God, that scene fucked with me as a child.

this country allowed the idiots to breed and there are no easy way back.

It’s even worse than that. The school system is fucked. A lot of people that could’ve wound up mildly intelligent were denied the skill of critical thinking and the benefits of well-rounded education. Instead, they were taught to game tests and to obey their authorities without protest. Don’t rock the boat, don’t “talk back” when you’re wronged, just do what you’re told and keep your mouth quiet about it.

It’s no mystery why so many people rely on talking heads to direct their political opinions.

In my usual Wikipedia rabbit hole journey, I came across some lovely paintings the other day. I ended up going through the page of Johannes Vermeer, admiring a bunch of his works. Consider my surprise when I scrolled by a familiar painting, The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Although the artist’s name didn’t ring a bell at first, that painting is famous enough that it stopped me in my tracks. Go figure, he’s got all these detailed slice-of-life paintings that give a strong sense of what life was like for an average, middle class, Dutch person in the mid-1600s, and yet the only work of his I’d seen before was that one.

I guess it’s kinda like how some musicians can put out multiple albums, yet be forever known as a “one hit wonder” because only one of their songs “made it big.”

You mean even my Steam games are actual steam? Neat.

If we’re lucky it’s furry porn. I’m more worried about the non-consensual porn of real people, including simulated CSAM.

Some aircraft engines, too. The old single-engine Cessnas I trained on were air-cooled. Though that’s pretty easy when you’re pushing cool, atmospheric air over the engine at 100 knots.

I hope you don’t mind, the language of your screen caught my attention and it made me curious. How many languages do you speak or study? I see you’re from Brazil, with a computer apparently using Dutch, while using English on a forum. That’s really cool.

Ooh, yeah you’re right! Thank you

Found a strange, single, long hair growing off my chin the other day. I’m a woman in my mid-30s with no tendencies toward facial hair whatsoever.

It reminded me of when I was working in a nursing home, and such hairs would just appear, already over an inch long, on patients’ faces. It was as if they sprouted overnight.

It was a disturbing moment to find one on myself. But hey, it was still my natural color and the length made it easy to pluck. So, can’t complain. Yet.

I would enjoy a feature akin to old-school “channel surfing.” Let me flip through the entire library, mid-program, so I can see if something new catches my interest. No algorithm, no needing to search for something specific, just a chance to try out a few minutes of a show when it’s in the midst of its progress the way we used to be able to do. Then if we like what we find, we can switch to watching the show/movie from the start.

Yeah, it could expose spoilers, or be confusing with continuity, but any good show is worth watching more than once. Jumping straight into a show/movie in progress also eliminates the “analysis paralysis” I sometimes get when forced to pick a show from a menu. It’s far easier to give a new show a try when I can casually jump in and out of it.

We can’t discount the classic dick-measuring contest that’s bound to happen when rich people compare their net worths to each other. I’d be shocked if some people weren’t at least partly motivated by having a bigger “number” than their friends do.

Yes, autistic people are still human, and as such sometimes our experiences are shared by people who aren’t on the spectrum. That isn’t surprising. Comments like this give the sense that there’s something wrong with us sharing relatable posts in an autism community, even if non-autistics can relate to the same things.

I’d like to assume that isn’t what you’re intending, but when people post this sort of comment it’s hard not to read it as some sort of admonishment. Nobody said “only autistic people experience this,” or “this is absolutely 100% part of the autistic experience,” and those were never the points. The point was an attempt to relate to others in the same community… which is something we famously struggle with. The post title is a question, asking if others experience the same thing. That’s it - a question to a community. Not a claim that the habit in the post is special to us, just asking if we ever go through it.

Can we have just a little space to share experiences with each other without having to worry about whether or not neurotypicals relate to/approve of the topic? If a meme is relatable to the broader population, feel free to commiserate with us, or even share the image elsewhere to invite broader discussion. Coming along to an autism community and telling autistic people that the things we connect over aren’t “autism” enough for us to talk about in our own space is… well, concerning.

I can’t help but wonder what exactly is going on here. Are the good contractors scared of ICE taking them away, leaving talentless MAGA hacks as the only ones participating in this project?

Or maybe they’re aware Trump never pays others for their work, and this is an example of “you get what you pay for”?

Or it could be an example of top-down incompetence, where the workers are faithfully following a boss’s orders, but the boss is such an inept loser that this is what following their words gets?

Or maybe the workers hate Trump and this is their small way of protesting/sabotaging his plans?

So many possibilities!

I remember long ago, watching a show where a blind teenage boy used echolocation to skateboard around. I thought it was the coolest thing.

Plot twist: the ice cream quirk is a trick. “Nope, no body in this freezer. Just lots of uneaten ice cream. That’s all that’s in those tubs, yes sir.”

That’s not at all what the term means. In psychology, “positive symptoms” refers to symptoms that are added to typical functions, such as experiencing hallucinations. Likewise, “negative symptoms” are symptoms that take away from it, such as having reduced emotions.

Making up ridiculous lyrics has gotten me through retail work. Hearing the same songs multiple times a day gets old real quick, but funny words make it easier to tolerate.

One set of alternative lyrics that my brain can’t let go of goes to Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb.”

There’s always gonna be another cow there
I’m always gonna wanna make it moo
Always gonna be a field of cattle
Sometimes it’s what I’ve got to do

To the extent that a pet is dependent on their human, it makes sense. Domesticated animals need someone to look out for them, much as a baby does. In this light, seeing a pet as one’s “baby” doesn’t seem too bizarre.

Damn, you were one determined little blastocyst. Well done.

Interesting. Although users in Philadelphia can cross the river to New Jersey to buy legal cannabis, it’s only available in Pennsylvania with a medical card. I have to wonder if these cases are coming from people who bought weed legally in a neighboring state, or is it happening with people who consumed unregulated alternatives (like Delta-8) from places like smoke shops and gas stations?