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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 27th, 2023

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  • If someone showed me pictures of a tropical beach and said “what picture of?” I would say “vacation”. No question. I don’t care what’s happening in the picture, or how he formulated the question.

    I think the difference isn’t big picture thinking or whatever the presenter was saying, it’s whether you rely on internal context when socializing or external. Most people rely on a large amount of shared internal context. A tropical vacation is a prototypical vacation and a picture of a tropical beach is a prototypical signifier of a tropical vacation. That’s all internal context because it’s in my brain not in the picture. If someone is showing me this picture, it’s more like we’re exchanging memes that we both know so we can vibe. He’s not asking me a genuine question or expecting real thought.

    Prioritizing external context is a big part of the autistic spectrum. In a technical context, it’s important to prioritize external context so that you’re not blinded by your assumptions. In a social scenario, the focus on shared internal context smoothes over missteps and misunderstandings because no one is analysing what is said, they’re just responding to shared queues and vibing.

    Also a work lesson on thinking styles is a primarily social setting. Maybe you were actually trying to learn, but the main purpose is to relax and socialize with your peers. The presentation is just there almost as an ice breaker introducing (hopefully fun) ideas to talk about after, serving as a basis for “memes”. For example, later if someone does something silly because he missed something obvious you could joke about missing the “big picture” to ease the tension and have a laugh about the situation with a reference to the presentation. So again no one is expecting anyone to actually analyse something or find solutions. They’re just vibing and sharing “memes”.

    It feels like you were treating this like a technical meeting where you’re invited for your knowledge and skill. The questions asked were something that your considered seriously and tried to give an accurate answer to. You were taken aback because no one else was taking things seriously and they seemed to be somehow “correct”. They were correct, it was a social situation and they were vibing, that’s the average neurotypical behaviour in this situation. Analysing isn’t the average nt behaviour in this situation.

    I don’t know if I’ve been helpful. I hope I have. My partner is autistic so I try to find helpful ways to explain how the nts are behaving and why. Sorry if it’s not useful or if I inadvertently said something hurtful.


  • I think the owners assume that no one has been a dick in the last 5 years, and hope it means no one will be a dick for the next 5 either. It seems like you’re getting close though so maybe take a different road so you avoid the temptation of stealing a cat since it seems unusually strong in you.


  • Yeah. I had a dad that didn’t get laid too. Sex is in the bottom layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then intimacy is up higher as well. If you’re not getting these things you’re not going to be able to hide them. Your kids won’t know why until they’re much older WHY your not happy, but that is a sadness of the soul that nothing can hide.

    You ever see one of your friends the day after they get laid and you just know. That’s a kind of joy from having your needs met that you can’t fake.

    You’re teaching your kids it’s OK with someone who doesn’t meet your needs. It’s not.

    Be with someone who makes you happy. Let your wife do the same. Show your kids what a happy marriage and happy parents look like so they can model their relationships that way. Don’t continue the cycle.



  • The comment about your wife is related to his comments about you beating him and breaking his arm. He’s decided you’re abusive and are part of the reason his childhood was so messed up. It probably helps him cope with a few things. For example he doesn’t feel guilty when he abuses you or your mom’s hospitality or generosity because you owe him. Anyways he decided that you’re abusive and so you probably beat up your wife worse than he does. It’s self protective, if you’re worse than him (he assaulted his wife and you kill yours) then he can still be a good guy in his own mind by comparison.

    He sounds pretty fucked up honestly, and his coping mechanisms are maladaptive. If you want to help him, reach out occasionally to let him know you’re there. Don’t give him money or things or a place to stay. He doesn’t see you as a role model, he sees you as someone who owes him Infinity for what you’ve done, meaning he can abuse you in significant ways and it’s all fair in his mind. You owe him for what you did.

    If he ever realises that he’s the problem in his life, and that to make his life better he needs to BE better, only then can you help him.

    You can’t help someone be better if they don’t want to be better.




  • I’m not really going to argue with that much defeatism, I just want to clarify that being a person that’s enjoyable to be with doesn’t mean being a Hollywood movie definition of a “fun” person. It doesn’t require you to change into someone else. It just means you work to improve yourself, reduce the aspects of yourself you don’t like and increase the prevalence of aspects of yourself you do like.

    You don’t need to become a “fun” person, just a YOU that you would want to spend time with.

    Nobody is forcing you to improve yourself, but like I said before, if you wouldn’t want to spend time with yourself why would anyone else? Even if you live the rest of your life alone, would you not prefer being able to enjoy your own company?


  • Finding a partner has two roadblocks.

    1. Would you date yourself?
    2. Could you date yourself?

    The first asks are you fun to be around? If you were a fly on the wall in your house would you think “this is a person I want to be with, their activities, demeanor, and level of self-care are something I find attractive”. If you don’t want to be with yourself why would anyone else? Work to being and staying a person you enjoy being around.

    The second is more applicable to people who are alone and introverted. If you lived two streets over from yourself how could you meet yourself. If you’re not someone that ever interacts with new people then how can you meet anyone? Find ways to open yourself up to meeting people you want to be with and who want to be with you. This could be through hobby based communities, to socializing with classmates and co-workers, to meeting friends of friends, to joining new groups or classes you’re interested in.







  • Like evasive chimpanzee said we need to poop INDIRECTLY in crops. Hot aerobic composting for example has excellent nutrient retention rates and eliminates nearly all human borne diseases. The main problem would be medication since some types tend to survive.

    Also urine contains almost all of the water soluble nutrients that we expel and is sanitised with 6-12 months of anaerobic storage. So that’s potentially an easier solution if we can seclude the waste stream. Again the main issue would be medications.

    I don’t have the answer, if it was easy we would have done it already. The main issue is we don’t have a lot of people working on the answer because we’re still in the stage of getting everyone in the world access to sanitation. Certainly the way we’re doing it is very energy and resources intensive, unsustainable in the living term, and incredibly damaging to the environment. We’ve broken a fundamental aspect of the nutrient cycle and we’re paying dearly for it.

    The other problem is, like recycling, there isn’t a lot of money in the solution, so it’s hard to move forward in a capitalist system until shit really hits the fan.


    1. We mine and manufacture nutrient dense fertilizer at massive environmental cost.
    2. We use the nutrients to grow plants
    3. We eat the nutrients in our food
    4. We expel 95% of these nutrients in our waste
    5. We dump our waste into the rivers and oceans with all the nutrients (often we purposefully destroy the nitrogen in the waste since it causes so much damage to rivers and oceans)
    6. We need new nutrients to grow plants

    Before humans there was a nutrient cycle. Now it’s just a pipe from mining to the ocean that passes through us. The ecological cost of this is immeasurable, but we don’t notice because fertilizer helps us feed starving people and waste management is important to avoid disease.

    We need to close the loop again!


  • That’s how a lot of stuff works, true. I don’t agree that can work with violence. I also don’t appreciate the conceptual response to very practical questions.

    I live in a peaceful society. I wouldn’t want my neighbour to be able to use violence because my tree dropped it’s leaves on his side of the lawn. I wouldn’t want an alternate police force hired and paid by a group of white supremacists (current statistics aside) to enforce laws in a biased manner. Having other corporations able to use violence is an absolute dystopian nightmare and is 100% the cause of every dystopian fantasy world. If the government WASN’T empowered with violence then there is nothing to stop the above 3 scenarios. So I’m not sure what other “equalizing distribution” you’re imagining and I’m not certain a better one exists.

    I am open minded, which is why I asked those 3 very specific questions. If your have a better idea I’m all ears. If your idea is just to open up the floodgates and hope for the best because that will equalise access to violence and more equal is more better, then I will keep treating libertarian ideology as a threat to civilization. Mostly ideas that sound nice, but no practicable solutions that don’t destroy society. Like communism.



  • Government programs IS US HELPING EACHOTHER. Sure corporations have been undermining democracy, but the government is OUR corporation. It’s the only one that we get the choose what it does. The fact we’re obligated to pay taxes is EXACTLY the implementation of your statement “we’re obligated to help eachother”

    I don’t understand how you can make statements like this. The threat of violence? The government’s monopoly on violence is rephrased as the will of society to ban violence in public life by restricting violence only to the enforcement of democratically selected laws. There is no other way I can conceive. Should more people have the ability to use violence to enforce their views on others? Should corporations have that right? If no one has that right how can we stop someone who decides THEY have that right?

    The whole “government monopoly on violence” is for me the most absurd librarian statement of them all. What’s the alternative? Who should decide what deserves violence? Who should use violence? What do we do if someone breaks this compact? Because the current answers are at least ideally “the people, through democratically enacted, clear and transparent laws”, and “the people, through the police they pay for accountable only to the people” and “apply fair and balanced justice through the judiciary system, run by the people and accountable only to them”. I’m in no way saying that it’s working perfectly as is clear in recent politics, but it’s certainly trending in the right direction in social democracies. We’re closer to that ideal now than we have ever been. As far as I’ve seen libertarian ideology has only come up with absolutely HORRIFYING answers to these questions, or wishy washy nonsense.