As a zebra patient… too many to list lol

But the one that stands out is my original POTS diagnostic test. They did something called a “tilt table test”. They strap you on a table like a torture film, literally head straps and everything, and then raise the table vertically. The idea is to see how well your body adapts to gravity.

Normally I have pretty good compensations for my condition. I’ve learnt specific ways to stand, lean, and hold my body so that my circulation works… not well, but decently. I can get up to make toast every now and then, stuff like that.

The table bypasses all that. Immediately I suffered extremely bad effects. I could feel all the blood draining from my brain and my body and pooling into my legs. Couldn’t breathe properly, vision going white, feeling absolutely horrible. I can’t accurately describe the feeling of all your blood leaving your vital organs. It felt extremely bad, I felt like I was dying. Like a cold shower on the inside, hollowness, pain.

Worst part was, I was too weak to even ask them to cancel the test, or move to remove the bindings myself. Turns out you need blood to do stuff like that. I was completely paralyzed.

The doctors were like “wow this is the worst POTS I’ve ever seen! Usually when people say they have POTS it turns out they don’t, but man… hey let’s show Larry” and they leave the room to go find Larry and show them the interesting POTS patient. I could barely see on the monitor my heart rate was 180bpm and my blood pressure was 80/40mmol, which is very bad. I eventually lost consciousness completely. As I passed out I accepted that I was going to die right there on the stupid table because nobody noticed the problem.

I didn’t die (obviously). I came to when I was horizontal on the table again and they were unstrapping me. No idea how long I was out for, but fuck that. Nobody told me it would be that bad. “A bit uncomfortable” my ass.

After all that, I got my diagnosis for severe POTS after 10 years of confusing symptoms. Now I have some medicine that helps it not be so severe, so I guess it was worth it in the end?

One of my exes was really into making clothing. I learnt second hand (via venting) how difficult it is to get a printer to print 1cm=1cm accurately when you buy a “pattern” (basically a tracing you follow to chop up the fabric).

They would check every printout, and half the time they had to print the same thing multiple times because the printer decided to be stupid and add a half centimetre here or there or subtly stretch it; which matters a lot for a good fit. It was a whole big thing, apparently. At least for cheap printers.

This was already a thing when I went to university over a decade ago. Partnerships with local businesses where university students basically do work placements, completing low-stakes corporate projects as assignments.

I know this goes against expectation but it was actually really good. I think the difference was that the business actually cared about us, taught us things, and even extended a job offer to people who did well.

I dunno if that program is still good today, probably not.

I tend to find dx11 over dx12 to be a more enjoyable Linux experience in general. My theory is that compatibility is still being worked on or something.

Oh shoot, was the “hmm” emoji real this whole time? 🤔 I think the people around me just got used to the blank thinking stare though.

I dunno, I just felt like making up a rhyme

I take advice that seems like good advice, and makes sense to me. Your advice seems like good advice, but applied selectively

Wow that’s a really cool read. I guess I’ll try to find something else to do with my phone. Maybe hide it under a tissue box or something! Haha

Edit: we made it a game where we find fun and creative places to hide our phones when having coffee with mates

Does face down phone hurt the convo? I do it as a deliberate statement (like “no phones right now”), otherwise it will vibrate in my pocket and disturb me. If it’s on the table it feels better than pocket

To me: Not in room > bag > face down on table > pocket > face up on table > in hand

I got a “CouchMaster” desk thing for working from home. Works pretty well. It’s hard to setup an ergonomic couch though. It was very expensive for what it is though

Mmm, carbon monoxide flavour.

Edit: Downvote if you or someone you love has brain damage from chronic exposure 🥴 1 vote = 1 real safe stove for those in need

Bed no Breakfast

Gotta get creative with the power scaling. Next up, solar system! LLMs will destroy the galaxy! No; the whole universe! The multiverse! Or worse?!

In many fields and activities, years of training have traditionally served not only to produce a final answer or product, but also to develop understanding and the ability to formulate new questions and ideas.

I think this is a really important point. Even if A.I. “could” theoretically (big theoretically) solve all current problems, I don’t think it could solve future problems. Without humans, students, etc, asking new questions with curiosity and creativity; it would just be a hard cut off point where innovation ends.

LLMs were trained on stealing past data, what happens if they push out humans completely from an industry? There would be no more data to train on, and all possible skills in that area would die.

I still remember trying to get it to solve a problem I had with nested multi-level navigation bars in an enterprise app, and it’s JavaScript solution was like:

const nav = document.querySelector('nav');
window.multiLevelNavBar(nav);

Hey LLM, I got an error; multiLevelNavBar does not exist. What the fuck?

Oh my gosh, you’re right, that’s 100% on me. Here’s the REAL solution… (Insert some more fake bullshit)

It’s good at filling in the blanks. But if the blanks are too big, all you get is filler

🤔💡✅

Buddhist devs meditate frequently on the differences and similarities between this and self

Framing my disabilities as an “inconvenience” that I’m too lazy to compensate for, and therefore am a “slavery client”, is very ableist. But I’m sure you already know that.

I remove my own upvote from my comments; it’s my own weird thing 😂

And no worries. I think food is one of those things that is extremely specific to each person. I’m sure most people would hate what I eat every day. I would describe it as “low-GI vegetarian”

I liked the term “meat puppet” more; though it’s a little morbid