As with alcohol, I think it really depends on the individual.

For me, I find that too much regular pot puts me in a dim, slightly dissociated place. But it might also be that in the past I may have smoked too much cannabis at times when I was already headed for dim dissociation, so bit of a chicken and egg situation maybe. Meanwhile I have friends who swear that cannabis has saved their life, helping them cope with anxiety, OCD, etc.

Either way, if I had to choose between a pot or alcohol abuse problem, I’d def choose the former. It’s not ideal, but it’s far less likely to kill you or ruin your life.

Yeah that’s an absolutely grotesque situation. I’m in Canada though so it’s a bit different.

In practice people also don’t get fired here on a an employer’s whim. Not because it’s not allowed by law but because fired employees can sue for wrongful dismissal, and for most employers it’s not worth the risk, so there’s usually a long HR process for firing someone for poor performance.

Termination with “cause” has special meaning in employment law. It usually means getting fired for theft, fraud, harassment, causing irreparable harm to the company, etc.

One consequence of getting fired with cause is you don’t get severance or most other protections you’re normally entitled to by law. So, the bar for this kind of termination is (rightfully) very high.

Poor performance or even not showing up for work at all generally don’t meet the requirements for “cause”, so I dunno if making it illegal to let people go for anything other than straight up committing illegal or harmful acts makes sense.

Gelsinger, McKeon, and Lavender do have a nice ring to them.

A while back, I (with a few others) built and sold an innovative tech company to a large “enterprise”. What you’re describing is exactly why they bought us and how things played out post acquisition. I’ve since left, but the thing we built is now in shambles, buried and suffocated by bureaucracy and institutional ineptitude. The parent company has learned nothing, continues to keep buying smaller tech companies, and can’t seem to figure out why things always turn to shit.

The thing about forests around cities is they tend to get cut down and paved over. That’s much harder to do with mountains.

The other day I used Apple Maps in my car for the first time in a few years. I gotta say something about it felt nice.

Maybe it’s the aesthetic? The names of towns and geographic features are in big letters and flow across the map nicely — the name of the peninsula I was driving across was stretched along the length of the peninsula itself — and it felt a bit like I was traversing an old timey map, maybe like in an old Indiana Jones movie.

If I need to find some obscure business, I’ll still use Google Maps, and if I’m on a well known commute I’ll still use Waze, but for just general ambient map display, I think Apple Maps might be it now.

Alkaline batteries lose voltage as they drain, so 1.5V is at full charge but it drops down to about 1.2V very quickly and then stays at 1.0V - 1.2V for most of the alkaline battery’s operating life.

NiMH batteries tend to consistently stay at their nominal voltage (1.2V) through their entire charge.

So in other words, if you have devices that really expect exactly 1.5V per battery, they would only work with alkalines at the very top of their charge. Nowadays most non-garbage circuits should be designed to work just fine with anything above 1V per battery.

Def the other way around.

Writing a privacy policy generally forces a company to make commitments about what they will and won’t do with data they collect about you.

No privacy policy means anything goes — they didn’t say what they will or won’t do, so you can’t sue them if they do something sketchy.

But many jurisdictions require companies to publish a privacy policy, so just about any company these days will have one. The devil is in the details though, as this article points out.

Because Apple’s core business is selling their stuff to you. Google’s core business is selling you to other companies.

Google’s consumer software and products literally serve no other business purpose than surveillance to figure out how to turn you into a more lucrative advertising target.

Apple has realized they can capitalize on this by making privacy a core selling feature for their stuff — one that Google cannot challenge them on as privacy is directly at odds with the core premise of their entire business.

Well no, a lease is literally a lease. People do lease houses too you know. When people “buy” a condo, that’s not a lease.

The point I’m making here is that the housing analogy doesn’t work (“Imagine buying a house and not being allowed to X”) because people literally “buy” houses and are not allowed to do basic things that you’d assume come with house ownership.

I’m not defending that this is ok. For me buying a condo would be as ridiculous as buying a DRMed Tesla.

Imagine buying a house but you have not get access to certain rooms.

A bit off topic but that’s kind of how condos work btw. You don’t actually own the apartment or townhouse, you just own shares in a corporation that gives you the right to live in that space, with some severe restrictions.

Often you don’t have the right to mow your own lawn, you can’t keep certain things on your balcony, you can’t have a dog over a certain size, etc. It’s kind of nuts tbh. They give you the illusion of owning the space, but it’s a very restrictive form of ownership.

Pretty sure that’s the moon, not the sun. Looks like a long exposure.

Same, but I switched to an iPhone. It was an annoying adjustment for a few months but now I’d never go back. Great hardware, but Samsung’s software is an almost comical mess, and they seem to have zero awareness of how bad they are at it.

I’m curious about personal experiences here rather than aggregates, which tend to wash out individual differences.

I haven’t played this one, but I wish someone would do another “Inindo, way of the ninja” game. I have really fond memories of that one. I think it was a spinoff in the Nobunaga’s Ambition series. Looking at the screenshots now (from 30 years ago!!) it has… uhh… aged, a lot.

Does something like mindfulness help at all with this?

I’ve found that — with my ostensibly“normal” brain, at least — regularly practicing mindfulness meditation can be really helpful in getting through physically, emotionally, or perceptually difficult moments. It’s a practiced skill that helps take the edge off what would otherwise be overwhelming experiences.

I wonder if this is a practice that could also be helpful for people like yourself?

Genuinely curious: what happens to you internally / how do you feel when you feel overstimulated, as someone with ASD?

Fair question, and looks like I overstated that link.

Chronic stress affects your immune system (via cortisol, long term inflammation) and that is no bueno for all sorts of health outcomes, including likely making it harder to fight off tumours.

But to my surprise, there doesn’t actually seem to be solid evidence of a causal link between stress and increased risk of developing cancer.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re worried about getting cancer from 3-4 drinks per year, it sounds like you might be dealing with a fair bit of anxiety.

Stress caused by anxiety is bad for your health and a possible cancer risk, and almost certainly worse for you than 3-4 drinks a year. I don’t want you to now be anxious about your anxiety, but this might be a good thing to focus on to improve your general quality of life (and possibly reduce your cancer risk in the process).

You could start by talking to a doctor or other medical professional about it, or try finding a therapist in your area. The therapist search on https://www.psychologytoday.com/ is a good place to look, or try an online service like Better Help.

[edit: corrected overstatement about stress being a major cancer risk]