Lead adds weight. These guys all need to lose around 11 pounds… for the health of everyone else.

Follow-up question: is it “whom is seen” or “who is seen”? Physically they are the object of someone else’s vision, but I think grammatically they are the subject of “to be seen”, so it would be “who is seen”?

Criminey.

I can’t say that psych meds ever did anything but make me manic, and they probably did numb my ability to feel emotions. Are you off all of them now?

I got off pretty light–didn’t geta full night’s sleep for close to eight months when I was tapering off Latuda, but everything else was easy peasy.

You know what helped me most? Playing music. Too bad I can’t send an institution a few hundred bucks a month to play it and also pay a certified professional give me monthly permission to play it, otherwise maybe I would have gotten to it sooner.

I had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder rob me of about 20 years of my life.

Be wary of defining yourself by diagnoses and getting into systems where you are a “patient” that needes to be “fixed.” Seeing yourself as ill can be more debilitating than an actual illness.

What I’ve learned is that nobody can know me better than I know myself (and also that knowing oneself is a process that sometimes involves risk).

A lot of people assume they’re seeing everything always.

One thing I learned in driver’s ed: it’s not the cars you see that get you into accidents.

Your comment has been filed under “Tips for the Coming Genocide.” I don’t check the hispanic box on ANYTHING these days.

But the CURRENT benefit of getting an autism diagnosis is that it qualifies you for Americans with Disability Act protections (ADA) at work. For instance, if they’re trying to fire you for being “anti-social”, for instance, they couldn’t legally do that if you had an autism diagnosis.

I knew a guy that introduced himself immediately as having autism. He was socially quite terrible and would go into fits of rage when he felt people weren’t respecting him. His old store didn’t want to risk firing him and risking an ADA lawsuit, so they put him forward as an internal candidate to our store with absolutely GLOWING reviews (I’d worked at his store for a few weeks and saw that he was a disaster), and the reviews were so glowing that he was promoted at our store into a SUPERVISORY position. Within a few months, everyone hated him and he almost got into a few physical altercations with other coworkers. But even then–and there’s cameras everywhere–he wasn’t fired, just transfered to a different position, setting up displays at various stores where he could work alone.

I felt bad for him because he was really wanted a lot of social contact even though he bungled every relationship and I don’t think he’d be happy working by himself.

Yes, thank you for clarifying about hallucinations.

I was thinking about schizophrenia in this context because it does seem to be treated completely regardless of whether it significantly impairs a person’s life or not. I’m heard this from plenty of people with schizophrenia diagnoses who had to fight their way out of the medical cage they were put in.

So your key mistake was in not supporting your co-workers decision to trade in their sexual abuse for career advancement?

What a shit show.

I have to agree with you on bailing. There really is nothing to be done once the narrative against you is set.

“we could do this for literally everyone, huh?”

Fucken A, yes!!

Imagine a society where you could say, “You know what, this makes me uncomfortable and I’d like to achieve the same exact result this way instead” without having to get the entire psychiatric establishment and congress and judicial system involved in it every fucking time.

Thank you for the sonic plushie. I shall display him proudly next to my Certificate of Sanity.

ETA: I also sometimes want to say, “I’m autistic” because I have these traits, but I don’t like to say that because people will think I mean I can’t read emotions or detect sarcasm.

The real issue is that we live in a society that doesn’t respect us individuals, so we need to qualify into a diagnostic category to have any kind of rights. That diagnostic category needs to have a enough people in it that it has political power (what was likely behind the merger of Aspergers and Autism into autism spectrum disorder), but not so many people that it loses legitimacy.

It’s largely a political project.

Generally, the medical system doesn’t get involved until something “significantly impairs functioning” in one or more different realms. So if someone has all the traits of X, but it doesn’t get in the way of their socializing or working or jerking off, they don’t get a diagnosis. There are some exceptions to this–like hallucinations will probably always land you a schizophrenia diagnosis, but the general idea is that the medica system should not get involved when there isn’t an actual problem.

For “sub-clinical” I just mean any constellation of systems that doesn’t fully meet the official critera. So there’s usually a list of things and people need to have 3 things off one list, at least one of another list, and they can’t have anything on this other list. So sub-clinical would be someone who meets many of the criteria for diagnosis, but not ALL of them.

You can get rid of the spoiler tag, brother, we’re all in this together. I’m happy to discuss this topic with everyone, including people who feel like maybe I shouldn’t be having this discussion here.

Yes, I think you touched on exactly my problem. We have neurodivergence, but you can’t say you’re OFFICIALLY neurodivergent unless it’s DEBILITATING. But being divergent isn’t about a disability, it’s about difference.

Politically, it’s a bit of a mess. People with autism want to overcome the stigma of it being a disability by recasting it as a style of interacting with the world, but if they leave the disability model, they lose legal protection.

I think listening to your buddy dying all night in No Man’s Land is a staple of WW1 films.

See The Expanse if you want to see this in action at speeds significantly less than c.

This goes for ANY container. I mostly notice empty suitcases.

There’s employment laws and trade unions for a reason.

Ah. Non-US lemster detected.

Carry on.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

It’s weird to me that everyone just assumes that American Independence was a good thing.

It’s also hilarious to me that everyone assumes “their” state was proudly patriotic when several states were pretty damn loyalist.

I also think everyone else really should question their Independence Days. Usually all the happened for the majority of people is that a little less of their labor went to a foreign crown and went to their local rapacious land-owning aristocracy instead. Big fucking deal.

My constellation:

• almost physical pain at small talk
• primarily socializes over the internet since high school
• a big believer in systems and rules
• immediately pointing out flaws without thinking about social repercussions (this one is totally sinking me in job interviews; seems like every interview I somehow manage to criticize someone or their organization indirectly; you’d think people would be interested in feedback–they are not, they want praise at all times)
• career disaster due to my not being able to play politics or even be interested in having relationships with people just because they can help my career
• kind of brainy hobbies–languages, music
• I literally have no real friends (but apparently 40% of the US doesn’t either, and the remaining 60% are probably in denial)

I will also add that I think I would like a diagnosis because then the ADA would at least offer me some protection at work, but ultimately, going to a job where everyone hates you is usually not worth the paycheck, but an ADA violation at least slows the clock on getting fired.

Likely the latter; AI doesn’t make those kinds of errors.

We got to this point by the US ruthlessly negotiating every trade deal to give its copyrights global supremacy.

This is a big problem for reverse engineering things like servicing your John Deere tractor, of interest to countries with citizens that eat food.

People are catching on, though; eventually, one country is to going to step out of this US-enforced system and there will be a legal place to hack your car so you can use the seat warmer without paying a subscription.