Hey folks  

Bit of an odd practical biochemistry question in relation to the absorption speed of any meds.

Hypothetically-speaking, is it possible to turn an instant release (IR) med into an extended-release¹ (ER) version via non-commercial means?

Examples of IR meds might include:

• A capsule (designed to dissolve in the stomach) containing an easily-absorbed powder.
• A tablet without any coating and a structure that dissolves very easily.

Examples of ER meds we've seen include:

• Capsules containing tiny pellets, coated with something to slow absorption.
• Tablets with a coating designed to slow absorption.

Could you, for example:

• Encase the capsule in a larger, acid-resistant / enteric capsule?
  • e.g., like the ones described here
• Coat the tablet in some kind of food-safe coating?

Genuinely asking here, as we neither have the spoons nor time to go down an AuDHD rabbit hole investigating this 😅

#biochemistry #AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease

¹ aka prolonged, sustained, modified, or controlled release

Hey all  

We had another linguistic thought.

(You can see our previous linguistic queries on looking for words for the pain of being misunderstood and finding an alternative word for hope.)

We realised that English has a specific word for the inability to experience pleasure from activities you'd usually enjoy: anhedonia.

However, it doesn't seem like there's an equivalent official word for the inability to experience hope.

Instead, there are only words like hopeless or hopelessness, but those words do not really suggest that the person can no longer derive hope from situations they'd normally expect to.

Following the same logic as the above, we think it would be something like an- plus either elpĭ́s or elpída.

So, we think it'd be either anelpis or anelpida.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Corrections?

#AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #English #linguistics #hope #hopeless #hopelessness #anelpis #anelpida

Hey fedizens  

Bit of an odd linguistic query for anybody with knowledge of English, in any and all forms, regions, dialects, etc.

Is there a simple, true neutral (realistic) alternative for the verb to hope, and maybe even a true negative (pessimistic form)?

We've thought and posted a fair bit about the concept of hope recently-ish, particularly in this post after watching a John Green video.

On the back of this, we've realised that hope is a word that has a positive, optimistic connotation inherently within it, at least as we understand and use it.

When somebody says that they hope that something will happen, they are simultaneously communicating that:

• they want this thing to happen;
• they recognise that it may not happen;
• they nonetheless believe that it could happen, and are somewhat biased towards it happening.

We've seen underhope and overhope suggested on Wiktionary, but never read, heard, or otherwise seen these in real world usage, and overhope is what most people seem to mean when they use variants of hope like hopeful.

The closest we've found is wish, but it doesn't work as a verb replacement. You can use it as a noun to some extent, but it sounds anachronistic and clunky.

e.g.,

• I hope that you are doing okay.
• It is my fondest wish that you are doing okay.

We're curious about all the other forms and variants, but it's the verb that we cannot find in-use realistic or pessimistic forms for.

For the realistic (true neutral) form, we're looking for a verb that conveys that:

• you want this thing to happen;
• you know it technically could happen, from a statistical point of view;
• you cannot be hopeful, as you have decent grasp of the situation, the challenges, and so on.

For the pessimistic (true negative) form, we're looking for a verb that conveys that:

• you want this thing to happen;
• you recognise that it could happen, theoretically;
• you do not believe there's any realistic prospect of this happening.

Any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions within the broad scope of all English variants?

Genuinely asking, but -- as per usual -- no reply guys please 🫶

Boosts and friendly quotes welcome  

In the meantime, where hope is the defacto optimistic form, all we feel like we can say to folks is something like:

We wish we could hope that...

#AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuys #English #linguistics #hope

Random tech question, especially for audiophiles, or anybody who listens a lot to music.

What affordable (<=£50 GBP)¹ options exist in the UK for:

• Taking sound input from a sound card via a 3.5 mm audio cable or optical cable output;
• Transmitting the sound to paired bluetooth headphones; ...

... and which has a volume control option (ideally analogue, or otherwise at least 100 volume steps)?

We have bluetooth headphones (Sony WH-1000XM4), but only presently use the bluetooth connection when listening to music on our phone.

When we're at our PC, we've been using a 3.5 mm output from our speakers. We got those speakers back when we used to listen to music occasionally out loud, but we don't ever do that any more: we only listen via headphones, so the speakers are entirely redundant.

We'd like to be able to connect our headphones quickly to the PC with an analogue volume control, like the one we have on our current speakers.

In case it's relevant, we have a Sound Blaster Z sound card.

Boosts and quotes appreciated, if you think it'll help  

Please remember we're in the UK and looking to get something on a budget.

#AskFedi #tech #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #audio #audiophile

¹ This is the ideal price range, but if there's some longer-term better solution, perhaps involving a replacement PCI-E sound card that has a native option for this, or some device that might also help with future streaming stuff, if we can ever return to it, we're willing to consider the options presented. Anything beyond £100 GBP will be pushing it though, unless it's a perfect, long-term solution with multiple features.

Hey folks  

This is a query targeted at any folks who experience any kind of neuropathic pain for any reason(s), to any degree, and with any frequency, and who've found meds and/or treatment options to reduce, manage, or otherwise cope with the pain.

Please note that we're not asking for ourselves, but for friends who have various forms of this and seem to be having no luck getting decent or timely care through official medical routes 🥺😔

Our own experience of pain has been very different, so we cannot extrapolate anything that has worked for our own issues to neuropathic pain. Relatively-speaking, we've been very fortunate.

We are aware of what the medical organisations say, but we'd much rather hear from folks with personal experiences of any kind, particularly atypical ones that work where others have failed.

As we understand it, commonly-prescribed meds like duloxetine (or any similar SNRI) and gabapentin are often ineffective in many folks, though please correct us if we're wrong there.

We don't have any insight on things like:

• Using a TCA like amitriptyline or nortriptyline.
• Using pregabalin.
• Combining a TCA with a gabapentinoid like pregabalin or gabapentin.
• Using an opioid like tramadol.
• Stronger opioids.
• Lidocaine patches.
• Some form of cannabinoid (or a mix of different ones) in various forms.
• Non-prescription methods.

Thank you in advance for any answers 🫶  

#NeuropathicPain #disability #disabled #ChronicPain #AskFedi #healthcare #TCA #SNRI #gabapentinoids #gabapentin #pregabalin #neuralgia #meds #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuys

Hey fedizens  

Anybody know a decent, modern replacement for Tag&Rename?

It used to be our favourite tag editor, but development seemingly stopped back in 2018.

We're ideally looking for something that's:

• Cross-platform (at least Windows and Linux).
• Has a user-friendly UI.

It must:

• Have a dark mode option.
• Be compatible with modern tags, particularly lyrics ones, which we're apparently way out of date on 😅
  • We think the newer Vorbis tag is UNSYNCEDLYRICS, based on some downloaded FLAC files, versus the older LYRICS tag we're used to.

For context, we primarily use WACUP on desktop or Poweramp on Android.

Not sure if it's a thing, but if there's some kind of new option for synced lyrics that's compatible with both of the above, that would be amazing!

#AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuys #WACUP #Poweramp #Tag&Rename #music #FLAC #DarkMode

Hey fedizens  

Anybody know a trusted script¹ or extention² to automatically replace "smart" (aka "curly") quotation marks and apostrophes with straight ones?

• Double quotation marks -- replacing “ and ” with ".
• Single quotation marks -- replacing ‘ and ’ with '.
• Apostrophe - replacing ’ with '.

Genuinely asking, but no reply guys please 🫶

Thanks 🩷

#AskFedi #punctuation #PunctuationMarks #QuotationMarks #apostrophe #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuys

Edit: Apologies for any confusion caused. We're looking only for something basic and trusted that can replace certain characters or text strings with another. So long as we can easily configure it to replace the above, it doesn't matter if it's a more-general script or extension for replacing text.

Edit 2: We found an extention that could automagically do it for us. It's called FoxReplace. Took us a few moments to work out how it worked, but we ended up creating a rule for text only (ignoring URLs) to apply the desired substitutions automatically to the text output on any rendered web page on a page load/reload.

¹ Compatible with violentmonkey.
² Compatible with Firefox or Firefox-based browsers.

Query for folks who live in Britain (or did for many years but have now escaped)

What terms of endearment / address do you hear or see get used in your region, usually at the end of sentences, and are they gendered?

e.g.,

Region: East Anglia
County: Essex
City/Town: (optional) Exampleville
Term: "mate"
Gender: can be both masc coded and (to some) neutral; varies by place and person
Age Range or Generation (Giver/Receiver): Gen X, Gen Y (Millenial)
Other info: can be a threat if stressed heavily ("How you doing, mate?), and can be used to intentionally misgender somebody

#GenuinelyAsking #AskFedi #linguistics #language #English #British #Britain #England #Wales #Scotland

Edits: Opened the question up to people who have escaped Britain; added a section for age/generation of the giver and receiver of the term; clarified that these might also be terms of address and go at the end of sentences.

(Asking this whilst we temporarily have some sufficient executive function, time, energy, spoons, and motivation 😅)

Any of y'all tried using SteamOS as a primary OS?  

Where Windows 11 is rapidly and increasingly enshittifying, we're curious whether it is currently -- or might become next year -- a viable replacement  

For context, we:

• Are not a coder or dev, and haven't ever worked in an IT-based job or field.
• Consider ourselves an intermediate user.
  • i.e., we can troubleshoot issues, research problems for solutions, follow guides, etc.
• Don't have any experience of any Linux-based distros on a primary desktop.
• Can use a terminal or command line, but only ever if no decent GUI is available.
• Are a neurospicy mess 😅

We'll probably want to test it in a virtual machine environment... once we've found one that's free, ideally open source, and not at all aligned with evil corporations (especially Oracle).

Genuinely asking, but no reply guys please 🫶🩷

#AskFedi #Windows11 #SteamOS #Linux #GenuinelyAsking

Edit: Thank you for all replies and thoughts so far! Spoons are fading, so can't reply to all, but very much appreciate all thoughts, including the suggestions of Linux Mint or Arch Linux as Linux alternatives. We'll check out ElementaryOS too when we've got more spoons.

Edit 2: Making a note here for ourselves (and any other interested parties) of the other suggestions. In addition to Mint, Arch, and Elementary, folks have suggested Bazzite and Aurora.

Hey lovelies  

We'd like to ask you all for your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas to help us resolve an ongoing issue.

The issue

At a high-level, we are a neurodivergent (AuDHD) spoonie with a mixture of health issues that are preventing us from being able to get or do a "typical" job and earn an income.

By "typical" job, we mean one where the company and role just aren't well-suited to many folks who are disabled (including being neurodivergent), have support needs, and/or have other health issues.

Most "typical" jobs broadly:

• Have fixed hours (start/finish times and total working hours required).
• Require a minimum fixed amount of time in a physical office.
• Require a lot of interaction with other people (including colleagues).

... and so on, so you can probably understand how difficult it is for us to find any suitable paid employment that we can do 😅

This is made harder by the fact that:

• We only know how to search for "typical" jobs.
• There is zero support within the UK for finding suitable employment outside of "typical" jobs.
• The welfare system within the UK is fundamentally (and intentionally) broken

The request

We have zero idea where to even start, so we are genuinely asking for your input and recommendations here.

We have decent reading comprehension, writing ability, and neurospicy pattern recognition, but we also have an inconsistent level of executive function and energy (physical and mental), so we can't do a job where we have to clock in and out at set times, even on a part-time basis.

Even whilst writing this post, we're already out of spoons and on to knives today, meaning that we're pushing through to ask for help.

Any suggestions will be appreciated, and we'll add additional details to the post based on any questions or thoughts from others 🥺🫶

Thank you in advance for your thoughts, as well as your empathy, understanding, and kindness  

#AskFedi #GenuinelyAsking #GetFediHired #neurodivergent #neurospicy #AuDHD #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #spoonie #disability #disabled #LateStageCapitalismSucks

Edit 2025-11-27:

Thank you for replies so far. There has been some confusion, which may be due to poor explanation on our part, so we wish to add some further details to clarify some points.

The issue is a health, disabilities, and support needs one, rather than not being able to find a job that meets our skillset.

We're not asking directly for a specific "typical" job, as we cannot work those kinds of jobs.

We're basically asking for advice on where to start in light of all the various issues we have that are preventing us being able to do any form of "typical" job.

There is a slim chance we could recover enough to do some form of "typical" job, but that could take another 6+ months, a year, or longer. And even if we did recover, any "typical" job would burn us out again within a year, possibly worse than now.

We've not listed specific skills, as we're trying to get help on the first steps, rather than which jobs to look for. That said, we're going to clarify outright that we cannot program at all, we've never been able to learn any computer languages, and we lack the underlying talent. Again though, the issue isn't our skills (or lack thereof): it's a fundamental query about how to go about trying to earn income when you're unable to do any kind of "typical" job.