Best posts made by Kestrel

Thought Slime makes educational videos about Anarchism with bite and dry wit.

Currently relevant, I recommend his video on why All Cops Are Bastards.

Been writing poetry lately.

It's something I used to love doing when I was a teenager, and then I think at some point I stopped because I decided it wasn't all that cool and I was embarrassed of seeming angsty or edgy or emo or whatever. Even though like, maybe I had a reason to be feeling this way, and having this form of expression wasn't just cathartic for me, but a skill I could've nurtured and kept developing.

As an adult, realising some of my friends write poetry and feeling some pangs of jealousy towards them for their lack of shame in their obvious talent, and wondering if I could still be as good as they are if I hadn't shunned this hobby out of self-consciousness, I have some regrets. And even for a while after realising that, I still just kept insisting I'm not good at poetry, and that I don't want to waste my time or theirs with subpar underdeveloped attempts to change that.

It's very freeing to let go of that. Turns out this is something I enjoy, regardless of whether it's "good", and prose doesn't have to be my only form of creative expression.

My teething puppy decided to scare the shit out of me this week by not eating. Considering when I first got her she used to vacuum her meals up in five seconds flat, this had me seriously worried.

I switched to free-feeding kibble since the raw was getting wasted and then attracting flies. But, today I noticed her gobble up the last of last night's kibble and then look up for more.

So I tried breaking out the raw again. She gobbled it up. I was so elated by this I ended up giving her a treat — to reward her for eating.

Doggo eating again. All is right in the world. I am happy. Watching animals eat is a thing I could do all day.

I've been reading some studies lately on gender disparity in the rates of ADHD diagnosis and referral.

Today one thing in particular jumped out at me and made me think of MSB, both because you guys have such an extensive ADHD thread and because there was recent discussion in Gripes about how one wraps their head around the idea that even when a person's gender presentation is but text on a screen, it's still possible to experience bias towards them because of it.

People may experience and respond to the same behaviour of males and females in different ways due to gender-related behavioural expectations [42]. For example in two studies where teachers were presented with ADHD-like vignettes, when simply varying the child’s name and pronouns used from male to female, boys names were more likely to be referred for additional support [45] and considered more suitable for treatment [46].

Study:
Females with ADHD: An expert consensus statement taking a lifespan approach providing guidance for the identification and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in girls and women

Open access, no need for any kind of fee/login.

@carma said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Kestrel I don't mean to trivialize the study, but my initial reaction is of course there's a bias against women and girls in every facet of the medical community. It's good that there's a study that proves it. I just feel like we shouldn't have needed a study to prove it, because of how obvious it is. What would be surprising is if there were no bias.

Still, thanks for the link and the signal boost.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm in the process of being assessed for ADHD right now and while I'm open to the possibility that it might just not be the right fit for me, my initial meeting didn't go so well: I fit the criteria for inattention but not for hyperactivity and was on the low end of impulsivity. The psychiatrist I saw indicated that I needed to fit the criteria for all 3 in order to be diagnosed.

I've been discussing this whole thing with a few people in the MU* community for a while now and @Clarity suggested I should look into research on women with ADHD specifically. Turns out fitting the criteria for inattention but not for hyperactivity is actually totally and completely normal for women with ADHD and doesn't lead to any better outcomes in life if it's left untreated. (Much more on this here.)

So I mean, yeah. We shouldn't need a study that proves it, but it's good that one exists — because I have a feeling that saying to my psychiatrist point blank, 'Have you considered that you might be reviewing this case through a lens of unconscious bias?' Miiight not go down quite so well as, 'Hey, apropos of nothing, I came across these interesting studies about women with ADHD! This article was published just last year. What do you think, Mr Doctor?'

(I learned how to communicate with male-kind thanks to the Cooper Review. Can't recommend this enough.)

EDIT: Sorry if this is old news to everyone here. I'm super new to all of this. Didn't start even entertaining the possibility until 2 months ago when some MU*ers quietly ganged up on me to suggest I should.

Some days I'll be having a self-esteem thing where I worry about the various ways I measure up and how others must perceive me.

And then I'll walk through the door and my dog is there going OMG IT'S YOU. HI. I HAVE MISSED YOU. YOU ARE THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD AND YOU HAVE BRIGHTENED MY DAY IMMEASURABLY JUST BY EXISTING. ILYSM.

And that helps me get back on track so I can stop thinking stupid thoughts and do something useful instead, like throwing her a ball or wrestling her for five minutes.

She is a gift, and I totally understand dog people now.

Completely loved Cruella. This film was serving up looks like it was going out of style. It was also shot in a really engaging way and had great tunes, so considering how heavily fashion features it really delivers. Aesthetically speaking I give it a 10/10.

I liked the story though that probably isn't going to be the selling point for most people; it had a good balance of dark and edgy with fun and campy. The plot is kind of Money Heist meets Gossip Girl? Devil Wears Prada meets Ocean's Eight?

In summary if gawking at cool dresses and fierce femme fatales is your bag, you're going to like this movie.

I've been pretty bummed out about not receiving proper mental healthcare due to what I perceive to be institutional biases.

And like, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm right. It's my credibility against the experts, who's gonna believe a self-professed crazy who thinks she knows better because Dr Google said so?

So I sat here thinking what to do. I tried contacting some other experts, who specialise in providing mental healthcare to the specific demographics targeted by these institutional biases, but they're all on double-crazy waiting lists and can't offer more than a 'maybe in 3 months, if you're lucky, and get your foot in the door then.'

Then I remembered that mental healthcare is all made up based on the stated, subjective and perceived feelings imperfectly bandied about between labelled crazy people and people who've made a living labelling crazy people. And that I can just cut out the middleman and skip straight to the hard science without having to worry about the institutional biases of the flawed individuals whose job is just to make their best educated guess.

So I'm off to get a bunch of scans of my brain. It's actually a lot cheaper than I thought it would be (cheaper than the junk assessment a psychiatrist gave me) and honestly I'm super excited. Who doesn't want pictures of their brain to gawk at?

So when I first got Andi I had just discovered this song and had been replaying it to death, all day, every day, and singing along.

The lyrics actually have nothing to do with her, they're about falling out of love and abandoning someone which adds a layer of irony here. But, because it's the song I had on repeat most often during her early puppyhood, it is now her favourite song.

It's the most adorable thing in the world 'cause I have it on my normal playlist (which is 547 songs, 32 hours long) and anytime it comes on, even if I don't immediately notice, she does and lets me know. She could be in the other room and will immediately walk in howling excitedly and tossing her head about. She could be asleep and will at once perk up and look over at me expectantly.

So, 9 times out of 10 I of course give her what she wants when she reacts this way, and start serenading her back, or get up to dance with her in the living room. My day will also be improved times a hundred.

@macha said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

So, I was excited to tell a long time friend about the progress and the script.

his response. "Shit, Adderall? I hope that is not where you settle. I've never known that to be any good for anyone."

.. like really, dude?

Adderall abuse has gotten a lot of media attention lately, both through pop culture references in fiction (e.g. featured heavily in the latest season of You) as well in the news and documentaries (Take Your Pills is one I've heard about, but haven't watched). I've noticed a lot of side-eye when I mention to people IRL that I'm on stimulants, people seem to default to the assumption that I'm lucky/sneaky to have scored a diagnosis for those priceless drugs and that I'm probably abusing them. Like weirdly even someone who told me he has ADHD too said he chooses not to be on them and thinks many people who have "anxiety" use those kinds of drugs to self-medicate.

The stigma sucks but I also just don't owe people an explanation and don't have to justify my healthcare requirements to anyone other than myself & my doctor, so I don't. They're not in my head or my day-to-day life/routine and I don't think I could make them understand it without that experience. Why bother? It's helping me and that's what matters.

It wouldn't surprise me if your friend had come across similar headlines (or maybe incidents of actual substance abuse) and arrived at the currently topical mainstream conclusion without much nuance. C'est la vie.

@faraday said in Did you get diagnosed with...:

• Many doctors, particularly ones of older generations, are not well-versed in adult ADHD. They have stereotypical notions that ADHD is a "kid problem" and people outgrow it. (Some do; most don't.) If your friend wants a proper diagnosis, they'll want to see someone who says "adult ADHD" amongst the symptoms the treat--that's a good sign that they at least are aware that it exists.

@silverfox used male pronouns to describe their friend, but regardless for anyone else reading who might be going through similar motions, I would like to add that I strongly recommend seeking a female practitioner and/or someone who specialises in "ADHD in women". There's a double whammy stigma not just against ADHD in adults, but specifically female brains as well.

More on this can be found here:
Females with ADHD: An expert consensus statement taking a lifespan approach providing guidance for the identification and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in girls and women

(If you have the patience to read the above study, I would recommend also looking at the references as well, many of which are likewise very insightful.)

tl;dr for the above link: women are severely underdiagnosed due to referral bias, for example in one experiment it was found that found that teachers were much more likely to refer written profiles of students for an ADHD assessment if male names/pronouns were used even when the profiles were otherwise identical. Women & girls with ADHD do tend to present somewhat differently (more internalised symptoms rather than externalised, which is typical across the board for mental health problems in women). Yet despite underdiagnosis and undertreatment, they do not have better life outcomes in terms of academic/professional success or interpersonal relationships if left undiagnosed/untreated. So this matters. A lot. Even if they're more likely to seem OK, on the surface. Research and common medical knowledge is also generally lacking, for example there's been found to be a lot of interplay between female reproductive health & ADHD, but hardly any psychiatrists know or think to ask about endocrine factors when diagnosing and prescribing. Female puberty, menopause, menstrual cycles, contraceptives and endocrine disorders have all been found to impact dopamine levels and the efficacy of ADHD medication.

Additional hurdles exist in the UK where the NHS have only just barely begun wrapping their heads around the existence/validity of ADHD at all. I wish I'd kept a screenshot but it was barely a few months ago that their official medical advice website had stuff about ADHD being linked to low IQs and only being diagnosable in children. They updated that only very recently; apparently there was an explosion of people seeking treatment/diagnosis during the pandemic, forcing them to reexamine their current systems & knowledge base.

For me personally ... I've had to fight tooth & nail for my diagnosis, treatment and medication; it's been a trying journey, but very much worth it in the end. I feel like it's a journey I'm still on, and a lot of people in this community might be able to personally attest to the emotional rollercoaster I've been through this year pursuing it. (Because they were wonderfully supportive and I love them for it.) It's been less than a year since I was diagnosed and it's actually thanks to members of the MU* community that I pursued it at all; a few people in a Discord server I was a member of for a MUD I played were discussing it, shared online tests about it and more than one person seemed to be nudging me with the suspicion I have it. I was pretty resistant to the idea at first but then the more I read about it, the more things started finally clicking into place. I was able to talk to people one-to-one, and even just browsing that ADHD thread here that I'd been ignoring for years helped a lot.

Like @saosmash, I had to pay out of pocket. A lot. I'd estimate for the first year of assessments, appointments and medications it'd amount to something like £5000 in London. It'd be a lot cheaper on the NHS (like just £100 a year), but getting the NHS to believe you have ADHD and need real medication for it is basically impossible without first coughing up for private treatment. (Doubly hard with the aforementioned bias factors.) Hopefully soon I'll be able to make the switch off of private care, with enough important looking letters from the expensive experts I've seen.

I've had to argue with my (unfortunately male) psychiatrist a lot, cite studies (which should've been his job to be informed about). I've honestly cried over this, more than once, both with relief (when getting a prescription) and stress (when having to fight for one). I'd switch practitioner but the waiting lines in the UK during this pandemic are borderline insurmountable, and having to start over with someone new would mean having to pay more again and risk losing the prescription I'm on now until my diagnosis is reconfirmed. Having money to throw at people helps, and still only to a point.

The returns I've seen on this have all been worth it in the end, however; my life is measurably better on medication. My work, relationships, physical health and even academic potential have all improved. (I'm starting a new degree and several new work projects, which I wouldn't have had the confidence to do without this.)

I've had to do a lot of my own research since I've been able to get relatively little help from medical professionals due to both logistical impediments and institutional bias. A combination of Sci-Hub & NCBI have helped enormously. (God bless Alexandra Elbakyan, hero of our times and personal saviour.) I've spent a fuckton of time just searching stuff about the medication I'm on, my symptoms, etc., poring through the available research. It's been time-consuming but kind of fun, if you're a fucking nerd like me. I couldn't muscle answers out of my psychiatrist so I had to hunt them down. Specific individuals in this community who were available to share their personal experiences with me were a big help as well. (Other women especially, and Americans for whom the whole process is much easier & saner sharing their perspective of much more sensible doctors.)

I often think about how life might've turned out differently if I'd been diagnosed in childhood but ... water under the bridge now I guess. Just gotta make the most out of what I have and am capable of now in my upcoming 30s.

@macha said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@tributary Yeah, I feel... nothing.

Very normal. They start you out on a low dosage and work their way up until you mention feeling something, because they don't want to take you higher than needed and your brain needs time to adjust.

Pretty much everyone I know who's started out on a medication journey has had the initial freakout on day 1 of 'Oh no it isn't doing anything my last hope is gone and I must not have ADHD apparently I'm just broken'. Don't sweat it!

@Misadventure said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Solstice I agree with what Derp said, and it's not benefitting me one bit.

Am I a sycophant, or am I someone with their own opinion worthy of consideration as a human being?

The latter; I have no reason to doubt your sincerity and have never personally assumed any statement of yours to be inauthentic.

I would like to go on record however saying that I've never played Arx, have no intention of doing so (L&L not my theme), nor have I ever privately communicated with its staff members on any platform, nor with BMD's staff, or any of the usual suspects generally insinuated to be part of this "clique".

I'm a person who's been paying attention to the discussion on both of these boards and over on @Ghost's Reddit thread, and was able to arrive at her own conclusions after quite an extended period of sitting on the fence and letting people reveal themselves.

As I too was then swept under the label of "clique" (initially, ironically, for having stated that I wished to stay on the fence), I note that there's quite a lot of what you're describing going around, @Misadventure, though to be clear I'm not implicating you personally in it.

I think this broader conversation is being controlled by people peddling a lot of absolute fucking horseshit, and I don't need anyone else's borrowed opinions to smell the stink.

This is not a tale of two warring tribes, nor as @Derp puts it, friction resulting from "two very different groups of people interacting in the same space". This is a whole bunch of people cut from the same exact cloth, some of whom now have the weight of a banhammer behind their desire to win internet arguments, and some of whom don't. And, somewhat more enviably, the apparent wealth of mental fortitude with which to keep the spin going for this long, instead of just admitting to an ounce of accountability.

I don't think there's any difference between people online and offline. I really don't. If you don't like me online, you probably wouldn't like me IRL, either.

Contrary to popular beliefs about how online you can be anyone, and you can't trust people on teh interwebs, what differs is not the inherent character, but presentation: people's true selves come out more readily online. I trust people online way more than I do offline; anonymity means there's nothing holding people back here if they want to be arseholes. You can be racist, sexist, homophobic — in my case, I'm an obnoxious vegan — and it isn't going to cost you your job or the respect of your new girlfriend, etc. You can stalk and harass people online with virtually no consequences, you can even send people death threats. IRL you have to be polite to save face.

While it may be true that online you can be anyone, I think that the person people most want to be, and tend to become online, is their truest self. They can lie about their gender, their physical appearance, their marital status, their history, but these things are surface-trappings. If IRL you're in the closet because you live in hicksville, OL you can be a flamboyant diva. If IRL you're a psychopath who has to keep their violent tendencies in check, OL you can cyberbully and play FPS games. People might seem different online and offline, but they're really not. You just might not have known them as well as you thought you did, when all you were seeing was their public restraint.

@Cupcake said in The 100: The Mush:

Actually, he was a big part of what made an otherwise fun environment go seriously sour. He had a habit of shredding apart anything that other people enjoyed, beyond the point of just not liking it to insulting it (it's okay to not like things, BUT DON'T BE A DICK ABOUT IT), used to passive-aggressively snark at players and staff on channel, and was, imo, generally unpleasant to be around. I only rp'd with him when I had to, and when I realized he was making me reactionary and falling into bad behavioral habits, did my best to keep my contact to a minimum.

He wasn't the only one, in fairness. Just probably the only one I felt comfortable naming at the time because he didn't have any prior connections (that I know about), so I knew everyone would agree with me. It was easy, any time someone brought up shitty players, to go, 'Like Jumar?' To which unanimously people I spoke to would say, 'Yeah, Jumar.'

He didn't actually creep on me personally, mind, though I fully believe @tek that he did. He was just frequently obnoxious in my general vicinity, of the bang-my-head-against-the-wall but not the I-need-an-adult variety.

ETA: Really I'm just commenting because as much as I felt annoyed by this player, I don't think it's fair to make him a sole scapegoat.

@three-eyed-crow

It is a great show in its own right, feminist delight aside. I just have to point out that aspect of it because I just got into it, and I know that when redacted showed up on Eve's doorstep at the end of the pilot there was a shocked part of me going, 'Wait, another distinct female lead on this show? Don't we already have two? The show already passes the Beschdel Test! We get a third?' It was like literally Christmas and I do not expect such gifts from the TV Gods.

Also that pilot was really good, start to finish. Some shows get off to a rocky start; not this one. It hit the ground running. That ice-cream scene at the very beginning was so captivating and well done that I had to replay it to fully appreciate the way they expressed the character using no dialogue and nothing more than her attempt to smile.

@Ghost said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

while I think you are a bully

Any receipts, or are those waived for members of the anti-clique clique? It’s been a while since high-school, I don’t remember the club rules.

Thank you also for the armchair psychoanalysis, it was kind of you to take time out of your day to reflect on my wellbeing. As a return gesture, I would like to suggest that I think you’re projecting.

@Misadventure said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

The question for you becomes: what if people disagree with you and feel people were accountable enough?

Then I suppose we agree to disagree and make peace with the outcome. I still don’t think you’re being disingenuous, but I have a lot less confidence in those you put yours in, and must live with the incorrigible impulse to call a spade a spade.

@rinel said in Real life versus online behaviors:

@kestrel I don't know how much I agree with that. What we choose to do with how we feel--the public restraint we choose to exercise--is part of who we are.

Fair point.

And it's not just a lack of consequences that influences our actions online; empathy is much harder to come by when you can't see or hear a person. And that's not an intentional issue--just think how many fights start on this forum because people misunderstood something written they'd never have misunderstood in a face-to-face environment.

It doesn't excuse consciously acting like a jerk, but I think it explains why people sometimes do. It's not that they don't care that people are upset; it's that they don't see it.

I think that empathy can be measured in the radius of a sphere.

Everyone cares about themselves. Almost everyone also cares about their inner circle: family, friends, significant others.

A little further out people care about people like them: their gender, their race, their political party, their country. Much further out people might/sometimes care about the wellbeing of their entire species, e.g. people from other countries, other backgrounds, other beliefs, social outcasts such as prison inmates, and so on.

Even further out people might care about sentient beings who are very different from them, starting with the family dog and expanding outwards towards endangered species on the other side of the planet.

Caring or not caring about people on the internet, who are theoretically on the other side of the world, and whom you can't see, would rank a little higher on the empathy scale, but I don't think that's any less a measure of the person in question. It might just be that they never even think about what the person on the other side of the screen is going through, but again, that's a lack of empathy.

It's similar to how some people are deeply moved by the horrors they see on the news, and become inspired to action, while some people shrug and move on with their day — or will even continue actively contributing to these horrors somehow — but would perhaps feel differently if they were transported into the communities and came face to face with the victims, whom they don't otherwise think about harming with their day-to-day choices.

I don't necessarily think that the latter category are 'bad people', but they're definitely less empathetic compared to the former. It isn't a binary measure.

@Lotherio said in The 100: The Mush:

@tek said in The 100: The Mush:

@Sunny If it was real power that impacted people in a way they couldn't avoid, I might agree with you.

This is a silly debate, but internet bullying is a real thing. Internet isn't a magical land, its not like saying my imaginary friend abused me. I've had real family snuff it from internet bullying. This is like you saying that this relative of mine was just being silly for taking their life cause its only internet and they should of walked away?

Yes, internet bullying is a real thing with real consequences, and abuse is absolutely a thing that can happen via the internet.

But nothing that Andy and Orion did was abuse, so that dialogue is irrelevant on this thread. Even if I agreed 100% with the allegations @Ghost has made against them — which I don't, by the way, so thank you but no thank you I do not need your chivalry — being selfish and writing stories that revolve around oneself is not abuse.

I'm sorry, did someone force you to play these games? Did @Seraphim73 and @GirlCalledBlu threaten you that something bad would happen if you stopped playing or if you didn't play on their terms? Did they mock or deride you for your choices? I bloody well doubt it, sir, considering that even on this thread, responding to your bullshit, they've been as courteous as they can be, to a far greater degree than you deserve or I'm willing to offer.

So yes, I too have a problem with the use of the word abuse in this context, and it's not because I question the impact that stories and netizens can have on vulnerable individuals. It's because people using it in this particular context, on this thread, are being hyperbolic and sensitive to the degree of choosing to be offended where no insult was made. They made something you didn't like. You disliked their style. That's the way of it, sometimes. I paid with hard-earned cash to go see Mad Max in cinema and I didn't like it either. You don't see me crying abuse over the deception of having the hype around that film oversold.

You need to find better things to be offended over and cry 'abuse' for, @Ghost — super ironic coming from someone who takes as much issue as you do with SJWs, too. May I recommend booking a session with a dominatrix if you're that desperate for something to angst about?

@Arkandel

Cersei is alive for precisely the same reason that Ned Stark isn't.

It's supposed to be unfair and frustrating. Indeed she is my least favourite character on the show (or rather, my favourite character to hate since Joffrey) but it's precisely because of how unscrupulous she is that she "deserves" the Throne, in a sense.

Obviously, I'm looking forward to seeing her die. That was like, #1 on my wishlist for this season. It has been #1 on my wishlist since she killed Sansa's doggo. I hope her comeuppance is brutal and cathartic.

But I mean ... she worked hard for that uncomfortable chair, as gross and unlikeable as that makes her. It's pretty on-brand for GoT to show us that life isn't fair, and political success doesn't necessarily come to the smartest/bravest and most deserving! I think she's a good villain.

@Seraphim73 fair points all in all. She's definitely no Princess Buttercup. (How Not to Do a Damsel.)