iPad Sketch #2: Pumpkin's Gone Horribly Wrong

Originally published at Absentminded Author, v2.



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Is AI Good for ADHD or Just a Distraction?

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In which Douglas proves he’s not a Boomer I’ve been rethinking my engagement with AI recently. I’m too eager to be an unpaid beta tester for these guys. Companies that have invested billions into AI will gaslight us all day about how imperative AI tools should be in our lives. They’ll force us to deal with their AI, replace perfectly useful services with AI, and cram AI down our throats every time we turn around. (Microsoft 365 Copilot, I’m looking at you.) So what good is AI? Judging by how much trouble it gives me, I’d be tempted to say “not much”. ChatGPT once formatted CSS tables so poorly for me that I spent longer fighting with it than I did just coding them myself. Grok often hallucinates answers, gaslights me until I call it out, then it apologizes and gives me the information that I wanted. Just tonight I asked Siri how many kids Ronald Reagan had and what were their names (since his oldest son passed away today) , and it told me “five”, but withheld the names. ChatG...
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The Car Wreck of My Life Has a Name

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Since the pandemic, I have discovered something harder to deal with than Tourettes. It challenges my efforts to be upbeat and optimistic, and has given me very little to laugh about. I manage my ADHD & Depression just fine—or should I say I deal with them just fine. They represent road bumps that cause me to slow down, but then I get back up to speed. My Tourettes acts more like an IED that blows up my schedule. It takes a bit more effort and time to recover from, but I always get moving forward again. Post Viral Dysautonomia, as I’ve been recently diagnosed with, has been more like a head-on collision with demolition charges for the past four years, taking out both the car and the roads. It leaves me exhausted, susceptible to illness, and with oxygen saturation that routinely drops below 88%. Recently, I had a setback in my efforts to overcome dysautonomia. It was just back surgery. I had a cyst removed. Nothing drastic. It was day surgery. I laughed and chatted wi...
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A Moment of Sunlight

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Yesterday was conquered by fatigue and Tourettes. I didn’t get much accomplished aside from taking care of my daughter, which left me feeling a tad discouraged since I had just written in my journal before going to sleep about what an awesome day it was going to be. Still, all was not bad. For example, dealing with my daughter is a joy as it gives my life purpose. There was something else that brought a smile to my stressed out face, however. My daughter is autistic and learning disabled, and we work with a service that provides in-home therapy. They teach her coping and life skills. Today, she had a new therapist. There is an uncomfortable period, as you can imagine, when a stranger enters one’s home, but we’re used to this routine, so we make jokes and idle chitchat as we try to quickly establish a professional rapport. I was fully present for a while, but then I began a Tourettes episode and retired to my room to wait it out in private. Later, my daughter barg...
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