Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

something I wish I had learned much earlier in life is that if you are weird, trying to be buttoned-down and normal in spaces that aren't for being weird in might feel safe, but being fully weird signals to other people that you are safe for them to be weird around, which is more important

Instead of, “I can’t unmask because no one will accept me,” what if it’s, “I must unmask because people already aren’t accepting this masked me?”

What if it’s, “I need to find out who will accept the real me.”

#AutisticMasking #ActuallyAutistic #Autistic #Neurodiversity #AuDHD #unmasking

Hello friends! I am excited to (re)share the #mentalhealth project I started two years ago: https://littlebetterzine.com

Little Better Zines are free guides to evidence based coping skills – now expanded and redesigned with new info and improved accessibility.

These are techniques I often share with therapy patients, but I know not everyone has access to therapy. I hope you find these zines helpful, and I’d be grateful if you repost/share the link with anyone who might need them!

Alpha males

There are some serious reasons why you still need to be on Meta platforms: it's your last link to family members, or your support system, or you live in a small town.

I wrote about how to stay on while limiting Meta's ability to surveil you or use your information against you.

tl;dr Boring users, who don't generate clicks or behavioral data, are unprofitable users.

https://buttondown.com/practicaltips/archive/how-to-grey-rock-meta/

.....oh.

Since the old metrics of "being visibly performing work" that were the oldschool way to demonstrate corporate value don't work in remote-work situations,

volume of code commits - the old KLOC style - replaced those as a social signal for performative effort to gain managerial approval.

And that's why llm-based codegen took off so fast - manager-class demanding performance of work instead of actual results, using the only metric they could measure: kloc committed.

So once again, "the thing you measure becomes the thing you do" comes to call.

**All symptoms are solutions.**

That's a mantra I've come to live by.

A fever is your immune system making your body inhospitable to bacteria.

Procrastination and addiction can be us giving ourselves comfort and relief we don't think we deserve.

Workers or community members who seemed checked out are often protecting themselves from a situation they feel helpless to fix.

When you see a symptom you dislike, don't suppress it. Understand the problem it's solving and find a better solution.

Software folks

Wired is running a short survey asking about whether you ever use AI in your coding

if you're interested, give 'em your feedback: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxqxzbjQvfD9xIcrub3d2n1yDWreJJL5PxGYpfjaw9fgnDuA/viewform

One of the most important things I've learned in therapy is that talking to yourself (verbally or silently) in the ways that you would talk to a scared child that you would offer reassurance, support, and encouragement to basically *works*

And it's a skill you can develop to have enough awareness to know when to do that: when you're feeling powerless, when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're lost in all-or-nothing rigid thinking

I just recently discovered that it's especially useful when I wake up in the middle of the night, wanting to think about things, to be able to remind myself that each of those things are things I'll think of again the next day, and which can be dealt with during daytime

It's kind of fucked up that so many of us are taught from a young age that "talking to yourself is crazy", so we ignore an entire tool. Or at least, I did