Alas, the wait moist for the steam controller hasn’t reached me yet. By the time it does, watch me be broke lol

That’s a lot of questions lol.

So, the current model of addiction leans towards neurotransmitters being the triggering factor.

That means that whatever a given addiction is to sets off an interaction with one of the chemicals that make the brain go “WOW!”. Exactly which one varies by drug and activity.

As an example, cocaine works with dopamine as the primary neurotransmitter. It causes a lot of it to release at once, and you get high.

All of the addictive drugs do something similar, it’s all about which ones set off which NT/s.

The big ones that get that job done are dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and the endorphins (there’s multiple types). There’s other factors in getting high, but the shit that will dig into your brain and take hold in addiction tend to either trigger those to release (singly or multiply) or bind to receptors for them.

However, that’s not the only thing that causes addiction. Addiction is a more complicated disease than can explained away as only chemicals. The person’s psychological history, social factors, genetics, and state of mind during use contribute strongly to the process.

There’s other chemicals we get from external sources that do the same things, but they tend to have a much lower risk of triggering an addiction by themselves. Weed is an example of that. The addiction threshold is much higher than most recreational drugs, and that’s in part because the receptors they bind to don’t have as strong an effect.

But! The there’s that connects all addiction is that at some point, neurotransmitters are involved. That’s why you can get addicted to things other than drugs. Sex sets off a release of all of those aforementioned big NTs. Thrill seekers tend to get hooked on the norepinephrine. Gambling hits dopamine the hardest.

The key factor is that if something makes you feel good, our brains are hardwired to seek that feeling. The more intense the good feeling, the higher the chance of addiction being formed.

And, yes, the reason different drugs give different highs is that the exact chemicals involved vary, and the proportion of them varies as well. Something that’s more dopamine focused is going to be a more energetic experience, whereas endorphins tend to come with a more relaxed and euphoric vibe.

I gotta give my usual disclaimer though. Other than a quick search to make sure of spellings , I’m pulling all this out of memory. And I’m fucking old, so I never trust my memory 100%. I’m also not willing to write a book here, so I’m leaving out a shit ton of detail in favor of hitting the questions you asked in total. Plus, addiction isn’t high (hah) on my list of continuing education as a hobby, so my shit is likely out of date. That may or may not mean it’s wrong, just that it isn’t cutting edge info. So, grains of salt needed (though hopefully not “bath salts”).

Fwiw, I will add that there’s a misconception about addiction, that there’s a difference between “physical” and “psychological” addiction. There isn’t really. It’s all tied together, it’s just that some chemicals do have an extra oomph because they give a much bigger boost to the NTs involved. There’s also a misconception about specific drugs not being addictive just because they aren’t as fast to trigger it, and the factors like one’s mental state and history have a bigger influence. But they’re still addictive, just lower risk

The old school prosthetics tended to be strapped on in a way that let you use other muscles to operate the grasping part. The typical ones you’d run across were hooks. They had two sides, and you’d essentially flex your upper arm to spread or close them (over simplifying, but that’s the gist).

And that’s in terms of stuff that did move. Some were purely aesthetic, others (like the classic pirate hooks) served to allow a range of tasks, but didn’t move. There’s some examples of really old prostheses that were remarkably dexterous, but they tended to be one-off items.

In terms of the full on mechanical hands, those are relatively new. They’ve been developed for decades, with a handful of methods used to try and bridge the gap needed what the person wants to do and the movements the device makes. Anything from picking up brain signals to electrodes that detect muscle twitches at the site.

Ahhhh, gotcha.

A great selection for sure, but they pretty much all have the same placement of things like enter and backspace, which heavily influences where the letters lie on the screen, and thus your swipe paths.

Yeah, I’m currently swapping between them on my phone while casually chatting. Been using heliboard for a few months now on it since Swype isn’t installable without rooting, and I ain’t rooting graphene.

Futo is way better at pattern recognition. It’s 95% as accurate as swype is for me, and that’s with the layouts being different enough that I’m not at my best.

Heliboard is maybe 75% as accurate, though still better than gboard itself (again, for me)

Heliboard has the advantage of being able to change the long press character options, though being real that didn’t help my accuracy much when doing markdown, as the dimensions between it and Swype are different as well.

Futo’s long press options are kinda weird, compared to anything else I’ve used, like the \ and / being on not just different keys, but on opposite ends of the layout. Heliboard’s defaults are better arranged.

All that being said, I’m typing more and correcting less with futo, and that’s a big deal imo.

I think I’ll end up switching to it unless the devs pull some fuckery

I’m Not mad at source available as long as it is actually available and not “we’ll get around to making it available some day”

I can’t remember who it was that pulled that shit, but it made me dubious of the term for a while

Well, I’m trying it out. My main keyboard is swype, and nothing has ever matched it in terms of accurately picking up what I’mtryingto type compared to what sloppy swiping I’m really doing.

Heliboard is better than Gboard, but has never touched the accuracy of swype at all. Gboard is *okay *, but has too many issues being Google. FUTO previously was just bad. But this has all been typed on FUTO and f only has to delete an entry twice, with that f a few words ago being the first true typo (until i tried typo, which needs a little extra pause on the y to work right.

Could stand for some ability to fully change the layout, as i ahave took (have a ton) of memory built up with where the enter is vs the baggage (backspace)

But fuck me, it’s so far working at least as good as heliboard, though with some little quirks of its own.

If you look the the stuff in parentheses, that’s owhat (what i) was trying to type, with the section before being what came out. A few times, there were suggestions that don’t even get close to what i was trying to tout (like that was supposed to be type, but it didn’t come up as an option).

Ngl, ima play with settings and see if there’s options to change layouts. If there is, i just found a solid pick to replace swype as it becomes impossible to install or use. It’s almost as good, and ifi can tweak it to reduce the damn learning curve of the layout, I’ll be happy as hell.

If not, it’ll go on the back burner to practice with for a while until i get used to the layout.

Legit though, I’m impressed

I hate to agree with a billionaire, but he’s right. Currently steam is not a monopoly at all, and hasn’t yet gotten so dominant that it amounts to one.

But they are the single most dominant outlet, and are in the first stages of having an ability to control the entire market in unfair ways to the point of crushing competition. It won’t be long before they do have that ability completely. And we can’t just trust the billionaire because he’s shown an unusual degree of user focused choices overall. Even if he’s perfect, he ain’t immortal, and as soon as he’s not in control, there will be fuckery

I only remembered one, so I looked it up

https://www.thatericalper.com/2025/11/10/when-the-band-album-and-song-all-share-the-same-name/

Here’s the list, in case that link is wonky

Angel Witch.
Bad Company
Bad Religion Black Sabbath.
Body Count
Bo Diddley.
Electric Wizard.
God’s Hate
Iron Maiden.
Living in a Box
Metal Church
Motörhead
Pennywise
Run the Jewels
Slowdive
The 1975
The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Tin Machine
Wilco
Rivers of Nihil

The only one I remembered was motorhead, though once I saw the list I facepalmed having forgotten several of them that I had noticed pulled a trifecta in the past.

I mean, with all due respect to your undoubtedly wonderful son who will now be forever known as “dickfoot”, I’m not sure how justifies even mild annoyance, much less miniscule fury. Pareidolia is in the eye of the beholder, not that of the sight. It’s a pixelated heart with a streamer, not a penis. It’s only barely phallic if you stretch phallic as a term far longer than you should ever stretch an actual phallus.

Funny as fuck all! But not really something to be infuriated over.

Hope you and Dickfoot have a wonderful day!

Crazy eyes be trippin

This is why I said I wouldn’t debate the issue. Nothing new can be said about it. There’s no fresh ideas to bring up, and it all eventually comes down to it being a fundamental right or not. I’ve never seen anyone convinced to switch their opinion based on a debate. I strongly suspect I never will because nobody that’s willing to debate it in the first place lacks a strong opinion.

Edit: I will say that there’s a difference in terminology here. A fundamental right is one that all people have, whether or not it is enumerated. An enumerated right may or may not be fundamental as well.

That may or may not be word usages formalized for discussion of rights, but it’s the terminology I use to point to why debate is never going to amount to anything. Once something is considered a fundamental right, laws cease to matter because even if those laws abrogate or suppress a right, it remains a right that is being suppressed. And, again, doing so should always require the highest possible standards to occur, and should only be done on an individual basis, not writ large

How does your brain with Alzheimer Disease or Dementia deal with pain or notify your body of said pain in a biological or physiological way? Is there a delayed reaction or that delay is extended ?

Quoted because my app doesn’t show the title when writing comments.

Aight, so you gotta understand that my grasp of Alzheimer’s isn’t even master’s level, okay? It’s more first hand backed up by reading at a non academic level. So, grain of salt, and it’s an old grain since Alzheimer’s isn’t on my priority list for continuing education.

That being said, there’s essentially no difference in nociception in Alzheimer’s, or most forms of what would be called dementia (though some diseases that cause dementia may interfere or alter nociception).

To rephrase, what happens during the forms of dementia you’re asking about doesn’t cause a change in how the body and brain respond to pain. What it can do is change how whatever consciousness remains responses to that pain.

As in, a demented patient may scream and cry more than a person without dementia because they lack the capacity to process it any other way.

And there is a difference between the physiological side of pain and the mental/psychological side of it. Our ability to at least partially influence what we do in response to the perception of pain is significant. That’s what patients with dementia lack. They can’t “cope” as well.

So, essentially, the process is the same as in a person without a disease.

Whew. Careful with all that straw, don’t drop any matches

Need?

Who cares about need.

When it comes right down to it, nobody needs more than one of most things.

But in reality, there is a limit to how much “you” (as in someone that is trying to limit someone else’s access to something) should be allowed to limit said thing without both due process and significant cause. When something is a fundamental right (and anyone with multiple firearms is definitely of the mind that firearms are a natural extension of fundamental rights, so long as they exist at all), you, me, the government simply shouldn’t be able to declare that anyone has to show need to exercise that right.

To the contrary, suppression of rights has to be done only under extreme and unusual circumstances.

Now, from your comment, I doubt you consider the right to defense as extending to firearms. That’s fine, I’m not debating that by this comment (and won’t, it bores the fuck out of me because nobody ever has anything new to bring to the debate). I’m just saying that if something is a right, placing your idea of need on it simply isn’t acceptable.

A dozen, a hundred, a thousand, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the right exists. And, in the US it is a specifically enumerated right. There’s wiggle room on when rights can be curtailed, suppressed. We do it all the time. But it can’t be done lightly, and shouldn’t be based on some arbitrary, ill defined standard of need.

That being said, the role of a handgun vs a shotgun vs a rifle at least points to three use cases that can’t be met by the others. Since different calibers of ammunition have discrete properties, it can also be said that significantly different rounds would fulfill different roles (you shoot a squirrel with a .50 cal, you ain’t scraping up enough to roast). Just based on that concept, it would be easy to point to at least six different firearms being “needed” to fulfill roles.

If you have multiple people using the firearms, you can need different ones for each person.

So twelve? It really isn’t that many. I’ve seen hunters that will regularly use at least twelve different rifles in a year, sometimes more, depending on how often they can find time to hunt. Ignoring any debate about hunting being something you or I support, it is a use case that is common enough to merit the term need when it comes to the tools used to do it.

Now me? I don’t need that many. Not a hunter, don’t compete in shooting sports, don’t even target shoot as a regular hobby. But you sure as hell don’t get to decide what I do and don’t need. Nor does anyone else without the application of due process and just cause.

Oh man, I wish I could let you into my head while that crystalline, high speed magic is zinging back and forth through the neurons, lighting me up from the inside out.

I do love bluegrass, even the more traditional and slow tempo stuff. But this new generation of it just sends me

Totally get it. But, being real, budget is always a relative term. I wouldn’t have been able to afford the cheapest version before, period. Mine was gifted to me. Items like this are only “budget” if you actually have a budget for a one off gaming device in the first place.

I’m in the same boat as you if mine dies. No way in hell could I swing even the prices on the LCD version if they still offered them, much less the oled. It’s what? 750+ USD for the lower tier version? That’s almost my fucking mortgage. The LCD would still sit at the 600+ range most likely.

And the deck is technically a full PC if you get a dock and set it up, but that’s still a damn big outlay for a low tier PC.

So, yeah, fuck Altman and every other dipshit pushing hopped up llms like they’re the second coming.

Not if everyone else goes up too

I did, and what I saw was an uncomfortable chicken.

They tend to have a lot of difficulty with things that hold their feathers in a given position. Even things designed for them to have on for extended use can take some time to get used to.