you guys know you can get USB connectable CD, dvd, and blu-ray players right. and you can buy external hard drives with crazy amounts of space for an amount of money that would make the average person from 2009’s head explode bc of how cheap it is. and if you do this and get ripping software such as handbrake for CDs and DVDs and makeMKV for blurays you can both own a physical copy of whatever media you want and make it accessible to yourself no matter where you are. do you guys know this
Seen a couple posts on the dashboard lately about writing with ADHD. So, for the ADHD and neurodivergent folks who like writing but struggle sometimes… check out StimuWrite.
You can set it to make little sounds as you type (or leave them off), and emojis pop up in the corner. You can change the background, dark and light themes, set your word goal, and it gives you a percentage and total word count at the bottom. Though it’s more meant for getting a draft written up, so it doesn’t have spell check or anything like that. You’re meant to just copy and past what you write here into Google Docs or Word or Scrivener or whatever else you use and go from there. Honestly love it when I’m struggling to get words down, though. And apparently there’s an update now for StimuWrite 2?👀
Anyways, give it a try if it looks like it may help. It’s currently name-your-own-price.
Yo I just downloaded this thing and hammered out 3000 words????? Which is more than I’ve written in years????????
Hey I’ve accidentally written 20,000 words in six days.
Even though April had all the clinical signs of schizophrenia, the team believed that the underlying cause was lupus, a complex autoimmune disorder where the immune system turns on its own body, producing many antibodies that attack the skin, joints, kidneys or other organs. But April’s symptoms weren’t typical, and there were no obvious external signs of the disease; the lupus appeared to only be affecting her brain.
The autoimmune disease, it seemed, was a specific biological cause — and potential treatment target — for the neuropsychiatric problems April faced. (Whether her earlier trauma had triggered the disease or was unrelated to her condition wasn’t clear.)
The diagnosis made Markx wonder how many other patients like April had been missed and written off as untreatable.
“We don’t know how many of these people are out there,” Markx said. “But we have one person sitting in front of us, and we have to help her.”
The medical team set to work counteracting April’s rampaging immune system and started April on an intensive immunotherapy treatment for neuropsychiatric lupus. Every month for six months, April would receive short, but powerful “pulses” of intravenous steroids for five days, plus a single dose of cyclophosphamide, a heavy-duty immunosuppressive drug typically used in chemotherapy and borrowed from the field of oncology. She was also treated with rituximab, a drug initially developed for lymphoma.
The regimen is grueling, requiring a month-long break between each of the six rounds to allow the immune system to recover. But April started showing signs of improvementalmost immediately.
As part of a standard cognitive test known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), she was asked to draw a clock — a common way to assess cognitive impairment. Before the treatment, she tested at the level of a dementia patient, drawing indecipherable scribbles.
But within the first two rounds of treatment, she was able to draw half a clock — as if one half of her brain was coming back online, Markx said.
Following the third round of treatment a month later, the clock looked almost perfect.
Drawing a clock is a common way to assess cognitive impairment. These clocks, drawn by April, show how significantly the treatment regimen was helping her. (Courtesy of Sander Markx)
Despite this improvement, her psychosis remained. As a result, some members of the team wanted to transfer April back to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, Markx said. At the time, Markx had to travel home to the Netherlands, and feared that in his absence, April would be returned to Pilgrim.
On the day Markx was scheduled to fly out, he entered the hospital one last time to check on his patient, who he typically found sitting in the dining room in her catatonic state.
But when Markx walked in, April didn’t seem to be there. Instead, he saw another woman sitting in the room.
“It didn’t look like the person I had known for 20 years and had seen so impaired,” Markx said. “And then I look a little closer, and I’m like, ‘Holy s—. It’s her.’”
It was as if April had awakened after more than 20 years.
TL;DR in case you don’t want to read or you’re out of free WaPo articles: Article describes two cases of young women who were diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, respectively. Both spent 1-2 decades in inpatient psychiatric hospitals because their conditions were so severe and did not respond to psychiatric treatment, including ECT. This doctor realizes they have lupus that is attacking their brains. He treats the lupus. Both of them improve quickly and drastically. Article wonders how many people with “treatment-resistant schizophrenia” actually have autoimmune diseases targeting their brains… which could be easily identified with a blood test.
“Markx and other doctors believe there are probably many more patients whose psychiatric conditions are caused or exacerbated by autoimmune issues.”
Our son Sam has told us that the D&D art file we use for a screensaver on various devices bothers him.
Because it makes him frustrated that he can’t look at some of them longer. He wants to know what is happening in some of them.
I told him that is one of the reasons we play Dungeons & Dragons, so we can go find out together, in our collective imagination.
Not really D&D related- but I feel compelled to add to this that not only are these GORGEOUS pixel arts- they are also in fact not animated. There are no frames used. There’s no extra pieces of art. Just one layer.
These pieces are so old that they stem from a time where animating cost way too much memory and/or only 256 colors could be used at one time, so the motion is achieved by ‘color cycling’. Half the available colors would be reserved for that very color cycling. It’s mchecking bonkers, please go watch this video if you feel like learning the technical details of how these artworks were made! They were screensavers that would match the actual time of day that you were in. Somehow. Just by cycling color palettes. Wild shit.
(Especially relevant time stamps for color cycling: 5:50, 9:55, 37:26, at 49:54 he gets into the technical side of HOW this even works)
Yup.
I’ve always enjoyed how they depicted some of the landscapes at different times of the day/weather/season.
Like these two areas. Daytime and nighttime at the village by the waterfalls.
And the high mountains hidden by rain in one and visible in the other.
yall r gonna post a man’s entire portfolio of art and not give credit?
anyways these images are by mark ferrari, a color cycling pixel art master, you can check them out in their html color cycling forms, with sound effects and ability to change the time of day of the image, here and here
Good morning/afternoon/evening/whenever you’re reading this, I’m Sierra unclefather and I am still in a bad place. We have until august 15th to vacate our home and find somewhere else to go. Myself and my 2 children. We received a 90 day notice in may and the days are winding down and I really have no real direction or plan as I don’t have the funds to do anything. Like I stated in a previous post, I don’t have great credit and I only have a short amount of time to find us a new place to go. It feels like my only option is to try and make as much money as possible so I can put down a larger down payment on a new place. I am still paying rent and bills in our home and will have to do so until we leave. My paychecks at my job are helping with the bills but I have nothing extra to go toward leaving. And with the days counting down I don’t know what else to do. I am hoping I can find a place that will accept my credit. Even if I do that I need help with an application fee, security deposit, first months rent, etc. the point of this post is that I am trying to make as much money as possible so that I can move my family and have a place to live.
I sell advertising, spicy content (click here), bad drawings, tarot readings, etc. I have applied for government help, work from home jobs and all of that stuff it more than likely will not come before the time is up for us to leave. I apologize for having to use my platform for this, I just don’t really have an option right now and anything helps. I appreciate everything even if it’s just a share or some advice. Thank you guys a lot. Our cashapp and Venmo are unclefather
Jews have been in israel for thousands of years and they're indigenous to the land. Israel would be "apartheid" would be if palestinians weren't allowed in Israel. You know, the way jews aren't allowed to enter some palestinian districts.
The English used to be native to Anglia and Saxony before Germanic migrations…. but we can’t invade Germany and take their houses away. You can’t...
