I'd like a soothing game that I could play on my phone. However, this type of logic puzzle ("simple to learn," but "hard to master") would probably not soothe me, because I'd be very stupid at it, which would only irritate me. I do like the minimalist design, though.
(Word games are what soothe me, I guess, because I can do them reasonably well, but without thinking too hard, and without fearing that I'm somehow being tricked...).
I've had luck with trying a quick naive solution, figuring out what fails, and then progressively correcting it. We'll see if that continues.
I played this similar game for a while. Now I just do crosswords. JPJ, Letterpress? I really enjoyed that while I was playing it.
Although the last time I played Letterpress, after a long while away, it seemed the human competition had become "professionalized" and was playing only-in-a-game words to win, which is so annoying. All these competitive word games would be better if they limited their dictionaries to words that an educated person would have at least heard before. How you'd determine those boundaries would actually be kind of a fun problem itself.
I take it you're not a fan of the two-letter word list that every competitive Scrabble player has to memorize? Will try Letterpress, thanks!
I am going to use this thread to recommend a TV show, an old one, so maybe this is the stalest news to everyone, but I just went back to it after years and I'm so glad I did. I watched the first season of Damages when it was new, and never finished the second, because after the first year it does have the pacing problems endemic to 13-episode-a-season dramas. But now that I've watched through seasons two and three I see that you can't fully luxuriate in Glenn Close's acting until some of the season 1 mysteries were resolved and the creators were free to write scenes that allowed the character to express herself in more coherent ways. I can't think of another tv show that delivers this much pleasure just from looking at its star's face. Wikipedia says she called it "the role of her career" and that seems right to me. Also, for an absurdly bloody Grand Guignol type television show -- or really, for *any* television show -- there's actually a ton of care taken to tie up plot threads and make sure everyone's motives make sense (even if they are extreme). Finally, while it's not exactly non-stressful, it is sort of escapist in that it allows one to live in an Obama-era fantasy in which regulatory enforcement is supposed to be strong enough that rich corporate malefactors feel the need to have even rich, well-connected American citizens assassinated to try to avoid it.
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NMM to Nicolas Roeg. Fantastic director and cinematographer.
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Woke from a doze on the Cambridge train to hear a knitting woman explaining with enormous pride that her son is the acting digital editor of the LRB.
suck on that, mere mothers of brain surgeons.
My brother got me addicted to a stupid freemium game, Clash Royale, I stopped playing it for awhile when they limited the 2x2 matches which are a lot of fun to play but since they brought them back I can't stop playing.
Is there anyone else here besides Moby who's a Pokemon Go player? It's golf for millennials, in the sense of being a walk ruined. But I'm up for more friends to play it with.
11 I almost started but then I found out you need a Poke account and never finished signing up.
You can sign up through Facebook and Google accounts nowadays. But you need an account because you have a persistent character who interacts with others, etc.
I'm not on Facebook. I guess I can make a throwaway gmail account.
Probably not worth it. I admire your commitment to not being enthralled to our tech overlords, though.
10 I'm a total dick on this game, they have emojis (emotes they call them) and I spam the most annoying ones relentlessly. This is more that half the fun.
Pokey is having a manic, agitated hell of a response to the new adhd meds. Another 5-6 hours until it's out of his system. Punches a hole in a screen so far.
That's not good. Hope the hours pass quickly.
What was the response supposed to be?
He was supposed to mellow out. Which he did for 2.5 days, and then it shifted and got increasingly agitated, and doing his weird compulsive math rabbit hole, and getting bizarrely angry over stuff.
FWIW, it seems like he's calming down some.
OTOH my neighbor just posted a photo of an actual arsenal laid out on a folding table with a high feve (🙌 ) symbol and I'm a little spooked.
Heebie, it's good to hear that he's calming down. Is his agitation considered a normal/expected response to the new meds?
17: try to get him to an academic medical center for a child psych consult.
That said, there's a lot of BS about childhood bipolar people that was pushed by experts with pharma ties. And antipsychotics being overprescribed in kids. So you have to be careful.
23: they said the first couple days, he might be hyper, and then he'd settle down. He was mellow the first two days, and then this kicked in, right when his "real" response should have been kicked in.
At any rate, he seems back to his regular self. But this has been a tiring vacation.
24: You do have to be careful, sure. But as a parent, the one thing I've learned is that that you have to go with what works. Which is sometimes a trial-and-error process, of course. But if something with "pharma ties" actually works, well then, you just go with it, you know?
When next do you see the psych?
Hope Pokey settles down and these new medications do the trick.
Sorry to confine myself to my own private venting thread. Sympathy to you, heebie, and to Pokey and the rest of your family... it has often taken me a long time to acclimate to psych meds, although I've never tried ADHD remedies, and there's been so much noise in the first few weeks that I've had no hope of getting a signal. It's frustrating too that usually urgent needs lead to prescriptions, but then you have to wait and be patient and potentially suffer more. I really hope you start to see consistent patterns ASAP.
So far it's fun but the kind of thing I'm pretty bad at.
Er, that was before reading any comments.
It was funnier the first time.
27: there have been some controversies in the field with people (cough Child ADHD expert Biederman) signing off on "scientific" papers written by PR people at drug companies.
Not opposed to meds but antipsychotics in kids are a big deal. And s lot of people think that there has been diagnosis creep with bipolar. That said, maybe talk to them about an anticonvulsant for mood issues or an antidepressant?
27: there have been some controversies in the field with people (cough Child ADHD expert Biederman) signing off on "scientific" papers written by PR people at drug companies.
Not opposed to meds but antipsychotics in kids are a big deal. And s lot of people think that there has been diagnosis creep with bipolar. That said, maybe talk to them about an anticonvulsant for mood issues or an antidepressant?
27: there have been some controversies in the field with people (cough Child ADHD expert Biederman) signing off on "scientific" papers written by PR people at drug companies.
Not opposed to meds but antipsychotics in kids are a big deal. And s lot of people think that there has been diagnosis creep with bipolar. That said, maybe talk to them about an anticonvulsant for mood issues or an antidepressant?
Heebie, sorry for all of you that you're dealing with that! Is there a way to contact the prescribing doctor and let them know what's happening to know whether they want to discontinue or keep trying?
Not opposed to meds but antipsychotics in kids are a big deal
Just to clarify, Heebie never said anything in this thread about antipsychotics; BG mentioned them. But whatever medication Pokey is taking, that's undoubtedly something Heebie has talked about at fucking length with a doctor.
39: Stanley - I wasn'tclear about what I was saying - just suggesting that heebie might want to get Pokey to an academic medical center for an expert evaluation. I was also trying to say that for a variety of reasons that might not be a panacea. It's just really damn hard to get a good child psychiatrist.
Heebie - So sorry you have to deal with this. It sounds incredibly hard.
Sorry about the F-bomb, BG. That wasn't really directed at you. I'm a little twitchy right now about perceived judgy attitudes towards parents, presumably because [gasp!] I'm about to be a dad.
Just remember not to give them edibles before they are six months old.
42: Right, you can't just give them the edibles. You hide the edibles around the house, like Easter eggs.
Hooray, Stanster!! Congratulations!
No offense taken to anything on my end. Pokey was trying out a stimulant in the adderall/Ritalin family of such things. He seems back to his normal self today, and the on call doc told me our doc will check in tomorrow.
Congrats Stanley! Heebie, I'm sorry about Pokeys response to the meds, that sounds really hard to parent. :(
And in response to 11, I play Pokémon Go (it's quite nice if you are often pushing a stroller around try to get small ones to sleep!). Email is linked.
Yay Stanley! And presumaby even more Yay Stanleyette who's doing most of the heavy lifting!
Congratulations, Stanley! Stock up on games you can play with one hand while holding a baby in the other one.
(Tiny Tower was my mindless 4am game of choice, though in the light of day it became clear how pointless it was).
11: I'm also a PoGo player.
Babies, hooray! Congrats, Stanley!
Finished Hexio, have to say the thrill isn't the same as having a kid.
Congrats, Stanley!
Hexio is fun, but crashes a lot (iPad Pro 10.5). Sad!
I feel, incidentally, that someone in a position to do so should set up a football team which recruits entirely from Texas university mathematics departments, solely in order to use the name "Houston Eulers".
Yes, but it should be proper football (Association, Union or League).
Newcomers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_game
64: The UT-Austin math department co-rec soccer team usually names itself in honor of that joke.
I downloaded Hexio and played it a lot on my otherwise very unpleasant three-flight trip back from NM yesterday. It was fun but it does crash a lot on my iPhone X.
There's an MIT intramural hockey league Eulers team, after the Edmonton NHL not the Texas NFL team.
All my exes live in Texas
And Texas is the place I'd dearly love to be
But all my exes live in Texas
And that's why I hang my hat in Tennessee