annzabelle

I know my Pixel has an accessibility setting that is effectively "make this device more usable for older people." It gets rid of the home screen/app switching/go back gestures and replaces them with the old icons at the bottom of the screen, makes all the text and icons larger, and apparently increases the amount of time you need to press on the screen for it to count as a long press.

I worked for a large unethical company in the US that worked to emulate big tech, and took a page out of Jack Welch's playbook (stack ranking etc). I was miserable working there and thinking of changing careers.

I ended up moving to New Zealand and working for a small civil engineering firm that has developers to write internal tools that are used by the engineering team to process their data. The technology I'm working with is a lot more dated, the development processes aren't sophisticated (there are 0 meetings and no attempt at project management) and I took a real pay cut, but I genuinely feel that the software I'm working with is beneficial and has a net positive impact on the world, no matter how small. There is also no on call and I work exactly 37.5 hours a week, on top of all of the workplace culture differences in NZ.

> I suspect that almost all AVP/iPhone purchases are direct to consumer

I have worked for multiple companies that provide iPhones to employees, but neither of them would budget for the newest best version, unlike with the macbook pros. Companies know that if they buy devs computers with more ram and a bigger high resolution screen, we will get more done, but the main reason to provide a top end iPhone is as a perk.

Might be different with the Duo because I can see an argument for it being a better productivity device for people who need to send a lot of emails from a mobile.

Manichaeism did run into a lot of practicality challenges. In particular, the restrictions on diets and behavior for the priestly class were very extreme. No harvesting food, no stepping in puddles, strict veganism, and celibacy.

I read a few books on it for a term paper in college, and the part that most sticks out in my distant memory is that the creation myth involves a lot of what were translated in my copy as aborted fetuses.

I actually took a whole class in college on syncretic Christianity, and we had a unit on Goa, and there are Catholic shrines in Goa that are also frequented by Hindus, and you can find people there who identify as Christian but say that Vishnu is their favorite saint, and people who identify as Hindu who say that Jesus is their favorite god.

For central authorities of the Catholic Church, and Hindu theologians, this is all heretical, but the Catholic Church allowed for flexibility around traditions as it expanded. One big example is that many of what are considered Christmas traditions in northern Europe (the Christmas tree being an especially prominent one) are hangovers from traditions that predate Christianity.

If you have a smartphone from the last 5 years, you have to have done something unusual to it to not have an SMS app that also does RCS.

It makes group messaging work a lot better, too. Previously, group chats with a mixture of ios and android users were really buggy leading to iPhone users significantly preferring group chats with all ios, which led to some social exclusion for android users in the US, leading to market dominance for iPhones. Now, with RCS, you can make a functional group chat across platforms and you don't have to convince anybody to install something new.

Americans have had unlimited texting plans for much longer than Europeans. I'm pretty sure most Americans had unlimited texts before Whatsapp existed, so there was never the move to it for economic reasons.

Nearly everybody uses it in the USA. It's very common to text people through the default messaging app on your phone there (probably an outgrowth of the popularity of iPhones and iMessage), and backup options would be Instagram, Snapchat for a certain demographic, or Facebook messages. Whatsapp is only for messaging foreigners, and Signal/Telegram are for messaging your drug dealer.

There's a podcast (that's been on "hiatus" for 6 years) that I used to listen to that would do an air crash segment. The show was called Hello Internet, and I would always try to queue up the air crash episodes for any flights I was on.

One of the hosts recently started a new podcast called Runway 23 that's mostly about air crashes, and his cohost is actually a Qantas pilot.

It's interesting for interviews. I assume that people who have somewhat inaccurate memories but with a (possibly subconscious) egotistical filter do much better in interviews than those of us who have more accurate memories of exactly what our contributions to a project were. There are a lot of ways of stretching the truth in your favor, and they all seem much more natural if you really believe them.

My friend recently told me about seeing that an old coworker of hers from 20 years ago described her role as HR manager rather than HR assistant on her LinkedIn. I can easily see how someone with a fallible memory can retroactively exaggerate their title or responsibilities, especially when it's been 20 years.

Both of you have to send them to the other person as a specific recipient (so not just putting it on your story). I'm not sure about opening them.

For the two friends I'm thinking of, my impression is that they don't know each other any better through snapchat than they do from me knowing both of them and mentioning them to each other (they live 1000 miles apart and only met once). I guess the best I can say is that I would be comfortable seating them at the same table at my hypothetical wedding. Same vibe as my cousin I have on Facebook but have only really met twice in the last decade.

I'm not sure if you are in this demographic, but a lot of people I know born in 1999-2003 or so in the US used snapchat as a primary method of communication for many years, and a large part of it was keeping up "snap streaks" of sharing one photo a day with many different friends.

This is one thing for all of the pairs of genuine friends doing this, but I also have two friends who I introduced to each other exactly once, and who have never spoken since, who have a 6 year snap streak together, and both of whom have streaks like that with dozens of other people, many of whom are virtually strangers.

I have to wonder how much of this is "would like a full time job but has a part time job paying over 26k." Because of mandatory benefits (such as health insurance) for full time workers, a lot of companies only hire part time workers, but often people are making a living wage from those jobs. I'm not sure if a bartender making $50k+ (including untaxed tips) working 32.5 hours a week should count as unemployed.

My impression of Australia (as an American who is living in New Zealand) is that there isn't the same financial benefit to working as a software engineer vs other careers as there is in the US, and there isn't the same stigma towards the trades.

I would recommend avoiding any subreddit related to ADHD.

I honestly would try to stick to materials written by mental health professionals and possibly talking to a therapist (your company might have an EAP that can help with this) over interacting with any online community I'm aware of on this matter.

I find online mental health communities tend to be "if I have a hammer, everything is a nail," and aren't open to other explanations for any traits or struggles. They also tend to suck in the people who aren't doing better with treatment, while the people who found systems that work for them leave for greener pastures. On the opposite side there are communities that are anti-psychiatry and refuse to consider medical treatments. In general these spaces tend to be very black and white.

I do like the Astral Codex Ten open threads as a space that's relatively neutral on the topic, though they lean very biohacker in a way that gets ahead of the science.

Good idea. Feel free to try different options until you find something that you genuinely want to stick with. Running is just what I like, but my understanding of the current research is that it's more important to do something you actually want to do consistently for years than to do the ideal workout for 6 months and then quit exercising entirely.

Any country or time zone restrictions for REMOTE jobs?

On the non-medical options front, I will note that my lifelong hyperactive and neurotic tendencies dramatically improve with a 3-4 day a week distance running training regimen. I enjoy running enough, even though it is very difficult, that I've kept up with it for several years. I'm not as consistent about this, but I also found yoga classes to be a way to make mindfulness fun and easier.

That's not to say I'm not on the medication train (despite moaning about medications a lot). I do personally avoid taking any controlled substances. This is easy because I hate how stimulants make me feel, but in general I worry about the effects of having a direct reward signal from taking a pill.

I listen to a lot of psychiatry podcasts, and they generally think that ADHD is being seriously overdiagnosed at this point.

Executive dysfunction, especially that which was not impairing as a child, has a lot of potential causes. Anxiety, depression (yes, ADHD can cause these, but these can also cause executive dysfunction in people without ADHD), OCD, Bipolar (manic people in particular often attribute worsening of hyperactivity and distractability to ADHD instead of mania), Schizophrenia pretty much universally is related to cognitive symptoms and lowered motivation even when not psychotic, and borderline personality disorder can cause changes in interests and identity.

For many of these conditions, stimulants can act as a band aid on something else. It can superficially make people feel better (of course, it's speed), but it can distract from other symptoms that are impairing functioning, and prevent people from seeking long term solutions.

Have you gone down the rabbit hole of non stimulants?

I have had bad reactions to every stimulant I tried since I developed bipolar 1 in my late teens (had taken them as a child for ADHD).

I had a good response to strattera, but there's a variety of them out there.

I have similar stimulant intolerance since I developed bipolar 1 in my late teens (had been diagnosed with ADHD at 7). I was off ADHD meds for several years, and have now tried a few of the nonstimulants.

Strattera was subtle, but I had clearly improved feedback at work, a cleaner apartment, and no side effects.

Qelbree caused a lot of nausea.

Intuniv caused lightheadedness and got me an unnecessary cardiac workup.

Wellbutrin doesn't have as much ADHD efficacy as Strattera (my doc won't let me take both at the same time), but it improved my seasonal depression and motivation significantly. I had some irritability for the first few days after a dose increase, but otherwise the only side effect is reduced hunger and I also stopped asking people for cigarettes or zyns when I'm drunk.

My understanding is a lot of it is voluntary migration. If you you're not paying rent, you don't have a job, and you've burned all your social support ties, you might as well get a greyhound to a place with good weather, good social services, and where people will look the other way on your visible symptoms of mental illness and drug addictions.

I once played mario kart with the stranger sitting next to me on a plane with the switch.

Just because something is vegetarian, doesn't make it a vegetable in standard english usage.

The last large company I worked for switched from self hosted github enterprise to github.com in January 2025 or so.

I wonder how much egg is on that exec's face.

Japan has one of the highest numbers of psychiatric beds in the world. That's what I'm referring to. If you're experiencing psychosis in public in Japan, you will be removed from public spaces. This is not true in the US.

That's also true of the US.

I think they're referring to type 2 diabetics who might just be on a long lasting insulin and not need to inject at every meal?

Japan will lock people up for a long period of time if they show the sort of anti-social behavior that the most visible homeless people in North America are famous for.