cbsmith

> The current energy deregulation in the EU involves forcing utilities to trade electricity in a spot market, that treats the on-demand production of conventional power plants and the random and unpredictable production of solar and wind, as if it's completely equivalent.

The California case also forced utilities to trade electricity in a spot market. These markets always seem oriented towards purchasing power rather than capacity, which strikes me as odd. Power companies need committed capacity, because they need to have reserves of power. Sure, buying electricity that no one else is using makes sense, but because demand is comparatively inelastic, it's just crazy to have that be how companies ensure they have sufficient capacity.

> that in most cases people are probably better off not taking SSRIs – that part of the problem is that people don't learn to deal with their depression anymore and as a society we don't care to help those suffering with depression beyond just telling them to take psychoactive drugs.

There's some inconsistencies in your logic there. If SSRIs aren't effective, how is it that people "don't learn to deal with their depression" due to SSRIs?

> As a depressed person myself and someone who knows a fair few depressed people, I do believe you can learn to manage it in the vast majority of cases.

The evidence supports that. The evidence also supports that without help, a lot of people won't learn to manage it, and many will literally die because of it.

I assumed the original comment was posted in jest.

I did not have this problem when I played a game from Firefox.

> I can hold every line of the codebase in my head but I can't remember what I was just doing...

The lines of the codebase are also working memory, no?

It's really hard to tell to what extent I've developed techniques for dealing with limited working memory. I certainly don't use things like mnemonics or other common memory techniques you commonly hear about. Unlike most anyone else I know, note taking with a pen or pencil seems to actively reduce my working memory. If I hyperfocus, I can memorize decently long sequences of meaningless numbers, but it requires what I suspect is a lot more effort than it does for other people (I score about average on working memory, and that's very much how it feels it's going to go during the testing). Hyperfocus can compensate, but you pay a heavy price for it.

My working memory is also hopeless with context switching. If I'm juggling three contexts at once, odds are I will lose working memory of all three (or was it four? ;-).

When I look back at my life, I've absolutely had to compensate for all that, but most of the "compensation" is just acknowledging the limitations. Memorizing dates and times just isn't going to happen (add time blindness compounds the problem), names of people & places are going to be impossible, etc. The closest thing I have to a compensation technique is the crutch that is hyperfocus.

However, when it comes to information (i.e. data that has some kind of meaning), I seem to be able to do much better than most, to the point where people often remind me that I need to consider that everyone else isn't able to keep all that context in their head at once. I can't speed read, but I can digest material with complex subject matter, analyze complex problems, etc. just faster and seemingly more easily than a lot of people. Some of that is likely due to other factors, but working memory is definitely an asset.

Yup, I've got loads of the executive dysfunction... ;-)

Keep in mind that ADHD presents differently in different people. I, like a good chunk of people with the diagnosis, exhibit none of the hyperactivity symptoms.

> Ironically tempering states is an important function of the federal government (eg civil rights, environmental protections, etc).

Right, like shutting down congestion pricing plans. ;-)

> They are in favor of state and local government, but object to federal, which they assert reduces the ability for states to have different rules and regulations that can drive competition amongst different legal frameworks.

As demonstrated by efforts to prevent state and local governments from acting independently...

> ADHD makes a mockery of working memory.

Honestly, I don't find I have much of a problem with working memory. Sure, my ability to recall a meaningless number several minutes later is absolutely terrible, but a handling an analysis or conversation about a complicated subject (complex is a different matter that relies on raw intelligence more than working memory) with lots of important detail seems to be easier for me, to the point where other people tap out with "information overload" when I'm moving along just fine.

Of course, executing a complicated process is a whole different matter, because the ADHD brain quickly loses interest and focuses on something else.

> Linux breaks internal compatibility far more often than people add or remove Drop implementations from types. There is no stability guarantee for anything other than user-mode ABI.

I think that's missing the point of the context though. When Linux breaks internal compatibility, that is something the maintainers have control over and can choose not to do. When it happens to the underlying infrastructure the kernel depends on, they don't have a choice in the matter.

I'm with you. There is a world of difference between leadership and management. Plenty of engineers who are good leaders.

You lost me at "government thinks". ;-)

As per the article, the reference point for the whole concept traces back to Switzerland in 1947. The gorillas & chickens came later.

> The truth is that it's just not a way of working that comes naturally to people who write a lot of SQL for a living.

I don't know... Refactoring Databases is pretty old now. Plenty of DBAs can handle this style and even prefer it. I think this is more of a cultural problem in the small than in the large.

That'd be relevant if it pointed to a problem with the etymology of the term Alpha Wolf.

...or, it's just a solid case of confirmation bias.

As well established as dominance hierarchies are, they aren't the only social structure, and just as this article explains, it's rather ironic that in the case for wolves, that isn't the prevailing social structure in their natural setting. That wolves have become the prevailing reference point for the concept, is metaphorical on a lot of levels.

> There's no redefinition here. When we refer to animals in every context, alphas are leaders.

Yes, there is a redefinition. The context of Alpha Wolf was based on the notion of a dominance hierarchy, which does occur when unrelated wolves are put together in a confined space. In the wild though, they function more like a family, with no acts of dominance. The breeding pair still lead the pack, but not through dominance.

https://web.archive.org/web/20051214072331/http://www.npwrc....

I like the idea of Rick Rolling the whole neighborhood. It'd be horribly illegal, but it would also be funny.

So weird to me. I have a 2019 Model 3, and aside from some warranty work and a blown tire, there have been zero issues. I'm wondering if the Danish inspection is more thorough and I need to have someone check mine out.

> There are no advantages. I have yet to see something that a person with ADHD can do that a person without ADHD cannot do that can be solely attributed to ADHD and no other factors.

Oh, there are lots of benefits. ADHD people tend to be able to react quicker & think more clearly during emergencies. They tend to be better able to find connections between disparate ideas. That's just a couple. For obvious reasons, the disadvantages tend to overshadow the advantages, but everything is a trade-off. It's not 100% negative. A lot of learning to live with ADHD is learning to create contexts that play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. It's harder to create those contexts than if your mind more adequately meets society's expectations, but it can be done.

> If a person with ADHD kills another person in a vehicular accident, should they be automatically free of punishment because it's not their fault?

Okay, that is really, really not where I was going with this.

> Their inability to adapt to the environment around them was not their fault, but as evolution shows us -- too bad.

Ah, but we've reached a point where predominantly we adapt our environment to us rather than adapt to our environment. Those roads these cars drive on didn't come from nature.

> The universe owes no one anything.

I think I've completely failed to communicate my point to you. I don't know how to correct it beyond saying this is not at all what I was trying to say.

> I once stared at person pointing a loaded gun in the eye and lectured them on their behavior, completely ignoring the gun.

Yes. I was mugged at gunpoint, and my initial reaction was to talk about the game theory of the whole situation. Somewhere, somehow, I was able to force down that thought by realizing that they wouldn't be in that situation in the first place if game theory had any space in their thinking, so all I would be doing was increasing my chances of getting killed.

I almost did it anyway.

Important context: I'm not brave at all; bravery did not enter the picture in that whole interaction. It was just what I instinctively felt like doing.

...and yes, impulsiveness, risk taking behaviour are standard ADHD symptoms, and ADHD often affects how you respond to conflict.

So, on the medication side, there are NRIs (norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) and alpha-2A agonists. The latter in particular work kind of the opposite of stimulants. A psychiatrists described the difference to me with the metaphor of a sound system where you're having trouble listening to the music. The stimulants are amplifiers that push up the volume. The other approach is a better preamp that does a better job reducing the noise. Depending on the nature of your problem, one is going to help a lot, and the other is going to be useless at best, but could well make the problem worse.

I presume you're aware of the other non-pharmaceutical interventions, like CBT. Generally they don't have as high a success rate, but that doesn't mean that they aren't be the right solution for you.

> Modern society values none of the things that would help people with ADHD

Yeah, I wouldn't expect that modern society is going to value things that would help people with ADHD. One might hope that modern society might value people with ADHD, at least enough to help them some. It's not like society's expectations of people don't change over time. They do.

That said, my statement that "we could be doing so much better" wasn't really a hopefully statement. It was more a statement of fact, and a recognition that society's expectations are killing a lot of people with ADHD.

Fault is a tricky term in this context.

Humans face a number of challenges when driving. Cars, roads, laws, traffic systems, etc. have all evolved to help them meet those challenges, but it is all shaped by our expectations of the humans. When a human doesn't perform to those expectations, we say it is their fault. When an accident occurs despite them meeting those expectations, it's not their fault.

But folks with ADHD have brains that don't match society's expectations; cars, roads, laws, traffic systems, etc. have not evolved to help them. Their brains are effectively a chaos factor for all the safeguards we have in place... Even their advantages can be disadvantages because everything was designed to help someone who didn't have them.

Even if an accident wasn't their fault, I think it's quite credible that people with ADHD might just be more likely to be in situations where there is a higher risk of an accident... and I'd expect it'd be more common for accidents to be their "fault", because again, how we determine fault is defined by expectations they conform to.

It's taken me most of a lifetime to figure out that this is kind of the opposite of the right way to deal with the problem. You're effectively fighting fire with fire, and the whole thing needs to not be a fight at all.

> I guess it depends on the treatment, but amphetamine based adhd treatment was for me, the fucking devil.

Fortunately, we now have options other than amphetamines, but yes, in general, like most diseases, ADHD is categorized by symptoms, not really causes, and so lots of treatments that work wonderfully for some people with ADHD are literally the worst thing for other people with ADHD.

In general, people with ADHD do not conform to society's expectations of how a human brain should work. That means they're more likely to be marginalized & targeted, and likely have fewer resources at their disposal if they are at risk; so they are both more likely to become a homicide target and have less protection if they do. They're also more likely to engage in risk taking behaviour, much of which could increase one's risk of being a victim of a homicide.