Alex Florez 🔮 making magic

Join a community of wizards having fun playing games and support an independent creator: mint.wizzyverse.com

@juliette_hiyb @aakashgupta Which is why newer ADHD drugs focus on improving the brains ability to uptake dopamine (Strattera/Atomoxetine), instead of trying to flood the dopamine pool with stimulants (Ritalin/Adderall). It’s a vicious cycle, but we do what we can.

If I may offer some nuance... this take makes it sound like an ADHD brain ends their day having "spent" all their dopamine and now needs to top up the tank with the easy dopamine from low-effort high-stimulation activities (like scrolling). But this is actually a very dangerous analogy. The functional dopamine deficit at the end of the day isn't due to some depleted reservoir of the neurochemical dopamine. It's actually due to desensitised dopamine receptors from the sustained load of the day. There is plenty (relatively speaking) of the neurochemical, but far fewer receptors to "sense" it (which means less of the signal gets through). This weaker signal feels like low motivation and restlessness. The *last* thing you should ever do to a desensitised dopamine system is subject it to another dopamine load (like scrolling). This just kicks the can down the road and makes the damage accumulate even further. Scrolling only feels "good"/relieving in the moment because the load of scrolling temporarily props up the desensitised receptor feeling. It comes back in full force as soon as the scrolling is stopped. (More on how to restore your receptors here if curious: hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/dopamine-deb…)

This has a clinical name. Revenge bedtime procrastination. And the ADHD version runs on a completely different mechanism than the neurotypical one. A neurotypical person stays up late because they want more leisure time. The ADHD brain stays up because it spent every drop of dopamine it had on executive function during the day. Sitting in meetings, managing transitions, filtering impulses, remembering the thing you were supposed to remember. That burns through dopamine the way sprinting burns through glycogen. By 10pm the tank is empty. But here's where it gets counterintuitive. The exhaustion is physical. The dopamine deficit is neurological. Those are two separate systems. Your muscles want sleep. Your prefrontal cortex is starving for the stimulation it was denied all day because it spent 14 hours on task-switching and impulse control instead of anything that actually felt rewarding. The phone at midnight is the brain trying to collect what it's owed. Low-effort, high-stimulation content. Scrolling, short videos, rabbit holes. The exact profile of activity that delivers dopamine without requiring the executive function you already depleted. The sleep researchers call this a "self-regulation failure." It's closer to a debt collection. You borrowed against your own reward system to function all day. The bill comes due at midnight. And the brain will not let you sleep until it gets paid.

@VoxtekTU @munumagic @aakashgupta This isn’t just scrolling on the phone. This also happens when I reach flow state in creative projects at 10pm and feel driven to finish something before going to bed even though my eyeballs are burning and my joints are screaming and my stomach is crying.

@VoxtekTU @munumagic @aakashgupta ADHD: whoops, every time you said five more minutes it actually took 15 minutes, and then about 3am you forgot to look at the clock again and now the sky is getting light and the birds are singing and you need to wake up your kids for school in one hour. Sleep tight!

Except I also did this as a child before smart phones existed. I would stay up late reading books or building LEGO by flashlight, or just laying there with my imagination racing, hours past my bedtime. I can get my dopamine fix by mindless cleaning tasks like folding laundry or doing the dishes, which is often something I catch up on after everyone else at home has gone to bed and I am physically exhausted but my brain won’t turn off.

Pretty sure this is all made up. It’s addictive, compulsive behaviour. Lack of discipline or ability to delay gratification. The ADHD label gets thrown around way too often. It’s not scientific. Most people do not have ADHD. Not on a true medical sense. Most people are over stimulated (phone addiction), lack discipline, have fried their dopamine system with tech abuse, hand taken no accountability for doing so, and have self diagnosed their “problem” as “ADHD” .

@BAYC5511 @Neurotic0x Aaah what the hell! I used this same type (not sure if exact same model number) at the print shop where I worked. It made very nice prints.

@Neurotic0x Yeah and fully working too lol, they were moving and didnt wanna bring it

Man, missed this beauty by 5 minutes 😭

The new Kart Maker update is out 👀

I'm making this game that is like an online, collaborative Mario Maker. My friend @KamiSawZe has been hard at work making new tilesets. I don't know how to explain it, but his levels feel like "real" video game levels. So fun and well designed. wamp.land/r/-10/8

@21stcentury_ML I remember GenX being lambasted in media for living with their parents when I was a kid (in the 90s and 2000s). Bad parents in older generations like to complain about how useless they taught their children to be.

So they’re just recycling the “millennials spend all their money on avocado toast” excuse for an increasingly bleak economy

@ihyace It’s a Warthog. It will be able to limp home.

rate my take off

👻

@KamiSawZe I think we got a few more in us 🤘

CHEEM x IN BLOOM POWER MOVE: VICTORY LAP OUT JUNE 5th

@samnazz I keep clicking it just in case...

@samnazz ENHANCE! 👁👄👁

I was right. Now we’re dropping this album in 2 weeks on a major label

@songadaymann NOOOOOO 😭

my daughter got lice and so ... bid on the 1/1: songaday.world/6350

@DreamMixGames @netflix I need to watch Jeepers Creepers properly. I caught the second half on TV back in high school and the song gets stuck in my head now and then.

@KamiSawZe @netflix Signs and the mist are 2 of my favorite horror films. The mist is a competitor with Jeepers Creepers 1 for me.

NOPE is literally unwatchable on @netflix desktop. It's a bleary mess of compression with crazy artifacts that almost look like bad VFX. On gigabit fiber in Chrome and Microsoft app (Edge wrapper). Doesn't matter that I'm paying for 4K. I'll try on my TV later.

@RaynTarant @analogue The reason I never ended up buying a 3DS. That was the one game I was really excited for.

@analogue I'll never forgive Capcom for not making a third or suddenly revoking the previous go-ahead they gave for the fan project

Mega Man 64 (Capcom - 2001 - N64)

@DreamMixGames @netflix Having just rewatched Independence Day, I'm finding that more action blockbuster than horror, so I'd put it maybe more along the line of Signs and The Mist.

So I thought it was really good, but you shouldn't go in with presuppositions about what a horror movie should be. It's got a heavy dose of Western too, especially at the end. It is (I feel) less scary than say Signs or Independence Day, certainly less scary than Alien. But at the same time it has a couple scenes that might be distressing depending on what makes you uncomfortable. It deserves the accolades it got. It is beautiful and uplifting and thought provoking. But if you go in expecting something along the lines of Get Out or Us, it is going in a very different direction.