Watching Tom Scott's latest video on Nebula, about realistic patient mannequins. This training centre has the world's only FtM mannequin and they say they wanted to get a MtF one too but the company that made them was taken over by a US company and... they didn't want to make them anymore.
Hmm... I haven't been seeing these. I came by to check in, because I hadn't seen anything from you in a while. Probably just timing though, I've been busy off the network lately.
Internet Protocol Version 8 (IPv8) is a managed network protocol
suite that transforms how networks of every scale -- from home
networks to the global internet -- are operated, secured, and
monitored.
my partner works for prpl foundation, so I've heard (bad things) about WiFi 6, and she skipped over 7, but told me that there's rumours of WiFi 8 already.
I didn't realise that there's a whole rat's tail of other midlife crisis sounding stuff attached to it
"Devices communicate only with their designated service gateway. The service gateway communicates only with the designated cloud service. Lateral movement between devices or zones is architecturally prevented by the absence of any permitted route to any other destination." WTF
Now livestreaming at joystick.tv/u/toplesstopics and through our discord server at toplesstopics.org/chat ! Gonna discuss the intersection between feminism and naturism, then edit some more "artistic newed photos" for sale to pay for video hosting etc!
The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.
People sometimes think of a #kink dynamic only in terms of power exchange. It's more like a trust exchange. One party may choose to trust another to provide safety, tranquility, comfort, etc. That gift of trust is what is infused with power. The offering should be made with an appropriate expression of limits and bounds. The entity to which the offer is made is often, but not always a practitioner of the arts. They etch and line the boundaries, ideally capturing the intent of the supplicant. Once sealed, the ritual begins, and can manifest in many forms.
Within the circle, there is safety, accompanied by an outpouring of vulnerability, droplets of which harbor the essence of the devotee. These are cared for and woven into the ritual. The threads can undo a person altogether as the essence is drawn out into the aether. A mind set free to wander the void, leaving the consciousness intact within its vessel. It's a vulnerable state, and it leaves the beings highly suggestible, sometimes devoid of purpose, and easily put to good use.
The entity in control, the weaver, the witch, the queen of the hive; they have discretion as to what choices to make. As you are allowed to peek out of your enclosure after quite a rest, you see a snippet of such a ritual in action... Continued in the #AltText
---
Drone 9382 is pre-bundled with a photography module, and I'd say the editing task ran on these images is pretty nice
I intend to write up an educational piece building off my existing ones to explore the aspects involving de-identification. I feel like it's one of the many things that are not well understood about kink spaces. But ego dissolution as a whole is difficult for some folks to grasp so I'm not sure how well it'll work.
In the meantime I finally broke the seal on posting the backlog of latex+rope pics I've been collecting. I'm looking forward to getting some shoots in with a vacbed and rope sometime in the near to medium future.
I’ll be very interested to read this! Recently I started heavily getting into pet play, and realising that absolute trust of my Handler is key to getting into the right headspace. I was never able to just go blank like that before…
the UK has had some new legislation enacted which improves renters' rights [edit: initially with England; housing is a devolved matter] [edit2: apparently England is lagging behind here] by a lot:
there are no more fixed rental contracts; everything is done on a rolling basis with a generous multiple-month notice
no-fault evictions are gone
after an eviction without reason landlords couldn't re-list it as a rental property for a year
rent can be increased once a year with a 2-month notice
rent increases can be challenged by a tenant
"rental bidding" where you try to give the landlord a higher price than other tenants is made illegal (this was the single biggest WTF moment i had arriving to the UK)
pets must be accepted by default, unless there is a good reason not to ("I don't want to" is not a good reason)
Most of these sound like EU-wide rules in general (or at least in effect in most EU-countries) but one stood out:
"rental bidding" where you try to give the landlord a higher price than other tenants is made illegal (this was the single biggest WTF moment i had arriving to the UK)
What the fuck is this and who in their right might thought that this was a good idea
@exec rent bidding has started becoming the norm here in Australia ;_;
wanted to ask about UK/EU stuff tho, how many months notice for landlords ending a rolling contract?
here fixed term is standard and we (tenants) preferred it because it at least gave you 12-24 months of stability at same rent rather than them giving 2-month notice to end so they could relist it at a price higher than they could increase your rent by
Order a copy of our magazine Too Long: https://toolong.news/collections/tl007With the new Renters Rights Act coming into effect in just under a months time, ...
the bidding thing feels like a recent development, we encountered it for the first time in 2023. every time I moved before this, you made an offer and the landlord said yes/no. after, it was your bid got put in a big pot, you had to write a grovelling personal statement, etc
very glad that it's stopped, it made moving impossible. that year and the year after our landlord put rent up over 10% each year so I'd like to know what effect these laws actually end up having on rent rises
@jcoglan it's completely normal in Australia - some places have rules against the real estate agent asking if you'd like to pay more than someone else, but as far as I know it's still legal for you to make and for them to accept a higher-than-advertised price
Yesterday i had to do something really fucking stupid.
I wanted to try out a new desktop fedi client, but the windows version is only released in the microsoft store. so i go to download it from the MS Store only for it and all the other store exclusive apps i use. to fail to download/update. it kept giving an error, so i google that error and all the results for it are related to the windows firewall not working.
So i check the windows firewall and its related services and theyre all working fine. my next guess its probably something fucky with the microsoft store. so i clear out the cache and it doesnt fix it. i check the microsoft store services and theyre still working, restarting them doesnt help. so i think maybe the store itself is broken so i open power shell and uninstall it. as im going to reinstall the microsoft store it keeps failing saying it cannot find the files, even as i explicitly point to them or try to redownload from microsofts servers. i cant even re-download it from winget because it uses the store as a repo for that. oh and microsoft removed the
... Show more...
Yesterday i had to do something really fucking stupid.
I wanted to try out a new desktop fedi client, but the windows version is only released in the microsoft store. so i go to download it from the MS Store only for it and all the other store exclusive apps i use. to fail to download/update. it kept giving an error, so i google that error and all the results for it are related to the windows firewall not working.
So i check the windows firewall and its related services and theyre all working fine. my next guess its probably something fucky with the microsoft store. so i clear out the cache and it doesnt fix it. i check the microsoft store services and theyre still working, restarting them doesnt help. so i think maybe the store itself is broken so i open power shell and uninstall it. as im going to reinstall the microsoft store it keeps failing saying it cannot find the files, even as i explicitly point to them or try to redownload from microsofts servers. i cant even re-download it from winget because it uses the store as a repo for that. oh and microsoft removed the MSI installer to manualy install the store, you can only get it from the store or windows update. AND WINDOWS UPDATE IS NOW BROKEN TOO!!!
So at this point im thinking i need to do the usual SFC/DISM fixes in powershell, except when it goes to repair things it still cannot find the repositorys. maybe i can try the offline fix method? so i download a W11 25H2 iso, mount it, point DISM to it, and it STILL cannot find it.
Now at this point im kinda livid. this windows 11 install has survived 6 years of updates, across 3 different machines, and even the jump up from windows 10. I have kept this frankenwindows install running for so long i get a sick perverse pleasure from keeping it alive. I really do not want to have to nuke this drive. so i go for broke and do an in-place reset of 25H2. AND IT STILL DIDNT FIX IT.
But the in place reset did do something! after that i was able to use powershell to reinstall and reset the store. and when i finally open the store im greeted with "WinAppRuntime.Main.1.8 Updated Today"
So you're telling me that the runtime environment necessary for the microsoft store and related apps to update and function, updates through the store? and if it breaks it cant update itself to unbreak? is there not a way to manually install this? well apparently not that i can fucking find. you need to do an inplace windows reset because apparently nothing short of that will fix how badly it fubars the repositorys and app database.
doing linux levels of repair effort to windows isnt my favorite passtime because of how annoying it is, but it is entertaining to see what breaks and why.
@DjBRINE1 it is, but spending time building windows applications is not something i really enjoy doing. at least the linux version is released in a sane way.
Tons of people inside microsoft had been complaining how bad windows update was for years when I started working there... 10 years ago. The team I was on actually broke windows update over the weekend once because we pushed too many internal OS images into their pipeline, after they explicitly told us we could do that without causing a problem, which also took out the entire windows store, which included all of xbox!
When I went back 5 years ago they had to patch the Windows Store just to support Halo Infinite having two possible executables, and there was also a bug where every time you installed the game the icon would get 1 pixel smaller. We had multiple issues with the Halo Infinite install on the windows store. Everyone hated it (and we didn't have any issues with Steam). The entire windows ecosystem is a catastrophe, microsoft employees don't even like it, and eventually the inertia the company thinks it can ride on forever will run out, very abruptly.
@cloudhop my uncle worked on drivers at ms during the win7 era and he fucking hated it back then too. ive never heard good things from ex ms employees about the state of windows.
PS: if you tell me to use linux instead of windows for this machine, which for various reasons i wont get into i cannot do, they will never find your body.
Today, someone on the Fediverse told me, “Your free speech is not important to me.”
Ironic—because my free speech bothered them enough to send me a message about it.
But I don’t say things because they’re important to you. I say things because they’re important to me.
So important that I pay for the privilege of owning and managing atomicpoet.org. Which means my free speech doesn’t depend on the whims of someone else—or whatever their mood is at the moment. It’s based upon my own personal integrity.
My personal integrity says, “Speak the truth even when others are bothered by it”—which they are.
Specifically, the truth is that Trumpism is a religious cult. It’s a cult—talking about that shouldn’t be isolated to a #uspol hashtag because it’s actually #worldpol.
... Show more...
Today, someone on the Fediverse told me, “Your free speech is not important to me.”
Ironic—because my free speech bothered them enough to send me a message about it.
But I don’t say things because they’re important to you. I say things because they’re important to me.
So important that I pay for the privilege of owning and managing atomicpoet.org. Which means my free speech doesn’t depend on the whims of someone else—or whatever their mood is at the moment. It’s based upon my own personal integrity.
My personal integrity says, “Speak the truth even when others are bothered by it”—which they are.
Specifically, the truth is that Trumpism is a religious cult. It’s a cult—talking about that shouldn’t be isolated to a #uspol hashtag because it’s actually #worldpol.
And this isn’t merely politics anymore. It’s religion. Trump comparing himself to Jesus Christ is beyond political propaganda—it’s religious proselytism in a literal sense.
Everyone should know this. I make no apologies for saying it in the most public way possible.
There’s just something poetic about white colonizers who believe they should dominate online spaces they don’t control because they’re simply used to getting what they want.
Is it just me, or do the bulk of “no Trump” complainers on the Fediverse happen to be white dudes from Australia—living literally on the other side of the world from the USA? It just seems pretty ...
These days, nude = sex. So I have sex watching TV, I have sex making a sandwich and I often have sex doing my job. Wow... I knew I was too sexy for my shirt. - P.Z. Walker
This TDOV I am very grateful to have trans friends. I have never met a trans person who was unhappy about transition and achieving their chosen gender identity.
I am also continuing to question my own gender. A lot of the things associated with masculinity make me deeply uncomfortable.
I'm a naturist at heart,' she says, 'I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly young people, beautiful old people, whatever. It's so unsexual and so liberating' - Dame Helen Mirren.
@Eetschrijver dat klopt. Het zou in heel veel opzichten goed zijn als de 1960er jaren weer terugkwamen. Toen was ook niet alles rozegeur en maneschijn maar terugkijkend...
Mastodon is the kind of place where if I made a shitpost like:
You can tell the difference between leaded and lead-free solder by tasting it
So many of you would get mad as hell and probably report me and even consider making a fediblock post, but you wouldn’t do the sensible thing and quote tweet it because you’re too cowardly to have that kind of callout culture
Figures that meta(Facebook) are behind a lot of the age verification stuff going aroind. They have a functionally complete set of products. Facebook, Intagram, what's app, all have been basically feature complete for a decade at this point. They've not added new user facing features in a while, at least not obvious enough that I remember them.
If you can't compete on features you've got to compete by making it harder for the opposition. Adding something to support a new regulation is trivial for them. But a dozen slightly different rules in different parts of the world make it really really hard to bring up a new Facebook competitor.
With the amount of regulations and paperwork from osa (which I've long said was designed to prevent an English Facebook competitor) it would be a wild amount of work for a new social media company that wants to be focusing on features but now need to get a legal team too.
The other advantage to Facebook of age verification is that they don't need tracking cookies and other hacks to know what you're doing online. They'll have your fucking driving license, passport, or gov ID. For them it's a massive bonus
I think someone is following me around and making a documentary. But I can't be sure.#vr #vtuber #furry🟧WATCH LIVE 5 NIGHTS A WEEK!🟧https://www.twitch.tv/c...
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
What the title says. Well intentioned, often other "neurodivergent" people look at your life, your autism, and say: "you should mask harder."
For example, I accidentally said something that offended a friend. Won't go into detail, but it was me unintentionally coming off as arrogant, not something bad like a slur or hate speech.
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, "you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic."
But isn't this just saying "mask harder and be more palatable for everyone else"?
Every piece of "autism advice" I see even in "neurodivergent friendly" communities is basically "how to be less autistic."
Well, NT people mask too. I thought the goal of these communities was "ND dont need to mask 24/7! Accept who you are!" and then I hear "But limit your personality in public, it makes others uncomfortable."
People (including other autistic people) treat my autism as a liability and a nuisance. Thanks! I knew that!
I think there are situations where consciously choosing to follow a social convention against one's "natural" inclination (which I think is a type of masking) is a good idea. For example, if someone has recently experienced a death in their family, I might think twice about making death-related jokes, or even bringing up the subject of death at all. I don't think these rules are inviolable; with the right context I think humor can help with grief. But I think it requires a level of intimacy with the person grieving and their relationship with the deceased, and thoughtlessly saying any thing that comes to mind can cause fresh hurts for someone already hurting a lot. That's a rule that I consciously try to follow and think very carefully before I break it.
There are other rules that I will willingly and gleefully break because I think they're harmful, e.g. "It's [unpatriotic / blasphemous / rude] to criticize [the government / church leaders / authorities]". That rule is bad and exists to reinforce the power of people who already have power, so I deliberately try to break it,
... Show more...
I think there are situations where consciously choosing to follow a social convention against one's "natural" inclination (which I think is a type of masking) is a good idea. For example, if someone has recently experienced a death in their family, I might think twice about making death-related jokes, or even bringing up the subject of death at all. I don't think these rules are inviolable; with the right context I think humor can help with grief. But I think it requires a level of intimacy with the person grieving and their relationship with the deceased, and thoughtlessly saying any thing that comes to mind can cause fresh hurts for someone already hurting a lot. That's a rule that I consciously try to follow and think very carefully before I break it.
There are other rules that I will willingly and gleefully break because I think they're harmful, e.g. "It's [unpatriotic / blasphemous / rude] to criticize [the government / church leaders / authorities]". That rule is bad and exists to reinforce the power of people who already have power, so I deliberately try to break it, and I try to catch myself when I find myself unintentionally following it.
I think a lot of "just mask harder" advice comes down to people's (well-founded or otherwise) belief that a certain rule should be followed, sometimes without question (I often find this axiomatic take explained with some variant of "that's just the rule"). I like learning about the rule even if I take the implicit recommendation of following the rule with a grain of salt, but I do find the implication that rules have to be followed because they're rules tiring.
Don't call your mother fat, don't push the person standing at the crosswalk in front of a bus, don't cut someone's hair when sitting behind them because it bothers you... Socially unaccepted actions, why, because they are. In another universe they all may be acceptable. Our cultures calls them rude, murder, and possibly assault or maybe just impolite. Why. Because stuff and things. Mostly, it'll hurt someone's feelings.
Really I think it is, our freedom ends where anothers begins. Thus, we are free to do what we wish, but if your happiness impeeds on anothers happiness, then there is an issue.
Edit*. When the law doesn't match that, then I feeo government has failed
I don't think the reasoning behind unspoken customs is unknowable or arbitrary. I think part of being a good person is analyzing the rules that are handed down by our elders and deciding which are good to follow and which are good to leave behind. Circumstances change, new information comes to light that our parents weren't privy to. Or, maybe they just made convenient or selfish choices when deciding which rules were important. Sometimes those convenient or selfish choices get codified into law, and when they do, it's up to us to fix them. I dunno if that's government failing so much as it's just how government works.
New information coming to light is 90% propaganda, 10% truth. If we got rid of all borders and made all insurance companies illegal while saying denying a person care in terms of health would put your organization in prison. It would fix nationalism immediately, drag health costs down, and fix many issues people struggle with. The person who works for their family isn't an issue, the government that doesn't let them is. It doesn't matter where or who they are, they were segregated due to old rules, mainly the British decision to segregate to isolate and isolate and divide to rule. Did wars happen before then, yes. But the way to end all wars isn't through segregation, but rather assimilation throughly so all are accepted without question.
All is well. I also find the problem overwhelming when I try to think about it all at once, all the cruelty we inflict on each other because we were taught to, or because it feels easier to keep rules that afford us the barest of privilege over our neighbors. It's a lot.
Makes sense, thank you for your response. I am often unsure how to make sure people know that I am being sarcastic or sincere. So thank you for your input. Appreciated
It's a skill that we find harder to master than others. That's all.
Some are naturally gifted at math. Some can learn a new language effortlessly. Others have to practice and pay attention carefully or they make an error.
It took me 30 years. My personality is now permanently different. It's no longer a mask just like learning a language and culture eventually becomes normal.
Learning how to pick up social cues in a rote way instead of an imitative way, essentially, is a treatment. I mean, I know it’s hard to pick up on norms and mores naturalistically with autism, and we should all be graceful and respectful of that as well. Just you know, if someone says something is rude or hurtful, that’s not an attack on your inability to judge that social situation by default…it is information. Even NT do impose expectations on other NT behavior across settings that is sometimes incomprehensible.
There is no objective line, but if your actions result in your friends getting hurt that is sad, and if your friends decide not to hang out with you because of the chances you'll hurt them again that is a fair choice. You may choose not to put effort into understanding other people's perspectives but this means most people with healthy boundaries will either get hurt at some point and leave, or recognize that is bound to happen and leave pre-emptively. So if you want friends that treat you right or a partner who isn't miserable, then you will have to put effort into understanding other people's perspectives.
Your friend was offended for a reason. People assume you care why or how to avoid it because that is a necessary part of any healthy friendship. If you do not care, then I hope your friend finds friends that do care so they, at least, can be happy. I also hope that you have friends and you are happy, but an unhealthy friendship does not make you happy and it barely counts as friendship anyway.
The situation really wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be. I was just talking about how I was doing in a course and my friend got jealous because I am doing much better. I didn’t brag, just like “Oh I did great on the exam”
But apparently GPA and pay are two things you can never discuss with anyone….for some reason.
I asked for advice (elsewhere) and the advice was universally, “you see, NT avoid this topic at all costs. Going forwards, know it is best to avoid this topic.”
I don't think of that as masking actually. NTs run into the "said something they shouldn't have" error quite a lot... i think of that as just learning new social nuance. If social interactions are like kayaking in ooen water, this is the equivalent of bumping (gently) into a wall that was already there, but being given instructions to mask more is like them putting down barriers to reduce the amount of water you have available to maneuver in.
But I do think in your example that the best course would be for NTs to just be more aware of and accepting of ND saying things they consider weird. Would be the most efficient course of action and is more of a solution than "Add this to the mental list of things you can't talk about!"
I think a lot of advice tends to be an explanation of a social rule, with the implication that following the rule (or "masking better") is preferred. Sometimes the insistence that rules must be followed is more explicit, which I find aggravating because I don't think social rules have to be followed, and there are many times where they should be broken. I think they're similar to literary or grammatical rules in that it's better to be aware of them and have a nuanced understanding of how people use them, so I can follow or break them more intentionally in conversation as my preferences dictate. For my money I'd rather people take the time to explain the rules they adhere to no matter how silly or damaging they are. At least then I can engage with the rule more tactically rather than being caught unaware when I accidentally break it.
I don't think this is a NT vs Autism thing. There are topics that, depending on the environment, are taboo and not to be discussed. Figuring out these rules is confusing (or at least, not automatic) for Autistic peeps, but actually following the rules is something both NT and autistic people must do. Whether or not you call it masking, it's still something that both groups are subjected to.
They’re only taboo subjects because society (primarily NTs) decided they were taboo.
Autistic people have to follow the rules set by NTs, not the other way around.
I'm 50/50 on this.
People running a social scene (generally NTs) set the cadence, yes.
Thoughts/questions/ponderings:
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren't familiar with, wouldn't they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
Some taboos exist for good reason and apply across the board. We don't greet strangers by asking them how their genitals are feeling, for example (although that would be hilarious).
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Autistic people generally have either far fewer than allistics or if they have some kind of social obsession potentially they have a whole world of rules of their own that even allistics will struggle with.
But yeah generally, in my own case: 1) Don't be irrationally or sadistically mean.
That's basically it. You can be irrational/strange around me and at most I'll be surprised due it being unexpected and my "mask software" wont have a response to load and I'll freeze up for a bit. You can even be mean if there is sufficient justification for it. Maybe I fucked up bad.
Now, "being mean" a fairly broad category and I have specific obsessive silos of topics I don't want broken, but that's on the basis of a "info hazard". Mainly: discussions of poop or story spoilers. But if someone ends up breaking those "Rules" I don't hold it against them because they could not have known that I have a severe aversion to both of those things
... Show more...
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
Autistic people generally have either far fewer than allistics or if they have some kind of social obsession potentially they have a whole world of rules of their own that even allistics will struggle with.
But yeah generally, in my own case: 1) Don't be irrationally or sadistically mean.
That's basically it. You can be irrational/strange around me and at most I'll be surprised due it being unexpected and my "mask software" wont have a response to load and I'll freeze up for a bit. You can even be mean if there is sufficient justification for it. Maybe I fucked up bad.
Now, "being mean" a fairly broad category and I have specific obsessive silos of topics I don't want broken, but that's on the basis of a "info hazard". Mainly: discussions of poop or story spoilers. But if someone ends up breaking those "Rules" I don't hold it against them because they could not have known that I have a severe aversion to both of those things, I just warn them and move on.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
Yes but they'd probably be documented, FAQ'd, etc. Autistic people would tell rule violators to RTFM.
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren’t familiar with, wouldn’t they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
If the autistic person got upset at the person for breaking a norm the allistic was unfamiliar with they'd be being unfair assuming there was no good reason for them to have known in the first place.
Some taboos exist for good reason and apply across the board. We don’t greet strangers by asking them how their genitals are feeling, for example (although that would be hilarious).
I unironically would be pretty comfortable in a society that did that. At worst I'd probably be confused by why this was the thing people asked about but if I encountered a society that did such and I learned that as a common greeting I'd settle in fine.
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
I'm sure most do, but it's far more likely for their rules to be ignored/overridden if they don't fit in with society's idea of normal.
For example, an autistic person who does not like being touched is more likely to be seen as the "problem" than someone who tries to shake their hand or give them a hug. People who are close to them will probably learn to respect to that individual's personal rules, but NTs seem to less adaptable to social change, particularly if it's inconvenient to them.
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
Definitely, but a lot of them exist for good reasons. I suppose I'm talking more about the seemingly arbitrary rules here.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
... Show more...
Do autistic people, as individuals, not have rules in their own head about how people should interact with them?
I'm sure most do, but it's far more likely for their rules to be ignored/overridden if they don't fit in with society's idea of normal.
For example, an autistic person who does not like being touched is more likely to be seen as the "problem" than someone who tries to shake their hand or give them a hug. People who are close to them will probably learn to respect to that individual's personal rules, but NTs seem to less adaptable to social change, particularly if it's inconvenient to them.
Are there not rules that both autistic peeps and NTs have in common?
Definitely, but a lot of them exist for good reasons. I suppose I'm talking more about the seemingly arbitrary rules here.
In social groups composed entirely of autistic people, would another set of norms emerge that could get someone in the group scolded if they broke them, just like in the rest of society?
In my experience there just generally seem to be fewer "global" rules, but when rules are broken people get over it more quickly.
When a NT person upsets an autistic person because they broke a norm they weren't familiar with, wouldn't they also feel bad and try to remember not to do that in the future?
I guess this depends on the person, but that applies to everyone, not just NTs.
Rules are easy for my autistic self, it's when the rules are pointless, never explained, and enforced purely on vibe. For instance, as a rule you should always rinse and brush away as much of the gunk on dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. This isn't hard to understand or follow for me, it makes perfect sense. Now if the rule is to "read the room" ok, cool that's not specific, it has no clear goal, it's entirely vague. But it's also against reading the room to ask about reading the room and when asked NT people can't generally explain the structure to the rule.
“Read the room” is not a rule. “Read the room” is a skill of knowing how the people in the room are feeling.
The rule that skill serves is, “don’t say things that people in the room can’t handle hearing right now”
Obvious example: avoid chattering happily about your recent raise in front of people who are miserable they just got laid off.
Usually, people dismissively saying “read the room” mean, “I know that you are capable of feeling and understanding other people’s emotions, would you please fucking pay attention to that skill right now?” (This is plenty common even for not-autistic people) But of course for autistic people that assumption is just incorrect. People saying that to autistic people need to read the room.
I'm sorry but I completely disagree, read the room is entirely a rule. If you think social expectations are merely skills and not rules then idk where to really take this because society, socializing, it's all rules of which skill can allow you to bend and sometimes break. For instance it's against the rules to be happy at a funeral, even if you're happy but if you're socially skilled you can manage it.
I think you're getting stuck on people saying "read the room" not all the unspoken rules that ND people have to navigate simply because not doing it is rude. If I get asked "how are you" and I reply "I don't know why I'm alive anymore" I am considered an asshole not the person asking questions they don't want answers to. I have to follow the unspoken rules that they don't really give a fuck about me, they don't care how I'm doing, and that I need to lie even if I'm uncomfortable with it because they forced me to.
I would argue that it's moreso that there are many more specific and clear social rules, but most people don't know how to explain them, so when asked, they just say "read the room". As another person said, it might also be a reminder or shorthand of something that you are assumed to already know intuitively.
I think part of the skill is tone, which is kinda dumb since the truth you communicate is basically the same. Even so, something like "I don't know why I'm alive anymore" might be considered rude while something like "eh" or "not great" or "same as usual" (hopefully that's not your usual) or even something like "well, I've been a bit overwhelmed by current events recently" would generally not be seen as rude. You can still say something that's true; you just have to soften things. It would be easier if the softening was not necessary, but as people have gotten at earlier, you have more power to change yourself that to change how the rest of the world reacts to things.
I'm not diagnosed autistic or any other form of neurodivergent. To the day if someone asks "how are you?" I might give a real answer. "Not good, my cat is sick and I'm worried he might be dying" was one I gave last year, to a food service worker. He gave me a discount that day, acknowledged that that doesn't make it better but he did something to show he saw me and we have been a lot more friendly since then.
I don't dump on him every time I see him, because I genuinely have good days, but he lights up when he sees me, and that makes me happy too.
No you shouldn't rinse and brush as much off as possible, it undermines the environmental benefits of using the dishwasher to save water. The dishes and dishwasher will be fine.
Well intentioned, often other "neurodivergent" people look at your life, your autism, and say: "you should mask harder."
Yeah pretty much, right? But is any other advice possible?
"Here's how to appear less autistic" is really the only usable piece of info when the problem is "I'm autistic and that's never going to change but it sometimes causes problems".
"Learn how to politely say Fuck you deal with it it's definitely going to happen again" is the only other realistic option but that strategy is only effective in limited contexts.
I see it more like "those poor NTs can't help it, here's how you deal with them" in the sense of, they're not smart enough to understand you, so you have to understand them. If I run into a problem where a child doesn't understand me, I don't expect the child to understand me better, I expect to explain it better.
If literal aliens visited the Earth, I would try to understand them, and at the same time I hope they'd try to understand me, but I can only control my own understanding, not "make them understand me".
It's not so much about "what you're doing is wrong" more about "you can control yourself but not them, so you can do better". At the same time, if you notice they're not even making an effort, and they should know better, you're in your right to point that out. If you talk with someone reasonable, they'll understand.
because our behaviors and personalities are seen as a burden. having to be mindful about somebody's limitations requires some amount of work and people don't want to be bothered.
Which is a shame, because it means more of the effort falls onto us. We have to be extra careful of what upsets NTs, but NTs aren't instructed (nor expected) to be careful of what upsets us. To be fair, what that is can differ strongly from person to person.
It just sucks when you run into a spot where either side needs to give - like when your energy is low and somebody complains about your vocal tone. On your side, you're already extending as much energy as possible and falling short. On the NT's side, they don't necessarily know that the reason for the change in tone is because of something you can't control, and it has nothing to do with your feelings toward others. I ran into this issue recently and it basically meant I had to entrust someone else to explain to the other person what the issue was, because I didn't have the spoons to explain why tone is a lifelong issue and why mentioning it triggers me. Thankfully, my workplace is understanding, but I've been in countless more situations where I'd be expected to somehow give more of myself just to appease the NTs who do
... Show more...
Which is a shame, because it means more of the effort falls onto us. We have to be extra careful of what upsets NTs, but NTs aren't instructed (nor expected) to be careful of what upsets us. To be fair, what that is can differ strongly from person to person.
It just sucks when you run into a spot where either side needs to give - like when your energy is low and somebody complains about your vocal tone. On your side, you're already extending as much energy as possible and falling short. On the NT's side, they don't necessarily know that the reason for the change in tone is because of something you can't control, and it has nothing to do with your feelings toward others. I ran into this issue recently and it basically meant I had to entrust someone else to explain to the other person what the issue was, because I didn't have the spoons to explain why tone is a lifelong issue and why mentioning it triggers me. Thankfully, my workplace is understanding, but I've been in countless more situations where I'd be expected to somehow give more of myself just to appease the NTs who don't consider what their words mean to me (even though I've been made acutely aware through life of what my words can mean to others.) These situations usually fall 100% onto us to resolve, even when we aren't capable of it in any given moment. Which sucks so hard.
I wish there was more public understanding of our struggles. I wish masking so well didn't result in harsher social punishments when our masks inevitably slip. It would be a fairer world if NTs were taught and expected to respect our sides, instead of just us being expected to navigate the minefield of NT socialization. Alas, we're not there yet. But, the more we talk about our sides, the more NTs may come to understand us. Hopefully.
i share in your experiences and frustrations. i've had similar moments throughout my life when i felt the responsibility was entirely on me to make sure the social interaction went smoothly. i have tried to explain to people how i find certain social expectations exhausting and draining but that isn't really understood and often forgotten by the next time it happens.
Yes, and I'm afraid that I (LSN, self-Dx with high certainty, awaiting formal Dx since early 2023) been guilty of giving this advice until some time last year, when a user on this very platform informed me that what I was suggesting was masking.
One major factor in this problem, I believe, is that a lot of the "raising awareness" stuff I've seen over the years tends to focus on just one part of our demographic (namely young, medium support needs boys), which is quite counter-productive. This is likely the main reason why none of my teachers ever thought to have me tested, and why I was 17 before I thought "Hmm, I can't shut up about Linux, I have a bunch of autistic friends, and I just watched three solid hours of old PSAs. I wonder if there's a reason for all that?"
There are times when masking is a good idea, this potentially being one of them (I do not know the context); but on the whole, it really isn't fair to do it all the time just to placate neurotypicals when they are more than capable of dealing with it without long-term psychological harm.
Sometimes the advice isn't centered around interactions with other people.
Like - wearing sunglasses can help with feelings of overstimulation during the daytime.
running a fan at night for constant white noise can help you sleep
Liquid electrical tape is a great way to cover up those little LED lights on everything
10-20 seconds of cold shower can help your body with thermoregulation
My problem is that so much of discussion about autism is centered around social interaction, that people begin to think autism is just a problem of fitting in, and if only other people could be more receptive everything would be better... well it wouldn't make the sun any less bright!
Yep, that's why I only choose to hang out with other neurodivergent people or people who are willing to treat ND people's needs as at least as important as their more toxic social norms.
Public interactions you have to conform to survive, but personal connections are your choice.
What is not toxic to you: - A person has a disability which makes task x difficult to perform. - Everyone agrees that this person has this disability and that this disability makes it hard to perform task x - If they try to perform task x they may not understand they are doing it incorrectly, again because of the disability that everyone agrees is real and this person has. - no one is expected to create an environment where task x is made easier - when this person fails at task x, it is treated as a moral failing - inability to perform task x puts access to fundamental needs at risk
What is toxic: - being told that you do not understand the experience that someone is trying to express
The problem is that the rules for being "polite" and "tactful" are seemingly arbitrary and impossible to understand.
I know there are facial expressions you are supposed to make in certain situations to make your words work as polite, but I cannot consistently figure out how to do it.
"You need to learn to say no, because you are working well beyond your capacity and you need to take care of yourself"
Literally every time I say no it's seen as the beginning of a negotiation. I'm not being vague either. "Here is some data. I don't have time to review it with you today. Have a look and we'll discuss next week." Somehow that is interpreted as "Waltz into my office right now and ask about the data"
Or "I am not looking after that, go speak to (other engineer)" becomes 'Potato is handling it"
And like, these people are peers at best. They aren't trying to politely tell me I'm not doing my job or something.
The absolute worst is "I'm going to need to sit with the info you gave me before I can respond" becomes them just repeating themselves or trying to tell me what my response might be. Or when I say "I actually can't remember, but I can look it up" becomes them guessing. Not only have they completely ignored what I said to them, I'm now 100% checked out and every last drop of executive function is gone.
I basically made masking a hyperfixation for a while, until I had a good enough grasp of NT social interaction that I could drop the mask more and more. Then I just came across as cool, confident, and interesting when I was doing my own thing. It's kind of a "Learn the rules so you can break them" situation. NT conventions aren't really all that complicated if you devote a bit of time to study. If you can steer your fixations at all, it's worth the investment so you can get on with your life with fewer interruptions.
Unfortunately the world isn’t made for us and doesn’t understand — or want to understand — us. The only thing we have the ability to change is ourselves. It’s tiring and overwhelming and stupid, but using logic to cater to others emotional irrationality is just something we have to do to survive.
Yes, “mask harder” is a bad suggestion, but it’s the only one we have the power to do anything about. 😞
This should hopefully demonstrate that masking comes with serious costs, including misleading people who will come to think your mask is who you really are and possibly even come to love that fake person.
It turned out we could only live together when we were both masking and medicated. When she went off her meds to get pregnant, it fell apart fast. Still hurts, but it was the right decision.
I know you're not asking, but since you bring it up, I'd like to mention that I'm opposed to human reproduction. I hope everyone here considering creating humans will give equal consideration to adopting them.
I'm pretty sure I've annoyed allistics (NT or ND) friends and acquaintances by bringing up philosophy, sex, politics, religion, etc much more readily than normally "appropriate".
I'll continue to otherwise be friendly with them but on this they can get fucked. The only time I'm enduring "safe" small talk is when I'm at work.
The key here is to accept that not everyone needs to be your friend... unless you live in the middle of nowhere or in rural bumfuck (or as mentioned before you are at work). Then because the number of friends you'll potentially have will always be countable on 1-2 hands and you wont be able to afford losing one.
The actual good advice is: move to highly populated areas, accept that you'll alienate a large portion of people, and settle on the percentage of cool ones.
Unfortunately, moving to a populated place is expensive. So first get a job, and save up for the move.
As a non autistic person, we too are thought to fit in since childhood and do learn to wear social masks. It's not something exclusive to autistic people, but I guess you guys have a harder time learning to do it.
Moderate your behavior in public and respect other people is a conscious effort until it becomes "natural".
Just remember respect is a two way street, and everybody usually is trying to play their role.
Yes and no. The advice you received in particular is just as valid for neurotypical people. Knowing what is okay to talk about in different contexts is a learned behavior, not something that comes naturally to everyone.
However it is also true that a lot of advice is just 'mask harder' because... It's really the only thing you can do. You can't control other people and institutional change is slow, so the only option is to affect what you can affect and that will be yourself.
The difference is on WHY you're doing things. Masking is toxic if you're doing it to please other people or because it feels unsafe otherwise.
But adopting different ways of communicating depending on the context is not masking, it's how language works. Nobody speaks to their boyfriend the same way they speak to their Christian grandmother or the same way they talk in Xbox Live .
There is one from Brandy Bryant where she goes: "People accuse trans women of transitioning so they can beat up women, but if that's what we wanted to do we wouldn't have transitioned, we'd have just become cops"
The media in this post is not displayed to visitors. To view it, please go to the original post.
roleplaying with people with OP ass OCs is funny because it's like... "I'm a universe-bending princess alicorn!" and meanwhile my OCs are like... farmer, office worker, carpenter, contractor, janitor and such
But imagine sitting down at Starbucks. The room is full of normal laptops. Clean lines. Thin aluminum. Civilized.
I don't want to imagine it. That sounds terrible. That's not civilized at all.
I'd rather imagine sitting down at a hackerspace. The room is full of crusty old Thinkpads and other weird and obscure hardware. Retro-futurism. Cyberpunk RGB LEDs everywhere.
It has come to my attention that mastodon.art blocks a wide variety of the more popular LGBT instances, and so if you happen to be a queer artist there, you may not realize that your queer art gets very limited reach.
Having looked at mastodon.art's block list- which seems to be hundreds of instances long- I can confirm that this is the case.
Remember that server blocks like this are controlled by the staff of your instance and apply to everyone living there. And these blocks cannot be worked around by the user's preferences at all; it's been decided for you entirely. And unless your instance staff is very explicit about why they make these changes on your behalf, it's completely invisible to you as an end user.
You must trust in good faith that these blocks are necessary to protect the instance you live on, and that no other moderation tactic would be sufficient.
Mastodon.ART — Your friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO AI OR NFTs ALLOWED.
I feel like I rest my case with this. After literally having not followed this post since making it, they managed to prove me right by suspending me over this very post and severing the many follows I had to artists there. I do NOT recommend mastodon.art if you're an artist (or otherwise).
My first account was on .art, and i had to move because of drama that arose from the inclusion of queer and furry instances on their blocklist. I believe .art is run by well-meaning allies who have a more authoritarian view of progress and are not open to debate. I say this based on recollection from two years ago that i haven't updated since
The people at .art aren't "well-meaning allies", they're bigots pretending to be well-meaning.
They block lgbtqia and furry instanses over made bs made by the .art admins and start "call out" (harassment) campaigns agaings furry/lgbtiqia server admins/mods abd project devs until they're out of the fediverse.
Great lgbtqia and/or furry lead instances and projects have died because their main admin and/ir dev has been harassed out of fedi by the .art people.
wp is pretty openly transphobic and has harassed many queers off fedi.
They consider themselves allies but it’s contingent on enabling her bullying.
The reason it’s malicious is because wp talks over and refuses to listen to folks actively attempting to explain how her behavior hurts some of the most marginalized women.
I was gonna say, we know of several folks who left mastodon.art because they said that the majority of their commission work came from folks on furry instances and on tech.lgbt who have been blocked by mastodon.art.
But to some folks, we'll always be associated incorrectly with "virulent anti-Black racism" 🤷
@david The same thing happened to furry.engineer & pawb.fun. The truth is that a single user said something like "I don't like how aer0 put a bunch of LGBT servers on his blocklist" & he went apeshit.
@maddy have a look at the reasons for all those blocks.
every one of them is because an instance harbors (or exists explicitly to service) racists, fascists, transphobes, actual nazis, or the people who do their work for them.
the problem is not with dotArt. the problem is that so much of the fediverse is so hurriedly intent to sweep these things under the rug that they start to see meaningful moderation as their enemy.
consider the kind of fediverse we could have if more instances kept on top of their moderation.
@maddy also, I know at least two of the dotArt mods, and they play a pretty active role in reaching out to the moderation teams responsible for the users they receive reports about. your portrayal of them as having an "authoritarian view of progress and are not open to debate" is laughable to anyone who's actually interacted with them (providing they care about stewarding meaningful spaces on this network, of course).
@tully @FlitsFlash@floofy.tech @maddy also .art is a safe space first and foremost as per the about page
Don't know why people act like they have a duty for visibility when that's not what they're advertising they are.
Isn't the very idea of the fediverse that we can diversify approaches? Thus .art is a safe space for minorities with an art focus. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
We have been on fedi for 8 years now and this is the best instance we've been on wrt moderation
mastodon.fart has very very obnoxious trigger-happy mods. it’s to the point of guilt by federation - if some instance forgets to fediblock a bad actor fast enough they block it. +1 on that being there limits your reach massively just because of strangers’ whims and opinions on largely irrelevant years-old dramas
Skimming through the block list, they seem a bit hard on NSFW instances, blocking things just for unCWed NSFW, but ehh, the mastodon.art rules say no NSFW anyway, so I don't really see much of an issue. Just about everything else they've blocked seems reasonable, at least at first glance. Like, it's really easy to spin up a mastodon server, which has upsides, but also downsides
Mastodon.ART — Your friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO AI OR NFTs ALLOWED.
Mastodon.ART — Your friendly home on the fediverse for all things creative, all on a platform that is community-owned and ad-free. NO AI OR NFTs ALLOWED.
Yeah... I looked at the blocks. They definitely seem a bit trigger happy in general with their defederations. I looked and they blocked an instance for being "anti-furry" but in the same breath blocked furry.engineer?
oh yeah i remember this coming up when ppl were making the jump from cohost cause i had already had an account on a pretty innocuous small instance set up then that i rarely used and a few artists i followed on coho jumped to .art and i was like why cant i follow them ?? and that was my intro to federation drama lol
It's weird how "crimes against nature" is understood to mean some sort of perceived sexual deviancy, instead of, say, destroying the biosphere for profit
Just so disabled people in the UK know, if Reform UK get in, they would repeal the Equality Act, describing it as divisive and a political fashion statement. If you aren't interested in politics, it's worth bearing in mind that politics is interested in you - the immigrant carers that help you, your benefits, your access to work, your right to live free from discrimination, companies' obligations for accessibility, Uber's obligation to take guide dogs.
Also, don't imagine that them getting in would never happen because other people will vote the right way, because no-one would ever be mad enough to vote for them. Don't imagine this is a problem for other people to fix. It is not! Look at America. Ask the people of Minnesota how a largely apathetic electorate worked out for them. You know what's coming. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
If they come for you and your benefits, you don't want to be thinking "perhaps it would have been different if I'd done something!" If you're not sure what to do, askk. We're all in this together. We'll help each other, but we must do something!
It's something everyone should be concerned about. Even if you don't belong to one of the protected categories, one day you will be older.
Do you want it to be like the bad old days where someone in their 40s or 50s could be told "yes you've got great experience but older people don't fit with our image, I'm sorry but you just wouldn't fit in".
a reminder to old (and not old) people in the uk, you can become disabled at any time. As you get old you will eventualy become disabled. Even with only the most self centered mindset you should protect your future by protecting the rights of disabled peopl3
@Pouakai Yes, if you wanted to avoid credential stuffing attacks (i.e. taking the password from that poorly secured forum you were a member of to open your email account and pretty much everything else connected to you) a password manager has already been necessary for many years.
I’ve been using unique 20-char random passwords for at least five years. Occasionally, I’ve run into a site where the limit is lower, and then I’ve thought a bit about whether I really need an account at such a poorly coded site. Nope!
Just a note. Age verification is not mutually exclusive to everything that is on the safer column. If the real world has age requirements in some operations, it's acceptable that the digital world also has the same. Making the Internet lawless is what drives attacks on other liberties.
@dynom this laws you are referencing are the problem of unsafe acting on that harassment and victims you are referencing to. This laws will get it worse on victims because of stigmata on that topic. You have to reform that law before you could get victims safer. You have to get safer NSFW stuff before you kick out the really bad stuff. To ban everything that does not suit you is double standard.
Does your solution support open standards like POP/IMAP, allowing the end users to encrypt/decrypt/verify their messages EXTERNALLY? If it does not, please stop using the word "safe" and the name of your product in the same sentence.
@rbuzz because it is not make it clear what behave is good or bad. It is really not a all making safer thing than you will think of. It would be force to get more victims because of tabu that topic that has to be discus. Tabu this topics what will be unsafe for minors will get more victims and yes i mean also NSFW Content because that Content will get to people no matter what you will do. The other way around you have to guard minors actively not inactively like that verify stuff.
@strigga_ That is Stigmata what you are saying. You are correct on the 3rd but nut on the first 2. The First two has to be regulated and not to be banned. And i mean it also in context of minors. Because you are make it as a Tabu and this is violence the minors indirectly. This is Double Standard if you argument that censoring everything is a good way to protect minors because that will make more victims if that Topics are stigmatized by everyone. That will get more violence not less.
I think with the latest epstein files release revealing that the entire right wing movement (and 4chan/pol/) in the US and europe are a psyop by the international pedophile cabal is probably the funniest shit all year and it's january.
it means that we one the left have always had the mandate of heaven.
everything the right has is stolen, everything they say is lies.
Disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was a gamer who liked to share 4chan links and once chatted with Elon Musk about coming to a “wild” party on his notorious island, per documents released Friday.
god, i’d have to trawl through quite a bit of the justice.gov website again, but you can find the 4chan founder meeting with epstein basically the day pol was opened, steve bannon telling epstein he has advisor control over major right wing parties in europe, JK Rowling making private appointments with Epstein and emails exchanging ideas on controlling transwomen as sex slaves. The peter thiel exchanges also light up some of this spiderweb of disconnected and censored documents, it helps reading duplicates because they’ve often been differently censored.
![[FWGS]DjBRINE1](photo/contact/80/176819?ts=1738218875)
Aaron Davis
in reply to Rina Volpina 🦊🔞 • • •Sensitive content
Mark likes this.
Rina Volpina 🦊🔞
in reply to Aaron Davis • • •Sensitive content
Mark likes this.