Here's a little more detail.

Researchers a few years back ran tests. ADHDers and neurotypicals were asked to harvest berries and edible plants.

Neurotypicals tended to over-harvest and damage bushes to the point where recovery would be slow if possible at all, and tended to pick areas clean, wiping out local populations of edible plants.

ADHDers tended to move relatively quickly from area to area, harvesting a decent amount from each area but not excessively. The quantities tended to be at the sort of level that have long been established as a good balance, such that plants and populations would tend to actually do better the following year. Not only that, but they tended to gather more.

https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Crofts and small farms rapidly went to three-stage and four-stage crop rotation, but different fields would be with different crops. This meant that the failure of a single crop would be much less of a survival thing.

You'd see fields with a mutitude of diverse crops, because diversity was critical. Failure was highly likely, so you localised it. Failure in one area had no meaningful impact overall. Things like the Irish potato famine and the parsnip failures across France in the 1700s were relatively rare in history. Likewise, when industrialisation wiped out cottage industries, farms that had been very successful suddenly went bankrupt and mass starvation was common. The ability to task-switch and have a large number of small projects going was essential to life at the edges.

You're absolutely right, more ADHD would have indeed curbed the excesses. The industrial revolution caused huge problems by trying to do too much with too little diversity. Which eventually destroyed the economies built around the early mills, because the markets were too easy to undermine. There was no capacity to switch. But during the IR, the obsession with coal meant nobody really looked at alternative fuels or alternative activities. Economies became tightly constricted, which was devastating when it came to global warming, but equally devastating when it came to distributing metal-devouring bacteria (which did enormous damage to infrastructure) and radioactive particles (old mill areas are still unusually radioactive).

More ADHD wouldn't have eliminated the problem, but it would have diversified the solutions and would have diversified the markets, resulting in a much more robust, much healthier marketplace and a much more robust, much healthier population.

Uh, no. As in, 100% of gatherers would be ADHD. IF they weren't, you'd be extinct within the year. 20% of the hunters would also be ADHD, because over-harvesting was also going to wipe out your food source. 100% of your explorers would be ADHD, 100% of your experimenters would be AuDHD.

ADHD was essential to survival. If you didn't want to die out, you stuck the neurotypical outside so that the wolves and other nasties actually hunting (tigers wouldn't be present) would get them. Neurotypicals were the main threat to survival.

Wait 'till they hear about what's being stored at 2300 Empire Ave.

Though it's pretty clear that Hollywood is in self-destruct mode at this point so it's hard to blame the property owners when the economy is headed towards only making weapons and lattes.

Too bad The Message has shifted the business climate towards death merchants.

By time October comes around there may be new demand for the microwave pyrolysis methods of reducing plastics to petroleum feedstocks.

If the editors here are to be believed California has so much solar power and plastic waste that they don't know what to do with and gasoline is already approaching $8 there due to the foolish wars and foolish taxation.

IIRC the heavy plastic chains could help with the disastrous heavy crude shortage, especially. Chemical engineers, please correct.

Yup, there's also the time factor.

There's an important study of boys at age six being diagnosed with ADHD.

At 6 yrs 1 month the odds are 50% higher than at 6 yrs 11 months.

Because they're both "age 6" but in boys that year is huge in development and all metrics are against the age-appropriate standard.

If you're on WoW or Roblox all your waking hours you will have retarded development vs. somebody who is in the world.

So you'll be more ADHD for a 15 yr old if you mostly miss age 14.

"Trust the experts" and sheet.

No, it's more likely that girls and women learned to mask symptoms early for survival reasons.

If you look at hunter-gatherer societies, ADHD is paramount to survival because it avoids over-harvesting. Too little ADHD produces cultures prone to driving plants and/or animals extinct. ADHD is a critical stop-gap that prevents this. Studies show ADHD gatherers will not only collect more, they will do so in ways that cause far less damage, resulting in a far better second harvest and far better sustainability.

Into more modern times, ADHD was a valuable survival trait. Too little and you became vulnerable to diseases, pests, crop blight, etc. If you wanted a stable population, right the way through to the industrial era, you needed a high level of ADHD in the population.

It is only when neurotypical bosses decided that they had to micromanage everything and decided who lived and who died on the streets that you see ADHD symptoms suddenly and massively suppressed. But masking changes nothing. The levels will still be the same, they're just hidden.

It isn't. The under-diagnosis of girls is astronomical.

You are assuming ADHD is a new thing. No, it isn't. It is a survival thing. ADHD was critical in a very large percentage of the population for the bulk of the last 350,000 years. Without it, humanity would have gone extinct. It's merely not appropriate in a world in which neurotypicals make neurodiverse solutions a "bad thing".

They might drop by a little, but honestly not by much. Boys are mildly overdiagnosed for the reasons you give (but few places still medicate), girls are however massively underdiagnosed.

I never got myself into the whole "masculinity" obsession, even back in the 70s and 80s. The result of this was a discovery that computers launched me head-first through far fewer windows and pelted me with far fewer rocks. So, yeah, I was definitely seen as disposable though my childhood and teen years by pretty much everyone. (It's one reason anyone looking back at those as "golden years" is unlikely to win me over.)

Escapism is pretty much all I had at the time, and these days remains pretty much all I have - reality has grown far worse over the years and knowledge by the neurotypicals has not come with empathy but ammunition. There is guilt and shame in playing with creative writing or inventing, and the demons have got really bad on occasion, but you're right, it's not doing anyone any harm.

Both. It's best thought of as a positive feedback loop.

Nobody is that "stupid" in those departments.

The question should be what was the quid pro quo?

We can imagine what the PLA got out of it but what favor did Microsoft get?

And how high up the chain did it go? Who specifically approved the arrangement?

At least Microsoft probably has Windows 11 "backups" of the hard drives of anyone who might think of bringing charges.

Not sure if that strategy can be called stupid. Lots of other words apply.

"One Nation Under Blackmail" is a popular phrase.

in the free market businesses form and compete for consumer money with other businesses, it is the competition that is pro consumer. Unions, like any other political formation, exists to protect special interests, preventing businesses from competing to the best of their ability and pushing prices up - anti consumer.

Businesses are pro-consumer by definition, unless they are government subsidized. Being anti-union (as I am) is being as pro-consumer as possible. Unions push prices up, consumers want lower prices, unions are anti-consumer.

Yeah, so if this is the cover story what other heat signatures might they be looking for?

It's not immediately obvious to me but something we should understand.

Detecting Zizians would help prevent these forest fires but it would be quite hard for a satellite to do that.

The algorithm seems to have been failing to scale correctly, yes. On closer inspection, it looks like the billing software treated the bytes used as K used.