It’s really fascinating to me that this is what people make when the barrier to artistic creation disappears. It reminds me of some Youtuber books - they’re written by people with no literary skill or experience, but they produce them because they’ve gotten popular enough that the books are a profitable endeavor regardless of quality. Until you read a Youtuber book you don’t consciously realize what is necessary to write a book, because usually, mostly, only people who have that ineffable something do write novels. And here: you don’t realize what is needed to actually create art and not just images, until you see people with no artistic literacy or skill produce what they think of as art.

Visual art and literature are windows to the soul, and normally only a certain type of person goes through the effort to open that window for us. Here, and in Youtuber books, you can see inside a completely different type of person. And their soul looks like waifus and cowboys.

A lot of women with early life/chronic trauma get told they have borderline even if they don’t fully fit the criteria. It’s a systemic misogyny thing. I wonder if that is what is going on here?

It is common for people with ADHD and/or autism to develop CPTSD as a result of the way we are treated by others and by the world’s inaccessibility. CPTSD absolutely looks like chronic depression with some of the traits of borderline personality disorder. It might be worth considering because there are different treatment options for CPTSD that could be more effective.

It’s truly strange. Hard to believe sometimes that it’s 2024 and I’m bedbound from the plague and looking into bloodletting

There’s a weird thing that some people with LC have where large blood draws lead to symptom relief for hours/days/weeks. Probably something something microclots or inflammatory something being removed temporarily, or maybe the body’s response to injury…? No one knows, we’re all just speculating. But it happened to me personally after a big blood test and then I was seriously looking into donating blood regularly, or, alternatively, nurturing a crop of medicinal leeches at home.

Ugh, this gets right to a massive pet peeve of mine regarding mainstream climate change coverage. This relentless fucking fixation on having hope, the absolute strident necessity that we all feel the “correct way” about what approaches us. It’s toxic positivity. It’s emotional policing.

All of these people are terrified of death and they have no idea what hope even is! Yelling at some teenager grieving the destruction of the biosphere, “Be more optimistic! Look at the cool tech!” - it’s not just ineffective, it’s the literal opposite of helpful.

Hope isn’t optimism! Hope isn’t believing that we will win. Hope is when you’ve gone fully into despair and then find yourself, somehow, still alive there. This facade of positivity they call hope will break at the first sign of stress; that’s why they push it so hard, insisting we all perform optimism as well, propping up their fragile feelings for them. I just want to shout it in their faces: You can’t have hope without death! You can’t have peace without grieving! Fuck you, start weeping!

Well, first of all, every morning my cat comes and sits on my chest and she’s very very soft. And there have been a few times in my life where I’ve gotten to feel this transcendent, infinite love that is greater than anything else I’ve ever felt. So I feel inside for the love in my own heart, or I look at my cat, or I look at kind people still trying - and then I can imagine that thing I felt before, the big love under everything, is real and true and still there. I don’t really understand yet how it is possible, given the suffering, but I imagine it anyway.

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I’m very sensitive to cross contamination (celiac disease) so I have to be very selective about my supplement brands. I use Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Xymogen. And for magnesium specifically you might be interested in Xymogen’s Optimag Neuro - it’s what I take for RLS and sleep - it’s got magnesium l-threonate, malate, and glycinate so you can see more easily if any forms work well for you.

I get short of breath and feel like I’m going to faint after walking around too. For me it’s because I developed a circulatory disorder after getting COVID. The blood slowly pools in my lower body instead of being properly circulated back to my heart and upper body, thus causing shortness of breath (not enough oxygen) and lightheadedness (not enough blood to brain). The disorder is called POTS, it’s quite common to develop or worsen post-COVID, and on average it takes years to get a diagnosis because most doctors are not familiar, so I am compelled to mention it to you just in case it is helpful. You can screen yourself quite easily at home with something called the NASA lean test.

Why can’t anyone make a decent monster collecting/battling game

Ooblets is a fantastic indie game with the exact opposite vibes of this one

Why do you dislike talking on the phone? For me it’s because I use more cognitive energy trying to understand speech due to auditory processing issues. It also really stresses me out to be expected to spontaneously socialize at the moment my phone erupts with an alarm. I like video calls better because reading lips helps me understand speech, and I prefer pre-scheduled calls near the end of the day so there’s a generally consistent expectation of how long the call will last. I also make sure I have stuff nearby to fidget with because it helps me ground/regulate while socializing.

If I can suggest a resource for one of these problems - COVID - for people like me who can’t take on the risk of (re)infection/are already too disabled by COVID to do anything in person. Basically try joining a mask bloc or similar from the directory here, the people there should understand better than most your need for protection from plague https://linktr.ee/COVIDAdvocacy

Also DIY fit test your mask if you haven’t:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCZ8Qnf0Z0

https://mathburritos.org/fit-test-kit-v1/

And bring a HEPA air purifier if you’re going to someone else’s home.

If you don’t have access to nasal sprays or aren’t comfortable with the quality of the evidence, you can also do a saline rinse after potential exposures to mechanically remove virions from your nasal passages.

Might be helpful to you:

https://www.covidconscioustherapists.com/

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Since you’re still masking, have you considered intentionally connecting with others who are? There’s a disproportionate number of neurodivergent people in covid-conscious spaces because, broadly, we’re less likely to make decisions based on social pressure and what everyone else is doing. You might be able to find people to meet up with in person as well as local covid-conscious events on covidmeetups.com and also through Facebook groups with the prefix “Still Coviding”

I do a lot of online socializing with the covid-conscious community (people who are actively avoiding infection, staying up to date on the research, advocating for masking/air filtration). There are regular Zoom events, various Discords, Facebook groups. The community is overwhelmingly left, often queer and neurodivergent, lots of people disabled and chronically ill - so it’s a good fit for me. Possibly not a good fit for you depending on how you’re reacting to COVID.

I don’t think so. I’m a very fast reader and I still kinda “hear” words in my head when I go at a relaxed pace. It’s just that at a certain level of literacy, your brain has the ability to visually recognize words faster than you can mentally enunciate them, and it can also recognize words faster than you can mentally process for comprehension. I realized this when of my relatives started to play a game with me where he would flash me a paragraph on his phone for just a second or two, and then I would somehow be able to recite it back. You can deliberately make yourself read at this speed but it’s not very fun, requires focus, and again, is often so fast that you start losing full comprehension of the content.

See the speed reading subsection here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization - in summary: everyone seems to subvocalize to varying extents, unless you deliberately train yourself not to, which you can, but you shouldn’t, because it sucks.

Is it possible to overdose on weighted blankets?

Everything says stick to 10% of body weight but I just got a 25lb to layer on my 15lb and, honestly. I think I need more

It warms my heart to know my one comment actually helped you. It’s odd for me as well to look back on that conversation now. I’m also feeling remarkably numb in comparison. My long covid is substantially worse, but I’ve given up on convincing the people I care about to avoid infection. Things don’t feel as raw, painful, and urgent as they once did. It’s like I boxed up some of my pandemic feelings and put them neatly aside, and I can’t tell if that’s acceptance or suppression. But maybe there isn’t a “correct” way to emotionally process something like this.