I think the line is so blurry as to not matter in most circumstances. If you’re grumpy or tense and use it to feel better, it may not be a necessity, but it still improves your quality of life the same as if you did the exact same thing with an antidepressant. When there are safe and effective ways to feel better, there’s no reason to suffer. Saying it’s not medicinal is the realm of insurance companies and puritans.

You can even make a good case for party usage being medicinal if it keeps your mood up and helps you be more social. The line that really matters is whether or not usage is responsible. As long as you can use responsibly, party on. The world sucks plenty, I’m not going to think twice about responsible users just trying to make their lives better.

I’ve heard of the crystals, but iirc there was some question if they’re really psilocybin. You can extract psilocybin into liquid, though. There’s reduced body load and little to no stomach issues or nausea. The method I used for making it is in one of the books by Virginia Haze and K Mandrake - I think the psilocybin chef cookbook, but not positive.

Basically, you soak the shrooms in everclear to get out as much of the psilocybin as you can, then let the everclear evaporate so you’re left with a tiny amount of very concentrated fluid. Just add 1ml to some juice and you’re on your way. Been a while since I did it and I screwed it up a little, but it was way more mellow than eating the raw shrooms while still being effective. I’ve still got the rest of the little vial I made in the freezer, for whenever I’m stable enough to handle it again.

I like and use Steam. I agree that their dominance is mostly due to the lack of quality competition. They haven’t done anything super shady or anti-consumer.

But don’t expect that to last. It’s a story that’s been repeated countless times now. We know how this goes. One day something will change - probably ownership - and the enshittification will begin.

That’s what DRM free is about. You are in control of your DRM free games even after the developer, publisher, and the store you bought it from have all gone to hell. They also run better years from now when old DRM schemes no longer play nice with OS changes. DRM free is extra insurance that you’ll always have that game and be able to play it.

Too bad I don’t have the hard drive space to store my entire library. One day I’m going to be very sad right alongside everybody else.

That is a very unkind thing for somebody to say to you and it’s not okay. You deserve somebody who will appreciate you for who you are and not resent you for who you’re not. Somebody who will see your effort and thank you for trying, lean on your strengths and make up for your weaknesses. Somebody who will treat you with kindness all the time, not just during the good times. Your struggles are valid and not a weapon to be wielded against you.

I also had an ex who said she was leaving because of my autism. It really hurt to hear, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that pain. So I just want you to hear that you’re great the way you are. I’m sorry that somebody you care about said that to you, and I know how much that hurts even if you know deep down that they’re wrong. And they are wrong. The truth is they held themselves back, but want to blame it all on you. They agreed to care for you as a whole, not just part of you. They don’t get to blame you for changing their mind.

SSRIs and the like will mess with shrooms. It varies by person, like all this stuff, but you generally need like twice as much. On meds, I got a nice high out of 4.5g. Off meds, I get hit harder than that from 2g. Shroom potency also varies a lot, so it’s not that odd to just have a dud.

Edibles took me several tries to feel anything, but did eventually just start working. They don’t for some people, so that is possible, but it could just take a few tries. I think it was 4-5 for me.

The first several times I tried edibles they did nothing. I didn’t know that can just happen to people. So each time, I waited a few days and tried again. But, figuring the last one did literally nothing, I doubled the dose the next time.

I paused at 40mg, wondering if that was really a good idea. It wasn’t. When it hit, time literally stopped. A minute felt like an hour. But I had only myself to blame and I was super high, so I thought it was funny as fuck. I got ready for bed, giggling to myself constantly, then passed the fuck out.

It’s still funny to me, and it always reminds me that mindset is huge. That was the first time I ever tried weed and I could have freaked out, but I just accepted my mistake and laughed at how stupid I was. It makes it a good memory.

I have honestly thought about trying to make money this way. Maybe I’m just good at talking myself out of trying, but I found one good reason to think it’d be harder than it seems.

People say the book can even be bad, and they’re half right. It’s genre fiction, and those have a very specific style and convention unique to each genre. It’s not just allowed to be bad, it’s supposed to be - and in a very specific way. You need to be familiar with that to write to the audience’s expectations. Being too unique and creative is not a good thing.

In other words, if you want to have any success writing gay minotaur smut, you have to first read enough gay minotaur smut to understand it. I couldn’t force myself to read it, not because I’m judging, but I’m just not into it. It bored me too much and felt like a huge slog. But if you can read it you can write it, and the process of familiarizing yourself with that market should also help you figure out how to get discovered for that genre.

I get quarterly botox injections from my neurologist for my migraines. It’s 20+ little injections in my brow, jaw, neck, and shoulders. Before insurance would allow it, we had to try all other available treatments/medications, including a monthly at-home injection you give yourself. For me, at least, it’s been way better than the earlier treatments. I used to have 2-4 migraines per week at a pain around a 5 or 6 with a couple a year that would hurt more like an 8 or 9. Now I get 0-2 per week, usually no worse than a 3 on pain. It’s pretty common to go a few weeks without any, then just get one a week in the last month before my next injection.

Results vary a lot, probably because there are a lot of potential causes and even how we experience our migraines can vary so significantly. Efficacy can fade with time, too. But for me, at least, it’s held out for several years, and worked better than I or my doctor even expected.

I’ve always felt the Game Boy is the biggest icon of old Nintendo, before their more modern and less consumer friendly form. Its portability and low price also made it a more accessible system worldwide for many years, making it a good symbol of worldwide gaming for that era in general.

It’s a mess of proprietary software and drivers. Some of it I hopefully can get working, it’ll just take time. I’ve had a friend suggest a windows VM before, so I’ll definitely look into Quickemu and see how much I can manage. I swear one day I shall be free!

I’ll give that a shot, thank you! That will alleviate the latest, greatest annoyance at least.

I’ll still have to run OOSU10 for like three dozen other settings I can’t even remember, but that’s never going to change. It shouldn’t be that hard just to keep your settings.

I really do appreciate the tip, though. I will enjoy having copilot fuck off forever.

I know I have to turn this shit off every time, and I even have a program that reverts my settings in one click. But I still forget every damn “security update” until I notice that fucking copilot is on again. I will never, ever find it acceptable for my changes to be reverted on a regular basis. When any other program fails to keep my settings, it’s a bug and it’s a bad enough one that I usually don’t use the software. But Microsoft keeps doing it on purpose and it absolutely infuriates me that there isn’t more of a backlash.

I really wish I could get more of my stuff working in Linux to make a complete switch. I don’t even need all of it; I’ll give some stuff up.

Streaming can be a good fit. It’s a way to be social on your own terms from your comfortable space. You get to involve whatever other hobbies or hyperfixations you have at the moment. Almost anything works: games, programming, art, cooking, lego - I’ve even seen people do writing streams. Streaming itself is also as deep of a rabbit hole as you want to go down. You can just dip your toe in or you can learn all about audio, video, and other technical aspects of streaming depending on what catches your interest.

Just, if you do it, just don’t expect anything out of it. Do it for fun and learning. Enjoy the process. I’ve seen many people burn themselves out fast expecting money or viewers just because they go live. But that’s backwards. It’s the people who enjoy it that stick with it and learn. They stream regularly. They hang out in other streams and make friends. Then it doesn’t matter if they only have five people in chat, they’re still happy and having fun.

This probably at least plays a factor. It’s been researched, and people actually have different personalities in different languages. It’s a very individual thing, can be more mild or more pronounced, can vary over time, etc. It’s like a slightly split personality you access at will without realizing it (unless you pay attention).

Yeah, I understand very well. My disability is different, but money is still tight and when my Sound Blaster died it was really annoying trying to find a way to replace it within my budget and without rearranging my whole setup. I’m new to audiophile stuff too so it’s intimidating and a lot to learn.

For my use case, I look more into the USB audio interface side of things because I need to have an XLR input and a monitoring plug with zero latency. If you don’t need anything like that, then a DAC or a DAC/amp combo is what you want. I’m not really an audiophile and this is getting into that area so I’m not the best person to explain it. Definitely take anything I say with a grain of salt and make sure you check. But I think you only really need the amp if it’s required to drive your headphones. If you don’t have high impedance headphones, then you should be able to skip the amp and just get any DAC that fits your needs.

There’s a huge variety of brands, price points, and features. It’s dipping your toe into the audiophile world so the rabbit hole is bottomless, but you can also find very good quality gear on a budget. FiiO, Topping, and Hifiman are brands I recognize, but there are plenty of others I don’t which I’m sure would still be good. It’s the kind of gear somebody buys and expects to still be working in ten years.

The one thing I personally would look for is I would avoid anything with an internal battery. That’s why my Sound Blaster died. For whatever reason, they gave it an internal battery so you could unplug it and use it as a portable headphone amp. I never needed or wanted that, but the battery started expanding and died after over ten years, so that was the end. It’s not a feature I care about, so I’m better off getting something without a battery.

For what it’s worth, a quick search suggests any USB DAC should work fine in both Windows and Linux as long as it doesn’t require special software. So if you look for an affordable USB DAC with physical buttons/dials and all the inputs and features you want, that should help narrow things down to start. You can definitely find one with multiple inputs for both the speakers and a headset, and possibly different volume settings. But I’m not sure - different settings for different inputs might also be more in the realm of a USB audio interface, which may not be as good of a fit for your situation. But you could always look: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Motu M2 2x2 are very strong contenders for me.

Also, at least in the US, Sweetwater is a reputable site for audio gear. I’m sure there are others, of course, but it’s a start.

Good luck!

I haven’t made the switch away from Windows yet, but I hope to try in the near future. So I don’t know if my suggestion is of any help to you. But I’m one of the other weirdos not using onboard sound. Is there a reason you need a PCI card specifically?

Most good options these days are external. I had an external sound blaster for years that I bought before learning that it was basically just a sound blaster branded external DAC. When I can, I want to replace it with either another external DAC from a proper audio manufacturer or a USB audio interface.

If you look for those instead of sound cards, you’ll find a lot more options. I have no idea if that’s useful to you or if any of them work in Linux, though. Well… some idea. I know somebody who I think is running Linux with his DAC, now that I think about it.

So, I hope that’s helpful to you. Cheers :)

If you’re the type that can learn stuff online, growing your own is very easy. You can do anywhere from just a couple inoculated cups of instant rice to turning it into a full blown hobby.

Best practice is usually found on the shroomery message boards. Even if you end up just buying some, they have a wealth of advice for newbie psychonauts too. There’s no shortage of reading material for those with enough interest.

I had too many notepad++ tabs, so I let the autism drive and organized them into a smaller number around general topics, like “work notes” and “reminders”. But then it was too much of a pain to figure out which file I should choose in the moment, so I’d use an unnamed tab at the end to collect those hasty notes that I could go back and sort later when it was less immediate. Then the unnamed tab started to get long and unwieldy so I added a second unnamed tab.

I am up to seven unnamed tabs.

I’ve always felt like an outlier, but yes. I can go an astoundingly long time without human contact and be totally fine. I was shaking my head during the pandemic when people were getting antsy after only a week. Well before that I once realized I literally hadn’t spoken to anybody for over a month and it didn’t even register as odd.

Yes, “shawnan” is correct.