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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: April 8th, 2026

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  • Basically, periods where they just black out for a while and then have little recollection of what happened. Its obvious enough that even others unfamiliar with mental health have commented on it. It also seems to come with a change in personality, not as in pop-culture multiple personalities, but more like she forgets key experiences, or certain feelings. For example, being out and having a good day, then out of nowhere, being despondent and while she might be able to robotically list off the events of the day, she can’t conjure any of the related emotions. Before she learned that it wasn’t just a normal chronic depression thing, she described it as feeling like “the sunken place” from Get Out, watching herself doing stuff. Watching it happen as a friend, its like she’s possessed. An overly-religious person in her life literally tried to perform an exorcism on her (which would be really funny, if it weren’t so sad). Even in terms of background, she has more than enough trauma to raise a ton of red flags for things like BPD, DID, PTSD, CPTSD, etc. but all of that has largely been ignored. Like I said, pretty obvious and textbook case for something like that, but its mostly just been dismissed, usually as ADHD or bipolar.

    Edit: and to be clear, all of these symptoms have been present for decades, well before either of us was much aware of mental health as a topic, nonetheless dissociative disorders and their modern romanticization.


  • I know this is a problem, but this isn’t so much what I’m referring to. Specifically, I have one friend who very obviously suffers from dissociation, and I’ve had to help advocate for her because she is so often dismissed despite being a pretty much textbook case trying get treatment through all the correct routes, as well as two different psych profs I’ve had, one who said a lot of people didn’t believe in dissociative disorders, and another who directly said that dissociative disorders don’t have any evidence.



  • Free is obviously a big limitation. Honestly, I feel like the only free game I can actually recommend at this point is Dota 2, although notably you really need someone to tutor you to get into the game. Its just too complex, too team-focused, and too deep to get into without a more experienced player to guide you. That said, if you do get through the hundreds of hours of learning, there really is nothing else that compares.

    Outside of this, now that Steam is pushing developers to make demos again, try giving some of them a shot. Its a fun way to get a sampling platter of hundreds of different games, especially during Steam’s festivals. If you enjoy it enough, you can always buy the full game later.







  • Its complicated. Capitalism is likely a big part of it. Lack of connection is part. Lack of empathy/care for others a is a part. All of these (and more) feed back into each other. For example, Capitalism feeds wealth to those who act badly. Seeing the worst people become more powerful reduces trust, and thus empathy/care. Lack of empathy/care makes connections between people worse. Lack of connection makes it harder to organize against bad actors. Address any of those factors, and the loop is weakened or broken, but all of those are hard to fix and reinforce each other. This means there is no single reason, and no easy fix.



  • This sort of thing does exist, but the reason you don’t see it so much, is that its generally too imprecise, and too prone to error. For example, let’s say you’re trying to assess something related to abdominal pain. Is the pain on the left, centre, or right, or multiple? Is it closer to the front, back, or both? How does the pain feel? Etc. Etc. Etc. Thats a lot of questions, all of which can significantly affect the likelihood of different diagnoses, and which may be somewhat subjective. At the same time, people can’t be trusted to fill out the survey accurately (intentionally or not), getting worse the longer and more complicated it is. On the other hand, going through a doctor, you can in theory, assess symptoms more naturally and flexibly, while confirming their accuracy so insurance/government isn’t spending on (supposedly) unnecessary procedures.





  • What are the current go-tos for GBA emulation on Android? I tried a couple, but all had pretty significant issues. GBA.emu didn’t seem to be able to load ROMs, at least on an unrooted device. Everything retroarch based uses RetroArch’s terrible UI and controls, meaning its inconvenient and you have have more non-GBA buttons on your screen when playing than GBA buttons. Visual Boy works but is slow and finicky. Are there any decent options, nonetheless any free or open source ones?