Quarter Up

Adventures in design consulting, brewing, blacksmithing, and other arts. Occasional posts about foxes, and/or myriad other forms of geekery. Former game industry veteran trying to make it in the beer & freelancing worlds. Cis, he/him, intersectional feminist, listener. Trying to remember that everyone does the best they can with the tools they have in that moment.

[tastefullyoffensive]

Monsters Have Problems, Too by Teo Zirinis (HandsOffMyDinosaur!) Related: Artist Adds Monsters to Thrift Store Paintings

[gif87a-com]

[mamakay93-deactivated20190129]

Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues

[the-real-seebs]

this sounds oddly plausible

[jumpingjacktrash]

a good doctor will pester the insurance company on your behalf. a couple times in my Back Pain Odyssey my insurance noped out on a procedure, and my doctor called them up and was like “no, really” and they gave in.

so if your insurance is in the habit of going “you don’t actually need TWO months of physical therapy, just walk it off,” tell the doctor who ordered it, and they may very well volunteer to, or agree to, call up the insurance people and go “simon says pay for the fucking therapy.”

[breelandwalker]

For all my peeps out there fighting the good fight against Big Pharma Bureaucratic Bullshit.

[jackironsides]

I genuinely don’t understand how medical insurance in the US works, but just in case someone needs this, here it is.

(In Australia, your insurance will cover different stuff based on how much you pay, and will usually pay for $x of that type of treatment per calendar year. You swipe your membership card at your provider and it’s done.)

[ruffboi-mags]

here’s how medical insurance in the US works: By and large, it fucking doesn’t.

[iguanamouth]

What if you opened a pineapple but it was like a pomegranate inside like. It was already in uncomfortable chunks in there.

why stop there

[benredux]

I want all the things.

[benredux]

Hey @garbagefingers have you seen this? Stumbled into the work of Carrol Collet after reading up on another futurist's recent project over at London SuperFlux called Mitigation of Shock (also involving cool things you could do with plants, but more concrete nowish vs abstract theoretical). Anywho I for one welcome our new plant fashion overlords.

[glumshoe]

don’t eat any food given to you by extroverts or while visiting the homes of extroverts

[robotjiji-deactivated20190529]

do not tell extroverts your real name

[glumshoe]

if you are able to see and recognize extroverts, do not acknowledge them and pretend they are invisible to you

[thereissuchathingasatesseract]

when trapped by extroverts, turn your sweater backwards

[glumshoe]

if you are tired of extroverts coming into your home and disrupting your peace and quiet, an iron horseshoe above your door will usually deter them

[sarcasticcollegestudent]

If you are traveling by moonlight, do not step within a ring of mushrooms, for the extroverts will come and take you away to their land

[glumshoe]

when speaking of extroverts, refer to them using polite euphemisms, like “The Socially Inclined” or “The Good People of the Parties” unless you want to attract their attention and/or wrath

[rstevens]

Have you ever wondered where cats come from?

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/ics/341/

[benredux]

This literally just happened here.

[actuallyadhd]

ADHD Self Diagnosis

ADHD diagnosis has five components: symptoms, age of onset, generalization, impact, and differentiation. Here’s how I’d suggest assessing all five components.

1. Symptoms

Do you have enough symptoms of ADHD often enough? Doctors use a questionnaire like this, but it can be complicated to score. An online quiz will ask similar questions but score it for you.

2. Age of Onset

Since ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, it has to have been present as your brain developed—before age 12. (The only exception is if you have secondary ADHD from a traumatic brain injury—you definitely should not be self-diagnosing a traumatic brain injury. Go to the hospital! Now!)

Ask family member, friends, and old teachers what you were like before age 12. Did you get in trouble for talking out of turn or getting out of your seat in the middle of class? Was your room always a mess? Did you often injure yourself attempting daredevil stunts? Did you daydream when you should have been thinking about other things? Did you have a hard time memorizing times tables and spelling even though you didn’t generally have trouble with math and writing? All those things point to ADHD symptoms in childhood.

3. Generalization

Are most of the symptoms that you discovered in part 1 present in at least two parts of your life? For example, if you have trouble paying attention in classes but not paying attention to films, conversations, or cooking, you might just have boring classes. If you’re only hyper and impulsive with your friends but not in other situations, you might just have a high-energy friend group. In other words, if you think you have ADHD, do you always feel you have ADHD, or do you only feel like you have ADHD in one situation?

4. Impact

Is there “clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, school, or work functioning”? Are your grades worse than they should be? Have you lost friends because you’ve insulted them without thinking? Have you been reprimanded for inattention or forgetfulness at work? Have you caused multiple car accidents or gotten several traffic citations? Basically, are these ADHD symptoms causing you actual problems?

If your symptoms are not causing you actual problems, take a deep breath and step away from the Internet for a few hours. Everyone is different, and that is okay. You may identify with a shadow syndrome of ADHD, and that is okay too. You don’t have to have ADHD to read this blog. We will not hunt you down and block you because you don’t have ADHD.

5. Differentiation

This is the part that everyone skips over, and it is the most important. ADHD symptoms are not unique. Many physical and mental health problems can cause the exact same symptoms. You need to check out these too. For example, if you are getting less than eight hours of sleep a night, you’re basically giving yourself ADHD. Put your phone on blocking mode, place the phone far away from your bed, and go the f—— to sleep!

If you can, go to your doctor and get some blood tests: a Comprehensive Metabolic Panel, a Complete Blood Count, and a Thyroid Panel. Those tests should identify quite a few of the physical disorders that can cause ADHD symptoms. Have your vision (near, far, and astigmatism), hearing, and auditory processing checked. Sleep disorders are another thing you should look into if putting your f——ing phone down isn’t solving your sleep problems.

For mental health problems, I’d recommend taking a few screening quizzes; here are links to one for depression, one for anxiety, one for OCD, one for bipolar disorder, and one for sensory processing disorder. It is entirely possible to mistake one of these conditions for ADHD, and it is entirely possible to have one of these conditions and ADHD. If your score suggests a high probability that you have one of these conditions, check out mentalillnessmouse for information on what to do next.

Autism and learning disabilities can also be mistaken for ADHD, and they are both really complicated. Here are some steps for figuring out whether your symptoms are better explained by autism. There are so many learning disabilities that it is hard to link to a quiz—schools usually have the resources for learning disability diagnoses, and an educational psychologist is the person to see about learning disability diagnosis if you’re not in school.

Yes, this is a lot of work.

Diagnosis is complicated and takes time. Understanding yourself and your brain is worth it, though!

—Elise

[benredux]

Worth the time to figure out!

Once you know, it makes it easier to work out the best ways to take advantage of or learn to manage the evolutionary benefits your ADHD - being neurologically atypical doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily.

Once I started to understand my own strengths and weaknesses better as someone with ADHD I began to find all of the tiny edges that being aware of ALL OF THE THINGS can give you and the patterns/heuristics that can be gleaned or adapted from beginning to be able to manage all of the incoming data streams.

Living with ADHD doesn't have to be debilitating (though believe me it absolutely can be left ignored/unchecked/unmanaged) - if you can understand how your brain processes information differently you can begin to optimize your routines and how you approach the world to take full advantage of this very different, and pardon the analogy, instruction set. Honestly, when you're processing everything optimally it can sometimes feel like you have a super power.

[pr1nceshawn]

Photos Showing That Angle Is Everything.

[woodmeat]

this is pissing me off

[lumberjackmack]

this shit made me mad

[go-away-plz-k-thx-deactivated20]

Whoa

[benredux]

As with many things in life, perspective is everything.

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

Breathe. You’re going to be okay. Breathe and remember that you’ve been in this place before. You’ve been this uncomfortable and anxious and scared, and you’ve survived. Breathe and know that you can survive this too. These feelings can’t break you. They’re painful and debilitating, but you can sit with them and eventually, they will pass. Maybe not immediately, but sometime soon, they are going to fade and when they do, you’ll look back at this moment and laugh for having doubted your resilience. I know it feels unbearable right now, but keep breathing, again and again. This will pass. I promise it will pass.

Daniell Koepke (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[dark-owl-lucy]

When I was a kid, we didn’t even have cable; we had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and then maybe one of those weird, independent channels that only showed Colummbo reruns. But you know what, it was great, because as kids especially, we’d talk on the playground the next day about the episodes that we all saw last night, and they became folk tales, because we knew we’d never see them again. And let me tell you, folklore is a great home for The Six Million Dollar Man. When I was a kid, we only had one channel, and all it was was a duck falling asleep. That’s it, and then it was be commercials, and back to the duck on Channel Only, We’d watch it again, and we’d talk about it every day. Like, “what do you think the duck will do tonight?” “Probably fall asleep.” “Yeah, that duck.” That was a great channel, I loved that show. When I was a kid, we didn’t have any channels at all for our televisions. Oh, we had televisions, my dad made sure we had the first one on the block; it it cost three million dollars and no channels or screen. Still, we stared into it every night, and Mom was like, “get away from there, it’s gonna hurt your eyes,” and we were all, “Mom, it’s an empty box, it’s fine.” People who couldn’t afford an empty television box would go downtown and stare at nothing through a window of the shop that sold hollow television cabinets. We’d talk about it the next day: “did you catch the void last night? Yeah, it was a great void.” Back when I was a kid, we didn’t have televisions. We’d just stop and stare into the middle distance, slack jawed, for hours at a time. Next day, we were all, “Hey, how was your spell of psychological dissociation, it was a great!” And we’d high five. See, when I was a kid, it wasn’t like today: there were no TVs or cable channels or other people. We were all part of the subatomic singularity. And the next day there would be no next day because time did not yet exist, and all was nothing and nothing was everything. It was great.The cable’s pretty good, too.

John Moe, witsradio (ep. 65)

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

How to Change from being a Toxic Person

Even if you’ve hurt other people in the past, or have been the kind of person that you really don’t respect, you can always make the decision to change. The tips below might be helpful for this.

1. Look for the good in the people that you meet, and try to empathise, and understand others’ viewpoints.

2. Remind yourself of this: “That it’s not all about you” … and the feelings and the wishes of others matter too.

3. Be polite; try saying “thank you”; and don’t take people for granted. What they did took thought and effort, and it’s nice to be acknowledged.

4. Think before you speak. This will save a lot of grief. For once those words are spoken, they cannot be taken back. They may never be forgotten, and can haunt you later on.

5. Check your tone of voice and the words you choose to use. These can cause misunderstandings, or create a bad impression.

6. Don’t gossip about others; look for things to praise instead.

7. Don’t take the bait and be pulled into arguments. Just let the comment go. You don’t need to rise to that.

8. Make the effort to be kind, and offer others your support. And do something that’s special, and which demonstrates some thought.

[matociquala]

Call your congressperson. Here’s a script.

I know phones are terrifying, but this is important. 

Stephen Bannon’s appointment to the Trump White House is a test of how far America will go in allowing the alt-right (which is code for white supremacist, antisemitic, homophobic woman-haters) control of the American government. You can help stop his appointment, but tweeting or reblogging or snarking on facebook will not accomplish this.

What will help accomplish this? A simple phone call.

This website will give you the contact information.

First, call your representative or senator. You have two senators and one representative. Call all three. It’s okay to take anxiety meds beforehand if you need them. 

When somebody answers the phone, here is what you say:

If your congresscritter is a Democrat or Independent: “Hi, I’m [Name], one of [Name’s] constituents. I am calling because I strongly believe that the [Senator/Representative] should follow the lead of their colleagues, such as Ed Markey and Nancy Pelosi, in condemning President-Elect Trump’s appointment of a white supremacist misogynist, Stephen Bannon, as his chief of strategy and chief counsel.”

If your congresscritter is a Republican: “Hello. Hi, I’m [Name], one of [Name’s] constituents. I’m calling to ask if you can confirm your candidate’s position on white supremacy and white nationalism for me.”

After they answer, then you say, “In that case, I would call on the [Congress(man/woman)/Senator] to condemn President-Elect Trump’s appointment of a white supremacist misogynist, Stephen Bannon, as his chief of strategy and chief counsel in no uncertain terms.“

They may ask your address, Give them the address from which you vote. It’s how they confirm you are for reals.

You can do this. It does matter.

[mordsithcara]

[callmebetsy]

Reblogging this for you, @benredux 😄

[benredux]

Ahhh ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ its back!!!!

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

what do we do tho? like, honestly? what happens if he’s elected? what do we honest to god do?

[thegloriousfail]

We mourn, and then we move forward. We fight tooth and nail for every right he tries to take away. We exercise our right to free speech, loudly. We fight for our neighbors and our families and our friends. We stand up for the populations who can’t stand up for themselves. We chip away at his support. And in four years we unite to vote him out of office.

[shadowthekitsunereturns-deactiv]

This is spot on

[benredux]

We're shocked tonight because we expected America to be better, but like parents of a preteen who came home with shit grades after that first year of middle school and who knew to say what we wanted to hear but did what they wanted to behind our back anyway, we're in a bit of shock at the parent teacher conference.

Well, rather than give little America up for adoption or send them to military school or whatever, we sit them down and prepare for the long road ahead and try to help them get their head on straight. This isn't going to be easy and America isn't going to want to do the right thing, they're going to want to do the easy or the fun thing; but with a little love and understanding and a healthy dose of "WHAT THE FUCK WHERE YOU THINKING TONIGHT VOTIVNG FOR THAT MAN I THOUGHT WE WERE BETTWR THAN THIS?!!!" we will make sure that America gets on the right path again.

[annetdonahue]

[i-think-ive-killed-a-man]

Ugh, he’s right.

[acakewalkofcrocodiles]

This is our (white people) mess, our cultural mess, and we can’t abandon it.