Funny I mentioned #Psych , now there's an episode with two actors from there in Warehouse 13. Which also gives us Lassiter and Lattimer! 😆 (I've been thinking about that connection since the first episode.)
I'm watching Warehouse 13 for the first time. So far it's been quite a revolving door of actors I know from other places (much like how Psych was), but this episode I just watched, S03E09, oh boy!
- Kate Mulgrew playing a woman named "Jane". 😆
- Alessandra Torresani, and as a blonde which I'm not used to.
- And how apropos to discover that Bill Gates is the leader of the Ha'la'tha. 😱 :blob_cat_giggle: Giving us not one but *two* actors from one of my favorite shows ever, Caprica! Sasha is even once again a right-hand man and assassin. Type casting or homage?
And all this right after I awoke from a nap where I had a dream based on the show too. (Apparently my sister was trying to transfer skills into my brain using an artifact for some reason. It was very uncomfortable, but the warehouse doctor couldn't do anything about that.) Wild, huh?
“The last thing I did was the report on Gaza naming what’s happening there as genocide,” Pillay added. “One of the main reactions to that report was people [complimented] me for my courage. You can imagine how surprised I was. Why would you need courage to speak the truth. You interpret the law. You look at all the facts, so it’s an impartial decision.”
Not trying to remote diagnose or anything, but this sounds very autistic to me. :blob_cat_heart:
RE: https://mindly.social/@hephaestus/117329326736907958
And here is your surprise, fellow ND people!
#ActuallyAutistic @autistics #ActuallyADHD #ADHD #neurodivergent
I'm excited; after 9 weeks of work and problems, the next module of Techne should be out sometime today. It's actually ready to upload right now, but I am trying to restrain myself and check out all the formating, links, etc. first. :blobCat_angel: Not only is it going to be the biggest module yet, but there's going to be a special surprise for all my fellow ND types out there. 😁
But there are also all these stupid life things getting in the way, delaying me, like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping. I often call these "overhead" or "real life interferences (RLIs)". :blob_cat_angry: I know that technically there is no need to hurry, but like I said, I'm excited. (I need a bouncing something emoji here.)
I've always had a strange love of food served to me by a machine. Does anyone else have that?
My fondest memory was of a time my older brother took me to the tech school he went to, and I was around 7 years old. The lunch room was on the second floor, with big floor to ceiling windows overlooking an airport. Along one wall was a bank of more vending machines than I have ever seen. So I got to eat a heated can of soup while watching the planes take off and land (airplanes are a SpIn of mine). :blob_cat_melt_love:
I even love drinking fountains, and have a hard time not using them whenever I see one (even in video games). Part of that though is my also strange love of infrastructure. It's like a physical manifestation of society taking care of me. :blob_cat_heart:
I have an appointment with a social worker today to try and get help for my autistic burnout which is preventing me from getting a job, and I have no idea what to expect. And you know how much we don't like that. 😬
So does anyone have any advice or anecdotes to share?
Edit: Well it wasn't great, but not bad either. Some things are clearer now, what I have to do, just not as clear as I would have liked. There are still some loose threads, some undetermined variables. But I have steps to take and I guess we'll see how those go.
Thanks everyone for all the replies and boosts/favorites!
You ever have one of those epiphanies that come from realizing something derived from bits of seemingly unrelated information in your head, but then suddenly realize that they are all pieces of a same puzzle? It's that weirdness that you had all the pieces and didn't even realized that they all fit together. I just had that.
It struck me listening to the song Angels of the Dark by Blutengel. I usually interpret it as a song about vampires even though nothing in it that explicitly says that. The song is about feeling lost, alone, afraid and in pain, and hence looking for a better life. The singer then offers you a "better life" by joining them in the dark; sounds a lot like a typical vampire seduction.
But describing this person's situation, about looking for a better life, I found myself nodding along. Then came the line "The only price you have to pay is leave this world behind". Normally that makes me think of "the world of the living" because again, vampires, but this time was different. Lately I've been reading more about autistic burnout, and one of the key takeaways is that recovering from it is not about getting back to the life you had, because that life is what led you to burnout in the first place. It's about adopting or creating a new life, one that is compatible with your neurology, your true self.
That's why this line struck me differently this time. The world I need to leave behind is the neurotypical life I was trying to live, trying to be something I am not. This is the reason for all (or at least most of) the pain, fear, and other problems I have. So looking at it this way, the song could be about neurodivergence, not necessarily vampires at all.
But wait, couldn't it be both? I'm not saying that NDs are vampires, but as I just happened to write in a post recently, many of us end up identifying with aliens, animals, or *other fictional creatures*. I included the last one because I know an autistic person who identified with fairies when they were young. But vampires are fictional creatures too, and I've been big on them since I was a kid. One of my favorite role playing games is about playing the part of a vampire.
So could not then it be that my attraction to vampires has been my neurodivergence expressing itself all along? Then I remembered how some time ago I made a list of comparisons between autistic people and vampires:
- vampires sleep in coffins: this would shut out light and noise and be a great retreat for autistic people (I myself use blackout curtains and a sleep mask with earphones to listen to things like thunder storms, sounds I like rather than ones I don't)
- vampires sleep during the day: again, less light, noise, and people makes night more sensory friendly for autistic people. Plus many of them I know happen to just be naturally nocturnal and sleep better during the day (myself included).
- repelled by garlic: many of us have all sorts of sensory sensitivities, including smell and taste
- drinking blood: analogy for having a restricted diet, even having to 'hunt around' for food you can stand
- supernatural senses: often we sense things others don't
Again, I'm not saying that autistic people are vampires, just that vampires make a pretty good analogy for being different even though superficially the same. I just hadn't put it together like this before (even though it's right in my own profile name 🤦 ). So in learning to deal with my burnout, I have to learn how to live this other life and not the one other people live. I must join the Angels of the Dark.
Let's Talk About Jamaharon
On this 60th anniversary of Star Trek (I missed the Canadian one, doh!), I've already been sharing little anecdotes about my past with the show in other threads. So I thought that given the importance of the show to me, I'd share a little more in my own thread, and invite others to share theirs as well.
I grew up watching The Original Series in syndication when I was pretty little, young enough I can't remember when I first saw it. But I was in love with it though. In particular I loved Spock (big surprise, huh?) for his intelligence, logic, and interest and knowledge of science. There may have been some identification with him being alien happening too, but that was too long ago for me to really remember, so I can only speculate that that was the case. Lots of us neurodivergent types identify with aliens, animals or other fictional beings. But that's a whole other discussion.
When I was 13 I joined a local Star Trek club. I was the youngest member for a long time, unless you count the kids some of the other members were having; kinda draftees though. 😛
The club was modeled after a ship in Star Fleet, and we each had "characters" with position and rank. Those that didn't start out in positions like the Captain and department heads all started out at the lowest ranks, and had to actually work our way up through various ways of contributing to the club. It was my firm intention from even before my first meeting to one day rise to Chief Science Officer like Spock. My first position was as Astronomer in the Science department. And after many years I did get accepted as Assistant Science Officer. Then when the CSO position opened up, two of us wanted it, but the Chief of Engineering position was open with no takers, so the other person wanting the CSO spot decided to take that instead, leaving me the position. So I finally achieved my childhood dream! 😛
And that was the kind of people most of them were too, so super nice. After my very first meeting I went up to the front where people could sign up for membership. I intended to tell the person there that I wasn't sure how to go about applying for membership. What came out was "I don't know what I'm doing here." The lady just replied nonchalantly "That's o.k., none of us here do." and smiled.
In addition to the monthly meetings, we had several parties every year, some at someone's house, others at a local park during the summer so we called them picnics. At my first party I stayed until everyone else had left, I was having such a good time. Then I realized that it was too late to catch a bus to get home, and the host of the party cheerfully drove me home (I was 14 at the time).
For a couple of years, we even went "camping", staying at a large cabin by a nearby lake for a week and two weekends. So many memories there I could waste post space on.
Being in that club wasn't just great because we shared a common interest, but also because we shared this common vision of the future, of what humanity could be. You don't really get that with many other shows/fandoms.
And I think that it was good for me socially, since it was usually hard for me to make friends. I can say honestly that the only real friends I have today, I first met in that club.
I've been to many Star Trek and other conventions. I once even attended a Star Trek "Sit-a-Thon" hosted by a movie theater, where they showed all five Star Trek movies (at the time) in order (with breaks) over 12 hours.
Another, more odd, Star Trek memory was when I was going to live role playing games, in particular a vampire one. I had just moved to a new apartment with two people I had met and befriended at those games. My character's backstory was that he was turned into a vampire at 15 during a sci-fi convention a month before the premiere of ST:TOS, and thus was a big sci-fi fan. My friend/roommate's character became friends with mine during the games, and we'd sometimes role-play our characters outside of games. So one day after I had bought a toy phaser and tricorder, we decided to roam around our apartment building, role playing our vampire characters, who were themselves role playing as Kirk and Spock (yes, they were kooky vampires), using my new toys as props. 😆
There are a ton more stories, but I'll leave it at those and see what other people may want to share.
Happy Star Trek anniversary all! 🖖
Fun fact: The original pilot of Star Trek: The Original Series, was rejected by NBC for being "too cerebral".
A bit on the nose, eh? 😆
I just missed it by a few hours, but I've now been on Autistics.life for two years!
Thank you @AutisticInnovator for this great little corner of the Fediverse! :blob_cat_heart:
Ok, I think I'm getting in over my head on this computer problem, any help much appreciated! (Linux/Opensuse TW/KDE/btrfs)
Symptom: Everything that tries to save something to my home partition (configurations, sessions, kwallet, etc.) says that I have no space left, and thus won't work. Some programs won't even load (Vivaldi, Steam). Every file manager I have tells me that I do have space left.
History: Before this happened I had tried updating a game in Steam thinking that it would warn me if there wasn't enough room on the disk to do so (silly me). Then the whole desktop crashed and I had to restart.
Tried: 1) deleting several GB of files. I can now download files to /home, but all the other stuff still won't work.
2) running fsck from bootable flash drive. Mostly didn't do anything. Finally got it to tell me to use btrfs check instead (I am using btrfs).
3) I did that and it told me that there were errors. The only things that looked like errors was in "Checking free space tree" where it said "Space key logical (number) length (number) has no corresponding block group" twice with different numbers.
4) Not being terribly familiar with btrfs yet, I read the fine manual for btrfs check. There were lots of warnings about not trying to repair a btrfs without experienced help, else risking your volumes. So here I am.
Suddenly I'm wondering how many cases of cognitive or memory decline, or other psychological problems that were attributed to old age were in fact due to some form of neurodivergent (or possibly other) burnout, but weren't seen as such due to this not being well understood? :blob_cat_thinking:
You can all thank @SilverArrows for inspiring this bit of early morning weirdness.
Meet the real "A" Team:
#ActuallyAutistic @autistics
So tomorrow is the big day that I've been... anticipating... for months now: my first appointment with a psychiatrist. And yeah, I'm a bit nervous. First of all, what kind will they be: a nice, caring person who actually listens and is well informed about and supportive of neurodiversity? Or an old-school, manipulative elitist who likes having control over people and may have more control over my life than I want them to? How much self advocacy am I going to have to do? (Of course I've been madly scripting since I got the appointment.) And how much of that will do any good?
And then there is the possibility that, thanks to a misunderstanding with another doctor, that this one will likely think that I am there to get a diagnosis for autism and adhd. But really what I want is someone to talk to about my situation, goals, and options, like how to navigate the system and whether a diagnosis would benefit me more than any potential drawbacks. I worry that when told this that they will get angry and tell me that I just wasted their time (typical RSD). (sigh) I guess we'll just have to wait and see. 😬
I'm looking for recommendations for an art app for my Android drawing tablet. What I am looking for is something where I can put a photo on the screen and trace an image over it like there was paper on it, but really it's just another graphic layer. I also want to be able to change the photo so I can put different aspects of different pictures into mine. Preferably free and maybe even FOSS, but it should at least have no ads or subscriptions.
So tomorrow is that "mixer" I've mentioned, organized by my local autism employment assistance organization, for Disability Employment Awareness Month. Naturally, I'm still nervous. :blob_cat_box:
But I was thinking, that the employers that will be there are there specifically to meet autistic people as prospective employees. So they should be at least somewhat aware of what being autistic entails. And if that's the case, then masking is surely a big enough issue to know. Therefor one could surmise that they are prepared for meeting unmasked autistic people, because really, not to do so would be unfair.
So given that, I should go tomorrow wearing my favorite autism t-shirt (pictured). 😁
(And this part of the text should really go below the picture, but whatevs.)
Ok, I'm joking. I won't. I wish I could, but even my RSD won't let me. I'm just kidding around to help deal with the stress.
You know one of the things I hate most about being self-realized (aka self-diagnosed) autistic/ADHD? It's that it essentially puts me (us) in the same category as the "I did my own research" crowd. Don't trust the experts, the science is wrong, etc. I feel dirty.
I love science. I love what it has done for humanity. I think we need to appreciate and support it far more than we do now. I much prefer to defer to experts who know more than me on any particular subject. I do keep in mind that anyone can be wrong about any particular thing, but the majority of the time they are more likely to be right than me.
So I'm left having to justify to people why my research is right and the "experts" are wrong in this particular case and not others. I sound like "I'm right and the everyone else is wrong." Ugh.
I know that there are good reasons why self diagnosis for us NDs is valid, if you take the time to go through them and understand them*. But getting other people to listen to it all is hard. Plus, like I said, it just goes against the grain for me. It makes me feel like a hypocrite. It just sucks that this one branch of science is lagging so far behind where it should be. So aside from reading over the reasons yet again, I can only take small comfort in this one quote I've posted on here a few times already:
"There is probably no field of scientific investigation in which more resistance has been encountered than in those domains which have affected the superstitions men have entertained about themselves."
-Technocracy Study Course, 1933
* https://codeberg.org/alicewatson/asd-self-dx/src/branch/main
I want to talk about the fact that people in #Alberta need to pay $100 and book an appointment for getting the covid vaccine now. I've seen news reports talking about there being pushback about it, even protests apparently, but nothing specific. I also can't find any information about any efforts to organize any such thing. Even searching here on Mastodon has turned up very little in terms of people even talking about it. Yes, there's plenty of other problems we are having to deal with now, but this needs attention too. I haven't searched the mainstream social media sites as I'm not on them. Is there anything going on there?
I can't afford this fee, so to me that just says that our government doesn't care if I die or end up a burden on the health care system. This is punitive on poor people, not to mention adding risk to all other people, especially the immunocompromised.
I don't know what if any actions will have any effect, but we have to at least try. Who else is as upset about this as I am?