schleudersturz

Even the very best software fails to understand ADHD & OCD, today, along with many other neuro-divergent traits that exist but aren't directly in scope for this particular topic.

I'm thinking about what happened to me at around 01h30, this morning, when I turned on my PC to quickly check the weather before retiring.

My PC runs Linux, has an SSD, and boots in eleven seconds from a cold start so I actually shut it down to save electricity whenever possible. I had forgotten to check the weather forecast. What should have happened was this: I press the power-button, I open Firefox which navigates to about:blank (the only remaining safe-haven on the web) and I click a bookmark that takes me to a Norwegian weather service that presents a delightfully details and entirely unanimated forecast page – no fear of surprises – then, I shut down.

Eleven seconds after pressing the power-button, KDE Plasma 6.2 popped up a nag for donations.

Now, I understand that KDE is a rather excellent, free and open-source software and I think they deserve all the support that they can get but – right then – trying to understand what the new and unusual and unexpected popup was, why something that doesn't usually happen (and shouldn't be happening on my machine) was showing, and whether it meant something was broken, and deal with all the emotions of the disruption of my expectations was something I strongly resented at 01h30 in the morning.

If I ever was to donate (and, I would, but I'm unemployed at the moment so I can't afford it) I can also assure you it wouldn't be a part of the check-the-weather-because-I-forgot workflow and I wouldn't be doing it at 01h30 in the morning unless I was drunk.

All they earned was resentment.

There is a reason why the things in my kitchen always go into their places and the knives are always sharp. There is a reason why the stuff in my bathroom goes into particular places and my wardrobe is organised "just so": I understand the cost of surprises. I do not spend that cost on things that do not warrant it but reserve that energy for things that do.

Mozilla did this in Firefox, some years back: pushing a modal, full-window popup in my face just to let me know there was a new features for picking a colour scheme! (It didn't go away when one mashed escape, either.)

Microsoft – not purveyors of the very best software – do this constantly. Every website that uses a timer or mouse-leave events to dim the page and show a light-box nag does this. Indeed, much of my ire towards KDE is because this surprise-nag behaviour is something I associate with abusive patterns employed by very worst – KDE should know better.

These vendors either fail to understand that surprises carry a cost – for me and many others – or they underestimate that cost, or they simply disrespect the impact it might have.

All they earn is resentment.

OCD comes into this story: I obsessively had to understand what KDE's novel donation popup was – it resembled a notification and I've turned as many of those off as possible so any that yet appear must be vitally important, I thought.

When it became clear that nothing was on fire, my reaction was one of rage that yet another thing had judged it fair to abuse my attention – as is today's norm. Confusion, then rage and revulsion, were felt long before I'd actually figured out that this was just a nag for donations by a project I normally praise.

It's a great "new feature" in KDE Plasma 6.2. It is supposed to show up once a year[^1] and I know myself: I know I'll either forget about it soon enough to re-ride this wave of negative emotions and unpleasant surprise this time, next year, or – worse! – I'll dwell on it and stressfully, likely sub-consciously, anticipate KDE-Nag-Month towards next December. [^3]

[^1]: Somewhere, it was also mentioned that it is only supposed to be presented to users who do not visit KDE sites and aren't likely to have seen their other outreach campaigns. Exactly how do they get that data, I wonder.

[^3]: Writing this rant, here, is me trying to flush out my resentment so I don't dwell on it any longer. I'm sorry.

No. The popup must be extirpated and, blessed-be-FOSS, it can be. (I read some of the discussions on the merge-request pertaining to the popup and they thought about that. I respect that.)

The nag engendered uncharitable sentiment but, with regards to the likelihood of my donating to KDE, my banishing of it is independent. I would love to feel financially free enough to splash cash about. I am not so sure that KDE would be top of the list[^2] but they would certainly be on the list, quite high up, and being flush to fund others and indulge in generosity is pretty much my number-1 motivation to earn money at all after food, shelter and healthcare are covered.

[^2]: They certainly wouldn't be above Signal, my masto. instance, Codeberg, a whole queue of indie game developers, several musicians and a handful of writers …

Perhaps I, alone, get enraged by software that disrupts my expectations of what will appear, interrupts my intended task, fritters away my attention, surprises me often nastily, and curses me to revisit and re-navigate the exceedingly well-charted, choppy straights of outrage.

The prevalence of this sort of annoyance, particularly in today's software, certainly suggests that these patterns do earn positive utility value for the vendors. Do the majority not mind? Do they favour rating the apps they open, run an OS because they actually want to upgrade to the next version that wouldn't even run on their hardware, move to close a browser-tab because they actually want to sign up for a newsletter, or open their browser because they had a whim to pick a new colour scheme?

Are the majority of people inured to interruption?

What is the Fediverse analogue of blogs? Specifically, which facet of the Fediverse provides the features that blogging used to provide:

• long-form posts (without character limits)
• embedded images and other media
• perma-links and RSS / Atom feeds and other features so that content remains linkable into the future
• commenting and engagement and associated moderation features
• re-blogging and sharing
• community: blogs self-organising into interest areas, pollinate other blogs, link to each other, direct their readers towards each other, etc.

And, most importantly, the ability to create, grow and nurture a following or audience?

I'm on Mastodon and on Lemmy and, in my opinion, neither of those quite hit the mark.

• Masto is too close to bird-site: character limits (nearly always), shoddy threads, and the fact that one is invariably just firing toots into a torrential onslaught of public toots unless one actually already has a following. Hash-tags and other topic-related features seem ill used, throughout, so discoverability is pretty low unless you already have a platform. Engaging with others in replies earns a lot of boosts and favourites but zero followers no matter how well your reply-toots are received.

• Lemmy is too close to anotheR site. It's great for being a refuge from that and replacement for that but really not a blogging platform.

I'm happy with both of the above for what they do. I really like the discourse in Masto's reply threads, actually, but it seems useless for actually building a following for one's self. I'm rather new to Lemmy but I like what I'm finding, so far.

In preparation for the new year, I've been looking for a "better" way to manage what I'm "doing" and looking for a better task-board / ticket manager / project management solution to replace my current unholy and very-cursed mess involving paper notes on a whiteboard (magnets FTW), issues in Gitea (self-hosted) and a whole bunch of .md files in a git repository.

I tried out self-hosting Leantime in my development Docker environment. That was a waste of effort. It's crowded chock-full of "premium" links that just take you to the paid plugin store. I fully expect artificial limits and nerfs to be enforced, too, if one doesn't pay. (Their "pricing" page even alludes to this, stating that "self-hosted" includes the same as their cloud's "free" tier. That would be 150 tasks. That's borderline useless!)

Why ever would I self-host that? Even if I did, how could I trust it to remain free for the features I need, if it paywalls features in the self-hosted scenario? If I self-host it, I'd also want to be free to hack on it and potentially push merge-requests to an open-source project – why would I ever do that for a paywalled app I don't get paid to work on?

My Docker dev. environment runs off a tmpfs so the daemon got stopped, umount /var/tmp/docker, and that shall be the last I ever see of Leantime. Good riddance.

The search continues. I'm open to suggestions of what's worth trying, though. Lemmy, what would YOU actually trust?

Here's a thought that fell upon me[^1], last night, in those wee frosty, dark and restless hours: sleep is immensely important for everyone but it is even more so for us with ADHD[^3] simply because we typically suffer from difficulties directing and commanding our attention and train-of-thought, whilest awake, and sleep, bringing dreams, brings relief.

When I do find myself struggling with control over attention – including getting lost in thoughts, inability to focus, inability to disengage and a propensity to obsess on topics – I also notice that I have absolutely no ability to let my mind drift and sort through the things that are challenging or bothering me, or it, in any kind of cathartic or therapeutic way.

I imagine that that's what the sleeping mind does and, even more so, that is what the dreaming mind does: sift and sieve thoughts and experiences and memories.

It's probably also succour for one's corporeal body. Anyone post-puberty (or sufficiently far embroiled in it) knows that one's body's wants manifest in their dreams. Conversely, I know that my ADHD can see my waking self so sunk into a mire of focus that I can go without food or water, without sleep, end up borderline hyperthermic from sitting still or failing to notice that I'm inadequately dressed, even carrying a painfully over-bloated bladder.

Watching neuro-typical people in my life, I observe that they often daydream or muse wanderingly through their ideas as they go about their lives. None of them say they identify with my tales of ignoring my physical well-being in favour of black-holes of thought. Most of them even appear to be able to think about nothing at all at times: something I certainly could never do when I'm awake and sober.

I've heard some say that things like music or yoga or running are requirements for them to do this. Some say the television needs to be on but they're not really watching it. Believe it or not: I even have neuro-diverse friends who use distraction-scrolling, online, to free their minds to mindless musings.

Those concepts are anathema to me. I find music to be exhausting despite loving it: if music is playing, you can be 100% certain that my attention will be focussed solely on it and its harmonies and musicality and dynamics and mood and message. [^4] Similar things I could write about the others and scrolling must surely be worst of all.

So, for me, I think that sleep is my brain's only chance to drift and my dreams are its only sand-box in which to play. [^8]

Could one call such drifting and playfulness unnecessary for healthy human life? I shouldn't think so.

I think that slumber offers the same to others who are either free of ADHD-related specialities, or are living with a different set, but they are rich with other chances to sort their thoughts[^5] that are impossible for people like me.

Hence my unproven argument for the heightened importance and necessity of sleep for those with ADHD.

How could I back up this argument with citation? Have you any? Have you read anything of relevance or an opinion to put forth?

What could we conclude as a consequence? Perhaps this is the seed of an argument that any wholistic tackling of ADHD should necessarily amplify its emphasis on nurturing sleep and dream-time and warding against insomnia. [^6]

Perhaps I am completely off the mark. [^7]

Where shall we go with this, Beehaw? Throw your ideas into this petri-dish.

[^1]: Hello, Beehaw, and well met. Servus. Wazzup. 'habe d' Ehre. [^2] I'm new here. I thought I'd just jump right in and make this – my first post – a proper challenging one. Testing the waters by diving into the deep end, as it were... I don't know you but please Be(e) nice and help me add a "yet" on to that statement.

[^2]: There. That's about covered all the good greetings I can dredge up from the lands I've called, "home."

[^3]: Ugh. I hate that acronym. I hate that label.

[^4]: I cannot listen to the vast majority of over-produced podcasts or shows because of this. I would play a talk- or discussion-show for the ideas being discussed but my brain just goes, "oh, music!" and the words are reduced to noise.

[^5]: Let me point out that I only experience ADHD-related inabilities to steer my attention the majority of the time. Sometimes – albeit rarely – I'm actually fine so I know what it feels like to be awake-but-drifting. I'm sure I've even meditated, before.

[^6]: I think there is certainly a connection between ADHD and insomnia and finding citations for that would pose no challenge. Sleep-disruption is also listed amongst the side-effects of every ADHD medication's package-insert that I've ever read.

[^7]: I certainly do not mean to reinforce an us-and-them mentality or "claim" sleep for ADHD people in any way. I am simply intrigued by the idea that one could posit that sleep is of even-more importance and therefore more worthy of ever-more consideration. [^9]

[^8]: I do enjoy games and many creative pursuits, too, but those waking hobbies are invariably approached with intense focus and presence. It takes active effort to prevent them from consuming me – see previous ramblings about forgetting I have a bladder.

[^9]: Of course, I would argue that sleep goes tragically ignored in every population, beyond the charlatans peddling hacks and gimmicks. Today's hypothetical does nothing to deny that.