rogue_cricket's recent activity
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Comment on What are your food aversions? in ~food
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (February 2026) in ~health.mental
rogue_cricket Link ParentThank you, I am doing as well as I can be considering the circumstances, I think. In many ways - especially socially - my life is really the best it has been in a while. I have been trying to...Thank you, I am doing as well as I can be considering the circumstances, I think. In many ways - especially socially - my life is really the best it has been in a while. I have been trying to embrace the problems in a sense.
As for the business thing, I have considered it! I am at a point where I am pretty confident in being a capable human generally and I actually do technically have a business that I created to do contract work with a company I used to be an employee of. That’s the work that ended. So it’s been on my mind to maybe just… keep using that business.
I have a few loose ideas but where I am right now, I want to finish a personal project before I consider where to go next.
I feel you on the defeatism though. I haven’t even gotten rejections yet. It’s all just being ghosted. It’s hard but not the torture I went through after being laid off last time, which I think is a matter mainly of attitude and having positive feelings about the work I had actually done for the contract. Being “rejected” with a layoff really did a number on me psychologically and that’s at least no longer a factor.
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (February 2026) in ~health.mental
rogue_cricket Link ParentI do in fact have ADHD. I am the typical late-diagnosed woman, I did paradoxically better at performing academically when my life was at its most stressful and did well enough on tests to make up...I do in fact have ADHD. I am the typical late-diagnosed woman, I did paradoxically better at performing academically when my life was at its most stressful and did well enough on tests to make up for never being able to do my homework. Removed from structure I struggled greatly with under-stimulation and task initiation. The worsening of the attention economy also did not help things.
The way I'm tracking was inspired by browsing self-improvement and self-help subreddits - though not in a positive way. I found those places extremely irritating. Something I understood quickly was that the bulk of its users fall into one of two categories: people who are struggling and who are in no real position to give advice, and people who are trying to extract money out of the first group.
The sheer volume of poorly-hidden ads, ChatGPT-written posts about how some system or another changed the person's life, bait that purported to be about discussion but "subtly" encouraged users to check the profile of the poster or DM them for their blog or gumroad PDF or vibe-coded app honestly really got to me. I got angry! And then the more I thought about it, the more I realised that really these apps mostly give the illusion of progress and productivity: they're much like a video game in the sense that they rely on initial novelty and the dopamine produced by the 'fun' of planning and imagining. But the reality of follow-through is something that an app fundamentally can't help me with. Every single calendar system, fancy to-do-list, or thought organizer I tried eventually calcified into a monument to my inability to remain consistent.
I knew the problem was with me, my dopamine regulation, my ideas about discipline and motivation and perfectionism, and the underlying problems that make me want the distraction to begin with. I started with what I felt to be my core issue, and that was that I kept starting over, and told myself I'd do something that would never have a real failure state and that it would be built up and loose and not over-regulated. And almost out of spite I decided to use only the tools that were already available to me on my phone, free and ad-free. Notes, to-do list, spreadsheet, calendar, alarms and timers.
I started from an empty spreadsheet and thought about the stuff I wanted to track and built it up in increments. It is messy and unexciting on purpose. I am avoiding problems of taxonomy with it by just putting in the date, the broad category, and a note with every entry. Everything goes in one big bucket and at 8PM every day I have an alarm that reminds me to check it and think about how my day went - if I have a good day, it takes me two minutes to pat myself on the back, and on a bad day I extend kindness to myself and try and figure out what happened and why and what I can do to make things easier tomorrow. This I think started a mindset shift of really working with myself instead of trying to impose on myself, figuring myself out.
From there it's really just... experimenting. Things that have worked on me:
- Goals defined in ways where I always make progress (e.g., rather than "work out on THESE days", where I can miss a day and feel upset about it, my goal is "exercise 150 times" and at the end I will give myself some kind of prize)
- Reducing friction to its absolute minimum, and making this a throughline in my life generally: my environment should always work for me and make my life as easy as possible. I just bought a bunch of sheet organizers that dispense like a tissue box for instance, because I hate folding them and found that was causing me to procrastinate on washing and putting them away.
- Separating decision-making and follow-through. When I encounter something that needs to be done but can't be done in the moment (or that I don't want to do in the moment even, lol), I write down in my calendar WHEN I will do it and what decision I have made about it if any. I don't put it in an unorganized to-do list, I find that just clutters me mentally. Like... right now I have a pile of items to donate in my home in my living room. I have in my calendar that I will donate them on Monday afternoon. If it were just on my to-do list, I'd wait until I 'felt like' doing it and they'd sit there stressing me out potentially indefinitely. Now I can look at them and be fine.
- I watch videos about psychology and wellness occasionally although I do so with a very critical eye. I usually relax with one in the bath once a week or so. Anything that gives me an idea or a sticks with me goes in a "wellness-reminders.txt". I have many little mantras and they do genuinely help me to remember the things I am trying to embody when I am struggling.
I could go on, honestly. I've already gone on quite a lot already though, and what works for me is not necessarily going to work for you. But the core principle is really that I am building and negotiating with myself, not taking the "shoulds" of things from anywhere else. I am tentatively optimistic about being able to maintain this basically indefinitely.
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (February 2026) in ~health.mental
rogue_cricket LinkWelp, I’m unemployed. Again. This time it was simply the planned end of the work, not a surprise layoff, though. I have significant resources available, so I am not in a hurry, but I would still...Welp, I’m unemployed. Again. This time it was simply the planned end of the work, not a surprise layoff, though. I have significant resources available, so I am not in a hurry, but I would still like a job and I find the process of finding one to be utterly contemptible. It really makes me squeeze right up against the white collar performance that I find extremely grating. LinkedIn is, for me, basically the Torment Nexus.
But compared to the last time I was unemployed I am doing much better, at least. I have found a way of organizing time that has worked for me for a month and a half so far, and this one feels different than other systems I have tried because it’s not really a system that I am imposing on myself. It is one I am building out by determining what works by experimentation and refusing to create hard rules for.
I am still mentally ill or whatever, but I am definitely in a phase where it feels manageable and I am remaining functional, at least for now. For example, my house is kind of clean. It took me a month and a half to catch up to a good baseline while dedicating a certain amount of time every week to the project, but I feel I’m there now and now I can start tackling the dark corners of my storage areas. I feel much the same about my emotional cleanliness.
Other than that I have a solid relationship, I am having lots of fun experiences with my friends, I am exercising my attention span with books and a coding personal project and learning how to draw, I’m exercising regularly. If it weren’t for the job stuff and the political environment I would be feeling the most optimistic I’ve felt in a long time.
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Comment on /r/politics moderators in ~tech
rogue_cricket Link ParentA moderator can only remove comments in a way where it would show [deleted] for everyone, so you were accusing them of something that is not possible for them to do. Proof that the comment was not...A moderator can only remove comments in a way where it would show
[deleted]for everyone, so you were accusing them of something that is not possible for them to do. Proof that the comment was not publicly visible is not proof that a particular person or group was responsible. The comment was shadowbanned by either an admin or by reddit's overarching auto-detection system. Unless the person you were talking to was a site admin (rather than just a subreddit moderator) they were not gaslighting you, they genuinely have no mechanism to interfere with the visibility of your comment in that way.I hope you weren't rude to them based off your own incorrect assumption.
This is why being a reddit moderator sucks. A vast majority of reddit users do not understand reddit. This is reddit's fault rather than the individual, really.
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Comment on /r/politics moderators in ~tech
rogue_cricket (edited )Link ParentYeah, I moderate a subreddit of about 50k folks and a discord with a few thousand people and a lesson I've learned the hard way is that it's generally better to be kind of blunt and heavy-handed...Yeah, I moderate a subreddit of about 50k folks and a discord with a few thousand people and a lesson I've learned the hard way is that it's generally better to be kind of blunt and heavy-handed upfront. It sucks, but letting things slide for fear of looking unfriendly or draconian has INVARIABLY resulted in much worse situations down the line.
I would genuinely rather not be doing it a lot of the time, but the space I moderate is a safe space for many people and is one of the very few trans-friendly spaces for the topic. I want it to exist and for it to exist as it does it requires this kind of work.
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Comment on Unseeable prompt injections in screenshots: more vulnerabilities in Comet and other AI browsers in ~tech
rogue_cricket Link ParentMy feeling is that it simply doesn't have the ability to hold a broad enough context for anything of reasonable complexity or uniqueness. It codes like it is trapped in tutorial hell, perhaps...My feeling is that it simply doesn't have the ability to hold a broad enough context for anything of reasonable complexity or uniqueness. It codes like it is trapped in tutorial hell, perhaps because - well - it basically is, isn't it? It consumes a lot of tutorials and all it can do is remix and reproduce them, copying the snippets and mimicking the confident tone of tutorial-writers.
Humans can also struggle with this facsimile of understanding when starting out and doing too many guided tutorials, but the difference is that a human can internalize feedback and reassess its approach fundamentally and an LLM, by its nature, cannot. It has one approach that it can keep trying over and over. But even then, in my experience, every failure -> correction -> recovery cycle simply degrades the quality of the code further: the opposite of what tends to happen when a human is correcting its understanding.
Anyway, I'm bitter right now because I've been going back and forth on a PR for an absurd amount of time with a colleague who is supposed to be learning stuff in the domain I'm an expert in, and clearly he's just using AI to generate code based off my suggestions rather than reading and understanding them. He has wasted hours of my time.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
rogue_cricket LinkI’ve been playing Necesse, a sandbox survival building game that is like if Terraria had a baby with Rimworld. Create a settlement to attract NPCs, or go hunting for them in the wild or bribe them...I’ve been playing Necesse, a sandbox survival building game that is like if Terraria had a baby with Rimworld.
Create a settlement to attract NPCs, or go hunting for them in the wild or bribe them to join from their own villages. Attend to the needs of the NPCs - including furnishing a house and giving them a varied diet - and they will do assigned work using a system that isn’t as indepth as Rimworld (of course, since that isn’t the game’s focus) but still pretty impressive. For instance, I have a system of sorted chests that all my settlers do all the work of organizing, leaving me all the time in the world to do the fun cave diving and boss hunting parts. They can gather resources, process them, and even fight.
I can see it becoming a new obsession for me. You can build traps and tripwires and logical machines with gates, have multiple settlements with stations and minecarts between them. There’s multiplayer. One of my problems with Terraria was that I wasn’t a fan of the side scrolling for building, but Necesse is top down. It is really good!
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Comment on I tried to protect my kids from the internet. Here’s what happened. in ~tech
rogue_cricket LinkThis is something I wish there was a good solution for. I am involved with a queer community that involves adult content, including sexual content, and as a result of a schism involving...This is something I wish there was a good solution for. I am involved with a queer community that involves adult content, including sexual content, and as a result of a schism involving transphobia I ended up briefly moderating a discord server that was basically the equivalent of a lesbian bar. People would flirt there, discuss sexual topics frankly, and some folks even lived close enough to each other to meet in person.
We had an age verification system but there was at least one incident where someone who was under eighteen successfully lied about their age to get in, and I heard stories from other folks talking about how when they were kids, they’d do the same thing. They’d admit to lying about their age online as young as thirteen or fourteen, pretending to be eighteen, engaging in adult oriented spaces with adults. This is so scary!
I think children don’t understand how awful it is to do this. They’re curious, and defiant, and they believe that if these systems are for their protection then they should have the freedom to opt out of being protected. But in my situation, I understood that adults needed to be protected too. Especially at a time where queer people are already demonized unfairly and accused of harmful deviancy, and where surveillance is getting more extreme, having a minor in an adult queer space is an awful look and a huge potential risk for every adult there. Of course the child is also at risk, but it really is a terrible and uncomfortable situation for literally anyone who isn’t a creep.
Of course any age verification system that isn’t privacy focused is also a huge risk, and no government or company in the world right now would pass up the opportunity to collect a huge amount of private data because we exist under surveillance capitalism. Between the two options I think it’s better for society to fight against any system that has such a massive potential for the abuse of freedoms. But I wish there was something.
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Comment on Social media probably can’t be fixed in ~tech
rogue_cricket (edited )Link ParentI was also uninterested in the study beyond this point basically. So you're telling me that when you train the Reproduce-Trained-Behaviour machine on data from interactions in existing social...I was also uninterested in the study beyond this point basically. So you're telling me that when you train the Reproduce-Trained-Behaviour machine on data from interactions in existing social media and then put the Reproduced-Trained-Behaviour machine in an environment that is a little different from our existing social media, the Reproduce-Trained-Behaviour machine continues to reproduce the behaviour it was trained on? Wow, you don't say! I mean, what else would it possibly do?
LLMs are not capable of the novelty required to actually get meaningful information out of a study like this. LLMs used as a proxy as humans for a study that really should be psychology is actual madness. It's slop. Why even bother?
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
rogue_cricket LinkI've been playing an obscure browser MMORPG, HighSpell. It's basically a clone of Runescape classic but I've found it kind of enjoyable. http://www.highspell.comI've been playing an obscure browser MMORPG, HighSpell. It's basically a clone of Runescape classic but I've found it kind of enjoyable.
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Comment on Disney reportedly planning full reboot of the Indiana Jones franchise in ~movies
rogue_cricket Link ParentI’d like to add my own 4… I had never seen the original Indiana Jones movies until I recently went through all of them at the insistence of a friend as part of a group activity. I had caught parts...I’d like to add my own 4… I had never seen the original Indiana Jones movies until I recently went through all of them at the insistence of a friend as part of a group activity. I had caught parts of them on TV but that was it.
The thing that struck me most about them was how fun and sexy they were in a… messy way that you don’t really see any more. It’s definitely more of an overall aesthetic appreciation than me getting the vapours over young Harrison Ford - I’m a lesbian, for the record, haha - but the overall feel was warmer, softer, and moodier in the older adaptations than the new ones even.
I don’t think any big media companies have an appetite for that aesthetic any more and haven’t for a very long time. I don’t know. There was something extremely charming about it.
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Comment on I need advice, which laptop would you buy now? in ~tech
rogue_cricket Link ParentI'm also a converted MacOS fan. I used to have the impression that it was more restricted compared to Windows in terms of my personal control over the device and I do not believe that is true any...I'm also a converted MacOS fan. I used to have the impression that it was more restricted compared to Windows in terms of my personal control over the device and I do not believe that is true any longer - although it's still arguably true when comparing iOS to Android. Still, their approach to privacy and the sharp decline of the quality of Google and Microsoft by comparison finally brought me over basically entirely. Among those three I think that Apple is just the company that I have the most trust in. It's not exceptional, it's just that the other two are worse.
It also helped that I frequently did development on Macbooks for work and got a free M1 laptop as a consolation prize for being laid off in 2023 (hooray). I just recently replaced my phone with an iPhone 16 because I am currently dead-set on completely de-Googling my life (nearly finished) and I enjoy how the phone and laptop function together even if I miss some features from my Samsung.
I would love to be able to do more with Linux and have experimented and worked on it in the past and it's just... not quite there for me yet. Ideologically I love it and I hope that SteamOS allows me to replace Windows completely very soon for gaming. I am so, so sick of Microsoft.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
rogue_cricket Link ParentFor readers who are fans of Danganronpa I just want to give a STRONG! recommendation for a game called "of the Devil". It takes a lot of inspiration from Danganronpa as well as from Ace Attorney....For readers who are fans of Danganronpa I just want to give a STRONG! recommendation for a game called "of the Devil". It takes a lot of inspiration from Danganronpa as well as from Ace Attorney.
You play as a woman named Morgan who serves as a public defense attorney in a cyberpunk world defined by intense surveillance. Private security collaborates with the government so there is a massive unified network of cameras filming just about every street corner for the state. Personal phones have always-on cameras that not only track their users, but will automatically upload footage they passively gathered if the user was within a certain radius of a crime scene. The internet is, of course, tightly monitored and controlled. Rather than the setting being cartoonishly evil and authoritarian it's more... uncomfortable. And given the nature of things, there are now very few crimes that the state isn't able to score a conviction on.
Morgan has a penchant for gambling and so a lot of the mechanics are themed around poker. It's got the familiar information-gathering phase (where you gather "chips" that serve double duty as your life meter) and then a kind of "show down" phase which doesn't necessarily take place in court but during which you argue your point and try to put the information you gathered together. The poker theme is cute: like if someone comes to you with a challenge that you suspect is a lie, you can either "call" their bluff, or "fold" and move on... sometimes your goal isn't so much to win as it is to lose as little as possible. On the other hand, you can also "raise" on certain challenges that you are confident about, betting more of your chips. (You get little cosmetic rewards with them at the ends of the chapters, so there's an bit of an incentive to having more of them.)
I find the writing really good. It's more grounded and serious than both Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, but it definitely has its moments of humour, too. Morgan in particular is a really interesting character to me.
The prologue is free on Steam! So if this sounds intriguing to you you should pick it up and then DON'T LOOK ANYTHING ELSE UP ABOUT IT until you've beaten it. It's one of those games where spoilers can really affect the experience of playing it, I think.
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Comment on Cloudflare is down causing multiple services to break in ~tech
rogue_cricket Link ParentI actually thought it was me, because I just started a new job as a website reliability engineer...I actually thought it was me, because I just started a new job as a website reliability engineer...
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Comment on Post something from your notes app in ~talk
rogue_cricket LinkSmall selection:Small selection:
The moon is an egg?
What if it was "Benjamin and Jeremy" ice cream
I've got a tattoo of a heart with your name on it, and maybe that's last part of me left that still loves you
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Comment on What is your strangely specific phobia? in ~talk
rogue_cricket (edited )Link ParentI had a similar fear about autonomous computer things when I was quite young! Mine started from The Sims. When I had my first Sim die in a confusing way due to a glitch, I fully believed my PC was...I had a similar fear about autonomous computer things when I was quite young! Mine started from The Sims.
When I had my first Sim die in a confusing way due to a glitch, I fully believed my PC was haunted. I had nightmares about waking up to a messenger ping to find the dead sim trying to contact me over AIM.
I anthropomorphized inanimate things quite a lot as a kid, like believing that if I picked the same cup over and over again the others would get "sad", so I don't think it is really that surprising that I'd see these little digital people as having real feelings.
EDIT: I've talked about this here before, just took me a minute to find the link:
https://tildes.net/~talk/qwh/whats_something_that_creeps_you_out_more_than_it_should
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
rogue_cricket Link ParentOop, late on this! But apparently there was a ban wave right as I started a few months ago, so I only experienced like, a day or two of bots. I think they've been kept in check since then. Double...Oop, late on this! But apparently there was a ban wave right as I started a few months ago, so I only experienced like, a day or two of bots. I think they've been kept in check since then.
Double Cross is my BFF's favourite map too! She likes to play Demoknight and collect Sniper heads there. I've only got about 20 hours of actual playtime, so I don't have a ton of opinions yet.
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Comment on What are some traditional internet forums that you still use? in ~tech
rogue_cricket Link ParentI am also a big fan of MetaFilter. I think Ask MetaFilter is one of the best things on the entire internet. Some random notes - the jokey "he needs mouse bites to live" House joke script is, I...I am also a big fan of MetaFilter. I think Ask MetaFilter is one of the best things on the entire internet.
Some random notes - the jokey "he needs mouse bites to live" House joke script is, I believe, a MeFi original. There was a thread about emotional labour that made the rounds years ago as well that got the site some attention. I also occasionally use the MeFi terms "eponysterical" (when a person's username matches up with something they have posted) and "crouton-petting" (when you humanize inanimate objects) and forget they aren't common outside the site...
John Scalzi and Adam Savage have also made occasional appearances! I'm sure there are other notable members as well.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
rogue_cricket LinkWeirdly enough, I've been playing Team Fortress 2. I say weirdly because I am generally not the type to enjoy FPS games, although TF2 is much more casual and silly than the way some people play...Weirdly enough, I've been playing Team Fortress 2. I say weirdly because I am generally not the type to enjoy FPS games, although TF2 is much more casual and silly than the way some people play other FPS games so I'm vibing with it a bit.
I started because my friends play it regularly. I am pretty bad at it, but I do like playing Medic and Scout and Heavy. I'm neutral on Soldier, Pyro, and Sniper and terrible with Spy, Demoman, and Engineer. I'm interested in Engineer but I don't really know any of the maps well, so I'm never sure where to put my things.
Honestly, I don't really care about being good at it, it's just something to do with my computer friends on a regular basis. I really look forward to it.
I cannot be the only raisin-hater here...