CrowdBucks literally was last active the day the @WeDistribute article was published and never again, lol. what a joke. @sun

good, good, LinkStack doesn't support URLs with custom schemes (e.g. bitcoin) and CrowdBucks is dead. so much for federated options. tagging @sun, sorry if you replied to my earlier mention about this, I haven't looked at mentions yet.

I hate to say it, but group messaging on Delta Chat needs a lot of work before it can claim to compete with e.g. Signal.

apart from the explosion depicted, last I knew there was still NO restricted moderation in group chats: everyone is an admin. that's just not gonna fly, sorry.

I want @delta to succeed. I use XMPP daily. #DeltaChat is the only other realistic option for low-resource federated E2EE chat (Matrix: not even once). but the disaster that is group chat on Delta needs to be handled.

if anyone wants to help, the 3 main things I need right now are

* a #BodyDoubling work chat with 1+ persons typically awake during US daytime where we babble about whatever we're trying to do thru the day with fairly high interactivity

* money for basic needs to the donate link in my profile. even $5 helps. for example right now I need a pair of pants pretty badly.

* (hail mary) help with any way of accessing solitude or personal transportation for same, I am in PNW USA.

got overwhelmed and disconnected from the timeline for a bit, sleep/wake pushed around the clock after a week plus of instability. unfortunately everything overwhelming is still waiting for me including several issues critical to basic life & health. on the other hand my mood is still in a + regime, even though I haven't gotten the non-chemical lifestyle adjustments I planned a couple months ago into place yet. this is presumably due to the chemical adjustment + some luck.

nitpick time:

* I rely on ZeroTier daily despite forgetting everything about it because the well-trodden paths I rely on are all in the browser or via specific applications, which Just Work™ and require zero thought once set up.

* I could've just logged in via Tailscale right away instead of barking up the ZeroTier tree, but doing so takes more steps and is more painful, and one thing you ALWAYS try to minimize when in autistic burnout is COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY.

anyway, that's my rant.

so-called "level 1" or "high-functioning" ASD leads to drastic negative impacts on achievement, health, happiness, and lifespan thru mechanisms like I've just described and more. I'm lucky, for example, to almost never have meltdowns. sometimes people who do get their asses tazed, thrown in jail, and subjected to electroshock treatments. just to name an outcome for a friend of mine.

please help us when you can. I promise you we need it. #ActuallyAutistic

people working with kids today would likely ID little me as ADHD in 15 seconds, and ASD in 15 minutes to an hour. but I grew up in the 80s & 90s, so I got to adulthood with no tools for managing existence in my own skin, and had to build most of what I've got from first principles with sticks & mud.

there is zero help for autistic adults in the USA today unless you're rich. in the more likely event you're broke and on the dole, they're trying to take your Medicaid and food stamps.

I post, or "overshare" like this for two main reasons.

1. I hope some other person going thru this will find the posts and learn something that will help them, even if it's just to feel less alone.

2. in the hope that somebody will fucking *help me.* this is both too uncommon and also common enough that I'm not only still alive, but very very lucky, and conscious of it.

I've been lucky enough to figure out what's happening to me and only trade a few years of life for it. I'm quite sure many autistic people die like this without understanding, and often while blaming themselves.

for me, when I can access quiet & solitude for long enough, my cognitive ability recovers very predictably. the only issue keeping me in chronic burnout and thus housing, food, and healthcare-insecure is that I've been unable to consistently meet those needs since 2016. 🤷

early in #AutisticBurnout I was convinced I had a tumor or dementia. I demanded scans, which my "care team" didn't oblige, while also failing to tell me that none of these symptoms are very surprising for a moderate depressive episode, which was my misdiagnosis at the time. even though autistic burnout is often (usually?) misdiagnosed as depression, it would've saved time & agony to know that otherwise healthy brains do reversibly crap out and fail to process information sometimes.

in this case I determined that the only way to quickly access the server was to log in to the router via Tailscale and then log into the box from there. that's a process which I've done literally hundreds of times over several years, and it was gone from my memory until I spent 5 minutes doing archaeology on my own setup.

now imagine this type of scenario happening *constantly* with everything you've built and every tool you use, if you don't access them at least weekly.

all of this, and all the other cognitive symptoms that go hand in hand, cost huge penalties in speed, efficiency, opportunity, etc.

I've gotten little done on goals this year because much of the time I was simply not able to work, and when I was, much of the time was burned paying these penalties after months of memory & skill decay.

absolutely none of this is normal. this is WAY below my baseline. fortunately I still realize that; the last time I functioned at baseline was 2012.

if I don't document, from fatigue or since it's a one-off or because I'm in a good patch and I'll get to it the very next day and then don't because I don't have control over basics like sleep/wake or nearby activity - once I do need to repeat, I have to retrace, or reinvent, depending how long it's been.

after long enough, I won't remember I did it at all. plenty of times I've been following a new path and found my own forum posts or files on disk from 12, 15, 18 months before.

maybe this doesn't sound that bad from the outside. I honestly can't tell any more, but what I'd emphasize is the speed at which memories decay, and that even well-trodden paths become inscrutable without a LOT of prompting after just a short time.

even if I document perfectly - which I can't always do, depending on many factors including fatigue - I still pay a huge cost to write & maintain notes for what I could retain much better if I were able to meet basic sensory needs.

so, how do I get a list of peers on ZeroTier? no memory even of the binary's name. grepped history. okay, 'sudo zerotier-cli peers'.

none of the output rings a bell. I used context clues to deduce that the box is probably not on ZeroTier. only then did I remember that past me only installed it on 'personal' boxes: this infrastructure which I've come to rely on daily was a limited test to see how ZeroTier works. I didn't want it on 'work' boxes til I was running my own C&C/relay.

next, I had to determine whether the server is on ZeroTier. some are, some aren't. why? I don't know.

maybe I had a reason, or maybe past me was derailed while switching from my painful Tailscale setup to ZeroTier. the memory is gone and I found no notes.

2020-2021 were *really* slow since I had no good way (for my mind) to keep notes. I figured one out, but it turns out I'm a lot better at writing & maintaining process docs (how to build) than descriptive docs (what I've built).

this isn't an unfamiliar server. it's the 5th incarnation of a slowly evolving configuration, the most mature of my physical hosts. it's existed in some form for at least 5 years.

I knew it was accessible by overlay network by examining the control panel URL and realizing the router for it is on Tailscale. I knew it might also be on a less annoying overlay, but for a full minute I couldn't recall the name of that one despite using it daily with other systems.

oh, right. ZeroTier.

random example of one of many penalties I pay while unable to meet my basic sensory needs:

today I developed a sudden need to log into a particular server left untouched for 3-4 months due to my bad summer. this is arguably the most important box I have. everything with any direct or second-order connection to making money is on it. a couple dozen VMs.

I forgot how to connect. the information had evaporated from my brain. I had to chase clues in order to determine how to log in.

strongest "-" energy state in many months. fucking wild dude. wild. the meds barely move the needle. it's hard to even remain standing for more than 2 minutes (I was just throwing boxes in the recycle bin). I have to walk like 1.5 miles, actually needed to like 8 hours ago. not sure how the hell I'm not gonna collapse on the way.

bet you $5 I'm wide awake and plenty energetic by 11pm though. it might not happen but my money's on yes.