I'm talking about it in another thread too, but large birth weight is apparently a pretty significanly correlated risk factor for developing ASD. Studies show that obese mothers are more likely to give birth to higher weight children.
As I mentioned in another reply, heavy birth weight is another stat somewhat significantly correlated with ASD diagnosis that could correlate with c-sections. Interestingly high birth weight seems to be more common in mothers in their 20s.
In my case, I came out 2 weeks late and was little over 12lbs (~5.5kg) when I did. Apparently birth weight over 9.5 lbs is also correlated with higher rates of ASD. That would be my guess as to why c-sections show a correlation.
> People who would never have survived childbirth or early childhood in previous generations are surviving nowadays at historically unprecedented rates.
I have seen studies that correlate c-section deliveries with a somehat significant increased chance of autism, so that would track. I was born by csection myself, and both myself and my mom would have died if that wasn't an option.
I've never been evaluated for and am not diagnosed with autism, but given the broadened DSM criteria, it's possible they would have tested me and labeled me with something like that if I had been a kid today. Instead they just settled on "speech disability" and put me in weekly speech therapy for all of elementary school. I'm not sure if having a permanent disability label on me from a young age would have been a good thing to be honest.
Somewhat related, there's a great dark comedy movie called "The Day Shall Come" that revolves around the mechanics of entrapment, and especially how it often targets people on the fringes, especially those with mental illness. Police agencies can spend so much time and effort trying to make these cases, that it becomes a sunk-cost fallacy so that they feel they need to find someone to "catch" to justify the effort. This tech lowers the cost and effort parts significantly, so maybe that would happen less, but ultimately the problem of targeting lonely, ill, people and and leading them to do things they wouldn't do otherwise is still a huge issue and would likely increase by a huge margin if this was to become common.
Agreed. YAML was a great upgrade to traditional ini files, but its usage beyond any non-static config use case was a mistake. Not just k8s configs, but also ansible (Chef's ruby was so much better, chef just lost because it required an agent), and GitHub actions.
If it was strongly influenced by southern states having transplants, I feel like NC would be much lonelier, but we actually did pretty good. That surprises me, because culturally and economically, our closest peer is Georgia, and they didn't do as well. The biggest difference between us and Georgia is that the a huge portion of Georgia's population is centered around Atlanta, while NC has two major metros (Charlotte / The Triangle) and lots of mid-sized cities spread all over. Would be interesting to see this data on a per-county or per-metro level.
I've kept a journal of some sort for the past 10 years. Sometimes they're mostly used for capturing work tasks and working out architectures and designs, but occasionally I'll brain dump a random essay/poem/song/business ideas there, and those can be fun to come back to. I just moved into a new place unpacked them, so I've been paying through them as I get a chance. It's fun to see all the ways that I've changed, but it's actually more interesting to see some of the ways I haven't changed at all. I enjoy the act of writing because it makes me feel like my sense of self is less ethereal. Having something concrete that I made and like, even if it's just for me, is just satisfying.
You asked me why I didn't learn anything from those experiences and I explained. I'm not claiming to have the answers on how schools should be run or demanding my preferences implemented. I'm explaining my own perspective and acknowledging that the common view on these policies has changed since I was impacted by them. Personal viewpoints and anecdotes are still welcome on HN last I checked.
And if you knew one of the specific teachers I was actually referring to, and what he did and why he got fired, perhaps you'd understand why it's difficult to consider him "decent". As a result, I don't assume all teachers mean well by default. But that particular anecdote is not one for HN, and this conversation is boring me as much as that poem.
I do hope you found some help for your ADHD though. There are lots of medicines and lifestyle changes that make it possible to function even in extremely demanding roles, though getting it all nailed down is tough.
Because that would imply I had the capacity to change my future behavior based on those experiences. In reality, I had already faced consequences for late work and poor attention detail many times over my school career. Actually, that happened in nearly every grade and class I'd ever taken. But I was a good test taker and preferred to read in class rather than talk, so nobody bothered to evaluate me for ADHD. No amount of facing consequences for your mistakes will suddenly make ADHD go away. And if your home life is chaotic and unsupportive, you're not going to just be able to develop sufficient coping mechanisms on your own to function on par with expectations, even if you have strengths in other areas.
But those experiences did teach me a little something. They taught me to be grateful that most teachers are decent, forgiving individuals with policies for partial credit when you're late, because they'd rather see you engaged in learning than discourage you from even trying to finish the assignment. These days schools mostly aren't allowed to dish out straight 0s that can't be improved. And FWIW, nearly all of my college courses had policies for partial credit too.
Now I actually have ways to manage my natural executive functioning deficits, so I'm better at that kind of stuff.
Oh good timing, I've been writing poetry for the first time ever for the past week. Not about to share it anywhere.
But, they both look like mostly honest perspectives from particular types of people.
I see the first one and think of all the out of touch HS teachers I had who were so convinced their class was important and they were going to teach me an important life lesson and save me from underachieving by being hard on me in some way (usually being super strict on deadlines, or the guy who let me turn in my test with the back side not complete and didn't tell me or let me retry for partial credit - both my fault, but they taught me nothing). They had no concern for the fact I was just trying to get through the day. They just saw someone with potential who needed to learn from their mistakes by being held accountable. But I had missed deadlines in every class I ever took since middle school, if I could have just taught myself executive functioning and how to have a stable home life, I would have.
The second reminds me of a lot of some of my friends. They are anxious wrecks, obsessesing over the news constantly, meanwhile compulsively using social media to make calls for action and bring important things that they can't really actually impact to light. All the while, their personal life and mental health is a wreck, which they also loudly proclaim on social media.
So I think both poems were great insights into those perspectives. It's just that those perspectives are not exactly interesting and are sometimes a bit annoying.
That's interesting, because my earliest memory was wordplay related. Though I doubt I could have strung a sentence together at the time, there were definitely words involved. I have a few relatively early memories, but none that are totally pre-language.
+1 here, no narcolepsy diagnosis (do have sleep apnea though), but I also have that exact same awake-dreaming experience semi-frequently, or at least enough that it's not distressing to me for the most part. I also assumed this was a universal sleep experience.
I do vividly remember one experience though, I was riding the bus to high school. It was a very long ride very early in the morning and I started to fall asleep. My head was doing the thing where it would droop suddenly from tiredness. Usually the feeling of suddenly falling like that would wake me up a little and I'd snap my chin back up, but this time I guess I was extra tired so my head stayed drooped down and I continued drifting asleep while mostly upright on the bus. The dreams started, but in one part of the dream I heard someone call my name. I immediately became fully awake again, because I was aware I was on the bus the whole time and had thought someone had called to me and I might need to respond. But there was nobody behind me. Freaked me out a little because I wondered if that was a hallucination, but everything about it just felt like falling asleep. I get hypnic jerks a lot too, so I am used to suddenly coming back out sleep halfway through, and about half the time that happens I can remember bits of dreaming.
Microwaving ruins the skin for me, but does work much faster at least. A small toaster oven / convection oven might be a good trade off, and pressure cooker can do a good job too.
- Sweet potatoes. I eat one almost every day. I live in NC and can buy bulk local-grown ones in the fall and they last a very long time, but even at the grocery store it's only like 1.50 for 3 good sized ones. Eat them cooked in oven at 400, wrapped in foil for 1.5hrs depending on size, with butter or just salt.
- Sardines - I just eat from the can or over toast. Can also be good mixed with mayo. Lots of good deals available here, but try to prefer Morroco or Poland sourced ones vs the bottom tier ones from China. Bonus is sardines are lower in mercury than bigger fish like tuna.
- Goat cheese from Aldi - It's like $2/8oz there, my regular store is more than double that
Then I pair it all up with toast. The toast part isn't very healthy, but it's cheap.
I don't have a real cost reason to prefer cheap eating, but I'm the kind of person who would happily eat the exact same meal my whole life if given the option. So it's fun to optimize a little.
Under $100
- A portable neck cooling fan with semiconductor cooling pads on it
They sell these all over Amazon and similar places, but the best ones have both the moving air components and at least one little metal strip that rests on the back of your neck. That metal strip gets very chilly, so it makes hot weather so much more tolerable! Only downside is it's not great for long hair due to the fans potentially catching strands.
My Dad has ALS and has participated in a couple trials for different treatments. It's hard to say if any of them made a difference at all, and the justification behind some of these drugs seems extremely flimsy (one he was doing was for a drug that had some weak correlation during covid for slightly slower progression in one symptom), and the quality life impact of participating in that trial (having to fly to Boston, drug side effects, multiple lumbar punctures) leaves me frustrated that doctors recommend these at all. I feel like they're trading favors to get patients into studies with doctors they know, meanwhile, there are more promising ones that are being tested that he should be a candidate for, but the doctor won't even have a conversation about trying to get him in those trials. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I hope something comes from all this, but right now I don't have a high view of the drug research and treatment process for this condition.
It's not by design, but one thing I loved about living in Raleigh, NC is how many of the trees were preserved as it developed. It's quite nice (except during pollen season if you have allergies) and the shade is pretty valuable when dealing with those summers. It's especially noticable compared to Durham, which was not able to preserve as many trees close to it's downtown core and some big roads. Though Durham still has something like 52% tree coverage? The housing development craze in that area is definitely making a dent in the the coverage for the region as a whole though.
Reminds me of a place I used to work. Every time they asked for feedback, my refrain was "nothing here gets prioritized without a PIR (post-incident response)". Towards the end of my time there, whenever a PIR-related ticket showed up, I would mark it as a duplicate of whatever actual ticket I had dying in the backlog that would have prevented it. It really hurt team morale to have no influence in preventing foreseeable issues in our domain area. Most of the rest of the team had even stopped suggesting improvements altogether because management refused to let us pull our own tickets in.
They give zero feedback, so there are way better places to apply if that's all you're looking for.
The truth is the applicants have to have a story that resonates with whoever reviews your submission. Sometimes people jive over a shared problem space, sometimes they just like people who remind them of themselves or who come from "trust networks" they respect. The latter cases are where the bias keeps seeping in.
And just because they don't pick you for an interview doesn't mean you were disqualified forever. A lot of people reapply and have success. There are just so few slots compared to applicants that most don't hear anything.
There's also a great Adult Swim Infomercial satirizing this idea, "Live Forever As you Are Now with Alan Resnick"[1]. Apparently it came out the same year as that Black Mirror episode (2013) !
I actually love games with weird mechanics, but I see this problem a lot when I try to teach certain games to friends and family. Even if they're sober and used to playing board games. Some that take at least one playthrough for us are usually: Terraforming Mars, Terra Mystica, Gloomhaven.
You're reading way too much into the cities I mentioned! I work remote and have been city-hopping to places where I have friends and family, and none of my friend group are in tier 1 cities. I would love to do a long stay in LA and NYC in the future, but they're excluded from the housing program I use to bounce around.
I spent a few months in Austin for the first time this year. I hadn't expected much from it, but by the time I had left it had grown on me. I loved that it still had 24-hr coffee shops, I couldn't even find those in Seattle this summer. I also met a bunch of really kind, fun, and ambitious people in my age group (30s) through board groups, including other people interested in founding startups. Overall, it's definitely way more exciting than Raleigh, and the music scene was great too. I think it will continue to attract talent, especially from tech/startup-oriented southerners who may not feel culturally at home on the West Coast. The only other southern city I've organically ran into founders was Nashville, which is nice, but also quite expensive and doesn't have the history of tech investment that Austin does.
That's been 100% my experience as well. The real choice for me is "do I want to sit in front of my keyboarding spiraling down further and being mostly useless (and feeling guilty about that), or do I want to spend a little time addressing the problem and come back when I can function." Often times even just 3-4 hours is enough to do that. Getting FMLA protection for my chronic health condition has been amazing for that as it removed the guilt I used to feel about taking time, and I'm more productive than I've been in years despite taking a few hours a week. Recovering from burnout is seriously hard and it honestly needs it's own DSM diagnosis at this point.