> It's a bit heavy on the purple prose (though I was guilty of a very similar writing style in my 20s, and as I got on in life the purity of the idea became more important than its surrounding ornamental structures).
People have already responded with their reasons. You can try to hammer on with further digressions from what the submission is about (not even wrong), complete with that inflamed/emotionally charged interpretation, but what’s the point in spilling more bytes on this.
These contradictions (?) may be rooted in the reader’s assumptions about the world: the writer says A and B, but to the reader B implies (not A) because of their world view. In short they might not be actual contradictions.
This might seem very vague but a discussion on something so first-person as the mind is ripe for that kind of thing.
Which is resolved with dialogue. If the contradictions are brought up.
> Anyone with ADHD, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and many other conditions simply do not and cannot have full control of their minds without medical intervention.
Who are you and how are you privy to what I can and cannot do without intervention? Where do you get off?
I'm speaking for myself (ADHD) and anecdotal experience from people in my life with these conditions (clinical depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD). I don't claim to speak for anyone.
Your experience may be different, and that is fine and valid. The point I'm trying to make (and that you're also making) is that things that are fundamental truths for some are not always applicable or valid from the context of another person's lived experience.
> I'm speaking for myself (ADHD) and anecdotal experience from people in my life with these conditions (clinical depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD). I don't claim to speak for anyone.
Now you say that. But you made a very clear, absolute statement that these people “cannot have full control of their minds without medical intervention”.
And everyone’s lived experience is eventually respected with some back and forth in these exchanges. But making absolute statements about what people can or cannot do cuts both ways. So it’s best to make your vantage point clear from the start.[1]
I’m personally much more offended when someone says that my “type” cannot do something. Compared to assuming that I can.
Thanks for the clarification.
[1] For all we knew you could have been a medical researcher.
As someone with severe, often debilitating ADHD, I understand not wanting to depend on medication. It was forced upon me under threat of punishment as a child and heavily exacerbated my OCD and tic syndrome, which led to further punishment anyway.
Learning to be okay with medication has taken a long time. But the last couple decades of research have made a few things clear. Importantly, ADHD has been shown to be a genetic disorder, wherein your brain simply doesn't produce the same amount of dopamine receptors as a normal person.
This has a profound impact on your mood, executive functioning skills, motor function and more. Drugs which increase the dopamine available in your system can have negative effects (some extra dopamine gets shunted to your motor cortex and causes motor dysfunction/aggravates tics) but when you consider that 60% of ADHD sufferers are also diagnosed with depression, or in my case a large comorbidity with OCD and bipolar disorder, it becomes clear how valuable medicine can be.
ADHD is beginning to be understood as a reward-deficiency syndrome [0] and in this light, meditation/mindfulness and good habits are only coping mechanisms for an underlying condition which is ultimately genetic and massively aided by dopaminergic drugs. The result is literally night and day for many people, especially those who did not get diagnosed until adulthood and never developed coping mechanisms.
> But making absolute statements about what people can or cannot do cuts both ways.
I just lost one of my best friends last year because I moved in with him and experienced incredible prejudice around my disorder, which he was convinced was made up and not real. He would wax on and on about mindfulness, and constantly get defensive and aggressive at the slightest, most inconsequential manifestations of my disorder, and it rapidly deteriorated my mental health at a time where I was already in dire need of a safe space. His bias and increasingly erratic response to my disorder made me feel unsafe until I had no choice but to leave. The entire experience was very traumatic and reminded me of all the times as a child that my disorders lead to punishment and physical abuse. Some people have mild ADHD and it might be a slight convenience for them, but in my case it has been a major defining aspect of my life with a long list of consequences over the years.
The niche for hard-wrapping is straightforward. Sending patches via email.
In these types of communities there is no formal markup. So what is code and what is text? You can’t tell. Some might use “code fence”. Some might use four-space indents. Some might just dump code in between prose. And when you comment on a patch you comment directly on the diff.[1]
You can’t just let the email reader go to town on the text. That’s fine for prose but annoying for code where every line break is either intentional or machine formatted.
The author mentions the downside of browsing on a mobile device. Yeah I sometimes do that. But the primary mode for this kind of browsing might just be on a laptop/desktop. Certainly if you plan on doing some coding. (not just browsing the email archive for discussions that happened eight years ago... not that I would ever do that)
[1] Maybe diffs are easy to parse out of a message since each line starts with `+`, `-` or a space. After you have peeled away the quoting.
I can see that.
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