souperk

TLDR; I would like to study the Fediverse and I am looking for recommendations and connections with like minded people/researchers.

I have a CS degree and I have aspirations for an academic career. In the past, I was interested in programming languages and the theory of computation. The past year I have been more interested in social issues like isolation, freedom of press, misinformation, and access to information. I have been following the fediverse closely and I truly believe in its potential.

My goal is to study social media as a computational system, how a bunch of people interacting with each other can generate reliable information. Topics I have been thinking about include: How neurodivergency awareness has been booming through social media, how scientific research can be done in a global collaborative environment instead of an institution focused, and how misinformation could be combatted with small interconnected social circles like mastodon.

I have been considering getting a master's degree in a related field like social computing. The Human Technology Interaction program of Eindhoven University seems interesting, especially the Behavioural and Social Computing track. Also, there is the option of diving into a PhD right away.

Either way I am broke right now, so I should probably start studying on my own while I try to create a safety net that would allow me to make my next step in 2025.

So, if you made it through my autistic info dump, I thank you and I was hoping to get your feedback. While any feedback is appreciated, I have the following questions in my mind:

1. Are there any other terms like social computing that would help me understand the field?
2. Are there any researchers you would I suggest I follow?
3. Any books or papers recommendations?
4. If you are a researcher/student with similar concerns, would like to have a chat? You can find my matrix handle on my profile.
5. Any other universities I should look into?

Last but not least, let me know if you are interested for me to make a follow-up post with any information I gather.

The title says it all. It's November and I have yet to wear anything but shorts and a t-shirt. It's 25C outside and whenever I go for a walk I sweat like a pig. This time of the year I should be taking out my heavy coat, jeans and a jacket should be the bare minimum.

I am located in Athens, Greece where the weather is usually nice but not this nice...

It's like a daily reminder of the doom that has to follow. How are you coping with this?

Tonight my sister had an asthma attack and her inhaler ran out. It was late and the nearest open pharmacy was 3km away. Our options were:

1. Walk 42 minutes to the pharmacy.
2. Wait 40 minutes, walk 10 minutes to the bus station, take the hourly night bus (pray the route isn't skipped), and walk 15 minutes to the pharmacy.
3. Drive 8 minutes.

Fortunately, I have a car, so that was an option. However, tomorrow I won't sleep at home and my sister doesn't have a license, and maybe that happens the next time she forgets to refill... We live in Athens the capital of Greece, not a rural area, not a small town, but the fucking capital.

Car dependency sucks.

Edit: While ambulances are an option, no matter how unreliable they may be, having to escalate, when it shouldn't be necessary, is increasing the load of an already overloaded health care sector.

I understand that I have to relax every now and then, however I am really struggling with it, being constantly in an endless loop of:

1. Having a lot of energy and doing a bunch of stuff for a couple of weeks.
2. Getting exhausted to the point I cannot control my impulsions and wreck my daily routine
3. Try to rest only to fall in a depressive state for a couple of weeks.
4. Collect myself up and repeat from step 1.

Trying to do low effort activities like watching a series or playing video games, is addictive, I stay up late without being able to stop, and end up more tired.

The hobbies I like require focus, and that's what I am trying to avoid. Examples include programming and chess.

Going out with friends is nice but drains my social energy, after a couple of weekends out I need to stay in.

Chores sometimes work, but other times I feel guilty about the state of cleanliness of my home.

So, how do you relax/rest? Got a magic recipe? Are you struggling like me?

Edit: I just want to say this community is awesome, thanks for the support.

Greetings from Athens, Greece,

A city with no sidewalks, no bicycle routes, lots of car traffic everywhere and awful public transport.

I was walking with my sister today and she found me walking in the middle of the street dangerous. So, I explained that this is my way of fucking with drivers. They have to slow down and wait for me to make way for them to pass me.

I usually do this in the neighbourhood streets where drivers usually are not speeding, so I will be able to dodge them in time if I need to.

All this discussion got me wondering what else I could be doing.

I was wondering what other methods people are employing. So, how are you fucking cars? Are you organized? Are you a rogue individual?

At some point I was searching for an open source car pooling service. I realized there weren't any so I started developing one on my free weekends.

While I haven't made much progress so far, I have been observing how much as a society we have been relying on route planning software. Also, I cannot overlook the effect of such services on the planet (see Amazon, Uber, and many more).

With all this as a context, I have been asking myself the following questions:

1. What would be the impact on society (especially inequality) if there were open source alternatives to such services?
2. What would a common core look like? (i.e. what is the WordPress equivalent for transportation/route planning, is OpenStreetMaps enough?)
3. What domain specific knowledge would it require to build such a software? (while in university I researched about the travelling salesman problem, anything else?)
4. What safety protocols would we need to develop when there is no corporation insuring users? (i.e. if I order something from Amazon and it's dead on arrival, I get either a refund or a replacement shipped to me for free)
5. What's the proper terminology to describe what I am describing?

Feel free to add any questions of your own. I created this post because I am free this afternoon and I wondered what it would like to discuss this with strangers instead of pondering on my own.

Edit: My free afternoon was taken away by an incident I had to respond to, it's now late o'clock here, but I will do my best to reply to all you magnificent people.

Hi,

I realized as an adult that it's possible I have it and I want to learn more about it, both in order to better manage my symptoms, but also because I like learning. So my question to you is what resources are you using?

Personally, I prefer short articles and videos. Here is my list:

1. Russell Barkley, PhD - Keep an eye for the weekly research updates.
2. ADDitude Magazine - Their How to choose a professional to diagnose your ADHD article was super useful to me, but overall they have a bunch of good articles to read, and a youtube channel.
3. Broadcasting ADHD Europe - Found them literally today, not much to share.
4. How to ADHD - I have watched a bunch of videos, they are interesting and fun to watch. I am not sure how much I trust the information in this channel, please let me know if you have an opinion.
5. Olivia Lutfallah - Mostly shorts.

Edit: I am reading ADHD 2.0, I highly recommend it. My favourite quote so far is "we shoot ourselves in the foot, only to discover a more efficient method to extract the bullet".