I have dogs. (And a cat that hisses at the mailman, so - a dog.)

We all sleep naked. Not under the same blanket.

Like - I’m excited about sensors that uses higher frequency versions of this for health monitoring. I think that’s a perfectly valid use. But also, in my use, I’d be installing it as an IoT device on a network I control, feeding data to services I own.

This use - where it’s opt in for now, until they figure out how to monetize selling how much time you spend in front of the TV, in the kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom (paired with ‘anonymized’ data about what you’re looking at online in each space) is creepy as fuck.

Why this is unneeded

Citizenship is already required to vote in state and federal elections. Every state currently maintains its own voter rolls. These voter rolls are administered at the state level and how citizenship is proved occurs according to state laws.

Why this is bad

This database represents a breach of state autonomy to administer their elections.
Some localities do not require citizenship to vote. This database could disenfranchise voters in those localities.
This represents a huge target for hackers, and given that every municipality will have access to it, there are a lot of potential ways in which it could be compromised or manipulated. The federal government is rife with inaccurate information, and is often understaffed to address the issue. These issues can and will disenfranchise voters. States and municipalities are better equipped to handle their voter rolls.

How this will be abused

This database will be used to both verify citizenship, and for election officials to upload who is registered to vote in a given electoral area. This will lead to its usage to disqualify people who are registered in multiple areas. If - 31 days before an election, someone uploads a list of conservative or liberal voters from a purple area such as Florida or Ohio to the rolls of another state using hacked credentials, then it’s very possible those people will be disqualified from voting and may not know until they try to cast their ballot - shifting the balance of the election.
With the Supreme Court recently discarding birthright citizenship without clarifying who qualifies for citizenship, a sufficiently malicious actor could ensnarl the electoral and legal system with arbitrary claims that people’s parents were not U.S. citizens.
Invariably, the data from this will be used to stalk hapless people — either by electoral workers, or by anyone, once it has been hacked.
And, speculatively - what happens if the scope of this morphs to a ‘voter eligibility’ database, where it tries to ascertain if someone is eligible to vote on additional criterion, such as criminal history? Will it be plagued with errors, such as not registering expunged records, or applying one state’s laws to another?

Unless something else happened, it has to do with the sign stealing scandal

The internalized sense of failure because you cannot maintain friendships with (most) neurotypical people is honestly kind of a cancer until you figure it out. It’s one of the most damaging things that happened to my psyche as a result of having ADHD.

It’s one of the reasons why I so strongly advocate for everyone getting tested if they have any suspicions. The knowledge that I wasn’t wrong, and the disconnection I felt from others was not (necessarily) a result of my own failings was really freeing and lifted a lot of weight from me. I hope getting tested can help others by either preventing them from internalizing similar feelings, or giving them a path forward to working through those feelings.

And also rejection sensitivity, plus the common “ride alongs” like anxiety and depression.

Quick test: Do you have friends with ADHD?

More than 1? Ask them if they think you have ADHD.
More than 50% of your friends? You have ADHD.

It’s a scarily accurate meme that ADHD folks flock together.

For a more considered approach, I’d recommend getting started here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/health/adhdattention-deficit-disorder-test

It’s non-comprehensive, but doesn’t require a login or email to see your results, and it gives you a starting point to talk to your doctor.

Depending on where you are in the world and how badly this is impacting you or the state of your local health system, you may want to investigate alternative diagnosis options.
In the U.S., it was a 6-month wait for a traditional psychiatrist. I resorted to an online option as my ADHD discovery coincided with long covid and depression (I needed a quick turnaround before it impacted me professionally), but there are now some chain psychiatry operations that, well, I don’t like their business model, but they offer fast turnaround if you’re willing to be a part of the enshitification of yet another profession.

Editing to add: That’s more a pointed comment at myself than anyone else. My regular doctor was not really getting my depression meds right to the point it was becoming an emergency, so I wound up with a company called LifeStance. They’re the McDonalds of mental health providers.

Yes!
My wife and I order breakfast once a week from this local place. They’ve undergone some changes and transitions over the years and in their current phase they partnered with another business (a coffee shop) where they use they kitchen space that came with the building and the coffee shop plays to their strengths.

We can’t make as much small talk as we used to with the owners of the restaurant when we go to pick up our food (ordered online 99% of the time), but there’s always a sense of connection in being recognized by the restaurant staff, who will pop out of the kitchen to hand me my order if the baristas are busy, or when the baristas see me and just grab my food from the order window and call my name before I’m halfway through the crowd of customers. I’m a big fish in a very small pond!

I feel that in my area the driving culture has become so toxic that there’s a better than average chance that indicating a lane change (which I always do) will lead to the vehicle in the lane you’re attempting to change into accelerating to prevent you from ‘getting in front of them.’
It’s so frustrating (and dangerous!). It seems that a lot of folks feel entitled to the road, or the patch of road in front of their car fro as long as the eye can see, and are willing to behave irrationally regarding it.

I feel that telegraphing that your vehicle is slowing down (for any purpose) will lead to overconfidence or even willful misunderstanding by other drivers. A careful slow-down will turn to panic as they try to take advantage of the situation. I also think that drivers will focus on the vehicles too much, and will not focus on things like pedestrians or perhaps why your car is slowing down, and wind up contributing to the problem.

You are a light in the darkness.

Right! I can’t wait to hear about all the new historical events!

I wonder if anyone witnessed the burning of the Library of Alexandria and felt a similar sense of despair for the future of knowledge.

Ope, now I regret deleting my edited explanation! That is an excellent response to my accidental comment.

My immediate thought was “That’s not all they’re going to be hitting…”

deleted by creator

Or mastodon.

I was quite sure I didn’t have ADHD, too.

Not feeling a sense of accomplishment is not normal. You deserve better. Just check into it, okay?

For the U.S., the decisive blow came with the Citizens United ruling, although it’s not unreasonable to suggest the refusal to punish Nixon during watergate signaled that the rule of law was merely a suggestion. That kicked off a whole cascade of political and legal maneuvering to get both the legislative and societal landscape into such a contortion that it would willingly hand away the entire nation to vulture-capitalists.

Because they don’t believe in choice, freedom, or even democracy. They merely support the ideal and facilitate the illusion.

Anything that empowers voters to either dilute the two-party hegemony (where both parties are accountable to the same pool of donors) or elect party members that haven’t been carefully vetted by insiders is a threat to entrenched power structures. Adding roadblocks now ensures that transitions to better systems are made that much more challenging via peaceful and lawful means.

No, as non-experts, we must dismiss the knowledge of experts because their approach is not non-magical pseudoscience bullshit that consists mostly of evocative imagery.

I don’t need no boring particle accelerator! I want an atom smasher that’s been combined with cutting edge AI and the latest in superconducting magnet technology to tame matter down to the subatomic level so it can shoot a laser made of protons into radioactive materials to fundamentally alter its elemental properties so it no longer emits _{(as much)} radiation!

I mean, everyone is already fucked, and that’s what keeps everyone else in check.

Russia has made great efforts to hack municipal systems all over the world, and may actually have some control over Microsoft systems, owing to that credential hack last year that Microsoft still hasn’t confirmed is contained. (Recent Russian hacking campaigns are using malicious signed MSI files, so my bet is no…)

China has all that communication equipment everywhere, with rumors swirling that it’s intentionally compromised. There’s also Tuya, a massive IOT company that produces its own products and also white label products. And there’s all the EV power inverters that can be hacked and used as a botnet to destroy electrical grids. Not that they need to, because apparently they can shut down the U.S. power grid remotely. And who knows what they’ve managed to do with the U.S.’s backdoor access into telecom systems.

The U.S. has its own devices, hacking, and infiltration efforts, although as a U.S. citizen, my awareness of them is decreased due to U.S. media.

But my core point is that there’s basically a digital Cold War happening. And the U.S. is all but surrendering, making successful surveillance, hacking, and sabotage campaigns more likely.
If a situation goes hot at the same time that large parts of U.S. see poisonings or health issues en masse due to tampering with water supply chemical or filtration systems or even the possible destruction of drinking water systems, the explosion of natural gas lines as C&C systems over pressurize domestic lines, followed by a prolonged grid-wide electrical outage, the U.S. will have basically no ability to do anything but focus on domestic issues.