You could argue that, but are these personal benefits not just checks from lobbyists? And does this power not come largely from the leverage they gain expanding their influence in order to justify bigger checks?

I can only imagine the feeling of having such a weight lifted off your shoulders and conscience. It must feel almost like a fresh start, because in a way it is. Or at least that’s how it sounds to me, being able to progress in a meaningful way without such major hindrances.

I’m glad to hear you got to see such a favourable outcome after such a long and turbulent period, and I’m genuinely happy for you and your church, that you get to make progress in making your community better for everyone. It sounds like you all have the best of things to look forward to already, but I wish you all the best anyway.

Good news has been a bit hard to come by lately, so it’s extraordinarily refreshing to hear some for a change. So cheers, and thanks again for sharing.

Wow. Yeah that sounds like a rough ride, I’m sorry you and so many others were dragged through the coals like that for so long. It sounds like things were at a point where a split like that was probably necessary unfortunately, maybe even entirely unavoidable from the sound of it.

Thanks for sharing your experience, and congratulations on a more unified (and moral) stance on these issues. I hope your church can finally and more easily move forward without the weight of the interference, pressure, and influence these fringe actors had been exercising in the past several years.

Good on you. It’s always refreshing to hear from Christian folks who have a strong enough moral compass to steer away from (let alone actively support direct opponents of) some of the more zealous or bigoted views which unfortunately seem to be growing stronger in the Christian community as of late.

I say this from the outside looking in, as I’ve never been associated with any church myself, so this viewpoint of mine may just be the result of an increasingly active vocal minority.

But I’m very curious to hear your experience as someone within the community; have you yourself seen growth in these types of zealous or bigoted views in the past several years within the Christian Community? Things like stronger, more vocal, or even unwavering support of anti-abortion or anti-LGBTQ laws/practices?

I could see a Wikipedia-style donation model working to keep lots of different servers up. But I can’t see it happening for servers hosting exclusively news + memes + whatever random communities people want to add.

I _could _ see it happening for dedicated broad-topic or semi-niche instances (instances for gaming, investing, Linux, music production, etc.) each hosting a collection of related and maybe more niche communities (for CSGO, Bitcoin, Arch, EDM production).

As they become more popular, server hosting costs increase, and at some point they might need to ask for donations to keep afloat. People are willing to throw a little money towards something they enjoy, especially if it’s their choice to do so. And they feel good about it. And instances that stay around longer gain more users, more usability, more credibility (assuming a non-toxic community).

I could definitely see it leading down a path of growth and prosperity for the platform. However, now that I typed this out, I could see it both working positively, and being abused and exploited, so 🤷

I can practically guarantee that people who say they hate tea haven’t tried brewing any kind of loose leaf tea at the proper temp and time.

I got a 1kg brick of the cheapest loose-leaf black tea I could find for ~$3.50, and it’s delicious. I drink it almost every day, I bought it in June last year, and I’m just now running low. I brewed a bag lipton black tea at work recently, took one sip and I dumped it the fuck out. Absolutely foul, that stuff.

So I can see why people hate tea if they’ve only ever tried cheap bags with boiling water

No problem! It’s a cheap solution for me, but everyone is different ofc. As a 75kg guy who’s struggled with insomnia from birth, I can wake up way too late after losing sleep, then take my 70mg dose at 15:00 and still fall asleep by 22:00 if I take 1000mg vitamin C by 20:30

I see magnesium+zinc supplements labelled ZMA in health/fitness shops, highly recommend something like that too if you normally have trouble falling asleep anyway. It knocks me out quickly, works wonders for my sleep quality, then the next day the meds are even more effective/helpful because I got such great sleep.

It’s best to take vyvanse no later than 12-14 hours before you expect to go to bed, but some people need longer. Try taking 500-1000mg vitamin C a couple hours before bedtime, maybe also some magnesium just before you go lay down.

The vitamin C is particularly effective in flushing out any residual vyvanse in your system to prevent it from keeping you awake, and the magnesium will help you fall asleep. Zinc-magnesium supplements are also common, and the extra zinc is needed for your body to produce dopamine (which is something that is put under stress with ADHD medication releasing so much of it).

Lots of people still think that introverts hate social interactions, or feel better without any social interactions at all, but we do need to be social. Some people get dogs or cats and that helps them a lot. But lots of introverted people will tend to find some way to mask the loneliness by distracting themselves that requires a lot of attention, or occupying themselves with something that emulates social interaction. Playing a game while watching twitch streams of that game can fill both of those roles, listening to the streamer and reading chat periodically. That can work in a pinch, but it’s not a real solution. And I don’t have a real solution, aside from “find your balance”, but I know that’s not helpful.

I can suggest something that I found to be a more effective distraction, though. And it even could lead to the first steps to a solution to introvert loneliness if you’re lucky. You can try going to a local bar/pub on a slow day. It helps if you drink alcohol, but you really don’t have to. And of course if there’s a history of alcoholism in your family, you should definitely avoid the alcohol. Make sure to sit at the bar, because a lot of bartenders will start up conversation with lone patrons in their down-time, and the same goes for drunk people getting up to buy another drink, so you don’t have to initiate if you don’t want to. You can end up having a few interesting conversations in a night (or sometimes none at all), and go home either feeling good about going out on your own free will (I.E. Not being forced into a social situation), or exhausted from any overbearing social interactions and therefore a bit more content with going back to spending time by yourself for a while.

This helped me before I made a couple of friends (who I met at the pub) while living alone in a new city, after my distractions got stale. I say it’s worth a try, but everyone is different.

It was hard to initiate that first trip to the bar though, it felt very, very weird. But halfway through my second beer, I felt mostly content with even just listening passively to background conversation. By the time I ordered the 3rd, the bartender had initiated conversation, and before I knew it that feeling of loneliness was gone. It’s important to keep moderation in mind though, I could see that being very effective in catalysing a drinking problem. I did this 2-3 times per month, and that was just enough for me.

So ymmv, but it helped me a lot.

I’m absolutely not mocking you.

You’re basing some of your arguments on things you don’t seem to actually know, and using incorrect interpretations of my words as basis for some of your counter-points. I’ve noticed a pattern in people who formulate and present arguments/points similar to the way you do, and they tend to be difficult to hold civil discussions with, so I chose to end our discussion.

I’m sorry if that comes off as harsh or rude, but it’s my honest reason for ending our discussion. There’s truly no malice or mockery behind my words

Anyway, this is my last message to you. And since you seem to have read my previous message as a passive aggressive mockery, I really do genuinely hope you have a great holiday season.

I’ll argue that the blackberry was just a better implementation of the already existing PDA exactly like the iPhone was just a better implementation of already existing touch-screen device, but beyond that I just don’t feel like taking time to repeat/clarify points I’ve already made or responding to "pretty sure"s. So I’ll just suggest we agree to disagree on this particular topic and wish you a merry Christmas 🎅

Sure, cost was almost certainly taken into account, they are a business after all.

But they didn’t just get lucky by gambling touch screens and waiting to become cheap enough. Take a look at the user interface of the touchscreen phones that came before the iPhone. Very limited in what they could do. Users were locked to a few small menus and custom-tailored applets, not much different than the UI of the phones before the iPhone. A touch screen was really more of a tech gimmick than a feature. Most (if not all) only accepted single stationary taps, any movement with a finger pressed to the screen wouldn’t register properly, if at all, and there’s really only so much you can do with that.

What Apple innovated is a better use for touch screens, an improvement in the way we were able to interact with our phones, coupled with a re-imagining of what a phone’s interface should be at a fundamental level. And they accomplished this with huge help from their decision to move away from tap-only touch to something that felt more natural: multiple/moving gestures, such as scrolling by moving your finger up or down, pinch to zoom, etc.

This really caused the single biggest movement away from what cell phones really were for us. Before, they were mostly portable telephones with a few extra poorly-implemented and barely functional gimmicks (ever use a web browser on a Razr?). With the iPhone’s success, Apple single-handedly shifted us into the new cell phone model; a customisable, intuitive to use, modular canvas that anyone can mould into whatever suits their needs via apps created by anyone (which Apple gets huge credit for yet again, because this could only he possible with the developer kits Apple released, effectively outsourcing creative solutions in taking advantage of the iPhone’s functionality).

When you look at what they set out to innovate, how they went about doing it, how much different it was than phones in the past, and how incredibly similar it is to phones today, a whole 15 years later, you just cannot reasonably deny that it was an extremely innovative and influential product.

Are you saying that other people had been working on and creating what became Apple’s mobile phone touchscreen interface, and they just bought the already near-finished product? If that’s the case I wasn’t aware.

Or if you’re trying to correct me (I assume you’re not, but you never know), I did acknowledge that Apple didn’t invent the touch screen or touch screen phone, the tech has been around since the 1960’s and even on phones since the early 90’s iirc.

Came here to say something similar about touchscreens on phones. It’s probably the most impactful innovation they’ve had, and ever will have imo. I can’t ethically support Apple as a company and I haven’t owned an apple product since the first iPod touch, but they absolutely deserve credit for this one.

Even if they didn’t invent the touch screen, or even the touchscreen phone, they certainly figured out how to perfectly integrate touchscreens into mobile devices a fluid and intuitive user interface which served as a canvas on which to build pretty much anything you wanted in the form of a mobile app (a $200B+ industry which the iPhone absolutely catalysed the explosive growth of).

It arguably even began a significant change in the course of modern human interaction, due to how much more versatile and therefore more commonly used mobile phones with a similar UI basis became since then; because of that, increasingly popular social media platforms now had a new way to provide use for their platform (via mobile apps) on a device that pretty much everyone now had with them all the time. I don’t think it’s coincidence that social media use saw such substantially explosive growth soon after the iPhone and subsequent “copycats” were on the market.

So their innovation here was really the first step in a number of global paradigm shifts. It was just such a monumentally impactful step forward. Because of this I genuinely think that the iPhone is almost guaranteed to be in history books for centuries, like the printing press or the light bulb.

May not be interesting or new info (and the comments section of an ADHD meme are probably not the place for this anyway), but I just recently learned a very plausible reason why the trifecta seems to be so prevalent:

Rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD).

It’s essentially an abnormally strong negative emotional response to rejection or failure, and it’s very common in people with ADHD.

“Rejection sensitive dysphoria, while not a formal diagnosis, is also a common symptom of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, estimated to affect a majority of people with ADHD.” Source (Wikipedia)

Basically, people with RSD go about their days constantly and disproportionately anxious about doing everyday things. If they make an absentminded mistake (which of course happens all the time with ADHD), they’ll feel bad about themselves for it out of fear of disapproval from those around them, which only feeds the anxiety even more. If they mess up something more serious, it can be devastating.

Here’s another link with some great info under the “Symptoms and Causes” section:

• It’s very easy for them to feel embarrassed or self-conscious.

• They show signs of low self-esteem and trouble believing in themselves.

• They have trouble containing emotions when they feel rejected. This is often noticeable in children and teenagers with this condition. Some may react with sudden shows of anger or rage, while others may burst into tears.

• Instead of losing control of their emotions outwardly, some people with RSD may turn their feelings inward. This can look like a snap onset of severe depression, and sometimes, it’s mistaken for sudden emotional shifts that can happen with bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

• They’re often “people pleasers” and become intensely focused on avoiding the disapproval of others.

• They may avoid starting projects, tasks or goals where there’s a chance of failure.

• They compensate for their fear of failure or rejection by going all-out or striving for perfectionism. However, the downside of this is that they often experience intense anxiety and may not easily make self-care or downtime a priority.

So to sum it up, RSD affects a majority of people with ADHD, and can amplify anxiety due to fear of rejection/failure in many different forms, and any eventual rejections/failures that do materialise are met with a disproportionately negative emotional response.

Shit sucks.

I’ll share some anecdotes below if anyone is interested, but the TL;DR is that it has an extremely strong effect on me, and I imagine someone might be able to relate, if they care enough to read lol.

Last semester, I failed all 3 of my classes because I couldn’t keep up with the school work due to problems with my (at the time undiagnosed) ADHD. I remember falling behind and getting increasingly anxious about all the work I needed to catch up on, which only made me procrastinate my studies even more in order to hide from the anxiety and fear of failure/rejection that I knew I would feel when I became overwhelmed. I felt like an absolute idiot, especially because I recognised that logically, further procrastinating made absolutely no sense at all, and was definitely going to lead to failure in my classes. It got so bad that I could NOT make myself sit down and study, I was paralysed with anxiety every time I opened my laptop to study after working up the courage to make myself “just fucking start already”.

As the exams came closer, it became more and more apparent that failure was now the only option I had left. As that reality set in and I had to face this failure, the self-image I like to create of myself as a respectable and relatively smart person just dissolved. I felt the self-rejection engulfing me, I imagined the disappointment from my family and peers, and I became cripplingly depressed within maybe 90 seconds of reality setting in. I felt absolutely worthless for months afterwards, lower than low. This is what finally got me to make the doctor’s appointment which led to my ADHD diagnosis.

And something not so serious that happened years ago: While driving to work one day, I was running a tad late as usual, and couldn’t shake the feeling that I was forgetting something. It was really stressing me out, and anxiety was making me try frantically to remember what it was, because the longer it took me to realise what I forgot, the longer the drive back would take, and the later I would be for work. At some point I decided to just take inventory of everything I had and see if it felt off. I started with the 3 pocket check— wallet is there, phone is there, keys are… Shit, I forgot my keys.

So I took the next exit to turn around, and raced home for my keys. I didn’t realise for maybe 10 minutes that my keys weren’t in my pocket because, well, they were in the ignition of my car, which I was currently driving. That dumb little setback caused me to be late for work. I still remember the shame I felt driving back, deciding on what lie to tell my boss so I didn’t have to admit how much of a idiot I am. To make things worse, after I parked my car I discovered that I had forgotten my knife bag at home (I was working as a chef). It really made me feel absolutely worthless, and triggered a bit of depression afterwards. I can’t remember how long the depression lasted, but it definitely hit me harder than it should have.

I’m certain it is. I sent an objection/data deletion request, and their “privacy info” pages are absolutely in violation of GDPR, because their forms are NOT reasonably accessible. I needed to use 3 separate mobile browsers and my desktop. When you finally get to the form, they ask some basic info, and the box where you’re supposed to make a request ends by asking something like “what rights do you believe are being violated, and why?”. The fucking gall on these cunts.

I planned on dropping some links, but they all have hard-coded non-functional redirects, which is intentional and absolutely infuriating. The redirects either just break like this one, which is suppose to be the one that contains a link to the form:

https://help.instagram.com/contact/117037592428568

Or they take you somewhere barely related, like this one which was the hidden start page for the form:

https://m.facebook.com/help/1221288724572426?wtsid=rdr_0bxiU4jakSVimlO8y

Or maybe it was this one? I can’t remember, because it doesn’t fucking take me to the page I saved the url for:

https://m.facebook.com/help/238318146535333?wtsid=rdr_0LKGtSJZTQyEH3R9N

Anyway, I’m mad if that’s not obvious. If you happen to find the form, you can try opting out. I haven’t heard back yet. Here’s the thorough and crystal fucking clear message I wrote, feel free to copy/share it:

The rights granted to me as a resident of an EEA country and a citizen of an EU member state, which are outlined in the GDPR, would be violated if Meta is non-compliant to my requests and objections. I’ve noted the exact sections within the GDPR outlining my rights, just before each pertaining request/objection, to explain why I believe my rights and freedoms are impacted by the data processing (although, I should not need to explain why).

I am exercising my right to object outlined in GDPR Article 21 Sections 1, 2, and 6:

I object to the processing and collection of my personal data for direct marketing, and request that no further collection or processing of my personal data is carried out.

I am also exercising my right to erasure outlined in GDPR Article 17 Section 1 (b) and ©:

I request that all of my collected and/or processed personal data be erased.

I am also exercising my right of access outlined in GDPR Article 15 Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, and Section 4:

I request a full copy of my processed personal data, as well as any relevant details listed in each subsection of GDPR Article 15 Section 1.

If any of my personal data is stored under an email address other than the ones currently or previously associated with my account, then I will need the preceding requests and objections to be carried out for the personal data generated under each of the following: [all email addresses I’ve used anywhere in the past 20 years].

Personally, I think “lemming” is infinitely better than “fedditor”.