#solicited Advice

[andmaybegayer]

I need a Linux for my laptop, it's been between operating systems for like three months now, taking suggestions, probably not Debian or Arch or their derivatives. Previously had Tumbleweed and then briefly Aeon but Aeon is GNOME which sucks and if I'm considering reinstalling to Kalpa for Plasma I could also switch to anything.

[chiveoil]

for me what works best is knowing that i can’t form habits in a way that is automatic, like i can’t just do things in the same way every day without thinking about it, i think that is a pretty big feature of adhd and i’d be setting myself up for failure and feeling bad about myself if i saw that as the goal. but what i can do is check off things i want to do daily on a list.

for a while i’ve using a notebook/bullet journal type system for this, writing myself lists and checking items off as i go every day. i have 15 things on this list, but the only actual ‘habit’ i have really managed to form is ‘open my bullet journal throughout the day’, which i achieve by keeping it within arms reach pretty much at all times. when i tick one thing off the list, i look at the next thing, and i’m reminded to do it as well.

the actual things i put on the list are things i have learned over the course of several years that i need to do daily in order to stay generally okay (like: talk to someone i love, go for walks, eat regular meals) so it helps that these things are very important, if a lot of them were aspirational or unrealistic in some way then i doubt i would be bothering to track them once the initial burst of motivation wore off, but i have been doing this pretty consistently for years. for new habits that are stretches that i want to introduce, i add them to my list one at a time, or i add them to a similar list of things that i want to try do weekly or monthly. starting slow and keeping it within this framework is the only way to do it for me.

the pen and paper system i’ve been using for a little over a year, i used to use habitica for a few years before that. there are a few habit building apps that work like this and habitica is a really good option imo. it’s very geared to adhd in various ways and works very well without the paid features, it’s also available on desktop. potential downside that the fun rpg element of the app can be a bit confusing to get to grips with at first.

another thing that is important for me to know as a person with adhd is that no one ‘system’ of keeping track of my daily tasks will work forever, and i will have to be adaptable when it stops working. right now my notebook/bullet journal system works for me, in future i will have to try something else, but the basic system of ‘daily repeating to do list of things i absolutely do have to try to do every day or there will be really negative consequences for my life’ is how i do it and that will be the same whatever framework i put it in. example of another way to do this could be: a big whiteboard with the days of the week and you give yourself ticks or gold stars, put out somewhere you will see it and be reminded of the list.

tldr basically with adhd you need constant reminders and the way i do that is Daily Recurring To Do Lists.

Does any fellow adhder have any tips on how to form habits in adulthood? I’ve been trying to look online and everything that seems promising leads to a subscription to learn more

[ryannorth]

How do you get better at writing as a serious hobby when you're someone who only really ever maintained writing through shitty parody fanfiction and overly emotional vent poetry? I have lengthy detailed ideas for a sci-fi style universe and I want to get the idea out of my head but I have no actual assuredness in my own writing ability. I'm also borderline illiterate.

I tried writing a chapter of my idea today and when I re-read it to myself something about it felt kinda flat. It's hard for me to be descriptive about scenery and such because I have trouble visually imagining things in my head. Are there better ways of strengthening something like that?

The best thing about writing is that there is no way to do it and NOT get better at it. It's just like how there is no way you could shoot hoops three times a week for a year and, at the end of it, not be better at shooting hoops.

The thing is, as you get better at writing, you start to see the flaws you couldn't see before. If you took that chapter you wrote today and gave it to yourself a year ago, I bet you wouldn't see the flaws in it then that you see now. What's changed is you've become a better writer, and now are aware of all the things you wish you could do differently. So it's progress - it's frustrating, but it is progress! You went from not seeing the flaws in your work to seeing them - and the next step is learning how to correct them. You do that by reading and writing more, picking up more tips and tricks that you can employ!

All this to say, my advice is to read and write more, and especially read outside of the genres you're interested in. I can always tell when a comic writer has only read comics, because there's a sameness you encounter. But if you're the comic writer who reads all sorts of things, that gives you a wider breadth of experience, and a more unique one too.

My other advice is to not try to do your big idea right away. You have lengthy and detailed ideas for this universe, and you know exactly what you want it to be - and that's daunting. It'll take years to get all of that written in the way you want. So keep playing with it, keep thinking about it, but give yourself permission to do other things first. It's rare that someone's first book is their best book, and the expectorations you're building in your head may be very very hard to meet. But, to bring it back to what I said at the start - there's no way for you to write and NOT get better at it. Write other things, smaller things, bite-sized achievable things, and later on you'll probably find that this big daunting project is no longer quite so daunting - and much more within your grasp.

I hope this helps!

[knottybliss]

I finished a shawl! Knitting! Aaaaand I am probably going to have to frog it.

For reasons I have not been able to puzzle out, the top edge (which is the end of the rows) has NO stretch.

Therefore, the whole thing sort of buckles/puckers around the top center, which is where I started. There has got to be some method to having a springier edge, I just don’t know what it is.

I do like how the patterning in the body came out, anyway, and it was good practice. I’m faster and smoother now with both knitting and purling than I was when I began. Since that was, ultimately, the goal? I’m feeling pretty good about it overall.

MISTAKES ARE FOR LEARNING! FUCKUPS ALLOW FOR GROWTH.

if anybody has thoughts about how I might have achieved a stretchier edge with my row ends, please advise.

The pattern is Lionberry by Narniel of Endor and is a free download on Ravelry.

[andmaybegayer]

what kind of glue should one use to reattach plastic moulded pieces to hiking boots

[turboghast]

With the Velvet Room, you can fuse two Personae together to get a new one. This is worth doing because trying to level up a Persona with experience from fights becomes impractical rather quickly. The arcana of the resulting Persona depends on the arcana of the materials, while the level depends on the base levels of the materials. Treasure demons are an exception to the latter, leveling a Persona up can alter the result of fusing them with a treasure demon (when this happens is based on the levels of the other Personae in that arcana, and making it happen deliberately isn't worth it).

If you're worried that you'll regret fusing a Persona away, that's what the compendium is for. Register them there, and you can get them back by spending money. Filling up enough of compendium will give you a discount on summoning Personae from it; I found this helpful because I frequently summoned Personae from the compendium just to use them as fusion material.

The best skills to inherit are those that become more effective when a different Persona has them. The earliest example which comes to mind is Mokoi's Dodge Elec. Mokoi already resists elec, but fuse Mokoi with Regent and the resulting Matador can inherit Dodge Elec from Mokoi, making it harder for enemies to knock you down by hitting Matador's elec weakness.

A few minor tips:

You don't need to keep Agi around once you get Agilao, same goes for the other attacking elements. On the other hand, you shouldn't drop Agilao for Maragion unless your skill space is really tight; the same goes for ailment skills since the single target versions are much more likely to land. Buffs and debuffs are the exception to this rule, you can drop Tarukaja once you get Matarukaja.

Try to keep a skill of each attacking element somewhere in Persona stock so Joker can hit every weakness (but not all on the same Persona, so you have space for other skills).

Shadows and their corresponding Personae have the same elemental affinities (except for one or two challenge battle foes).

Giving a skill to more than one Persona in your stock isn't very helpful, you could just switch to that Persona when you need that skill. Defensive passives are the exception to this rule.

The number of skills a new Persona can inherit during fusion depends on how many skills its materials know (alarms let you use all the spare skill slots).

If you're having trouble with a boss, tailor-make a Persona to defeat it.

When you fuse a Persona of the same arcana as one of your social links, that Persona will gain experience based on how many ranks that link has. This makes them both a better combatant and better fusion material.

If you've got more questions, feel free to ask.

hi i just beat kaneshiro’s palace in persona 5 royal (first playthrough woohoo!) and. oh my god.

honestly im desperate at this point— can somebody Please explain to me how the velvet room works.

literally any tips help. i am Still so fucking lost. what the hell do i fuse. how do i fuse it. what does any of this mean. what do the different skills mean. what skills should i or should i not inherit. what does ANY of this mean. PLEASE

[magpie-trove]

🌸

[fabrickind]

so how in the absolute fuck did Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku save your life

LMAO a couple people have been wondering this so I'll tell the story.

tl;dr: if you are having severe medication side effects, get off that med.

In fall of 2017 I came down with a nasty migraine(? probably?) that disabled me to the point of being pretty much non-functional. I had to quit my job, I could barely leave bed, was in too much pain 24/7 to sleep properly and when I did sleep it was nothing but dreams about being in pain, the works.

I went through a LOT of different medications and diagnostics (MRI, spinal tap, you name it) to try to fix this problem. It never fully went away, but Botox ended up getting me functional again.

One of the medications they put me on, Topamax, was very bad for me. I did the proper ramping up of dose, got to the correct dose, and everything was so much worse. I was having hallucinations, visual disturbances, overall a bad time.

Around this time I was also having issues with word recall. I would mean to say one thing but a totally different word would come out, or I couldn't think of a word at all. Usually this was when I was super tired, so I just chalked it up to my brain being mush due to pain and fatigue (my brain is often soup when I have a migraine, let alone one that severe for going on several months at that point) and mostly ignored it, since i had more pressing problems.

Around this time the neurologist I saw also saw my symptoms and side effects and the fact that the med wasn't helping up to that point and said "well all of that will get better with time" and wrote me a prescription for quadruple (!!) my dose (without ramping up either).

THANKFULLY, just before this happened, I was in the car, fully awake, having a relatively good day, and what comes on my iPod shuffle but our old friend Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku. I was singing along, well, trying to, but I would open my mouth and only gibberish would come out, and not even the correct gibberish. I thought "that's concerning" and tried again. More gibberish.

I had remembered that my now partner (this was just before we started dating) was briefly on Topamax for migraine prevention and had word recall issues, but that hers persisted for a long time after she stopped.

So I called up my GP and said "uhhh here's my side effects (including the aphasia issues, the neurologist knew about those) and the dose he wants me on, should I do this?" and she basically said "wtf no stop the med right away."

If I hadn't had the issues with very much the wrong sounds coming out of my mouth when singing, I probably would have believed the neurologist and suddenly started a quadruple dose of the med, which would have caused even worse side effects, and side effects that were permanent, or at least MUCH longer lasting than the maybe month or so of continued visual issues and mild word recall issues I ended up with. (Also my overall health improved and I had less of the extreme eepies I had on the med once I stopped.) Luckily I was only on it for maybe two weeks at that point?

So "ZUM saved my life" is probably an exaggeration, but "ZUM prevented continued and long-lasting neurological problems" is absolutely not. It seems like sometimes the cognitive impairments go away for people after stopping Topamax, but for people who have been on high doses and/or for a long time, it sometimes doesn't, even after years.

So thanks, Utena, for my life, literally this time.

[rederiswrites]

Two Little Boys

General Audiences, 906 words

A style exploration, a more "fairy tale" telling that explores the elements that made Arden "Rook" Mercar and Lucanis Dellamorte the men that they are, and that made them the beautiful pair they are.

---

Dearest, do you know what it is to wonder, “Am I asking too much?” To not know. Is the world at fault, or only your desire?

For a little while the story of these two boys, now young men, diverges. Because one young man told himself that the world was wrong. He rejected the love he’d been given because it bound him too tightly, and went out into the world in search of more. In search of himself and of understanding, and, though he didn’t know it, gentleness. And the other young man, well, he decided that he was wrong. And he stayed where he was, and found his own little paths to meaning and gentleness. He kept himself deep inside, and tried to survive on the love he was given.

One said to himself, “The world is wrong. I want more, and I will find it on my own.” And the other said, “It is me. I am wrong. I will do as the world says I must, and strive to want only what I am given.”

now up on AO3

[greatwyrmgold]

(I have not looked at how one might obtain any of the cards I mention. If any of these sound cool but turn out to be unavailable or unreasonably expensive, I apologize for getting your hopes up.)

Last time I played MtG Arena, I had a pretty fun Black/White vampire deck with some life-gain synergies. I don't remember what specific cards I used, but there are a lot of vampires with abilities like that.

It should probably go without saying that lots of vampires have Lifelink, which gives you life whenever they deal damage. And if that's not enough, there are ways to give all your creatures lifelink. Whip of Erebos has a mana cost that isn't exorbitant and a neat secondary effect. Crossway Troublemakers is more expensive, but might work as as special central card. Card advantage is a big deal.

If you decide to build up a vampire deck, you'll also want what MtG nerds call "tribal cards"—cards that buff all your vampires, or do something special with vampires around.

I hope this helps!

Sigh

So Sophie's getting me into magic the gathering

I've been using black and red decks

[lillypod-s]

It’s laggy and I don’t know why 😭. Maybe it needs more frames? I tried to use the compression + stretch method to make it look more dynamic but it still looks stiff.

[norashelley]

they've been having halloween theme all week at my physical therapy and my appointments were monday & today, today they did a witch theme so I tried to come up with a sort of witchy outfit that would still work for PT and I thought I did pretty good and they all loved it. Tomorrow they are all going to wear onesies and I joked that too bad I don't have an appointment tomorrow cause I have a skeleton onesie! And my physical therapist said, you don't have to have an appointment you can just come by in your onesie and say hi! and then said they were all going out for lunch in their onesies and I could join them, but the way she said it I couldn't tell if we were all just joking around or if they were serious! My mom says they were probably just joking around (they do that a lot there) so they probably don't expect me to actually show up and I don't really want to drive all that way anyway plus it's going to be pretty hot tomorrow and a onesie would be uncomfortable. But it makes me think about how terrible I am at reading people and how I can never really tell when people are being serious or not! A part of me thinks it would be fun to do but another part of me worries people would be like, yeah we were not actually serious, and then it be weird and awkward! I don't think I'd feel up to doing it anyway so I don't even know why I'm worried about it but I wondered what other people might do if faced with that situation! Also for reference I've been going for over a year, so I've gotten pretty friendly with everyone but still only ever see them at appointments.

[yekokataa]

have any of you successfully treated burnout, through therapy or something else? i was looking at the wikipedia page for burnout and we're really in the dark ages still when it comes to this stuff, like it's barely even recognized as a real thing, and no one's agreed on an effective treatment. the things different countries have tried are like, have the patient talk about it, give them a bunch of vitamin B, make them really hot or cold, treat it like it's depression. i'm sure there are plenty of life coaches out there who would love to take my money in exchange for a promise to fix my burnout but is life coaching even a real thing. i'm so lost when it comes to navigating how to find a professional to help with it how the fuck does anyone find a therapist for something like this

[snowbirdbaby]

I'd say a general rule that has worked for me learning how to draw anything is breaking down the 3d shapes. For example, you could learn to get better at guts by getting better at drawing tubes.

That Anon sounds like they gave you a new art goal.

"get better at drawing gore"

I know right! I suck at drawing blood and gore and stufffff does anyone have like, gore tips, or how to make it look less like i just put a kinda blood looking red everywhere

[ulysses-but-somehow-more-transer]

ive been thinking about my life and i believe i need to do a full 180 cause i feel it is my Sacred Duty to go study mathematics

[gingerfan24]

Random electrical arcs coming out of the wall at the Electrodynamic Cenobium how I despise you right now.