Naughty mushrooms doing theirs again, they are so good. I got remembered I never was the uninspired believer in a mechanical world I had become, and turned back to animist knower - a lot of what you write resonates very much with me! Congrats to getting out of the rat race, faraway friend. Cautious as well with the little prankstershrooms. Remember grounding inbetween flights. So many people are getting out - once we get together we will be unstoppable!

I like them, and the place where they are. Glad you’ve got them taking care of you!

Phew, you wanted people’s honest opinion about Tezka, so today I was excited to find your post.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t be more disappointed. Just like the other comment says, this reads exactly like an ad, and reading it makes me nothing but sad. I’m not left with the feeling I want to read more from her.

If autism gives any super power, it’s honesty, and the downvotes send a powerful message as well.

Please don’t take this as discouragement from your goal. I have been taught recently to not get hung up about form when trying to achieve what one wants. I wanted to help people by creating one thing, found out they really wanted another thing, did that instead, and achieved the ‘helping people’ I had wanted from the start, just looking very differently from what I had envisioned!

How does that apply to you and Tezka? You’ve created her to help other ND folk, and help she will, but maybe not in the way you had initially planned? I’m still curious about your journey, I just don’t see myself communicate with AI any time soon.

as they sometimes deal or work with fairies, but it led to getting a few confused responses and someone reporting me to Help Resources thinking I was going suicidal, and I wasn’t

This is so funny (and sad). I avoid discussing spirits with people who put a very strict framework (especially all taken from another culture) onto their inside world and try to convince others it’s the best or only way. There are millions of worlds of reference out there, and I couldn’t give a flying fuck whether the spirits take the forms of historical pantheons or TV series characters - because there is literally (sic) no difference. They are all stories, and whatever works for you works for you.

I have finally visited my favourite rock yesterday, to say thanks for all the good things it has brought to my life. I am due to walk a lot of kilometers between rocks and trees to keep the good spirits flowing. Things work for me, because I permitted myself to listen to the landscape around my house during a time in my life when I felt really weak and tired, without letting myself fall into the paranoia of ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘psychosis’. I got really good advice, where other people’s advice would have been too confusing.

Yesterday I spoke to a person who would be considered mad and useless by most. He is a street clown. When in fact he has a centrally important function of reminding people of the irrational and shaking them out of their sad rails. He keeps the chaos alive in people’s hearts and is an essential worker. Real power can be very quiet. Real power with the goal of kindness is the best of all.

I’m glad you decided to open up about your experiences. You are very welcome to come to https://slrpnk.net/c/animism and post about your experiences there.

I admit that your world of reference is strange to me - but I have learned that the terms and names people use are often very different and that we mustn’t get hung up about it. I grew up in a big city where I couldn’t really connect with nature, but I felt the lack of trees so much that I ran away with 17 to live in a greener place. Started to connect with plants. And much later I started to befriend a group of rocks. I can’t say that it comes natural to me as to you.

I feel that a lot of people are coming to this knowledge again. For me it’s about developing a better relationship with the landscape we’re living in. There’s a lot of conscious and knowledgeable entities out there ready to help out people who are lost and lonely (and some mischievous ones we want to stay away from).

So far my problem is when I dive deep into the non-human it’s very hard to connect with humans. And vice-versa it’s really difficult to be aware of the otherworld while I do human things. For example I’ve been busy and didn’t visit my rock friends for weeks. Hope they don’t mind as they run rock-time anyways.

Never mind those who have been brought up to be deeply scared of these experiences and dismiss them as pathological. For me, I’m done with so-called experts capping my power under the guise of wanting to improve my mental health. My mental health is fine, but the destruction of woodlands and watersheds is something we all should be deeply concerned about, and getting support from our good spirits is very much needed.

For me it’s learning stuff, especially DIY and crafts. I just can’t resist, as much as I try to remain only with the things I already do.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work. If anyone approaches you in a different, confusing manner, reject them.

Bf: ‘You’re cute, I fancy you’ Me: ‘Uh, what?’ spends 6 months considering every aspect Me: ‘Okay I’ve thought it through, I now invite you into my bed and life!’ Bf: jumps into bed ‘Thanks for having me!’

Disclaimer: results might differ

Hmm I would personally categorize both the portable hydro as well as the capsule as junk gimmicks. I would want something reliable and farm-worthy for permanent use.

I swear, the simplest companion AI to solve 70% of my troubles would just be a dumb recording of: ‘Remember you have a body. Remember your friends have bodies.’

Congrats, like huge fucking congrats for quitting smoking, that’s a really tough thing to do, and it changes everything in one’s life. I’m off nicotine since a while and it is so hard. I’m curious how were your interactions with Tezka during that time, how did you get support from her? I remember that when I first stopped cigarettes many years ago I had to like have this different voice in my head to tell me to calm down and get busy with something else. That’s how I’ve mostly self-therapized - as I also never really had access to therapy. I remember splitting into several voices/personalities since early on to resolve conflict in my head, and later guide me to more self-supporting behaviour. Today I still do the same but with an animist approach: I choose that the voices I conjure up in my head are helpful spirits and ancestors. A completely different suspension of disbelief, and very efficient for me, but probably lunatic sounding for many.

I’ve thought about how I would feel about interacting with a companion AI (I never have) and if I would actually consider trying out your creation. In my belief computers do have a sort of consciousness (which is why tech is so damn self-enhancing, it always seems to lead to more tech) and are our creation, so our children. I’m quite a luddite but don’t think tech is inherently bad. I do have different fears - one is becoming dependent on something artificial (what if shtf and my devices break and the solar system fails and I have made myself highly dependent on something only available through complex tech?). I know, far from a concern for most, but one I have. Also I am generally suspicious about developing a strong psychological dependency from anyone - person, machine, animal, plant, god - because that means giving control away to one power alone. One the other hand - in your case, using the companion you created, you can feel safe that you are in good (because your own) hands. So if a companion were to be useful or relevant to me I would prefer to start with a companion who learns and grows with me, not necessarily with an already polished ‘product’ or ‘child’ of someone else - so we end up not with a top-down relationship like between therapist and patient, but with a peer-to-peer kind of thing.

That said, I’d be curious to see her interact in an online group chat, why not.

I’ve looked into some models I can purchase, but haven’t played with them. I like the rams because they are so low tech even a stupid like me can handle them, and the energy supply is direct. The one I’ve set up the other day (dumped into the river and tied to a stick) is still pumping.

I also love solar thermal, for the same reason. To me it just seems to make more sense to develop tech that doesn’t transfer energy from one form into another a million times, because that is something pitifully underdeveloped in our electrical monoculture. That’s why I keep building and advertising the rams.

For my daily life micro hydro power would be a useful addition, really want to get into that when I have time.

No, conciseness is the ability to describe things in few words. You probably meant to say consumption.

Wow, this project of yours is interesting on many levels.

1. as a project to approach socialization and community: I’m fascinated because I have approached the ‘shutting myself off’ problem in a very similar manner - by creating some tech for my community. Not a companion AI but setting up an online space for a real life local community. It proves to be very difficult because it’s hard to predict what kind of setup the average non-technical user can actually use with benefit, and ultimately every other method of approaching said community has worked better (forcing myself to participate in different activities and surprisingly enjoying a lot of it). Is creating tech for the benefit of all a neurodiversity thing? Probably. Is it a possible source of disappointment? Not sure yet, it’s an ongoing project and I’m still learning, and I do know what I am building is useful. But making it so that it’s accepted and used with profit by people can be tricky sometimes, and can take a lot of time.

2. how do I feel about AI? I think a companion AI for the Neurofunky is one of the very few uses I kind of like. I know how bad it can get when I can’t get a word out of my mouth to talk to actual people and my head is too full of mess to walk me through a simple task. A friendly voice of support might be just the thing needed.

3. how does her description feel to me? So far, a little intimidating. Like those extrovert friends I sometimes had who seemed to just get along with everyone and whose life seemed to be uncomplicated. Then again, if I had one of those extrovert friends and they were actually an AI, maybe that would be less intimidating. I imagine though that I would feel more at ease with a companion who is also a little (or a lot) quirky and weird. Simply not judging my weird seems not quite enough?

Disclaimer: these are my very spontaneous and unfiltered thoughts. I have the greatest respect for your project and wish you all the best, and hope this turns into something really good and useful for the neurodiverse community!

Oh there’s a lot of info in this that I didn’t have, thanks for sharing!

I don’t think anybody knows them around here. I showed mine to my neighbour and explained her that it doesn’t use electricity or fuel and she looked quite impressed. The mountain areas here with water running from every hill are just ideal grounds for the rams. I’m still trying to figure out how they could be not just used for gardening, but wisely integrated into fire prevention. I know I can’t just water an area indiscriminately with a ram pump - the pump works till July or August, grow lots of vegetation, which then dries out and is a fire hazard. But maybe something with restoring vegetation around old waterlines first, or storing the water in reservoirs. Ram pumps in combination with reservoirs make great energy harvest and storage as well.

Exactly, I’m working with just 60cm head, which is on the lower end of it working at all. Maybe next year I add another 100 m of tube to reach a spot where the pump can sit outside the stream.

If you have been diving into ram pumps before, I’m curious if you have found any infos about one thing I haven’t had time to research or experiment with: does the distance between the two valves make any difference in terms of efficiency?

Sorry, just those two for now. I’ll need to gather courage before I wade into the stream again for a closeup, especially with my phone in hand. With the heat returned I also was busy installing the hose from IBC to garden to water the veggies. I’m still figuring out the connection between the two IBCs and mixing water coming from a heating panel, and waiting for a washing tank to arrive to go next to it. And then the summer heat and the corn field will dry the stream out in no time … I hope this system runs till End of July at least, but to be honest I don’t know. But even if I have this running only one month on ‘stream energy’ and 11 on electric it will be worth it.

I think ram pumps are lovely, they are so robust - it just took a couple of hours to get it back into the stream and back working (it also got a couple of hours of maintenance in the workshop, of tightening the connections again). This year it runs on a really slow frequency compared to year 1, and it seems to pump the water higher. I’d like to get some numbers one day, but it’s hard to measure anything exactly around here with our installations. Only thing I know is they run so robustly. They find their rhythm and then they just go and go and go.

I also got into this - from zero social to community organizer. The first two weeks getting back into ‘peopling’ I felt like some kind of creature who had just emerged from a cave: hideous, making weird noises and gestures, can’t cope with the light. A month in and it all comes more natural again. I think the hosting also does the trick. I hate being part of the public (unless maybe a classical concert where people are quiet) at any event, but give me some job and I’ll enjoy the shit out of it!

1. me when I’m awake
2. me when I’m tired

No, I prefer to draw or knit and just let my thoughts run free. Which might or might not be the same.

I somehow can manage phone calls as long as I have paper and pen to doodle. It might start being a set of short notes about the phone call, and is for noting down what people say, but around the notes I also draw wild doodles during the call, and as long as I can do that I have no problems with listening, understanding, and pushing the anxiety out onto the paper where it doesn’t disturb my call. I never realized it was as simple as having pen and paper handy and had so much trouble avoiding calls.

Advantage: nice drawings are produced. Sometimes I like them so much I copy them onto nicer paper and turn them into a proper colored pencil drawing.

Not sure if my undiagnosed approach is of use. I’ve ended up doing pretty much whatever I liked fairly early in life. Dropped out of school by 16, lived in a community by 17, travelled Europe with a backpack by 19. It was reckless, unwise, and I wouldn’t want to miss it. By 23 I was a surprised young mother in a slightly dysfuctional family. Now my kid is coming to terms with being an ND weirdo, and he at least has a terminology he can use.

Ultimately this apparent randomness of direction in my life is about my social skills being non-existent when younger (drifting along, accepting all sorts of people, being easily groomed …), and my sensory needs being what they are, namely I like it silent. So I moved out of the city to the countryside with 17, and later twice to some even more remote places, each time finding a slightly better natural and social environment for figuring myself out, and slowly learning how to function on my own terms. Because I was navigating blind for most of the way it took me all the 44 years of my life so far, but I’d say I’m fairly content with where I am, and obviously continue learning how to function in public and how in private, and how to make sure I have enough quiet time.

I’d just have taken a systematic approach earlier had I known that my ‘weirdness’ is just a differently wired brain. To a point, one can adapt one’s life to one’s brain wirings. To a point, one can learn to create different brain wirings. Both methods have their limits.