Gender Bender!

EDIT: It’s Bend Her… I like my pun more :P

Gotta get that Femmzoil

Perhaps

It’s gotten worse over the years, don’t worry ;)

My top recommended movie right now is Freddy Got Fingered

It was the end of 9th grade, so I was 15 or 16. I read it immediately after To Kill a Mockingbird, which did not make it look good in comparison 😂

Asking questions is how most people show interest. That doesn’t mean it’s disingenuous. Conversations are not events where people take turns talking at each other, they’re back-and-forths.

On the flip side, have you thought about how disingenuous it can seem when someone says nothing while you talk, and then immediately afterward starts talking about themselves and their life at length? Most people don’t just automatically update everyone around them on everything in their lives, that’s why people ask questions and show interest.

This is probably the most concise and practical answer in this thread.

I just use the golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. I’m autistic, diagnosed in 2016. One thing I’ve noticed when hanging out with other autistics: they all want to talk about their special interest, and will go on for hours unhindered, but you can try to make conversation about something they don’t care about for 5 minutes and they don’t even pay attention. I’m definitely guilty of this, to a degree. I think that’s part of having autism. But the next time someone is telling you about something and you find you don’t care, consider what it would feel like if you were discussing your special interest with someone and they just acted disinterested the whole time. Doesn’t feel good, does it?

It’s important to realize that in conversations, most people don’t care about topics, they care about the person to whom they’re speaking. When you speak to someone, you’re signing up to have a conversation with them, not necessarily about something. For example, my fiancee is really into musical theatre, and I’m not. I don’t understand any of the terminology, or what even goes into a stage show. But I love her, and if she wants to talk about it, you bet your ass I’m sitting and asking questions because I know I’m going to end up telling her about Black Ops II Zombies lore for like 2 hours straight later. It’s not necessarily transactional, it just would be a terrible relationship if I only talked to her about my interests.

There is no social game. Well, probably to some psychopaths somewhere there is. But people ask you questions about things in your life because that is one of the ways people show interest in others. It’s nothing to do with gaming the social system - they are interested in talking to you, so they give you opportunities to talk about yourself, your interests, and what you’ve been doing. Sure, they probably don’t “care” about what they’re asking about the same way you do, but they’re not asking out of some cold, machine like formula that lets them climb up the social ladder - it’s just how being social works.

I’ll leave you with this thought: being able to listen to and understand the feelings of someone else in a situation you have no attachment to is empathy. Studies on empathy have shown that it is a skill that can be improved, not a static thing that’s rationed out to you in a certain amount at birth. One good way to work on empathy is to imagine yourself as the other person. So, the next time someone’s telling you about something you don’t care about, you could imagine being in their shoes. You may realize that they have something worth caring about after all, and though you may not care as much as they do, you may appreciate what they have to say just a bit more.

EDIT: I’ve seen the double empathy problem elsewhere in this thread. I would like to point out that empathy is literally all about trying to understand someone in spite of what differences you have. So don’t read that and assume there can’t be allistic-autistic empathy. Read that and acknowledge that it’s harder to empathize with allistics, and try to learn how anyway because that is empathy. Or don’t, idk. I’ve found the double empathy problem to be true in my life, and I’ve also found that building empathy toward allistics and all the things I don’t understand about them has done me a world of good and made it easier for them to empathize with me.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve read it, so this may not be a fair assessment. But, I fucking hated The Catcher in the Rye. I wasn’t even required to read it for school or anything, I just did. Perhaps I just found Holden to be insufferable. I think that was the point, but it did not make it a particularly enjoyable or insightful read at all, save for the overwhelming supertext of DO NOT BE LIKE THIS GUY. The part where he hires a prostitute and just cries in front of her really stuck in my mind. That was when it really sunk in for me that someone read this book and decided that Holden’s views were so accurate that he had to go shoot John Lennon with a gun for being phony. Almost unbelievable.

It felt that way, too. Never really looked into it, but that’s the feeling I had at the time. I should also clarify that all that I said verbatim was, “The Cosmic Joke,” with no elaboration. It was quite humorous at the time.

I was tripping shrooms with someone, and at one point I just looked at her and said, “The Cosmic Joke,” which was an entirely new term to me but we somehow both got it immediately and laughed about that all night. I have no idea what exactly The Joke is, perhaps the tumultuousness of life. I do know that The Joke is on us, and we have the choice to laugh along with it.

I don’t know how obscure this is because it was on the Skate 3 soundtrack. However, I’ve never met a person that knew the song, and it’s not on any music streaming services, so I think it’s a little obscure.

Gunfight by The Mighty Underdogs ft. MF DOOM

You know how you can see pinned restaurants with their name and a fork and knife icon? Businesses can pay to show their full logo and get priority in search results/what shows first on the map as you zoom in.

Yes. It’s hard to make out the map with all the pinned ads sometimes, and I’ve had multiple times this year where it has taken me to the wrong place. Every time that happens, I boot up Organic Maps and get right to my destination.

KDE Plasma is the way to go if you’re too used to the Windows desktop. Plasma 6 is out, and from what I ses it’s more like Windows 11, though Plasma is so configurable you could definitely mimic Windows 10.

Kubuntu still uses Plasma 5, which was pretty much exactly like using Windows 10 when I used it, though more configurable and smoother to use. If you want stability and compatibility in your machine, with a DE that has all its issues ironed out, Kubuntu is a good choice.

Oh man, Obra Dinn for sure. Nothing quite replicates that moment when all the pieces start to fit together. The game took me about 6 hours, I believe. Four hours were spent furiously trying to solve the puzzles, but the last two hours were a wonderful cascade of clues falling into place until I had a complete record of the ship’s crew and passengers. Masterpiece.

Fallout: New Vegas. I still find new stuff in it to this day, don’t get me wrong. But to be able to get lost in the Mojave with no idea of the stakes at play all over again would be an absolute delight.

For music, Facelift by Alice in Chains is one of the most underrated albums of all time. If I could go back to popping that CD in the stereo, not knowing what I’m in for and realizing that I’m listening to an Appetite for Destruction-level album. I wore that original CD out. :)

I just want it to be more clear what products are in my food.

Expand allergy warning labels on products. Mammal product allergy exists, it’s called alpha-gal syndrome - one of the issues that can arise from a tick bite. I would like to see allergy labels for beef, pork, gelatin, and carrageenan alongside the ones for milk, wheat, nuts, etc.

Finally, I know what the phone call does! Maybe I’ve been too hard on Roger Rabbit NES…

By the time I got around to playing it, the number was deprecated and I definitely wasn’t figuring out how to actually beat it! I guess I just assumed it gated me from the end, when it was probably some other esoteric thing.

The name and the intro really put in the work to get you excited for some high-octane action.