I don’t know if this is at all related, but I have found that I have to think of rest as being two different sorts: passive rest (i.e. sleeping, sunbathing, etc. typically “body” rest), and active rest (stuff that tends to use the mind, or are stimulating in some way). When I have been burnt out, I find it hard because I lack active rest, and it makes me super antsy. Sometimes I desperately need some passive rest (especially as I have some physical disabilities too), but my need for active rest can be so great that it feels torturous to engage in passive rest.

The worst is when I am too mentally burnt out for active rest, such as if I am ill, or if I hadn’t been having to spend all my mental energy on work tasks. I think, for me, brain fog is related but distinct. To use an analogy, brain fog is like the drain of a bath being blocked; lots of people can experience brain fog, it isn’t specifically an ADHD thing. The ADHD component here is like being unable to close the taps that are filling up the blocked bath. This means that ADHD + brain fog = the bath will inevitably overflow. This is what the agony feeling is to me. It’s not the brain fog per se, but the inevitable consequences of the brain fog.

You should do a version with a smiley face

When I recently committed to putting some of my hoarded stickers on my laptop, I got friends to place the first few, because I knew I would be paralysed with indecision.

Maybe you could use a similar mechanism of breaking the decision paralysis? If you have kids (plural), if one kid gives you a sticker, you could get another kid to suggest where to put it. If you’re feeling really wild, you could give the sticker to a kid and ask them to stick it somewhere (if they’re old enough to understand what kind of place would be bad/damaging)

I sympathise with not wanting to use up the stickers, but if you do use some of them, then as well as having this delightful stash, you’ll also have a few cute reminders of your family scattered about. And if you fear your supply is running low, you can give your kids a standing order of “if you see any stickers that make you think of me, I want 'em”. It’d make you easy to buy souvenirs for, for sure.

It’s not fine if the code needs to be used by other scientists though, which it often will be, even within the same research group. I have a friend who worked in a lab where one of their PhD students wrote a bunch of helpful code that was an unmaintainable mess that ended up breaking a lot of work flows at some point a year or so after the creator of it had left. It was kludge upon kludge upon kludge, and the thing that finally broke seemed to be dependency related, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on with it (I was asked to take a look).

There’s a lot of duplicated effort in science. Scientists tend not to think about stuff like software ecosystems unless they’re in a subfield that has been doing computational stuff for a long while, like bioinformatics. When it comes to code, there’s a lot of inventing the wheel from scratch and that leads to weird square wheels that work good enough to then have more code built on top of them. Software might not be scientists’ product in the same way as it is for IT people, but it often ends up being a part of the wider product of methodological reproducibility

(disclaimer: I haven’t read the article, I’m just replying to you because your comment was interesting)

I think your theoretical vs practical framing is useful, but as a (non-computer-)scientist, I find it fascinating to consider how a biomedical scientist uses programming compared to someone whose background is much more grounded on the compsci/IT/programming side.^[1]

[1]: I sometimes joke that, compared to many of my scientist colleagues, I am an exceptional programmer, and this says a lot about the average quality of the code that scientists tend to write when they don’t have much dedicated training or experience in programming

I’m reminded of Plato’s argument against writing, in which his position was roughly that relying on writing will make us become less practiced at remembering. I especially love the line, which goes hard.

“What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.”

Though the entire passage where the quote is from is great; It’s thought provoking even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.

Man, I need to read Schopenhauer. I’m not especially well read in Philosophy, but I heard somewhere that Schopenhauer is one of the ones to read if you want to understand polemical writing, and that intrigues me.

From a pure nerd point of view, I will say I got a hell of a lot smarter when I got better at being dumb. By that, I mean that I allowed myself to feel less anxious about appearing smart and I found it easier to enjoy learning from the cool people I knew when I could say “no, I don’t know much about that, but I’d love to learn more”. I also got to spend more time with my own thoughts, reflecting on my ideas, rather than focussing on acting a certain way.

You’re quite right that there are no winners to internet arguments, but this didn’t need to be an argument.

I think things often escalate in online discussions because tone and intent don’t come across well. Sometimes we start writing a comment and find ourselves struggling to put words to our point, possibly due to other tasks demanding our attention. Often we don’t realise a clarification is needed until after people have already read our message.

Given those factors, if we want to avoid turning discussions into arguments, we need to assume good faith from the people we’re talking to. That can seem like an absurd prospect given how many people online are arguing in bad faith, but if you can’t reasonably assume a particular person in a conversation is arguing in good faith, are they really worth your time?

For example, I didn’t read the person you’re replying to as being particularly snarky, and I’m surprised that you read them as such. You’ve written a decent amount here that seems determined to be having an argument, but I’m not sure what the actual argument at hand is. It seems like you might be feeling the need to defend yourself based on the miscommunication that happened up-thread? Which I can understand, but I don’t understand why you feel the need to break things down to the nitty gritty wordy bits. If I were being uncharitable, I would probably consider you to be trying to stir shit up and start arguments where there are none. However, if I am assuming good faith of you (which feels reasonable, to an extent, because you clearly spent time writing this comment, and I also appreciate that you partly apologised), then I still read you as being defensive, but in a way that I’m far more sympathetic to, because I do it sometimes myself.

I think you captured the grim nihilism of most internet arguments well when you said that no-one really wins in an internet argument. Certainly though, there are losers, and sometimes when I find myself arguing for longer than I should be, it’s because I feel like I’m trying to “save face” in a way, and avoid being the loser. Sometimes it’s when I have fucked up and communicated my original point unclearly, and sometimes it’s because I feel like people are unjustly accusing me of something (by implication, usually). However, that mode of discussion sucks for everyone involved, and ultimately, wanting to avoid that shit is a large part of why I’m here on Lemmy, where I find I have more discussions than arguments.

I fear that my comment here will seem overly accusatory or judgemental, but I hope that you’ll recognise that I have no stakes in this discussion and wouldn’t have spent this time writing this if I was just trying to throw shit. Your parsing of condescension in the above comments is not invalid any more than my reading of those same comments as being patient and reasonable is. Words can be slippery, even for the most skillful of writers. But I think you’ll find that assuming good faith of the people you’re communicating with can lead to far more productive discussions because people become more inclined to show you more slack in turn, which is nice.

I had to avoid alcohol for a while because of a medication I was on and it drove me mad when people would press me after I said “I’m not drinking”. I think it makes people feel weird about their own alcohol use? But if they’re that self conscious, maybe they need to do some self reflection about whether their alcohol use is a problem.

A phrase I’ve been seeing more in recent years that’s a small thing that feels impactful is stuff that says “alcohol and other drugs”. It is a drug and needs to be treated with respect, and ideally caution

I’m seconding Bitwarden. I’ll also say that whilst self-hosting (if one can do it securely) may be more secure than using a service, security is always going to be a sliding scale trade off of convenience and security.

I recommend Bitwarden to everyone, but I’m sure there are options that are probably equally good. But most people could probably benefit from a password manager because we have so many different services demanding we make accounts that I reckon it’s next to impossible for any reasonable person to avoid reusing passwords across services (that’s one of the biggest security risks that hit regular people).

Start up tips: make sure your master password is strong and memorable. I found Bitwarden’s password generator for this. A passphrase tends to be more memorable than an equally long password — a good master pass phrase would have at least four words (four is sufficient for most people). Write this down in a physical place, as a backup, ideally not your wallet. it doesn’t necessarily need to be locked away, just make sure you’ll know where to find it if you forget it (I forgot mine a bunch at first and had to reference my backup a few times).

Password managers and security in general can feel overwhelming because of the instinct to do things properly, which might include things like self hosting a password manager, or only avoiding biometric sign-in on the phone app version rtc. However, the best password manager is one that you use, and if bits of convenience like this help, then it’s a good trade off.

It reminds me of the joke about two people who see an angry Grizzly bear in the forest, which starts charging at them. One of the people starts running away, and the other shouts “Where are you going, you’ll never outrun the bear”. The running person replies “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you”. That’s a bad paraphrase, but the sentiment is that using a password manager at all puts you way ahead of many people, in terms of security. Obviously, you’d feel more secure if you knew you could outrun the bear, but if we spent too long being anxious about our ability to do that, we definitely will get eaten. (Apologies for such a long comment. I always do this when I’m procrastinating going to bed. I hope you have a nice Christmas, if you’re celebrating that wherever you are.)

I imagine it would be useful as a learning experience, even if that level of tracking didn’t go on forever.

I’m thinking of how tracking calories feels analogous; the time I spent dedicatedly tracking the calories of my food consumption was super helpful in recalibrating my intuitive understanding.

The first few months were a lot of effort because I had to do stuff like putting a bowl on a weighing scale and add what I considered to be an appropriate amount of cereal, and working out how many calories were in that, then doing similar for the milk. It was shocking to see how many calories were in some of the typical things I ate, but beginning to be honest about that and logging my reality was necessary to starting making positive changes. Because I tend to slip into disordered eating when I try to lose weight via calorie counting, I’ve found that I need to take a more freestyle approach and go for more qualitative goals like “eat more veg”, “cook more meals”, “drink glass of water before snacking” — goals that can be specific and towards being healthier, but don’t require too much number crunching. However, I wouldn’t have made as much progress without having spent a decent amount of time tracking things, judgement free.

The judgement free part is the hardest part, and I imagine that applies for tracking spending too. Did you ever have instances where you saw how much you were spending on a particular thing and cringed so hard that you found it harder to be truthful in your tracking? I know that I struggle with guilt a lot, and that can make it easier to put my head in the sand.

I like this story too. It reminds me of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed” (apologies for screenshot, the formatting was too awkward to get right)(Text available here

I’m answering a different question than the one you’re asking, but I switched to Linux (specifically Fedora) as my main computer not too long ago. I had been trying to improve at Linux because I work in scientific research, but I was anxious because games seemed far…messier and complex than the scientific stuff I was more familiar with, and I didn’t want to kill my recreation. This worry was unnecessary, because I have been immensely impressed by how straightforward playing Steam games through Proton (the windows emulation thingy that Steam uses). There have been a couple of minor issues that were easy to troubleshoot, and it was the kind of problem that sometimes crops up on Windows too.

I still feel quite overwhelmed by Linux, because I still don’t really understand why some things work on one operating system and not another. Like, I understand that .exe files don’t natively work on Linux (they require something like WINE, or Proton (WINE is like Proton, but not specialised for games)), but I don’t understand why. I think to properly understand it, I’d need to become a kernel developer or something silly, so I think I need to make my peace with not really understanding the difference. I think that’s okay though, because I don’t really need to know that. It’s sufficient to just know that they are different, and know how to respond (i.e. Knowing that the .exe version of software isn’t intended for my system, but that I can probably run it if I use WINE or Proton).

Most of my teething problems with Linux have been non game related, and although some of them were very stressful to troubleshoot, I found it refreshing how easy it was to learn how to fix problems. Especially given that a big thing that drove me away from Windows was constantly feeling like my computer wasn’t my own. Often when Windows goes wrong, it makes fixing the problem harder via hiding away settings, or obscuring information in a way that perversely makes solving small things require a much higher level of expertise. It ends up feeling like the system isn’t trusting me to be able to solve problems for myself, which makes me feel powerless. I suspect you may relate to much of what I have said in this paragraph.

Coming to Linux from Windows can be stressful because suddenly, you are trusted with a lot more power. You can delete your entire operating system with one command if you want (sudo rm -rf /* , if you’re curious) and there’s nothing stopping you. The lack of guardrails can be scary, but there are far more helpful and kind Linux nerds on the internet than assholes, in my experience, so I have found many guides that guide me through solving problems such that I’m not just blindly entering commands and praying to the computer god. You sound like a person with a mindset towards progression, so you will likely do well with this challenge. If you’re like me, you may relish the learning. Certainly I enjoy the feeling of progression that I’ve had the last year or so.

People here may suggest dualbooting or using a virtual box to try it out. I would suggest diving in, if you can. Unless you have software that you know is strictly windows only, setting aside some time to fully switch is a good way to immerse yourself. I tried with virtual machines and dual booting, but I ended up getting lazy and just using the Windows because it was the path of least resistance. I had to fully switch to actually force myself to start becoming familiar with Linux.

Hardly any of this directly answers your question, so I apologise if this is unwelcome; I wrote so much because I am more enthusiastic about this than the tasks I am currently procrastinating. Best of luck to you

Edit: some games have anticheat software that can cause issues. I play some multiplayer games with anticheat stuff and I’ve not had any problems, but I think I am fortunate to not play any with the kind of anticheat that gets its hooks in deep — they may be the rare exceptions to gaming being refreshingly straightforward. I didn’t consider them because they don’t affect me, but others have mentioned them and may have more to say.

I got started with Spyder when learning python in biochemistry

I asked a similar question of a writer friend recently (though I am interested in non-fiction). They told me something that I already knew, but was unhappy to hear nonetheless — that the start of one’s writing “career” will inevitably involve a fair bit of writing into the void; even for publications that are accepting open submissions, it’s useful to have an established presence so that someone who can read more of your work and get a sense of what you’re about. “Established presence” in this case may mean a blog/substance that has little to no readership, even though putting your writing out there when you have zero platform can feel pretty demoralising. It is good practice though, and the more your body of work grows, the easier it is to make a sort of dynamic portfolio of the best of what you can do.

One takeaway from my friend was that a lot of opportunities arise from word-of-mouth interpersonal stuff: when people think of you as a writer, they are more likely to suggest your name to publications that may be looking for writers (which is why having an established presence can be so useful).

I don’t have platform specific advice unfortunately.

Good word, I like it

Regardless of what your next steps are, I’m sorry for your loss.

“This isn’t about being spec-compliant anymore. I need to know the thought process behind this decision. And also please fix it.”

This unhinged tone is what I live for in blog posts

Edit: added hyperbole to make humourous intent clearer

To kill Demodex mites on our hands that could possibly contaminate something we’re working on

Thanks for posting, OP. I have replied to a few people’s comments in this thread, and I’m really appreciating you sharing this post which has led to such thought-provoking discussion.