I'd avoid physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
If you want a formal diagnosis, a clinical psychologist should have the authority to assess and diagnose ADHD. A psychiatrist can, too. The best way to approach getting a diagnosis (and the finer detail of what kinds of psychologists can do a formal diagnosis, what referrals you might need, etc.) is highly dependent on location. Once you have a diagnosis, you should be able to try medications if you want.
If you aren't interested in medications, you might still want to pursue some (enough for you to learn about yourself) or all of a formal diagnosis if you want. The benefits and downsides of a formal diagnosis are also highly location dependent.
Talking to a psychologist might be helpful regardless of diagnosis.
Please don't use an ADHD 'coach', they're a predatory scam
> Adderral and vyvanse work for a couple days and then I build a tolerance
Have you been able to go through titration and dose adjustment with a (competent) psychiatrist? When starting or restarting meds it's expected for the first few days (or more) to have a more obvious impact. After your body has adjusted to being on the meds, if the meds aren't helping (or are outright making things worse, like making you sleepy), you could just need a higher dose. The adjustment period is a bit different than the issue of proper long term tolerance.
There's a fair few options as far as stimulant meds go, and the combinations of drugs, release profiles, and dosages can take a bit of iteration to find what works.
There’s also nonstimulant medications used for ADHD but they're generally less effective than stimulant meds, but we're all different and maybe they'll help?
Please do! It took my mate like a year and a half with an amazing psychiatrist to settle on a regimen.
I'd recommend having a look through some ADHD groups; they're full of knowledge and tips and tricks that can help you self advocate.
A psychiatrist should have explained to you upon prescribing these meds that the first few days may feel like rocket fuel and that thereafter they may feel great (or can make it worse), and they should have advised you to keep a diary about your meds so at your next appointment you can review the impact the meds had and any related struggles like remembering to take your afternoon meds (if you had them, for example).
Whatever happened with your last psychiatrist that left you with no helpful meds, no guidance on determining whether the meds are working for you or not, and no follow up to boot is so unacceptable.
A little bit of self advocacy can go a VERY long way, though. Things like asking to book the next appointment at the end of your current appointment, and asking if there's any particular side effects you need to watch out for until your next appointment can mean the difference between what happened to you last time and you finding meds that actually work. You shouldn't have to remind them to do any of that but it can really help.
Sorry, I ranted a bit! I just really hope you find a psychiatrist who will actually just do their job and work with you to figure it out! Finding meds that actually help is quite achievable.
I appreciate a good rant, thank you! You’ve moved me and I’ll definitely be scheduling something soon. I was unprepared to self advocate the first time I worked with a psychiatrist, but now I have a bit more experience and some clear goals, thanks to you.
Thanks again for taking the time to help out a stranger!
I've never had an issue with using my own hardware here. It's definitely one of the only good things about australian internet.
Regionally is a total crapshoot as to ISP choice, in my experience. Even in the massive regional cities it's often appalling. People living in rural or remote areas might as well not exist. If I moved somewhere that only telstra serviced I'd seriously consider just not having internet at all. It's roughly equivalent in internet access as paying telstra but it sure is cheaper!
I don't use spotify (primarily buy CDs and use ipod classics, also records because I am a cliche) and this made me think of the articles about the guy who was one of the most listened artists on spotify (piano for study/concentration type stuff iirc?) and he got punished or something because he was publishing under several names? I couldn't quite find that or what actually happened, but I did stumble upon this Wikipedia page about controversy over fake artists on spotify[0] that suggests some of those are commissioned by spotify.
The only feature of spotify that I've ever been interested in was discovering new and new to me music. I'm not interested in AI slop though, and I can't imagine a lot of people would be (maybe the background noise use case don't mind so much which is fair, I suppose). Is this going to get to a tipping point with spotify for it to go under (or lose a LOAD of value), or is it going to be like 'smart' TVs where non-'smart' TVs essentially don't exist because almost all manufacturers have realised they can make more money from forcing ads and spyware? I see that it's been a problem for nigh on a decade according to that Wikipedia page but with the floodgates for AI feel a lot more open than they used to.
Kinda related, does anybody use soundcloud any more? Just interesting that it seemed hugely popular and was then derided (terms like 'soundcloud rapper') and I haven't heard about it in a while.
I suppose netflix still exists despite derision for their awful originals, killing the good originals, and having little content (especially internationally!).
Spotify will be fine, especially with how little they pay artists, but it's probably a shame for a lot of users.
Every time you load the page it recommends a random album from Deezer’s catalog. The algorithm is pretty silly: loop Math.random() * MAX_ID until you find an album id that actually exists and return it.
The goal was to recreate that feeling you’d get going down to someone’s basement and thumbing through an old record collection.
Also 1001 Albums to Listen To Before You Die is a pretty decent collection of canonical albums from the record industry that’ll keep you busy for quite a while.
Part of that feeling involves piecing together that person's tastes and whether you can be bothered digging deeper into their collection.
A more accurate recreation of that feeling might be to pick a random user with a large collection (or maybe a couple of users that are mutual friends) and select from their owned albums? Discogs would potentially be a better fit but you'd be veering into serious collectors there rather than a random person's basement.
I think it's neat though, enjoyed refreshing and seeing loads of weird album art!
What I do is use RateYourMusic.com and find people who rate albums similar to the way I do. The site even lets you build music charts and filter albums by how highly they’re rated by the users you follow.
I love discogs. Also hate it because I spend too much money there! Serious collectors and random basement are both vibes I need in my music discovery life!
I use SoundCloud from time to time, my taste is really niche and it works great for that (but you need to find a relevant artist first).
I recently jumped off Qobuz exclusively because of their drunk recommendation algorithm, or lack thereof (it seems I'd often end up with whatever is on the front page). I wound up on Pandora: their whole value proposition was finding music you like, and music you might like. I haven't been on Spotify in a hot minute, so I can't make a comparison, but Pandora has been pretty good.
Of all the things to try electrify, I wouldn't even have considered anything related to fires here. I don't know anything, so maybe this could be great. There is no planet b, after all.
Will these be as bottom heavy as cars? If so, maybe replacing fleets with these will mean our governments don't have to worry about installing the roll protection that would have saved a bunch of fireys from being crushed to death the last catastrophic bushfires we had!
Sarcasm about how we treat our fireys (and ambos!) like garbage aside (it wasn't these kinds of vehicles rolling on people, for the record) I won't own an EV while I live in regional Australia because (I can't afford one,) the reliability of ICEs and ease of quickly refuelling and transporting extra fuel with me (...a fire risk) in an ICE can be the difference between getting out alive and not. Also none of this "won't move, need updates!" rubbish. I'd hope that wouldn't be a problem for vehicles like this, but who knows? Manufacturers also don't seem to offer a car that can reliably get me to the nearest major city and back without having to be recharged when the battery is brand new. Minutes matter in fires.
I suppose I'm just skeptical of full EVs for this in the first place, a bit ill-informed, and extremely distrustful of the powers that be when it comes to protecting our fireys and providing them with what they need, and of EV manufacturers. I'm curious, though. It's not like the problems I whinged about are not obvious ones. I'd like to know how those issues can be overcome.
This is a bulk water tanker. Its job is to shuttle water from a reticulated urban supply to a staging area somewhere else. It's not the sort of vehicle that ends up on an actual fireground. That said, don't expect to see electric bushfire trucks anytime soon.
The first reason is that 30 year old trucks often go to auction with less than 40,000km on the odometer. They aren't utilised enough for electrification to make any sense from an environmental or cost perspective.
The second is that no EV truck manufacturer builds vehicles with batteries designed to withstand direct flame attack. Commercial off the shelf trucks are modified with spray bars, insulation covering electrical cabling, fuel and air lines etc to greatly improve their survivability if impacted by fire, but that isn't an option for any EV truck currently in existence.
The third of course is the logistical nightmare of having to recharge vehicles. It's easy to quickly refuel 30 diesel trucks from a fuel tanker (or even from drums), but much harder to charge 30 BEV trucks without mains power in the middle of nowhere.
YES! I cannot understand the grey on grey on grey anti-readability obsession. I cannot stand it. It's ugly and hard to read. I wish we'd all just stop doing it.
For anyone who wishes to understand a little bit more about what it can actually be like to bring offences like this to justice, I'd recommend Australian author and former Judge's Associate Bri Lee's memoir 'Eggshell Skull'. Obviously it's about her experiences in Australia. It also differs a little from the offences referenced in this article because her complaint was in relation to a childhood incident.
The reason I think its insights are relevant despite some major differences of context compared to this article is that the general barriers she faced at every step of the way trying to get some justice (despite being a Judge's Associate and the daughter of a well known and respected police officer) speak to the broad realities of navigating justice systems when you've been assaulted.
A total lack of understanding of these processes leads to people saying things like 'well there probably wasn't enough evidence' or 'the cops probably needed their finite resources for something bigger/worse' like they're unimpeachable axioms that exist in a vacuum.
The lack of critical thinking (or curiosity, or empathy?) about the (many, broad) realities of reporting crimes, or dealing with cops and the justice system if you're one of the few that make it far enough in the systems is just so frustrating to me. The thought terminating cliches that rely on the assumption that there's a just and relatively simple explanation for these stats get my goat.
In Eggshell Skull, Lee describes how many times she had to actually contact police in order to get them to even start a file, let alone getting them to actually take a report.
From first (and second) hand experience, the cops just turning people away (and lying about 'someone will be in touch') also applies to victims showing up at a police station immediately after an assault, clothes torn, not yet covered in the soon to bloom bruises. They don't even direct people to attend crisis centres or the hospital who will actually collect evidence following an assault. A friend of mine has described how the police (in a major metropolitan city) literally laughed and said 'men can't be sexually assaulted' when he brought in a male friend immediately after it had happened. They were then threatened with arrest by the cop when they asked to see someone at the station other than this front desk cop because they wanted to make a report. Arresting them would not be justifiable, but the intent of the threat, however empty, is pretty clear. Also good effing luck getting justice if the arrest threat was actually followed through. The cops are an active barrier to timely collection of evidence and a report. What is someone who keeps pushing for opening a case then left with? Little or no physical evidence and a report made maybe weeks after the event. It doesn't exactly set up a case all that well. Oh, I guess the cops aren't going to resource this case when that's all they've got to go on. The amount and quality of evidence and witnesses and whatnot doesn't seem to make a difference for these things but I've got no experience with that.
I guess I just wish people understood a little bit more about how things can work IRL and that it's not clear and simple. I know random internet anecdotes are worthless (especially the second hand ones) but maybe consider that things don't necessarily work the ways you think they do.
I'm also skirting around one of the more pertinent questions when crime stats like this pop up. What is the actual function of police? It's evident that it's not to solve crimes. That's maybe a discussion for another time.
That is my experience too. Of course being sleep deprived as a result of having a ...tenuous relationship to safety, shall we say, fucks with a person. Understatement of the century lol
It's popped up in the news (and in the comments here too) a bunch about how parts of the US's prescribed 'solutions' to this is to put people on antipsychotic medications. One big effect is that these medications sedate. If someone has passed out and has an inability to be roused and can hardly function if roused is an insane risk for homeless people. People aren't getting no sleep for funsies. Antipsychotics being used to chemically restrain the inconvenient is just abhorrent. Making them considerably less safe as a result is just inexcusable.
Not to mention the extrapyramidal side effects of antipsychotics that compound chronic health problems like metabolic syndrome. I'm sure that the nurse who's hardest science class was in high school who's now allowed a prescription pad after an only only diploma mill 'masters' is prescribing complex medications appropriately and managing overall health impacts of such meds when even experienced psychiatrists fuck it up (but NPs are a rant for another time.).
Having been homeless and on antipsychotic medications (thankfully not at the same time) it's just nuts to me that it's even considered a possible solution to homeless people having mental health issues (arising from circumstance or not) or being 'nuisances' is to just sedate them and leave them for dead.
Disclaimer: Antipsychotics are a tool and they can greatly impact a person's life in positive ways. Also in negative ways. They're also not just used for psychosis. I just wanted to clarify I think there's nuances in my anti antipsychotic rant here lol
I do enjoy seeing the interesting things Lenovo put together.
Will these foldable or extendable screens for phones, tablets, and laptops be the next 3D TVs, I wonder? The extra expense for features people don't even end up using very often (or don't see huge value in for the day to day), now with the extra downside that the devices are often much harder to maintain or repair feels to me like a solid maybe. I am extremely out of touch though lol. In the same vein, are touchscreen laptops (or monitors?) for daily computing a feature people use?
Anyway, I guess I just wonder if this is a flash in the pan or the next standard/standard-ish kind of feature.
If you want a formal diagnosis, a clinical psychologist should have the authority to assess and diagnose ADHD. A psychiatrist can, too. The best way to approach getting a diagnosis (and the finer detail of what kinds of psychologists can do a formal diagnosis, what referrals you might need, etc.) is highly dependent on location. Once you have a diagnosis, you should be able to try medications if you want.
If you aren't interested in medications, you might still want to pursue some (enough for you to learn about yourself) or all of a formal diagnosis if you want. The benefits and downsides of a formal diagnosis are also highly location dependent.
Talking to a psychologist might be helpful regardless of diagnosis.
Please don't use an ADHD 'coach', they're a predatory scam
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