GreenBeard

I mean it’s a spectrum of course, as all these things are. No two neurodiverse people are neurodiverse in exactly the same way, we fit broad tendencies. But in most cases people can tell, especially if they understand the broad gist of the various spectra. Most of us wear behavioral masks to get through the day but they’re rarely perfect. Sometimes those of us on a spectrum are better at spotting it in each other than typicals, because we’re working overtime to try to notice and process subtle signals but it’s always there to varying degrees. When our masks slip, people tend to look at us like we grew a second head or something equally bizarre. Some people describe it as feeling alien, or fey-touched, or any one of a billion euphemisms and analogies across time and place.

It is what it is, same as it’s always been.

As someone who’s also neuro-diverse, we’re all a little off-putting. We know we look/sound a bit off and it’s a bit uncanny for some people. People will attach all kinds of meaning to anything they can visibly identify as different. As a mildly autistic ginger atheist I feel like “Soulless” gets thrown around way too freely, but I feel it’s important to keep in mind there are much worse flavours of bigotry out there. Still it’s important to point out that just because Zuck is awful doesn’t mean it’s ok to hate robot-people.

Yep, and it’s everyone else’s right to wish it right back at you. I almost wish I believed in hell, because the idea of people who think like that slow-roasting for eternity is comforting. Unfortunately, the cosmos doesn’t usually do justice. That’s a human affectation. May you always find justice.

Don’t beat yourself up over being human. We all have our limits of what we can and can’t do, and a customer can only do so much. Stand up for labor, support unions whenever you can, I know that’s harder than it used to be, use your vote, and your voice when you’re able to demand better for all of us. Those are what you can do as a citizen. I know it’s abstract, I know they aren’t perfect solutions, but it’s better than where things are. And maybe we can all work on being better neighbours too. Remember, the most you can do is always working with others as a community.

Remember Arugula-gate? I can guarantee Pepperage Farms remembers.

They’re right though. “Floating a trial balloon” and “Testing the waters” wouldn’t be idioms if they weren’t a common behaviour.

Ah, the “I had to suffer, so everyone else does too” mentality. Now I see why they wished the worst on you.

Friend, just be kind and respectful. Whether it’s a teenager asking if you want fries with that, a retail worker helping ring up your purchases or a service tech fixing something for you, having good manners, not actively wasting their time or creating headaches for them, and having a bit of patience when we’re both frustrated with a system that doesn’t make it easy for you or us is a delight. Do your best to raise your kids to do the same, and remember it could just as easily be them on the receiving end. Most people are just fine. You can’t fix other people. You can make it socially costly to be an asshole, so any chance you get, do so.

I don’t think you can be a billionaire and be a good person. It is 100% true that if someone is that rich, and they tell you it’s from hard work, you should ask them whose, because no one gets that rich dealing fairly. Someone is getting rung out. A lot of someones. Do they all deserve to die? Hard to say for sure, but I see little to suggest keeping them alive is a wise decision, they rarely have much value to society beyond money at that point, and they’ve spent all of their humanity getting rich, so it’s not like it’s homicide ethically, even if it legally is. Still, I’m open to the hypothesis that there’s a human soul left in some of them, and if the evidence can be provided for such I’m eager to see it.

Happens daily to me. That’s life in a service industry. You deal with it.

On the contrary, if consumer uptake is too shallow, their big gamble on AI comes crashing down. While the fallout of THAT catastrophe will not be gentle, it’ll be a whole lot less catastrophic than the alternative. I will continue to avoid using AI as much as I am legally able, which right now is a lot, and steering any company that I consult with that demands AI into losing massive amounts of money on bad AI decisions. “It’s not me, the AI is quirky like that. Sorry, but I did warn you it was unreliable.” Let it burn. Let it all burn.

Hope for… what exactly. Be specific. “Hope” is just a meaningless shibboleth unless you define what for. Who are you asking to fight with you and what are you asking them to fight for, because the number of causes worth the effort is rapidly vanishing. Apathy may be one of the seven deadly sins, but there’s been too many rug-pulls now for anyone to have much faith that they’re not being taken advantage of again.

Whether it’s organic or not is immaterial. We can’t turn off the propaganda fire-hose, and once people identify with it, deprogramming people from it becomes a generational effort. It’s a bit like the gender wage gap, knowing what the systemic factors are that cause it doesn’t mean it’s not real, that’s just identifying the root of the problem.

Is it? There’s a lot of indicators suggesting it’s pretty close to accurate, that’s just one of many. Especially among young men, the abject hatred of women is soaring, and that attitude didn’t come from nowhere.

There’s a lot of people who have no faith in their neighbours anymore and have accepted that the war is lost. “We all stand together or we all fall together.” is not the motivating statement you think it is to someone who is just looking for an exit at this point.

You probably can’t. He will likely have to hit rock-bottom before he realizes he’s made a mistake. You’ve tried intervention, and you can leave the door open for when his plan all falls apart. You can’t really do anything more than that.

That’s an optimistic take. There are a great many reasons people didn’t vote, and it’s false on its face that they all stayed home because they didn’t condone his disgusting views on women. It’s not statistically unreasonable to assume the ratio of people who tolerate or even endorse Trump level misogyny extends equally through the non-voting population.

If we’re going to be part of the solution, we at least need to acknowledge the scale of the problem. There’s a gut reaction to want to assume the best, if only because the alternative is depressing and isolating, but not wanting to believe it’s that bad doesn’t make it wrong.

I really hope that Californians in general note who is getting tech $ and make sure they never see office.

You suffer from the illusion that congress as it currently exists represents humans. Congress represents corporate persons and special interests. There are two categories of corporate persons, a) those with just enough foresight to still be mildly afraid human persons will catch on and do something to overthrow them (Democrats), b) those who don’t care what you cattle think, because they have the psychological tools to manipulate you into doing whatever they want (Republicans). At no point is your opinion relevant because neither party actually cares, they’ll have their public relations team tell you what you’re permitted to care about closer to election day. AIPAC, the special interest group representing the Israeli government funds both, and so extracts favors as they see fit. It’s not at all crazy once you recognize the underlying structure. Evil, but not crazy.

Well, the left side of the party is. Unfortunately the right wing of the Democrats are better funded. Thanks AIPAC.