yiffmaster:

blunt-force-therapy:

yiffmaster:

I gotta read stuff to get my adderall to kick in before I can do real work, so here’s my attempt at a primer on the Chinese writing system:

• “How do they have a separate character for every single word??” They don’t: each character represents one idea, one morpheme, one unit of meaning in a word. 
• Unbreakable in English has 3 morphemes: un, break, and able, each adding meaning. In Chinese characters that word is 不可破, which each mean no, able, & break, individually. 
• Like break and -able, some characters can be their own words and some can’t.
• Just as westerners often think that each character = 1 full word, Chinese people often don’t realize that each English word can be many elements smushed together. Someone learning English might see antidisestablishmentarianism as one insanely complex character, rather than 6 morphemes in a trenchcoat.

We need to make an Antidisestablishmentarianism character for the most insane stroke order ever conceived by man

Ok I went and googled, and “most complex character” has multiple claimants, just like “longest word” in English. I present to you:

Nàng - stuffed nose, 36 strokes. Claimed to be the biggest word in common usage.

Zhé - an archaic word meaning noisy, which is never used today. It’s also dragon 4 times, which I think is a great etymology. 64 strokes, but isn’t it really 16x4?

Biáng - a specific type of noodle from Shaanxi. Some say it’s “not real Chinese” or was just made up by a clever noodle seller. One wonders how anyone read it, if so. 58 strokes.

Finally, the word/character that has the antidisestablishmentarianism reputation in China:

Huáng - 172 unholy strokes. No one even knows what it means! Historians and linguists have tried to trace it back, but no luck yet. It might just be a nonsense “word” used as a charm, like the SATOR square. How does it even have a known pronunciation, if no one knows its meaning?

spacelazarwolf:

brucebocchi:

saul-tortellini:

underwhelmedandoverstimulated:

hazbinbabbling4ever:

sew-birb:

prince-of-the-moths-deactivated:

fagtainsparklez:

fagtainsparklez:

fagtainsparklez:

fagtainsparklez:

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

my poor professor was SO confused that she asked them to repeat themselves and they went “you know, like, blank …” and kept just vaguely gesturing until she somehow connected the dots. i fucking hate art school

god i wish i was making the shit i witness at this place up. my life would be so much easier if i didn’t have to deal with my classmates seriously arguing about fandom discourse in the group project chat

the price you think you’re paying by going to art school: tuition, supply costs, etc

the price you’re actually paying by going to art school: having to put up with the most brain-rotting terminally online discourse imaginable in real life

I had someone argue with me that it was problematic for me to have watched Frozen with my niece because I was encouraging her to become an emotionally abuse codependent sibling. I’m a senior and I’ve had someone else doing their senior thesis ask, genuinely, if she was problematic for doing her thesis on domestic abuse, because sometimes domestic abuse effects rich white women and they’re privileged, so therefore her doing it on that is racism apologism. I’ve had to sit there and watch people say “unalive”, “SA”, “PDF file”, and my favorite, “marital relations” (it only happened once but it’s really funny) to professors who look at them in total despair.

Hamlet didn’t unalive himself, he killed himself. Our Crime Prevention class is discussing sexual assault and pedophiles. The implication of this paper we’re reading in Intro To Africana Studies is not about white settlers marrying and having gentle loving monogamous funtimes with slaves, it’s about rape.

I genuinely do not see how I’m supposed to take the people around me seriously. How am I supposed to believe you have incredible insights into something you can’t bring yourself to say? How am I supposed to look over your rough draft and not cross out the euphemisms and write grown-up words?

And I DO NOT go to art school! I go to Montana State! I’m in redneck country - remember when redneck meant tough enough to at least say words?! Not anymore!

Do you know how stupid I feel that I couldn’t figure out that “PDF File” was supposed to be censorship slang for “paedophile”

I thought it was cool that gen z was inventing their own vocabulary to use online with other kids… But now the kids are full grown adults and using that language in a not ironic way, in professional settings. People using un-alive unironically is sending me into the ether lmao

That is kind of inherently the problem most people are having with this, it wasn’t them inventing their own vocabulary,like previous generation’s slang, it was forced changed by corporate influence.

shesnake:

shesnake:

everyone’s doomed by the narrative bitch let’s get you some fruit

nicelytousled:

Its important to me that everyone is aware of r/whatismycookiecutter

fiveninetyeightt:

do I even have to say who this reminds me of

orchidboy:

things that are angels: fungi. computer programming. bioluminescent creatures in the middle of the pacific ocean that have never been seen by people. a weird restaurant server late at night pouring coffee. overgrown things. androids and robots. etc

the-real-seebs:

ms-demeanor:

ms-demeanor:

ms-demeanor:

ms-demeanor:

Do not attempt to out-malicious-compliance the staff at the malicious compliance conference.

Some dipshit decided to pay the conference fee ($250) in quarters. He handed us a wrapped plastic bag full of loose change. “It’s all there,” he said with a shit-eating grin, “you can count it.”

Oh buddy. We’re going to count it. What were you expecting?

At about the time I got to $60, he offered to give us $300 collateral so he could get his badge and go to the conference.

No, bud. You get to watch the most dyscalculic staffer count to a thousand while all your friends go in to the breakfast and find seats for the first talk.

“Ruining someone’s day” is the favorite hobby of everyone here. Why would you hand us the perfect opportunity to wreck your shit and think that was an own? Half the con is calling him “Untraceable,” the other half is calling him “Quarter Boy” and nobody cares what he says his handle is.

I spent an hour counting that and made him go fetch me baggies to hold it every fifty dollars.

This ended up being a good bonus prank for me too, because when the counting was done I wrapped the bags in gaffer’s tape and spent the rest of the day handing it to people very casually while saying “oh here, hold this for a sec” and then watching they weren’t ready for the weight (I only did this to people I know well enough to know this wouldn’t hurt them).

Like everyone else, I just really want to know what is the malicious compliance conference.

ofthedarkwoods:

ALT

ALT

Edit: IM SO FUCKING TIRED OF IGNORANCE

keldeer:

tiktoksforlosers:

X

:

diet culture is so fucking sad.

i once played the asking game with my mom when she was talking to me about her diet plans.

why are you dieting? because i’ve gained loads of weight recently. who cares? everyone does. i don’t care. but i do. why? because i don’t want to be fat. why don’t you want to be fat? because it’s embarrassing and i don’t want to be an ugly pig. is being fat hurting you? not especially, but it’s not nice for other people to look at.

at this point i looked at her and said “don’t you think it’s sad that you’re spending your whole life putting these rules upon yourself, rules that naturally skinny people aren’t expected to abide by, all for the effort of trying not to be fat?” and she looked back at me with suddenly wet eyes and said, with an amount of difficulty, that yes, it is sort of sad when you think about it.

she’s been fat ever since i, her eldest child, was born. she was always super skinny in her youth, but pregnancy changed her body shape and her metabolism, and i only ever knew her as a very fat woman growing up. chances are, she will never be thin again. her lifestyle is no different to how it was before my existence; her body just works differently now. she sees it as a personal failure. she doesn’t eat her favorite foods anymore, doesn’t go out dating, doesn’t make friends, doesn’t go to events, doesn’t allow anyone to buy her clothes for her birthday because she can’t bear anyone knowing her size. she lives a lonely life, unwilling to do her favorite things. she elected for a gastric bypass surgery which, over the last few years, has introduced multiple complications that came very close to killing her, and yet she doesn’t regret the surgery because it helped her lose a few pounds. she basically does not have a stomach anymore and she still believes her fatness is because she’s been doing something wrong for the last 20something years.

diet culture is deadly not only because of the self-starvation and malnutrition but because it rips away pieces of your life that you’re supposed to enjoy. relationships and sex are only for thin people, a glass of wine and some chocolate at the end of a difficult day is an indulgence only allowed to thin people, cute clothes are only for thin people, family photographs are only for the thin relatives, riding a bike on vacation with your kids is only for families with thin parents.

doesn’t your soul ache? doesn’t it hurt you to see people doing this to themselves, to inflict this on YOURself? you can do all of these things. your life can be lived fully and joyously and with love, but you distance yourself from the things that make you happy because you feel like you aren’t good enough for them. it breaks my heart.

fatphobia is something oft inflicted upon people by others, but it comes from inside too. kill the part of you that thinks you aren’t good enough. your body is perfect already, my love.

busty-shackleford:

posingasme:

headspace-hotel:

puzzledjay:

a-flickering-soul:

OTC BIRTH CONTROL APPROVED BY THE FDA

FDA approves first over-the-counter birth control pill in US | CNN

Add to the list of “things about America I (american) didn’t know were not normal worldwide”

Not only this, but a huge percentage of hospital systems around the U. S. are run by religious organizations who are explicitly against birth control. Their employee health insurance (because yes most places in the US still don’t have universal healthcare) don’t always cover birth control for their employees, and in some cases, the physicians are told not to prescribe unless it is a medical necessity, meaning not for birth control itself, especially for anyone under a certain age or unmarried, etc. So. Believe it or don’t, this is huge for us Stateside. We won’t see them in drugstores for almost another year, probably, and hopefully the ever-more-conservative higher courts won’t try to take it out before we can get there.

Also on top of all that shit: In the late 90’s into 2010’s, I couldn’t get birth control without a pelvic exam first, and that used to be the norm

orteil42:

evil game design must never be done for money reasons. evil game design must be done for the love of evil itself

sunshine-tattoo:

daily-spooky:

cuddly pastel goth is still goth.

Rock on, baby bats.

rwby-encrusted-blog:

Being neurodivergent is just having a Demicolon attached to every single sentence that comes out of your mouth.

For those who don’t know what a Demicolon is:

hierophanthistorian:

jihaad:

guy who just spawned into the map

ALT

thatdisasterauthor:

iguessweallcrazyithinktho:

renthony:

sexycraisinthanos:

only-tiktoks:

Also Semi trucks have lifted seats so the driver CAN SEE ANY ROAD HAZARDS

Also, like, in the United States, huge semis are mostly driving on the major highways and Interstates. They’re long-haul trucks designed to travel cross-country on specialized roads. They’re not vehicles for small residential streets in the slightest.

I’ve known a lot of truckers. They literally cannot use a lot of the roads that regular cars do. But the big fuckoff vanity trucks barrel through those same roads without a care in the world.

And the headlights!! The fucking headlights omg

And they’ve skewed the market for real work trucks so bad! I do legitimately need a truck, but it’s basically impossible to find anything that isn’t a monster anymore. For this (and a variety of other reasons), I’ll probably never be able to buy a new vehicle again.

REBLOG IF THIS RELATES TO YOU:

just-a-humble-garbagecan:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

sexhaver:

iamoutofideas:

has anyone ever had sex before

no

Don’t be evil

The motto fell, a whispered sigh,

Replaced with lines of legal lie,

“Do the right thing,” a hollow phrase,

Lost in the algorithm’s maze.

Data’s tides, a churning sea,

Where profits dance and ethics flee,

The user’s trust, a fragile thing,

Crumbled beneath ambition’s wing.

So mourn the phrase, the dream’s demise,

The echoes of a promised prize.

thememedaddy:

etakeh:

In case you think the writers on strike aren’t making good use of their time, think no more!

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

ALT

Only click the read more if you’re fully prepared. I’m taking no responsibility past this point.

Keep reading

dovewithscales:

dovewithscales:

vaspider:

Damn he’s got a great voice. Including the original comic panel below:

[ID: Single panel from an X-Men comic, featuring two younger people listening to the above monologue.]

Very much so. The early comics were written during the height of the Civil Rights Movement by people who had grown up during and right after WWII.

babaint:

i-am-a-fish:

so um, the five day work week. why exactly did we let that happen

so um, work . why exactly did we let that happen

meme-lord-santa:

relatable

derinthescarletpescatarian:

mercurymusing:

mayorgearsolid:

xeansicemane:

mayorgearsolid:

Ain’t nothing like turning to your coworker to ask what they’re making and hearing them say “piranha solution”.

For the curious it’s a mixture of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. It’ll dissolve anything organic faster than you can say “fuck I spilled it”.

Hazard statement(s)

H272 May intensify fire; oxidiser.

H290 May be corrosive to metals.

H314 Causes severe skin burns and eye damage.

H350 May cause cancer.

Precautionary statement(s) Prevention

P201 Obtain special instructions before use.

P210 Keep away from heat/sparks/open flames/hot surfaces. - No smoking.

P221 Take any precaution to avoid mixing with combustibles/organic material.

P260 Do not breathe dust/fume/gas/mist/vapours/spray.

P280 Wear protective gloves/protective clothing/eye protection/face protection.

P281 Use personal protective equipment as required.

P220 Keep/Store away from clothing/organic material/combustible materials.

P234 Keep only in original container.

Okay you’re clear to reblog this now.

Piranha solution vs chicken drumstick.

Thanks, it’s terrifying

:

aeide-thea:

dduane:

A Woman Was Denied Medication for Being of ‘Childbearing Age.’ She Just Sued the Hospital

What (and it’s hard to say this strongly enough) the F.

Last September, New York resident Tara Rule posted a raw, emotional video on Tiktok saying she had been denied a medication to treat a debilitating condition called cluster headaches, because her neurologist told her she was of “childbearing age” and the medication could cause birth defects to a hypothetical fetus.

Rule said that as she sat in her neurologist’s office at Glens Falls Hospital, she told him she never planned to have kids and would have an abortion if she became pregnant; referencing the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he responded that getting the care she was seeking is “trickier now with the way things are going.” He also said she should bring her partner “in on the conversation” on her medical care. Rule asked if the issue preventing her from getting the “highly effective” medication was solely that she could become pregnant and, “If I was, like, through menopause, would [the medication] be very effective for cluster headaches?” The doctor affirmed it would. He also asked about her sex life and whether she’s “with a steady person.” Rule shared audio recordings of the appointment on TikTok at the time.

Last week, Rule filed a lawsuit against Albany Medical Health Partners charging the largest hospital system in upstate New York with discrimination over the denial of her medication and a string of incidents afterward. […] In addition to Rule’s allegations of discrimination, her suit accuses Albany Medical Health Partners of privacy violations and fraud. According to Rule, after she shared audio recordings of her interactions with the neurologist on TikTok, an employee at the hospital contacted another hospital in the area, alleging that Rule livestreamed her appointments. This led to Rule’s removal from the second hospital, Malta Medical (also under Albany Medical Health Partners), in the middle of treatment for her cluster headaches. Rule denies livestreaming. In the lawsuit, Rule alleges her nurse practitioner at Malta discharged her against her will with the help of armed security, but her insurance company was told that she voluntarily left mid-treatment, which Rule argues amounts to falsification of records. Rule also alleges that the nurse practitioner who had her removed at Malta violated her privacy rights by sending Facebook messages to Rule’s partner that include her medical details.

[…]

Rule’s case shows how the notion of fetal personhood—an ideology that regards embryos as separate people with rights at odds with the pregnant person’s—can be taken even further, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director at Pregnancy Justice (which isn’t working on Rule’s case). “What we’re seeing is how this ideology can extend beyond pregnancy itself—the idea that if you can even become pregnant, then you can no longer make decisions about your own body or access medical care,” Sussman told Jezebel.

30

coobk-blog:

mutantrenegade:

bunjywunjy:

bunjywunjy:

bunjywunjy:

I could swear this pan was full earlier. they are shrinking

it’s because mushrooms do not take up. much room.

hot damn they’re still going

marzipanandminutiae:

delphinidin4:

don’t forget the RIDICULOUSLY accurate 1790s-1840s costumes

like. they made a tiny embroidered 1840s carter’s smock that Rizzo wears in ONE scene for a matter of MINUTES

the costumes in the scenes where Belle and Ebenezer meet and where they break up, again, appear in ONE scene each. and yet both are fully accessorized and show the fashion shift in the several years between those events

they didn’t have to do that! very few people would have noticed! AND. YET.

i-am-a-fish:

i-am-a-fish:

i-am-a-fish:

I made this, please feel free to use

ALT

I made this post a couple months ago, and I completely forgot that I made it

today has been one of the worst days of my entire life, and this post somehow made its way back to me, like a mental-health chef boyardee can.

it actually helped me a lot

have some more

ALT

ALT

An inside view of ADHD: What your doctor probably didn’t tell you

neurodiversitysci:

This started life as a more accessible version of my ADHD list for writers, and turned into a two-part series. That’s how ADHD works sometimes. 

This is part 2.

1. ADHD is an executive function disability.

Executive function is hard to define, even for researchers. However, all agree it’s a set of skills that let us control our behavior and respond flexibly to a changing environment. Executive function skills include:

Executive functions are like the conductor in an orchestra, while the different parts of our brains are the musicians. 

Each musician in the orchestra plays beautifully alone. But to sound good when playing together, they need a conductor. The conductor keeps them playing with the same timing and the same style.

Similarly, each part of our brain functions pretty well independently. But when we need to do a new or complex task, we need multiple parts to work together with the right timing. To do that, we need executive functions.

2. We may have a distinctive way of thinking and talking.

People with ADHD might think in a web instead of a straight line. Here’s a blog post that illustrates the difference.

Each connection between ideas is logical, but because we zigzag through it, our train of thought looks disorganized to people without ADHD who do not share our “mental map” of the world. 

We move through our mental web through associations. 

A stray thought, another person’s words, or something we see or hear can remind us of something else. Because we’re easily distracted, we often go off on tangents. Because we have poor short term memory, we then forget what we were talking about previously.

We also talk fast, trying to pack all the necessary background information in our web into the shortest amount of time, before people get impatient.

As a result, when we talk to people without ADHD, both people often get frustrated.

But before you blame yourself and apologize for the communication problem, know that nothing is smoother and more energizing than a conversation between people with ADHD who think this way!

It feels exhilarating, and the energy builds increasingly as we talk. Everything the other person says makes perfect sense. We can go on for hours and never run out of things to say (or return to the topic we started with). We can finally be ourselves and talk comfortably, without worrying about irritating or confusing the other person.

Another positive to our thinking style: it’s ideal for “divergent thinking,” for making creative associations that wouldn’t occur to most people.

Priti Shah’s research team finds that ADHD adults excel at certain types of divergent thinking, which can help them outperform neurotypicals on both creativity tests and real-world creative achievement.

3. ADHD is a production disability, not a learning disability.

Because we think in a non-linear fashion, it’s harder and more time-consuming to explain our thoughts to other people. You first have to figure out what to say (and what not to), and put it in an order other people will understand, before you can speak or write.

If the inside of your head looked like this, you’d have trouble communicating your thoughts, too!

That means that deadlines are a lot harder for us to meet, even if we can remember them (a big if!).

ADHD is often categorized as a learning disability in education systems, but that’s a mistake. Many of us have no difficulty getting information into our brains. Our difficulty is with production: expressing what we know by a deadline, in the correct format. 

Some consequences of this:

1) A person with ADHD may well be brilliant in class discussions and in-class quizzes, but perform poorly on long-term papers and presentations. It’s because of how our brain works, not because of the amount of effort we put in!

2) For a person with ADHD, the content of schoolwork is easy, and if we turn it in on time we’ll get an A. But turning it in is harder than the homework itself. 

3) As a result, we have an all or nothing pattern of achievement. We either ace or fail assignments depending on whether we manage to turn them in on time and format them correctly.

 4) We also have all or nothing effort. There’s no way to gradate effort because if we put less effort in, we won’t finish and turn in the assignment at all. People often say “just do the minimum,” but that doesn’t work for us.

4. What other people think is “hard” is often easy for us, and what they think is “easy” is often hard.

Homework isn’t the only case where the “hard” part is easy for us, and the “easy part” is hard.

Free to Be says:

I have difficulty with some of the boring paper shuffling tasks but am really good at creating websites, brainstorming, creating presentations and new systems. Does anyone out there feel that people treat you as less intelligent because we have difficulty with simple tasks?

I wrote a post discussing “the complex is simple, the simple is complex” phenomenon here.

5. Boredom is torture, and we get bored REALLY easily.

Boredom feels like Chinese water torture. Every second is a drop of water.

Boredom feels like being in a sensory deprivation tank. You feel like you’re going crazy.

All of us find boredom more painful than the average person. But we vary in how often we experience boredom, and how we deal with it.

Some are constantly bored, and highly aware of their search for stimulation. Others, like me, think they’re never bored, because they always keep themselves occupied. 

In my youth, I always carried a book to read and a sketchbook to write in, and I’d read even while crossing the street. At the breakfast table, if conversation was impossible, I would read the cereal box.

Only when I started learning to cook did I realize that I can get bored and desperate to wander off within less than 30 seconds.

6. We often have bad memory.

I’m not sure why, but people with ADHD often have a bad memory.

In particular, our memories aren’t useful or deliberate. That is, we can remember random details from our childhood or trivia about our interests. But we have trouble remembering what we did on a particular day, when someone’s birthday is, or even our own phone number.

Poor working memory is common, and linked to lower brain activity than neurotypicals in the frontal lobe.

Having a bad memory affects more than academics:

• We might be constantly writing things down.
  

• We might worry about how to organize this record of our lives, and what would happen if it were destroyed in a natural disaster.
  

• We might worry about whether anything we experience is “real” or meaningful if we’re almost guaranteed to forget it.
  

7. We have especially bad prospective memory, which is remembering to remember.

One of my most frustrating ADHD difficulties is my failure to “remember to remember.”

Without extensive strategies to remind myself, I remember errands I need to run at times I can’t do them, and forget about them when I can.

When I was a kid, my mom tried to teach me the strategy of “when you’re angry, count to 10 before you do anything.” I couldn’t use the strategy because when I was actually angry, I wouldn’t remember the strategy existed. 

Thus, we ironically forget to take stimulant medication for the very reasons we need it in the first place!

8. A double bind: We need habits to function, but have trouble making them.

Because we can’t “remember to remember,” we have trouble making new habits. We can’t consistently remember the habit at the time we’re supposed to do it.

That’s a problem because habits make everything easier for us. 

When tasks are automatic, we don’t have to make decisions and use executive functions–the things people with ADHD struggle with most.

9. We can’t process visual clutter well.

In everyday terms, “visual clutter” is when there’s so many objects with so many colors, textures, and shapes that all your brain stops seeing any of the things. All it sees is an undifferentiated mass of “stuff.”

Researchers have a slightly different definition of clutter, measuring small decreases in response time and accuracy rather than the experience of “objects turning into a mass of stuff.” But they find that neurotypicals have trouble processing visual clutter, too.

People with ADHD just have more difficulty processing clutter in everyday life, produce more of it, and have more difficulty cleaning it up.

10. It’s hard to remind ourselves to do things without creating visual clutter.

Some people mistakenly think putting post-its everywhere will solve our “remembering to remember” problems–even people with ADHD.

But too many post-its become visual clutter.

We might stop looking at them to protect ourselves from being overwhelmed.

Or, we might be so overloaded by clutter that we look right at them and don’t register their existence.

Visual clutter paradoxes apply to more than just post-it notes.

If objects in my home aren’t visible, I forget that they exist. They don’t even need to be in the back of a closet; they can be in an opaque drawer or even a shelf I don’t use all the time. I even forget about food in the back of the refrigerator sometimes.

So, you would think I need to make all my things visible. But then I still can’t see them, because they just look like clutter.

(You would think the solution would be to get rid of most of my stuff. But the decisions involved would take hours and leave me exhausted. Remember, clutter is just un-made decisions).

11. Organizing our lives is harder for us than for most people because we keep running into double binds.

We’ve just discussed some double binds people with ADHD run into when they try to organize themselves:

• We need habits, but have trouble making them.
  
• We need visual reminders, but too many of them just turns into clutter we can’t process.
  
• We only remember what we own if it’s visible, but we can’t process any of our things if too many are visible.
  
• We need to own few objects so as to avoid clutter, but it takes a difficult, exhausting amount of executive function to get rid of extra stuff.
  

As a result:

• We often put huge amounts of effort into making our time and space organized, and still fail.
• Most ADHD adults research, invent, and tinker with organizational systems our whole lives. Most don’t work because of these double binds, and we keep changing or replacing them. This can look, or be, inefficient. 
  
• Well-meaning advice from well-meaning friends, family, and coworkers doesn’t work and leaves everyone frustrated. 
• Even advice from professional organizers and life coaches might not work well if they aren’t trained in dealing with the double binds created by ADHD.

12. Look at both extremes.

Some of us can multitask well, but are terrible at focusing on one thing. Some, like me, are the opposite.

Some of us feel stifled by structure, while others, like me, try to plan everything in advance. The first type of person fits many people’s stereotypes of ADHD people as “spontaneous” and “disorganized.” But because of ADHD, I rely on routines and schedules to function.

Some of us have IQ in the “gifted range” (top 2% or so), while others have low IQ and severe developmental delays (children who are born prematurely, get lead poisoning, or have fetal alcohol syndrome often have ADHD).

Some of us can see the big picture brilliantly, but miss many important details. Others focus intensely on the details but lose the big picture. Others, like me, can do either, but not both at once.

Some of us are artists, some are scientists, some are both.

We can be the best students or the worst.

We can be social butterflies or socially awkward penguins.

13. We’re consistently inconsistent.

Our functioning is inconsistent from day to day and even moment to moment. Not surprisingly, we fear that others will fire us or reject us because we’re unreliable. 

But also, we may feel that we can’t rely on ourselves. This diminishes our confidence, motivation, and self-esteem. 

If we feel unable to rely on ourselves, we might feel that we have to rely on other people. We might resent our dependence, and fear that if we mess up one too many times, they will leave us.

Research calls our inconsistency “intra-individual variability.” Ironically, they find that inconsistency ranks among the most consistently observed ADHD traits.

14. When life gets hard, we can stop being able to do things we “know how” to do.

When our lives are going well and the people in our lives support us, we often function well in school, at work, and in our relationships. Some of us do so well that our ADHD is invisible.

But when difficult life transitions happen, some of us seem to suddenly fall apart. I call this “hitting the wall,” and Laurie Dupar calls it a “tipping point.”

Basically, we can no longer compensate for our disabilities, because we no longer have the time or energy to use the strategies that worked for us in the past. In fact, our old strategies might even be counterproductive. Our ADHD traits become more obvious, and we stop being able to do things we could before.

Common tipping points include: 

• going to college
  
• being promoted at work
  
• marrying
  
• having a baby
  
• going through menopause.
  

ADHD can turn even the joyous milestones of life into a struggle.

15. Many of us develop anxiety.

More than half of us develop anxiety.

We’re prone to overthinking, and may have trouble controlling our thoughts.

We have to worry about others misunderstanding us and calling us lazy, stupid, flaky, or rude.

We are inconsistent, and worry about the effects on ourselves and others.

Some of us develop an exhausting habit of “constant vigilance” to avoid making ADHD mistakes like losing things, forgetting belongings, running late, math/writing errors, etc.

16. We usually have other conditions along with ADHD.

People with ADHD are more likely to…

• Have other developmental disabilities, such as autism.
  

• Have learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, dyscaluclia, or nonverbal learning disability.
  

• Have difficulties with sensory and motor processing, such as sensory processing disorder and dyspraxia.
  

• Develop mental illnesses, including depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder.
  

• Have certain physical and neurological disorders, such as tics/Tourette’s syndrome or night-time bedwetting ( “enuresis”) into late childhood or adolescence.
  

• As children, exhibit behavioral problems, which may be diagnosed as so-called “oppositional defiant disorder.”
  

• Self-medicate to the point of developing substance abuse, such as alcohol or nicotine dependence.
  

Personally, I believe that our difficulties with self-regulation go way beyond high-level abilities like executive function. 

We have difficulty regulating even the most primitive brain functions (such as maintaining alertness). Some of us even have difficulty maintaining homeostasis of bodily functions. 

For example, I overreact to small changes in light, atmospheric pressure, temperature, blood sugar, hunger, thirst, or sleep, with migraines, pain, fatigue, irritability, and difficulty thinking and moving quickly. 

Difficulties regulating sleep, including falling asleep, staying asleep, and waking up well-rested, correlate with and probably explain some ADHD symptoms. 

(For this reason, anyone evaluating someone for ADHD should always inquire about sleep, because some people may look like they have ADHD when they don’t purely because of chronic lack of sleep! But people with ADHD also often have sleep difficulties). 

In other words, if someone has ADHD, they probably also have disabilities or difficulties with self-regulation that affect other areas of life.

17. Our family members are likely to have ADHD or autism, diagnosed or otherwise.

Many people report being diagnosed with ADHD after their own children were diagnosed.

ADHD is highly heritable, meaning that it’s highly likely that someone with ADHD traits will have children, and parents, with similar traits.

The same genes can also predispose someone to both ADHD and autism. So families that contain autistic people often contain people with ADHD, and vice versa. My own family is one of these.

18. Not everyone with ADHD views their condition the same way.

Some of us see ADHD as uniformly disabling. They believe it prevents us from using our talents and passions.

Others see ADHD as a gift that must be managed.

People with each of these viewpoints sometimes see the opposite as harmful to people with ADHD.

Still others view ADHD as a trait like any other, which can have positive or negative effects depending on how one chooses to use it and whether it fits the environment.

Personally, I see ADHD, in general, as a set of traits. However, I see my own as mostly negative. I like my creativity and ability to hyperfocus. However, I believe my ADHD traits interfere with using my talents, and would be impairing in any environment. (What benefit could inconsistency and self-regulation difficulties possibly have, in any environment?) But there are environments where my ADHD traits would be less disabling, and I’m trying to find and create them.

19. ADHD can be a serious disability.

On the surface, ADHD looks like something “everyone deals with.” But as this list suggests, it can cause serious problems in school, work, and relationships.

The large-scale MTA study followed hundreds of girls and boys with ADHD into adulthood, and found the following outcomes:

• Higher rates of self-injury and mental illness
  
• More adolescent substance use
  
• More eating disorders
  
• Poorer relationships with peers in adolescence
  
• Poorer relationships with parents and partners in young adulthood
  

ADHD has also been linked to:

• Lower test performance
  
• Poorer education and work performance
  
• Greater risk of accidents
  
• Obesity
  

Researchers and the media tend to describe these problems as the result of ADHD traits themselves, especially impulsivity.

But I believe the way we treat people with ADHD has a lot to do with the bad outcomes.

Many of us, especially those diagnosed late in life, develop crippling shame and self-hatred. This alone can lead to poor school performance, mental illness, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, and underachievement at work.

20. But people with ADHD are awesome!

People with ADHD can be creative, energetic, passionate, thoughtful, smart, academically skilled, empathetic, spontaneous, entrepreneurial, and more.

Famous people in every walk of life have diagnosed ADHD, and many past geniuses had traits.

Like other disabilities, ADHD colors how we experience and act in the world, and it adds unique struggles to our lives. But ADHD does not diminish us or make us less human.

***

Thank you for reading. If this post helped you understand ADHD better, please share it. Let me know if I’ve missed important ways ADHD has affected your life.

firespirited:

fitgothgirl:

kleefkruid:

Every fun post on here that encourages people to have hobbies/be creative always gets an avalanche of “Some people are poor Karen” type reactions and respectfully, you’re all super annoying. I’ve never lived above the poverty line and this is a list of hobbies I have that were cheap or entirely free:

• Read books: Go to the library, lend a book from a friend
• knitting, crochet, embroidery: Get some needles from the bargan store and ask around, people have leftovers from projects they’ll happily give you. Thrift stores also often carry leftover fabric and other supplies. And talk about your hobby loud enough and an old lady will show up and gift you their whole collection, because there are way more old ladies with a closet full of wool than there are grandchildren who want to take up the hobby.
• Origami/paper crafts: get some scrap paper and scissors, watch a youtube tutorial
• walking: put on shoes open door
• pilates/yoga/etc: get a mat or just use your carpet, watch a youtube tutorial
• Houseplants: look online for people that swap plant cuttings. There are always people giving out stuff for free to get you started. If you’re nice enough you’ll probably get extra
• gardening: You’re gonna need some space for this one of course but you can just play around with seeds and cuttings from your grocery vegetables.
• aquarium keeping is a bit of an obscure one but I got most of my stuff second hand for cheap or free and now I have a few thousand euro worth of material and plants.
• drawing/art: You get very far just playing with bargan store materials. I did my entire art degree with mostly those.
• writing: Rotate a cow in your head for free
• cooking: again one you can make very expensive, but there are many budget recipes online for free. Look for African or Asian shops to get good rice and cheap spices.
• Join a non-profit: Cities will have creative organisations who let you use woodworking machines or screen presses or laser cutters or 3D printers etc etc etc for a small fee. Some libraries also lend out materials.
• candle making: You need some molds (cheap), wick, two old cooking pots for au bain marie melting and a ton of scrap candles, ask people to keep them aside for you.
• a herbarium, flower pressing: Leaves are free, wildflowers too, ask if you can take from peoples gardens.
• puzzles: thrift stores, your grandma probably
• Citizen science: look for projects in your area or get the iNaturalist app

And lastly and most importantly: Share! Share your supllies, share your knowledge. Surround yourself with other creative people and before you know it someone will give you a pot of homemade jam and when you want to paint your kabinet someone will have leftover paint in just the right color and you can give them a homemade candle in return and everyone is having fun and building skills and friendships and not a cent is exchanged. We have always lived like this, it’s what humans are build to do.

And all of it sure beats sitting behind a computer going “No stranger, I refuse to let myself have a good time.”

Anyway I’m logging off bc I’m making some badges for a friend who cooked for me and then I’m going to fix some holes in everyones clothes.

• Birdwatching - download a free app for identifying and/or logging and go for walks or hikes or just sit in your yard/at your window depending on where you live. (My biologist friend uses the Merlin Bird ID app for identifying and eBird for logging, so that’s what I got now that I’m getting into it. These apps are associated btw, both by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology). A cheap/basic pair of binoculars helps too.
• Crosswords and other word puzzles - lots of free sites
• Learn a language - Duolingo is free, among other apps
• Photography - Most people have smartphones these days that actually have decent enough cameras that could suffice for beginners and intermediates - the important part is your eye and the composition, etc. Plus there are free Photoshop-like sites for editing, like pixlr.com. Also you can find old, great quality DSLRs that still work for cheap! They’re not like cell phones lol; my Canon is almost 20 years old and works like a charm. And good ol’ YouTube University can give you beginner lessons if you don’t know what to look for or how to get started.
• Journaling (and/or bullet journaling)
• Read lyrics along with songs while listening to them. If you don’t have Spotify, there are tons of free lyric websites out there.
• Research an unfamiliar topic either online at home or at the library.

Also for any hobby or just life, there’s always the Buy Nothing Project and freecycle and Trash Nothing where people exchange things rather than throwing away stuff they don’t need!

There are a couple of things I’d like to add as someone poor in supplies and in time/energy:

Yes it takes more effort and practice to get a nice looking result with janky materials and there’s a learning curve about what supplies are actually a waste of your time.

Yes it’s harder to be motivated when you aren’t part of a group or the people you intended to follow in a hobby have the nice supplies.

Yes it’s harder to find tutorials that are rewarding when you’re not using the supplies they have or try to sell you.

It’s kind of like learning to enjoy going to a movie alone or learning a skill outside of a class or group: learning to enjoy learning, to embrace your mediocre first attempts, not see practice pieces as wasted time, getting motivated for yourself alone… it’s a skill, it’s an exercise in patience (in endurance even, for restless folks like me). But that’s also part of the fun: the challenge.

My biggest advice is to embrace that you’re going to make ugly things for a while but you’re also going to have more intuitive, inventive skills than the folks with the nice supplies. Someday soon you’re going to be the one who can do clever fixes, recycling and point out to newbies why and how they’re messing up because you’ve been there.

The other super important advice is to find where the other people making janky beginner things are and join them.

Instagram, tiktok and youtube will recommend product photography level videos of high skill with high end supplies. Avoid at all costs!!

It takes quite a bit of scrolling or finding one hobbiest on your level to follow and follow who they follow so I like to go to deviantart first and try and find folks on tumblr next (and crafting for kids/teens blogs) . For example: on deviantart they’ll have a low res step by step photo montage tutorial and you’ll get to see the unprofessional looking item they made and you won’t feel bad because that was an honest time when people put their ugly work up and you can see how they became really good at it a few years later.

[I am learning how to crochet. I’m dyspraxic and can’t think in 3d. It’s been a week doing a few hours a day: I’ve done more than a dozen mini samplers with this 3yd piece of just right yarn, taken a photo then pulled it apart. When I can do neat rows and a better coordination for tension, I’ll go find a simple thing to make on deviantart or a beginners crochet book on the internet archive library. There has been no dopamine rush, there have been a series of downers and *that* is where the power of spite kicks in.

I know 5 stitches, I *will* get their tension right and then I *will* make a thing and it might take a practice piece or two but that thing will give me my dopamine rush. And if crochet isn’t my jam after that I’ll try something else or go back to something practiced to the point of making satisfying things.]

Another option is to look at homemade gift lists from craft blogs (past and present) and see if there’s anything in your current supplies, recycling, ingredients that you could practice. (I had some felt, cardboard and beads and a single bead needle so I learned to make beaded brooches as seasonal gifts. Following fancy tutorials for the techniques but making my own thing.) Hand made gifts can be a way of easing into a hobby with a specific thing to make in a small time crunch (and you don’t have to give it to someone who won’t appreciate the work, you can do it for you).

roach-works:

jartitameteneis:

are you fucking kidding me

theworsethingsgettheharderifight:

callmebliss:

angelicguy:

museum-of-artifacts:

Depictions of Medjed from the Greenfield papyrus (950s-930s BCE). Medjed (meaning “The Smiter”) is an ancient Egyptian god who shoots rays of light from his eyes, and who goes round about heaven robed in the flame of his mouth, commanding Hāpi (Nile god), but remaining himself unseen

The Sneaking Smiter

tadbitsickchickwithadick:

amphirelle:

Alright girls, you know what we need to do

They aren’t ready for girlsterous

8ball-wizard:

the-adhd-sorcerer:

8ball-wizard:

the-adhd-sorcerer:

8ball-wizard:

glasses: ON

cloak and boots: DONNED

earrings: GAY

spells: WHIMSICAL

pendant?

CURSED

cock ring?

ALSO CURSED

2urban2fantasy-deactivated20241:

tendie-defender:

crazy-brazilian:

for my male audience

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

cadmium-free:

cadmium-free:

cadmium-free:

cadmium-free:

if you’ve ever thought i’m standoffish, politely distant, or generally hard to befriend, know in your heart that i’m exactly the same in real life. my neighbours just showed up at my door drunk on Canada Day celebrations and told me how desperate they’ve been to meet me for the past few months and then tried to fix the water pump in my basement

one of the neighbours returned today with heavy machinery and gravel and fixed my driveway. i feel like a feral animal they’re trying to coax with little treats

they’ve told me the gossip which is that a few years back a 70 yr old man collapsed the bridge at the end of my road by driving his tractor over it, lost his tractor in the river, climbed back up the cliff unscathed, walked an hour home, and then the whole road fell into disrepair and all the campgrounds closed and the once popular waterfall down the road became obscure and secret. so like, be the change you want to see in the world. collapse a bridge to chase out the tourists. also you can lose widespread knowledge in under 10 years if one old man collapses a bridge

also i met this bridge collapsing old man on a walk a few months ago and he said to me “you should check out the river at the end of the road, there’s a tractor in it!” like he wasn’t the one who put it there

fluentisonus:

fluentisonus:

OBSESSED with this person on youtube that recorded the raven king ballad from the footnotes of jonathan strange and mr norrell and then posted it to youtube as “child ballad 307” (there are only 305 child ballads) with the description “an old timey appalachian ballad about getting kidnapped by fairies. for fretless foxfire banjo in the key of A” without once mentioning where it came from. literally they understood the idea of this book more than anybody else

^ the video

drtanner:

taraljc:

everythingfox:

He looks like an old light house keeper

I would buy his frozen fish fingers

The Trombone Champ soundtrack really makes this. :’)