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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: September 10th, 2023

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  • Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that’s one of those cases where you either add support yourself (provided you have the time, know-how - which most already don’t - and commitment) or wait until hopefully someone else does. Or - like me - you curse and go back to X11 until something gives you enouhh confidence to try Wayland again. I think I read somewhere on this platform that there will be (or was?) some Nvidia driver update that should help with Wayland support, but I haven’t looked into it.

    I don’t have much experience with laptop hardware. I did have one elderly laptop running Ubuntu, though it probably would have been served better with something more lightweight (I just didn’t know much about anything at the time). But that wasn’t doing anything intensive, just some Uni exercises. I think a simple neural network was the most challenging thing it ever had to handle.



  • As a low support / “high functioning” (which feels like a toxic phrase for “good at masking and compensating”) autist, it’s easy for me say “I’m just different” and blame my disadvantages on a society that fails to accomodate for that divergence. I often stay away from spaces where I know I won’t be comfortable, I miss out on events I fear may overwhelm me, I retreat when I don’t feel like I can handle navigating the minefield of social interaction. I’m excluding myself from things, because I know (or fear) those things won’t cater to my differences, but I’m not universally unable to participate, so it feels less like a disability to me (more on that later).

    That most certainly doesn’t hold for people whose “functioning” is more severely impaired. If you respond to unexpected changes with anxiety attacks because you can’t adjust quickly, that certainly presents a disability in the literal sense and a challenge in dealing with everyday occurrences.

    I feel like the shift away from calling it a disability is partially due to the stigma of treating people with disabilities as lesser, partially because it’s not always a visible physical disability and I’ve seen people argue that it’s not a real disability. Both of those are bad, but instead of engaging them, It’s sometimes easier to sidestep. Instead of arguing whether I’m disabled or not, I’ll call it a neurodivergence, because my brain being different is something that’s beyond argument.

    There is also the opposite to disdain or dismissal: Pity or praise. Instead of treating me as defective or overdramatic, some people have responded with some form of “oh you poor thing, that must be hard” or “you’re so strong, making your way through life despite those challenges”.
    The first one may be half-right, but it just feels like something you’d say when you don’t know what’s appropriate and are trying to play it safe with the empathy angle.

    The second feels hollow, because I don’t feel stronger. I struggle far more than I could even express, because expressing thoughts in itself is a struggle. I spent forever writing this comment. To consider myself stronger than others would require me to somehow quantify my difficulties and weigh them up against theirs. I don’t think that’s productive. I think it will lead to some form of “suffering olympics”, which is a mindset I’d like to avoid.
    And really, what else would I do? Sit in a corner and cry about the injustice of the universe? Might as well curse the sun for being hot, it doesn’t change anything. Better to look for shade instead of dwelling on the problem.

    I don’t want people to treat me like I’m subhuman, nor like I’m superhuman. I don’t want people to invalidate my difficulties, nor make a point of dwelling on them. I want people to acknowledge that this is how I work, to understand if I’m doing something “wrong” or have difficulties, possibly help me if it’s reasonable.
    I don’t need a lot of accommodation, just some patience, understanding when I express myself poorly or do things a certain way that suits me more and maybe someone to handle difficult communication on my behalf. So I wouldn’t describe myself as disabled, whether or not that would be accurate, because of the social baggage that word carries. I’d rather leave the relevant help resources for those that need it more.

    That’s not to discount anyone else’s self-description. If you feel like “disability” fits your condition, I’m not going to invalidate that. You know your experience better than anyone else. In fact, I can see an argument that my self-exclusion as response to my difficulties presents some degree of disability to participate.

    I’m still fighting my own preconceptions on that, and it probably is part of the reason I don’t feel like disabled is an accurate description for msyelf. I’ve grown up with a certain set of convictions and prejudice that I’ve deeply internalised. I’ve mostly managed to expunge them when it comes to others, occasionally still catching myself in some judgmental train of thought and then consciously derailing it, but I have difficulties accurately and productively reflecting on my own self-perception. In a way, it’s both the least outwardly toxic, yet most self-destructive form of hypocrisy, and I don’t know how to deal with it.


    As for the romanticisation, I feel like that might be the result of efforts to fight the stigma having overshot their goal due to survivorship bias. Yes, people with ASD may have unique talents too. Yes, we’re not all entirely disadvantaged. Yes, ASD doesn’t automatically make us strictly less capable.

    But most of us aren’t some insane genius. You just wouldn’t make a big deal out of the average, so the media report on the extraordinary instead. And if someone’s only contact with the topic is through media that show the savants, it’s easy to forget that what they see isn’t representative.








  • Given the inertia of moving social platforms and the spoiler effect of fragmentation, I assume ex-Twitter will remain the leading platform for a while still unless Musk manages to run it into the ground at record speed.

    I don’t have any hard numbers on the rest, unfortunately. I personally favour Mastodon, and I believe some national governments have officially adopted it and are running their own instances, which might tip the scales a little if people see that as endorsement.

    Bluesky overall seems to have the advantage in terms of marketing (probably because they have the advantage of money too). I have no idea about Threads, but being from the same company as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp may give them an advantage in terms of existing users for those services. I would expect they try to intermesh these services at one point or another.

    It’s hard to predict, given that many people might just follow whatever their favourite personalities choose, and once enough users have gone there, other popular people may choose that platform too for its larger userbase, drawing more people in… It can snowball either way.

    There’s also the ongoing debate about interfacing the other options with Mastodon. I’m not going to take a stance on that here, but it might be a solution to the split “some of my favourite people have gone here, the others there, but I want to keep up with both in a single app”. I think there would have to be a user-level option in Mastodon to block entire instances to allow people to choose not to get shown content from those services.

    As an aside, I think that would be a good idea anyway, for Lemmy too. If I want to be able to browse All without seeing specific instances, I don’t want to have to look for an instance with that exact list of defeds.


  • Read then rest of the quoted lyric.

    Need all men for what we’re solving

    The point is that “Not all men” attempts to deflect responsibility from those of us that don’t offend. “Yes all men” means that, even if we’re not the “bad guys”, we need to step up and call our fellow men to order, because who else can?

    If semantics are turning you away from the “otherwise noble” cause of “Let’s make women not have to be scared of men anymore”, reflect on your priorities: Is your pride really that much more important than making the world safer? We men can profit from it too, because we often enough face aggression from other men as well.

    And yes, I’m a man, as far as this debate is concerned. I’m not turned away. I know this isn’t about accusing me as a person of being a creep or offender. This is about calling all of us - you, me, everyone - to action.

    Shit’s fucked. Don’t matter who fucked it, just that we unfuck it.


  • The difference is that the claim was never “all men are creepy, violent or predatory”, which is where the -isms start, but rather “Enough men are predatory that women tend to feel unsafe when alone with strangers”. Us saying “Well, I’m not a bad guy” doesn’t change anything about the fact that some men are and go unchecked. We’re arguing semantics of the problem instead of looking for a solution.

    Yes, for some women it definitely has become misandry. That may be a separate problem, but it might also be tackled by dealing with some of the contributing factors that push women there or give the sexists ammo to fire at men with.

    Hence, I propose we talk about what we, the not-bad-guys can do to help fix that root. Progress doesn’t come through complacency, but through action. It’s not just about women either, but also about “weaker” men, for lack or a better word.

    I believe we need to make a point of engaging problematic behaviour directly when it happens. If we stay silent and look away, we project an image of “I don’t care, not my problem” that normalises such behaviour. But I’m not sure about the best way to confront it without escalating the situation, and that’s what I think we need to figure out.





  • To me, being on the meds makes me feel… weird? Slightly hollowed out? I can’t find the best words for it, but the whole chorus of sensory input and thoughts and impulses that I’m used to off-meds somewhat quiets down and my head feels a lot emptier.

    On the other hand, it has the significant advantage that there is more space for the things I do want to focus on, and I’ve figured out I can sort of fill the void with music. It creates a padding, further suppresses distractions, and I can filter it out quite well if I need to focus more intensely. It slightly depends on how well I know the music, but that’s not a hard-and-fast rule either.

    So I admit it’s useful for being productive during the day and by extension good for my self-esteem and mental health if I know I can get stuff done, but I also enjoy when it wears off in the evenings and I sink back into the familiar bustle.

    The side effects like heart rate, blood pressure, occasional feeling of anxiety and nervosity out of nowhere and increased sweating suck though. I could really do without them.