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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Work out a lot, enough to be buff

    Respectfully, I don’t think you necessarily have to be buff; you just have to be able to handle physical violence if it happens to come your way, and confident in your ability to do so. Because if you know that you “can take 'em” then you will have less reason to care about what they think of you, and less reason to fear that their bullying might ever go that far. Thus, IMHO, something like training in martial arts can be a very effective substitute for “becoming buff”. But “buff” without necessarily looking it can also be good enough, in some cases.

    I was never “buff” in school. In fact, from all outward appearances, I looked every bit the scrawny nerd that everyone always assumed I was. And I was a nerd… but I was also strong. I carried a book bag around throughout middle school and high school that contained all of my schoolbooks. I didn’t go to my locker; as I saw it, there was no reason to. I literally tore through bookbag after bookbag over the years. By about my junior year or so, it was a sports bag that held twice as many books as any backpack – because it kind’a had to be, since that’s just how many books the school had issued to me that year – but I was nonetheless easily manhandling that bag like it was paper mâché.

    I don’t recall the rest of the context of the conversation, but I remember this one football dude commenting about my sports bag, something along the lines of, “Yeah, whatever… it’s not that heavy.” So I called him out on his comment; I said, “Feel free to pick it up.” Having received the challenge, he certainly wasn’t going to back down – especially not from the scrawny nerd. He puffed himself up, walked down the aisle between the desks until he was towering right over me, and wrapped his big ol’ hand around the handle. He stood up with it by his side and paused in that position for a moment. He then very quietly put it back down on the floor and walked away without another word.

    (Morgan Freeman voiceover) It was that heavy.

    But you don’t even have to be “strong” necessarily; in some cases, what matters most is confidence. Later that same year, another bully – not another football player, just a rando dude who had decided he didn’t like me for some reason – told me to watch myself, because he was going to follow me home and (oh, so trite, reflecting upon it now) “beat me up.” Well, I knew who I was and I knew what I could do. Without even a hint of fear or hesitance, I responded to him, “Okay. When and where?”

    He didn’t show.

    Bullies are all talk and no show, especially when they’re alone and especially when you can confidently call them out on their crap. If they’re “just” making fun of you, do your best to ignore it; it’s not worth your time or energy to give them even the slightest bit of attention. But consider making an effort to get to a point where you’re confident in what you can do, if you should ever need to defend yourself… and then, never show them fear. They will usually back down and leave you alone when confidently confronted. And if they don’t back down… well, you’re confident for a reason. Defend yourself if you have to – but only if they start the fight. There’s never any point in picking a fight yourself.



  • zarmanto@lemmy.worldtoAutism@lemmy.worldUsefull Graphic
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    1 year ago

    This chart hits me hard, in so many ways.

    There are certain traits common to neurotypicals which I have always considered to be detrimental to not only that person in whom I’ve observed the trait, but to society as a whole – but because I’m the one who is considered “different” I usually find that it’s easier to just keep my trap shut, rather than be browbeaten by NTs for my strong opinions.

    As a very obvious example: “Highly developed morals” is tucked away in the corner of the Autism/Giftedness sub-quadrant. I’m going to make the obvious assumption that Ms. Higgins Lee clearly did not intend to imply that only neurodivergents hold that trait… but, anecdotally, I have nonetheless on more than one occasion observed that far too many people who are considered by the larger populace to be “normal” not only appear to lack that trait, but actively despise anyone who holds such high morals.

    NTs so often derisively label us as “autistic” or “neurodivergent” or (my personal favorite) “nerds”… like these are all somehow bad things – but maybe society as a whole needs to reevaluate the entire notion of what constitutes “good” and “bad”.

    Sorry… am I being too divergent? Should I shut my trap… yet again?




  • I’m a long time Trekkie; I wasn’t alive yet when TOS originally aired on TV, (I mean, that was the '60s – I’m old, but I’m not that old!) but I grew up watching it in syndication. I also watched TNG, DS9, Voyager and (ahem) most of Enterprise, back when these shows first aired on broadcast television. The notion of binge watching wasn’t even a thing, yet. That said… I’m somewhat in the same boat as you for some of the newer shows, simply because I haven’t taken the time to sit down and consume all of “NuTrek” quite yet, so I do get where you’re coming from. (The rest of “life” sometimes gets in the way of good entertainment, eh?)

    But at some point you have to a acknowledge that you’re fighting a two-front war. You say that you don’t want to watch a series that is incomplete or at risk of an abrupt cancellation, which I certainly get… but at the same time, you say that you don’t want other people who have watched it to spoil it for you, while still having the option to discuss the shows you have watched with those same people. These are largely incompatible whims; you’re kind’a going to have to just choose a path and accept that there will occasionally be thorns in the bushes along that path, regardless of which one you choose.

    That is to say, as I see it, you have three basic options:

    • Either watch things according to your preferences at whatever pace suits you, and accept that the occasional spoiler is going to be inevitable,
    • Or binge everything that’s ever been released as quickly as you can, and accept that you’re going to end up watching and investing in some shows that may not last as long as you’d like,
    • Or simply pull out of the discussions as soon as you realize that a spoiler is coming… or maybe even isolate yourself from those discussions entirely, until such time as you’re comfortable with your level of Trek knowledge.

    Some combination of those options is probably going to be more or less palatable to you. (Personally, I go through spurts of all three modes at different times.)

    As an aside: shows being cancelled prematurely is by no means unique to the Age of Streaming. The original Star Trek series is a prime example… but more modern examples exist as well, including non-Trek franchises, like Firefly.


  • Welcome to the fold! Be warned: coders tend to be a weird bunch of folks.

    The most important lesson I ever learned as I was starting out in software engineering came from my Design Principles teacher, during my short stint at a community college. That was a class which was technically not associated with a specific programming language, though the same teacher also taught various programming classes in different languages. She also wrote her own textbook for that Design class, actually… I still have my prepublication copy of it somewhere, that she had handed out to the entire class for free that semester. To this day, I still have a great deal of respect for that teacher. But I digress.

    The lesson I learned from her was this: Programming languages are just tools like any other. Tools come and go over the years. The skills that you learn which will last beyond whatever language you’re learning and using right now are going to be things like how to construct good logic and how to structure a meaningfully intuitive user interface. These are the things that you should focus on perfecting first and foremost, rather than the syntactical nuances of any given language. If you have a good design at the outset, everything else should fall into place much more easily.




  • I can’t really say from personal experience – mostly because I’m quite certain that I would offend someone in-so-doing – but I have an idea that might offer some insights:

    There’s a link in the right hand sidebar of this community to helpful resources; from there is a link to Autism tests. Click on the AQ-10 test, and take it. After you finish, look back over your answers, see if you can guess which questions would have made your score lower, and change those answers accordingly. Play around with it a bit, and maybe even think of it as a game. If you get your score down to zero… that’s roughly how the most “neurotypical” person would have answered. That’s not to say that all NTs will answer that way, but it gives you an idea of the traits that suggest neurotypicality, with the opposing answer obviously suggesting neurodivergent traits. Analytically, this also means that the more strongly you gravitate towards the ND trait answers, the less “typical” is your natural behavior.

    You could also do this with the 50 question version of the test, but I imagine that would take a lot more time and effort with a much more limited return on investment, as compared to just doing the 10… but even as I’m writing this, I’m finding myself tempted to go do it anyway. That’s probably one of the ND traits in me.

    (Alternatively, if you’re familiar with the structure of HTML, you can easily figure out all of the answers from the page source.)



  • The “I don’t know how to…” questions are mostly answered by doing exactly what you’re already doing… playing through those main questlines at the top of the list. But don’t hesitate to explore the secondary quests; there can be some good stuff there, too.

    One of the things I like the most about NMS is that there’s no real sense of urgency to any of it, other than what you imbue it with yourself… so picking and choosing whichever quest strikes your fancy at the moment can be quite satisfying.

    Also, I suggest that you don’t stress too much about units; if you can’t afford something right now, just look into it later. Even if you never read a single spoiler, in time you will no doubt discover a few methods on your own to obtain an overabundance of units.



  • A while back I started a Permadeath save specifically for the purpose of finishing off that last Steam task… so lately, I’ve mostly just been beefing up that save. Got a crap-ton of upgrades to my primary ship and Multitool, started a settlement, upgraded my Minotaur and got an S-class freighter – which I don’t even have on my original save with >500 hours!

    So now, I’m actually finding it next to impossible to repeat the process, and find an S-class freighter for my other saves.



  • zarmanto@lemmy.worldtoAutism@lemmy.worldShould I get tested?
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    1 year ago

    Full disclosure: I have not been officially tested by a doctor, myself, because depending upon your insurance, it can be pretty expensive. So money could certainly be one very valid reason to not get tested. On the other side of that, my wife and I did choose to have our kids tested, so that they can take advantage of options that such a diagnosis opens up within the public school system. You obviously aren’t looking towards that path, yourself, but that doesn’t mean it is entirely without value.

    That said, I did take the online test, which is primarily targeted at an adult audience and which (unsurprisingly) showed very strong indicators that I’m also autistic. I would suggest starting there. The way I look at it, knowledge is a tool; you get to decide how (or if) to use that tool. And when the barrier to obtaining that knowledge is low, it’s worth the effort to step forward and see where that knowledge takes you.

    The website with online tests is linked under helpful resources in the collection of links in the sidebar, but I’ll also go ahead and link directly to that website right here for your convenience: https://embrace-autism.com/autism-tests/

    The ten question test is merely a subset of the fifty question test; if you’re at all distressed about the process, feel free to start at the short test. (I took both, and they both scored me extremely highly.)


  • This feels to me a lot like blaming the kids when dad comes home drunk. Some of the MCU movies have been absolutely great… some, not so much. Likewise for the Disney+ shows, for that matter. Just let each of them stand on their own two feet and stop casually casting blame on content that is at best only peripherally related.

    And for crying out loud… stop force injecting political agendas into a movie which offer no meaningful contribution to the actual plot. I promise you, that’s done far more damage to movies than any of the Disney+ content.



  • Consider adding Ars Technica to your list. They aren’t specifically focused on Apple news, but a couple of their journalists do routinely offer some fairly balanced reporting on Apple affairs. Plus, their Android expert is constantly comparing Android devices to Apple devices… and he very rarely gives Android a total win in any given comparison. I think it’s quite amusing to read, actually.