On the other hand, some autistic people are prone to taking communication at face value without noticing emotional manipulation or deceit, have issues with social isolation and loneliness and, if academically gifted but socially unsuccessful, often vulnerable to messaging about how they are smarter and better than others but tragically misunderstood. (Not just chatbots, there are a lot of online spaces that seem to get into a feedback loop about the inherent superiority of autistic thinking and communication over neurotypicals, and as an autistic person I think this is rather misguided.)

I'm subscribed through work and haven't used it to make a personal project, but I imagine being told every decision you make is brilliant and revolutionary has some effect over a long period of exposure, unless you're very deliberately skeptical about it. If you started out thinking you're an exceptionally smart and insightful person, you're probably doomed.

It's the ciiiiiircle, the circle of slop.

Of course, it's not exactly the same situation, but if I listen to a song and appreciate that the vocalist sounds cool and they're doing some technically difficult things, I am definitely less impressed to find out it's a computer program. And it also means I can't find other songs with that vocalist's same artistic sense because they don't have one, they're a computer program who can sound like anything.

(But also admittedly way too often: pulling out my phone and looking at social media.)

I'm rather dismayed by the recent outpouring of articles about splitting the diagnosis up by people who don't even have a horse in this race but have somehow become qualified to weigh in on psychiatric diagnosis.

>>> Beats me. AI decided to do so and I didn't question it.

Really sums the whole thing up...

I went through a frankly terrible few months on my current meds because they removed the emotional numbness before removing the bad feelings. However, once that was over they effectively gave me my life back after 10+ years of continual exhaustion and brain fog.

Wonder if the dead wing will hold up for the lifespan of the butterfly without deteriorating? A living wing would have circulation. Then again even living butterfly wings don't heal from damage so it might not make much difference.

It's not about joyless grinding or forcing yourself, more like putting yourself in a space where you engage with the thing and deciding to go just one step further than the point where your attention initially starts to drift. Or just putting yourself back in the space of thinking about it when you have a free moment, like waiting in a queue. You can use that time to, for example, make up a few sentences in the language that you're learning (perhaps about how annoying the queue is), or playing music in your head.

It is slightly more difficult in the moment, but in the long term it makes your life experience richer and more fulfilling than if you pulled out your phone and started scrolling (which you can still do afterward). You don't have to be mercilessly beating yourself about productivity, but if you develop these kinds of habits you tend to naturally start doing it more often.

(Of course you can still choose to have them delivered to your door, but I find the delivery people don't ring the doorbell and then mark the delivery as missed, even with instructions to leave the package in front of the door. But that's a separate issue.)

So it's kind of like going through social interactions with an itch that you're constantly aware of but can't scratch. Or perhaps for a neurotypical person, imagine that you're instead not allowed to make any facial expressions or change in your tone of voice and you have to constantly monitor yourself to make sure you're not doing what is, to you, a normal and unconscious reaction. Of course everyone has to modulate their tone of voice and expression to some degree, but with autistics the gap between how they'd behave 'naturally' and 'what is considered socially acceptable' can be a much bigger one to bridge.

If I were at TSMC, I would not trust that the correct visas would be available in a timely manner to complete the project and also that any staff sent over there might get scooped up by ICE and sorted out later.

Anecdotally, the most depressed times in my life were when circumstances were objectively fine and I still couldn't manage to feel any less than terrible. Like, "This is as good as it's ever going to get???" Ironically having actual problems gave me both something to attribute the bad feelings to, and hope that I would feel better once I resolved the problems.