A bunch of (5 states) ranked choice voting ballot measures were just rejected directly by citizens, and another went so far as to ban it, and many red states have already done that. Team money won by convincing the public to vote against their own interests. Sorry to bear bad news, maybe there's something else to be hopeful about still but I'm not seeing it. The only good news I've heard in American politics since the election was within the last few weeks, and it gets you banned on most of the Internet for saying so.

Same happens every time I've tried to use it for search. Will be radioactive for this type of thing until someone figures that out. Quite frustrating, if they spent as much time on determining the difference between when a user wants objective information with citations as they do determining if the response breaks content guidelines, we might actually have something useful. Instead, we get AI slop.

I've played both Balatro and Hades, both are rogue likes, Balatro is just in the subgenre of deck builder. Balatro's gameplay loop is closer to Hades than to poker, you're wrong or uninformed to say otherwise. No one is playing Balatro and getting addicted to gambling and going off to play poker, but I can totally see it being a gateway to the rogue-like genre.

I'm certainly not arguing against content moderation for the littles. I just disagree with the reasons they cite, you know, the whole video games cause violence, and the bigger brother that is whatever BS puritanical religious zealots come up with to force their opinions on the pubic. Define a list of things we don't want kids to see / know about at various ages, and why, then go on from there. There's way too much bullshit in the laws that are just prior generations trying to force the next generations to not change, which is their prerogative, I just wish we could be honest about it.

If Balatro is gambling then so is every game that has a chance based mechanic. Genshin Impact is PEGI 12 and you can spend money on loot boxes, which is absolutely gambling. Balatro is identical to Hades, except you fight with cards.

The law is poorly written, or is being applied incorrectly here. Balatro is in no way simulating a casino, which I'd be more inclined to say games that do that should have a more mature rating. Bit of a slippery slope though, nothing stops a casino from adding a new game that mimics an existing genre of video game mechanics, and then regulators saying the entire genre is gambling. It's all pearl clutching, not backed by any science, etc. made by the same people that want to ban Mortal Kombat and think Counter Strike causes school shootings.

They could release just swap a dozen words, it wouldn't get this rating. None of those words are required for it to be a good game. The essence of gambling that society wants to protect children from is not part of Balatro any more than it is Solitaire.

I'd like to be a person who, eg., plays with Lego for 1 hour, spends the next hour painting, then decides to go and fix his bike, then listens to music for a bit, etc.

Why? There's no evidence for this assertion, but all successful and fulfilled neurodivergent people throughout history were absorbed in whatever had them hooked. Idealizing neurotypical lifestyles will only lead you to feeling frustrated at something you will never be able to change, disregulated, and eventually depressed.

If you're intent on engaging in multiple different interests like this, you should try very hard to combine them. As long as you feel like you are actively moving toward something singular, you'll be good. Disengaging while hooked is traumatic, like, to the extent that you may avoid re-engaging with it until you feel it is safe to do so.

Putting activities out of sight is a great strategy to avoid being accidentally hooked by them, but you need to figure out an organizational system that fits your space/life. If you're combatting storage and organization for multiple hobbies, it's going to cost a lot more in both systems and in space. I'd argue it's more sensible to scale back, and commit to some strategy where you only buy what you need, and you sell the niche if you get bored with it. There's no shortage of hoarders in the ND community, not because of the inclination to amass stuff, but because getting rid of stuff requires admitting some hard things to yourself. It's easier to imagine you'll get back into it than to admit you won't, and that you might have gone a bit overboard on spending while you were in the middle of the journey.

There's some theory about how we intuitively avoid or engage with things depending on real and perceived levels of effort, and real or perceived benefit. There's another concept in autism, something about momentum. You can intentionally exploit some things to make it more or less likely you'll engage with something. Traditional (or let's say neurotypical) organization systems aren't built for neurodivergent people. Best to try to find ND people you can use as a role model and hope they haven't just adapted to NT systems. I've not seen him say anything about being ND, but https://youtube.com/@zackfreedman comes to mind. Just know that what you want is weird by definition, don't let that hold you back. The population of ND people isn't a big enough percentage to justify a market apparently.

What's most frustrating to me about the issue is, every ND person I've had the pleasure of meeting is so open to sharing, if society was structured for ND people, you'd never feel like anything is wasted. You'd try out that thing without spending a dime, and if you did get deep into it, have somewhere you could feel safe in giving the stuff away for better use. Instead, the world is run by neurotypicals, and everyone has ulterior motives. A man can dream. If you live in a big city you might have a co-op, or hacker space, or even a public library with resources you can use.

I'm certainly rambling a lot here, I'd apologize if this was the NT world.

Another option, stop putting yourself down for engaging with "unwanted distractions". Unless it's something that's going to ruin your life, try embracing it fully. If you didn't want to do it, you wouldn't do it. My wife has this fight with herself sometimes as we're cleaning house, starting one task and ending up in the middle of multiple different cleaning activities. I do the exact same thing, the only difference is I love myself for it. I will eventually get to a clean house, and as long as I don't keep stopping to self loathe, it will be cleaner, faster compared to an NT person. I know, because I've cleaned NT people's houses and they are always blown away. I've got a model that is pretty close to monotropism that I think explains all these things, just cba to post about it yet.

Try reframing how you think of these things slightly. Watch https://monotropism.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Monotropism-animation.mp4 and just believe your brain works like that for argument sake. I know it's tough, especially because the act of telling you to do anything most likely will lead you to not wanting to do it, a frustrating trait of this brain.

Stop worrying about how normal people do things and try better to understand how your brain does things. Reframe how you see the problem as something where you're trying to get fixed to be normal, and accept that's not possible. Psychology's best therapies offer drugs that help you put on a facade of normal, or worse, crank your apathy up to where you just don't give a shit any more.

Have you ever done anything that you were so into, that you skipped meals, bathroom breaks, and other biological needs? Like, to the point of deep hunger, dehydration, nearly peeing yourself? "Normal" brains never do that, or even moderate versions of that. Like, there's a category of self improvement literature that sells the idea of a flow state, because most people want that state of mind and will never obtain it. It's simply something people observed successful people with monotropic brains doing, and made up into a new pop-psych thing to sell.

Spend time actively, consciously noticing what hooks you. Aggressively give up on those things that don't. You may habitually spend time doing things that you don't actually like, but you are unconsciously forcing yourself to keep doing. Step out of your comfort zone and try a new thing, activity, genre, media, person, sexuality, etc. Most people spend their whole life being forced into a mold, and that mold is almost certainly not compatible with the needs of a neurodivergent brain.

Structure is NOT a requirement, and for me, personally, isn't compatible with anything that makes me happy. Still, my entire upbringing continuously shoved structure down my throat. School constantly reinforced that I needed to organize my binder, write in a planner, and multiple times I remember being assigned projects like setting an itinerary for a vacation. I hated it, felt unnatural, stressful, and I never managed to adopt the habits they were forcing on me, yet still managed to be a successful person. I could have self-loathed about it, but instead I managed to kick the bs and move on. When I eventually got married and started going on vacations, my wife (who has an ADHD diagnosis, though wasn't diagnosed until after this story) planned a very structured itinerary for a 2 week vacation in the UK. The trip was stressful to plan, and our daily activities were on a tight schedule, leaving no room to linger where we wanted. While we had a good time, we both look back at random moments off the itinerary as the best ones, and have high regret for being forced to stay longer in some places, and not long enough in others. This same thing happened again on another vacation, we simply weren't self aware enough to avoid it, or were too concerned about following a script of how to do a vacation. Finally, on our third vacation, we approached it very differently. The only preplanned/prebooked moment was what city we were arriving in and the one night stay there, the rest of the two weeks were vague possibilities at best. It was our best vacation, and it's not even close, zero regrets, and that's including a medical disaster. Sorry for the long story, but I feel like it was worth telling you.

I don't fully subscribe to monotropism, even wholly rejected it prior to some of my own realizations. Like, it isn't the final and complete explanation, but it's a much better starting point than everything else out there.

As far as scrolling, it's a tough thing. If you are feeling fulfilled when doing it, stop kicking yourself for it, and instead look to optimize the activity. For example, cut out content that you know you don't enjoy. If instead it's just something you're doing to pass the time, with no real enjoyment, you should probably figure out a strategy to cut it back or out entirely. When brains like ours are bored, the compulsion to fix it is very strong, and will likely drive you quickly to something you will actually find fulfilling if you let it. If you're really lucky, an activity you find fulfilling will be neurotypically amicable, and maybe even profitable, but you should not expect that. Don't try to have multiple things at once, it's not that you can't, it's that you will likely be happier sticking to one thing you enjoy until you don't anymore, and then throwing yourself into the next thing. And try not to kick yourself too hard if/when that happens, sticking with something you don't want to, or putting yourself down for it is antithetical to loving yourself. With this brain, it's not about the destination, it's the journey, and as soon as you do get to the destination you will find an emptiness that can only be filled by starting a new journey.

Happy to chat more deeply about this stuff, feels like there's always more to say. Not sure how well it works with lemmy, but if you check my comments I recently wrote a response to someone in an ADHD community asking about watching movies that feels very similar to this question.

Yeah, and King George III had all sorts of shit written down that people in governing roles agreed to. People under tyranny were pretty upset and tried diplomacy back then as well. Violence is what eventually solved it, and the people that went through that wanted to make sure violence was always an option, hence the 2nd amendment. Anyone, Republican or Democrat, that says otherwise is just wrong.

Same folks will be like, x issued more orders than any other president, but also excitedly talking about record revenue, turnout, etc. As if the stuff they agree with grows in a vacuum away from the stuff they disagree with.

It wouldn't surprise me if it's still competitive for a lot of markets, and if it's not it's because cable has been lowering prices to become competitive. Everyone I know 15 years ago was paying $300 once you added up TV, Internet, and cell phone bills. Accounting for inflation, that's $450 today. I heard my grandma was being ripped for $350 a couple of years ago, and she just wanted a single channel. Hard to find anyone under an age that even has TV service, and those that do just want it for sports. At the original price of YT TV it was cheap enough to say why not, at the current price, even if it's cheaper than cable, it's now twice as much as I'd ever want to pay for it.

Fuck LG, not like they made good BR players. I've sworn to avoid buying their shit since they discontinued support for a BR player within a year of release, which back then meant you wouldn't be able to watch any BR movie released after a certain date due to new DRM or whatever. They just up and decided to not release new firmware for units still under warranty.

I've never had trouble staying engaged with something I actually like and want to do. I will fall asleep if I don't have my narcolepsy meds and I'm trying to do something I'm not truly interested in, yet can binge watch something I'm truly hooked on, into the wee hours, even without the meds.

My advice, start paying more attention to the things you are interested in and stop trying to be interested in things once you realize it. There's no such thing as superiority of any entertainment or hobby over another, yet so many people shit all over themselves because they get it in their head that their interests are somehow wrong. Not liking something that everyone else does is fine, liking something no one else does is fine. Strive to be you, if you can't focus on any movies you're probably not watching movies you're interested in. Maybe you aren't interested in any movies at all, plenty of people just don't get poems, paintings, music, literature, beer, wine, shoe culture, car culture...

Neurotypicals have the ability to be at peace with being bored, so much so that it's called a disorder when someone can't sit still and suck it up when the shit being served is just not interesting (to them). You literally have to smoke weed to attain that same level of apathy.