If you’re old enough to have voted in 2016, you probably remember "The Needle." A cutesy little graphic from the New York Times, it was meant to swing back and forth over a Republican-to-Democrat gauge as vote tallies came in. Many of us stayed up late into the night, watching that needle, as if through our undivided attention and sheer force of will we could push it to move the other way.

In hindsight, I think we all regret the time we spent anguishing over it. 

I’ve already coached you through making a plan for how you’re going to deal with election night anxiety. Today, I’d like to offer a more specific option—one that I will be choosing for myself: Do not obsess over returns as they come in. Take care of yourself, in the best possible sense of that phrase. Accept the fact that, once your vote is cast (and any election-day volunteering is done), your further attention to the election is not going to affect the outcome. And then go to bed early.

Results probably won’t be in on election night anyway

I understand the temptation to watch the returns and see what we’re going to be in for over the next four years. But remember that for most of the history of this nation, instant election results were not available. You had to wait for ballots to be counted and for the results to announced through the methods of the day. At best, you might wake up the next morning and read it in the newspaper. 

These days, data can fly across the internet as fast as electrons can travel, but that doesn’t mean the votes will all be counted that much faster. Some states, including my home state (and swing state) of Pennsylvania, are not permitted by law to even start counting mail-in ballots until election day. Workers in these states will go as fast as they can, but they’re not going to be done by the time polls close. We had to wait an agonizing four days to know who won the 2020 election; in 2000, due to legal challenges and hanging chads (iykyk), the wait was a grueling month.

Have a nice time instead

So make your plans now. Unplug. The weather will probably be nice (too nice; thanks climate change!) so maybe you should go for a hike with the family. Literally touch grass. Have a special dinner. Play a board game as a family, or watch a movie. And then go to bed. Whatever election night brings, you can enjoy (or not) finding out what it is in the morning.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGATE: If you've recently been laid off and have started the arduous process of looking for a new job, you've probably seen them on networking platforms like LinkedIn: postings for roles that are 30 days old, maybe more, with suspiciously wide salary ranges. They usually have hundreds, or even thousands, of hopeful applicants vying for the same position, but if you do a quick cross-check and notice that the role isn't posted on the company's actual website -- or any of their social media pages -- you should probably stop drafting that cover letter, because it's possible they're not hiring at all. "Ghost jobs," or ads for positions that aren't actually open, are a common phenomenon in the tech industry, which has been plagued by layoffs and budget cuts over recent years. As unemployed workers struggle to regain their footing, recruiters and career coaches who spoke with SFGATE warned that these fake jobs posted by real companies serve multiple, sometimes insidious purposes. According to a 2024 survey from MyPerfectResume, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled. While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it's also used to commit psychological warfare: 25% said ghost jobs helped companies gauge how replaceable their employees were, while 23% said it helped make the company appear more stable during a hiring freeze. Another damning 2024 report from Resume Builder said that 62% companies posted them specifically to make their employees feel replaceable. They also made ads to "trick overworked employees" into believing that more people would be brought on to alleviate their overwhelming workload. After interviewing 1,641 hiring managers, Resume Builder researchers found that 40% of employers posted fake job listings in 2024, and that three in 10 currently had ghost jobs listed. The idea to post them mostly trickled down from HR, followed by senior management and executives, their June 2024 article continued. Though the listings were posted on multiple hiring platforms, the majority of them appeared on LinkedIn and the companies' websites. Evidence suggests this trend is taking hold throughout the Bay Area, too. A collaborative document circulating online reveals a growing list of employers accused of posting ghost jobs. Many of them, it turns out, are tech companies with offices based in California.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The most important part of your computer, if you had to choose just one, would be the central processing unit (CPU). It's the primary hub (or "brain"), and it processes the instructions that come from programs, the operating system, or other components in your PC.

As companies invest more and more resources into developing artificial intelligence tools, the tech is becoming ever more integrated into daily life—potentially, anyway. Last year, Mashable considered ways people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder might benefit from using artificial intelligence tools. It’s a timely topic, given that ADHD medication has been in short supply for the past several years, and I'd like to add to the conversation with some perspective of my own, as I, like up to 5% of American adults, experience symptoms of ADHD.

But first: The most important tip for dealing with ADHD is to listen to your doctor. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a medical condition, and the treatment for ADHD is generally medication and psychological counseling. While AI programs are no substitutes for Adderall, they can help some people suffering from attention deficit in powerful ways. Below are seven tips for using AI that might help you overcome the task paralysis and other executive function problems that come with ADHD.

(Bonus: Because many symptoms of ADHD are present in neurotypical people, if to a lesser degree, these organizational hacks work for normies too.)

Use AI to estimate how long it will take to complete a task

This one is a huge for me. Like many people who have ADHD, I often find it difficult to start doing something if I don’t know how long it will take to finish each step. Even though I know I can estimate time-to-completion myself, asking an AI helper something like, “how long will it take to get my oil changed?” helps. By outsourcing the preliminary mental task of “figure out how long the thing takes,” I’m better able to mentally fit the actual task into the day. Otherwise it remains this abstract “thing I know I should do” that often ends up being neglected.

Use AI to write the first draft of emails and other messages

Even though I write professionally, sometimes I get hung up on correspondence. It’s usually the most mundane messages —“thank you” notes, basic requests—that trip me up the most. Having AI take a first crack really helps out. Using an AI to manage your email allows you to describe the message you want to send in only broad terms. The AI then spits out the text, eliminating the anxiety of staring at a blank page. I usually end up rewriting the AI’s message completely, so I’m not sure it saves time, but starting something is usually the hard part for me, and it’s easier to edit a message than create one.

Use AI to create better “to-do” lists

Anyone who wants to better manage their time will be advised to make lists, but if you have ADHD, you might be paralyzed by the process of list-making itself, asking yourself, “how should I prioritize tasks?” or “how do I know what I need to put on this list?” AI can help you by instantly providing as many sample lists as you can imagine, and can also help you order your list in different ways until you find one that works for you.

Use AI to repeatedly explain things

Having ADHD can make learning new things difficult, and even the most patient human teacher will eventually tire of explaining a concept over and over again. But AI doesn’t. You can ask it to tell you the same thing in as many different ways as possible until it sinks in. A word of warning here: The current technology for consumer AI doesn't always provide accurate information, so make sure you manually check everything factual against another source.

Use AI to synthesize information in different ways

You can use artificial intelligence to break down information in ways that make them more palatable to you, whether that means transforming a long article into digestible bullet points, or asking it to provide additional information relative to the topic. Again, this information might not be 100% accurate, but it can give you a starting point for further research.

Use AI to organize your personal relationships

This one has tricky moral and/or ethical implications, but you can also use AI to take over some of the responsibility of keeping in contact with friends and family. This is a common problem with people with ADHD, who often don’t answer texts or emails for the same reason they don’t pay the light bill.

You can already set regular reminders to “text Mom,” but AI allows you to do more than that. I spoke to Daniel (he asked that I not use his last name) about how far CommuniqAI, a communications scheduling app he created, can automate your social life. The platform uses AI chatbots to "look at your messaging conversations with your friends, family, and business contacts, and then generally come up with something that you can quickly say to those people,” Daniel said.

I asked if it would be possible to fully automate my online social life—to just tell the AI, “keep up a friendly relationship with my squash partner Gary, without me being involved,” and according to Daniel, CommuniqAI (and presumably other AI tools) could be used that way, although he doesn’t recommend it. It’s designed to either remind you to send a message, or to composes one for you to approve and send. But according to Daniel, a user could disable that functionality, and it would, “go on its way on your behalf.”

“But these are people who you value [and] trust, and I don’t know that you want to have an AI completely responding on your behalf without any of your prior knowledge,” he said.

I agree: It’s troubling. But I’m not judging. If you think this would help, give it a shot—or just use AI to remind you to text your dad every once in awhile.

Use AI to break complex tasks into manageable small steps

For many people with ADHD, completing bigger, longer-term projects or multi-step tasks can be difficult or impossible. Often this task paralysis comes because we don’t know how to start—if there’s any confusion or ambiguity about the first step, it can lead to complete inaction, a sense of “I can’t even think about this huge thing.”

AI is excellent at helping you clear this hurdle, if you use it right—it usually offers very general advice first, but its endless patience allows you to eventually achieve better responses.

For example, I asked an AI chatbot to tell me how to buy a house. My prompt:

I would like to buy a house. Break down the process for me, in very small steps, focusing on specific actions, along with an estimate of how much time each item will take to accomplish.

Its initial response was less than helpful. It provided a list of ten broad steps. Step one was:

Determine your budget: Figure out how much you can afford to spend on a house based on your income, debts, and expenses. Estimated time: 1-2 weeks.

Sure. I’ll just “determine my budget.”

I asked it to break down how to do this exactly, and it began with:

Collect all necessary financial documents.

Still not good enough. I asked it what financial documents to start with and how to get them, and eventually arrived at:

Contact your employer’s HR department: The HR department of your employer should be able to provide you with copies of your pay stubs.

It took a bit, but “collect your pay stubs” is a good, actionable first step. The next step could be “Compose an email to my HR department asking for my pay stubs,” and you’re off on a home-buying adventure.

This step-by-step approach seems like something people without ADHD can do easily (I wouldn’t know), and such “break it down for me even more” requests are the kind of thing flesh-and-blood intelligences will get annoyed by. Luckily, AI doesn’t judge you. And no one should judge you for using AI to help deal with your ADHD either.