There also a huge amount of training, medical and otherwise, that’s done through role-playing. I could definitely see medical students getting use out of learning telemedicine with LLMs that were ultimately adapted from TTRPGs character generator schemas.

Listen to this guy. I’ve lived the shift he’s prompting you take.

It’s incredibly hard to describe. People start to see it on you I think.

From my experience it seems to be in the way I look at people differently and how my body language has shifted. I’m face-blind so it’s hard for me to say for sure but I think people can see that I’m looking for positivity and a way to compliment them or brighten their day.

And if you’re trying to get laid… Holy shit. Give a genuine thank you and compliment someone of the same sex on your dates. Show your romance for the world and not just the person across the table. It really really works.

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant

Who was very rarely stable

🎶🎵

That might be one to mention to your doctor actually. It shouldn’t be anything too concerning but it may be indicative of a deficiency in some nutrients or mineral.

My doctors got very concerned when I mentioned that I disliked the taste of salt. Not just salty foods or bacon but just the weird mineral and acrid taste of salt. Better now but still not a fan.

That your body does want a different sodium pairing is interesting.

Do you drink a lot of electrolyte drinks like Gatorade?

Can part of it be skatepark laser tag?

Yes and no.

Tl:dr I should be dead but I’m not.

My health has become a monkeys paw. False anaphylaxis and seizures I can work around but the medication has made me healthy enough to gain weight and muscle. Then my boss gave me a very physical job. While I put on 35 pounds of muscle the doctors added osteoporosis to the symptoms list of my disease.

So now I’m strong enough to break my own bones if I’m not careful. And have dealt with chronic pain for long enough that twice now I’ve been to the hospital and discovered months old fractures because ‘it doesn’t hurt that much’. Soooo fuck me I guess?

Layer on top of that a bunch of gender identity issues and delayed puberty(second? I dunno I’m 36 with a proceeding hairline and my pecks are visibly bigger than last week) and I feel like im turning into a monster. My wife says a sexy monster which does help a bit. Pro-tip: don’t complain to your overweight wife about your anxiety around becoming physically attractive.

But I have a meeting in January to start a research project and pivot a bunch of my time at work to research and software development. I work at a lumber mill? My boss may be a complete fuckshow when it comes to safety but he’s a pretty nice guy and lets me work how I work. I do make him a buttload of money. I’ve learned to run a planer, filing cnc, front loaders and their kilns. One of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten was this year when after 18 months working the kilns they told me ‘there’s things you can do better but they are matters of diminishing returns for us so we’d like you to focus on something new’. They expected that timeline to be 5 years. I’ve developed spreadsheets and algorithms to track and extrapolate moisture data for my lumber. I led a skunkworks dev team in Turkey to make an OCR app and deployed it at work for the basis of an inventory system. One of my projects this summer is to expand that system to their entire yard from my purview at the kilns. I’ve made and iterated processes for their saw filing and tracking and eliminated about 30k/week of downtime. I’m fucking killing it honestly but still feel like shit about myself. I struggle a lot with whether I’m actually smart or just good at reading. There may not be a practical difference. I would like to be paid more. Im considering the startup route and founding my own company but having access and resources of the mill would be a huge help for development so subsidiary company? I don’t know. My boss is the kind of stupid where he gives a former apple employee a computer but no IPA so I’ve got some cards to play.

My wifes grandfather passed away last week. We moved in with him and gramma 7 years ago when I went on disability and they needed home care. Gramma is in a long term care facility with PSP(super-Parkinson’s) now. My wife is an absolute saint. He gave us a place to live when I was sick and I owe him a lot of who I am. I also knew him longer than any but 1 of my own grandparents. It’s really hard. Also the 6th person to die around Christmas since 2016 so we are pretty well done with the whole month. We don’t even know if her dad committed suicide on the 26th or 27th. Fuck Christmas.

But our time spent caring for the grandparents and various other circumstances means that we might be able to buy/inherit the house! We might own a house! Ahhh the millennial dream! Start work at 11 years old, work in 9 different industries, have 6 years of disability off work and save up just enough of a down payment to inherit a house! It’s pretty fraught. Just the whole melancholy and juxtaposition of moving upstairs and having windows again because an amazing person died is a bit too much.

And like…my dad tried to start a cult so I’m glad they’re getting divorced but having been the person to ‘not cause it, but you did open my eyes a bit’ is all sorts of fun to process. Sorry/Thanks mom. She is doing a lot better now so that’s nice. My dad not so much. Not sure if I have it in me to see him at Christmas. But as mentioned previously and statistics I worry about suicide at this time of year.

But hey! I’m autistic, high school diploma, post-traumatic and non-specific traumatic stress disorders, cycle food and environmental allergies on a weekly basis, 25+ fractures through my body, had fucking scurvy twice, 6 years off work in total and I make my national median wage, I’ve got a job that I can keep for as long as I want it, a boss who actually accommodates my disabilities and weirdness, an amazing wife, two dogs and too many cats, I look better than I ever have and my doctor told me to write my will at 21. I’m 36 now so fuck all y’all.

If anyone read all that thank you! If not it still feels good to just put it down in words.

I posted this in another comment in this thread. This poem always comes back to me when I hit these moments or these threads. Any suggestions on how to get ‘thissus offeroede thissus swae maeg’ as a tattoo without looking like a Viking fascist nutjob?

http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Deor

You might like this as well

http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=get&type=text&id=Deor

“That was overcome, so may this be”

The mill I work at schedules their yearly maintenance around hunting season. First week both mills are down. Second week half and half.

Easy 80% of staff are gone hunting.

Maybe tws earbuds with transparency mode? I’ve found it helps me hear voices more clearly and it allows for adjustable volume.

I fight em’

Maybe not the best course of action and certainly not politically astute but the laws on my side so fuck the bigoted pricks.

I confronted the owner of my company a few months ago about the toxic workplace and abusive behaviors he was inculcating in his company. Pointed out that xyz by abc employees can be and have been reasonably inferred to be comments, actions and disrespect due my autism. Informed him that his own statements and behaviors are putting his company in serious legal liability. There’s this law and regulation, I have contemporaneous notes and witnesses etc etc.

Make sure that you have a claim of workplace harassment or abuse due to your autism. Then lean into it. Be prepared to involve HR and legal resources. Make sure you constantly seek feedback and confirmation that you are taking the right steps. Be vocal that perhaps you are misinterpreting this persons behavior but due to your disability you would like the accommodation that it stop and it is causing xyz distress.

A big caveat to this is that I work in a small lumber mill. No union, no hr. I direct report to the owner because his org chart is fucked. Safety is a word they use but not one they understand. Especially for mental health safety. It worked because I made it clear that it would be very expensive if they didn’t stop fucking around.

I had to play things differently when I worked for Apple as they have incredibly detailed processes for dealing with this sort of dispute and specific forms of language and approach to use. I still took the opportunity for a fight when I could find my footing. Want to write me up for feeding homeless people? Off hours and out of branded clothing? Ok, let’s do this then.

When your disability is your opponents weapon of choice they have given you the shield of the law. Embrace their mistake.

It sounds like you’ve taken the right steps to document and follow your companies procedures and you should continue doing so. Playing the game is part of the fight.

Stand firm that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ and so is abuse. Theres likely something in your handbook calling out ‘unwanted’ or ‘reasonably construed’. Find this and seek clarification. One of the aspects of autism that has been very difficult to navigate for myself is that behaviors most people find normal or caring I find awful, abrasive and can be abusive. There’s a give and take in the world but in the end they knowingly hired an autistic person and are legally obligated to adjust their behaviors to meet you in a consensual middle. Perhaps this person needs to moderate their behavior and you need to moderate your interpretations of their behavior but to do so you need clarity.

For the emotional end of things, don’t want to go in, what if they fire me, what if they hate me, I’m scared to be hurt…it’s all “what if I’m wrong again?” for me. But thats kind of just everyday right? It’s acute and direct and noticeable right now. It’s heightened in these situations. But is it new? Is it actually different or just a higher degree? Am I not nervous in my day to day or am I just more nervous now? I’m pretty sure people hate me most days so the honesty can be refreshing(sadlol).

But most importantly it doesn’t sound like you’re wrong again. Workplaces have clear rules and regulations for a reason. Find your ground. Cite your arguments. Prepare to be fired. You’ll figure it out and fight the next manager, just like the last time. You’ll keep fighting to make a space for people like us. Because that’s our existence in this world.

Neurotypicals are bound by choice paralysis in life. What do the neurodivergent do in life? We have no choice but to fight. Our course is set and conviction can be found. Freedom not of choice but of action. We fight as we see fit and as we can, from each and to each, but we fight. For a new day and a new world and a seat in Valhalla. No justice, no peace.

Thissus offeroede(that was overcome)

Thissus swæ mæg(so may this be)

That was my first real experience with Linux!

My little brother bought one open box from Best Buy. Somehow it didn’t have keyboard or trackpad drivers? Not even external usb would work.

Ended up putting Ubuntu on it for him I believe. Fun learning experience.

On the ‘fought a war and lost’ point that’s the crux of it. The nation state one a war against a(series of pseudo-) nation state and the loser was subjugated and their governance dissolved. Fair enough. Spoils to the victor etc.

Where this falls apart is that we are not willing, able or morally justified in destroying the cultural nation. Genocide is not acceptable whether a physical or cultural. And so what is a democracy left to do especially when trying to establish a stable nation containing multiple polities? It follows that the victor nation state must hold its various contained cultural nations in equal value and that their cultures have their own value that should not be subjugated in the same manner that their previous political system was.

So yes, this leads to tricky concepts and conversations where various cultural nations have radically different means of disseminating authority and rights. For many aboriginal groups this is an internal democratic(or a similar cultural process that entails a pseudo-democratic process) which chooses and appoints elders who have the responsibility, ability and obligations to speak on behalf of their nation and peoples.

Where this ties into the Westphalian nation state concept is that yes, our current set up of international borders and their moral justifications are based in inherently racist tropes and morals. In the face of greater freedom of movement and globalization this system is encountering various limits to its implementation as we are seeing in Australia with this referendum or in Canada with the Quebecois and First Nations.

So are you actually going to stand on ‘no racism in my politics’ and support the free movement of individuals and the eradication of the Westphalian nation state system? Or will you recognize that nothing is absolute and compromise must be made to have an inherently racist, but mostly effective and deeply entrenched geopolitical paradigm, continue to work in light of multicultural and multi-national states?

In short, you can hold you own sense of nobility and righteousness in your supposed anti-racist stance but pragmatism and the implementation of your ideals has been shown to and will continue to lead to further cultural genocides. Canada spent a century trying to make the natives white under this same ideal that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. Ultimately you’re standing on a very shaky and naive soapbox.

Perhaps Canadas relationship with Quebec can serve as an analogy to help you frame this in a manner than is not based in racial divisions.

From my(Canadian) perspective Australia seems to be dealing with a number of the same issues that are important to the structure and formation of Canada and it’s constitution. Quebec holds status as a ‘nation within a nation’ and holds several concessions within our constitution to allow it to preserve the French language and unique Quebecois culture. Going back to the confederation of Canada and before 1867 we’ve always had a tension between the dominant English/Protestant culture and the French/Catholic culture and various protections for the language. Ontario and other provinces have constitutionally protected Catholic School boards which is fucking weird nowadays but make sense in the historical context. Take a look at the ‘not-withstanding’ clause and it’s history too! Bonkers.

All that said, perhaps a better lens to view this ‘Voice’ within parliament is in a similar sense to a nation to nation representative within your parliament. A recognition that there is another nation of people who hold a different value structure, sense of polity and ideas of the derivations and justifications for authority. This cultural nation within the larger Australian nation-state does not hold political or legislative power nor did the referendum propose granting any level of sovereignty to this subsumed nation(unlike Quebec), but in the interest of human rights, equality, cultural discourse and integration it would be prudent for this cultural nation to be able to provide advice and its perspective on the administration of its people.

This Nation to Nation method does have its own complexities and compromises however as Canada is seeing with its various treaty(or lack of treaty) obligations. The Crown Lands in my neck of the woods may be ceded to the local Algonquin tribe as their land was colonized but no treaty signed with their national representatives. It’s also holding up all sorts of large resource development projects.

I’m also curious, how do you feel about the Westphalian nation state? The right of a people’s self determination etc? I suspect you don’t want to tear down borders because their inherently based on racist principles as well.