I am glad to see this happening. Unfortunately a lot of the damage is already done, though - staff have been lost and may not be easily replaced, studies have been interrupted at critical points and cannot simply be resumed from where they left off, etc. At least this pushback from the courts may reduce the likelihood of further such cuts.

That’s true, yes, but I suspect the variation across NTs is not as wide as the gap between NTs and neurodivergents.

As an analogy, everybody’s colour vision is slightly different. But most people are similar enough that they agree on colour, whereas somebody who is colour blind has a distinctly different experience. Most people don’t even think twice that what they are seeing is not what another person might be seeing (and without special software it’s basically impossible for people with regular vision to gain an understanding of what a colourblind person might see, whilst a colourblind person can only get an idea of what regular colour vision looks like if they have the right colourblindness profile for a pair specialised filtering glasses to work).

To state the obvious: predominantly because they are unaware that their experience of the world is not universal, but in some cases simply because it inconveniences them.

Interesting, I hadn’t seen news about that Apple feature before… There seems to be a lot more press around Recall, which in turn amps up the amount of consumer attention and backlash.

That said (and I wouldn’t want Apple’s “semantic search” even if I had an Apple device), I’d still trust Apple more to manage the dataset securely compared to Microsoft. The Apple ecosystem is far more strictly controlled, whereas in Windows it’s more of a free-for-all (most people just used XP as an administrator, the UAC could be easily disabled on Windows Vista and 7, etc.). Especially with Microsoft’s move to put advertising in Windows 11 and complete lack of security measures in the initial version of Recall, it is very hard to trust Microsoft in this regard.

Gardening is one of my hobbies but I don’t have much retail experience… Guess that’s me ruled out then.

I partly agree and disagree with the description of executive dysfunction. I would also break it into two categories, but the first encompasses both aspects of the description by “overwhelmed”.

In this case, the anxiety or stress that impedes function is due to uncertainty around how to achieve the desired outcome. The degree of anxiety or stress is dependent on the cost of failure; e.g. something with no perceived stakes (or very low stakes) allows for a high degree of uncertainty and an imperfect or incomplete plan can be executed because the cost of it going wrong is negligible. However, as the stakes rise, the degree of uncertainty required to create a “barrier to entry” (i.e. a sufficient amount of anxiety or stress to prevent action) decreases. The uncertainty itself could simply be not knowing how to approach or break down a task as per the comment, but it is also often the uncertainty introduced by other people. If you know someone well, then you can have reasonable confidence in how they might respond to a particular topic. If not, though, and they are a key part of achieving said goal, then oh boy does that cause stress!

The other category is not directly due to anxiety/stress but instead a result of fatigue, burnout or being overwhelmed (i.e. near meltdown). The brain effectively goes “nope” and refuses to process the required information no matter how much you want it to or how important it is. The irony is that if the anxiety or stress from the previous category is high enough, it can actually create this overwhelmed state, but in my experience severe fatigue, too much sensory input or too many cognitive demands (i.e. being forced to juggle too many tasks/problems/interactions at once) will readily create this situation too.

I think Christopher Heyerdahl is Canada’s answer to Jeffrey Combs. Not only does he show up in Star Trek: Discovery (Season 3’s “People of Earth”), but he plays three roles in the Stargate franchise (two recurring ones in Stargate: Atlantis) and another two recurring roles in Sanctuary (where a lot of other Stargate actors show up too).

Currently testing out Shiori. I have tried both it and Readeck on my Raspberry Pi 3B running 32-bit Raspbian ‘Bullseye’. From an installation and performance perspective, Shiori is easier: 32-bit binaries are available and its web interface is a bit more responsive. If you are not running a 64-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS, you have to build Readeck yourself (which I successfully did).

The main attraction of Shiori over Readeck is that it has both a readable and archive view. The main downside for me is it lacks the read/unread feature of Readeck and Pocket (although that’s apparently something planned for future and in the meantime, it’s possible to workaround using tags).

Both have a browser extension to enable capturing pages that contain Javascript and do not gracefully degrade. Both also have an export-to-ebook function that may suit your e-reader.

Bottom line: if you have an RPi4 or later, then Readeck is probably want you want. If you’re running an older Pi, though, Shiori may be a better option.

He’s trying to normalise the idea of the US taking control of Canada. It’s utterly insane, but if he repeats it enough plenty of people will just switch off or subconscious accept that Canada “should” be part of the US.

My understanding was that DS9 (and I thought most, if not all, of Voyager) was made on film like TNG, then edited on videotape with effects added. Creating a HD version for them would be the same process as remastering TNG. As far as I know, the reason this hasn’t happened is the cost involved.

Edited to add: https://treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/

Based on https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/2206365/Alternatives-to-MZLA-Pocket I’m going to try Wallabag and/or Readeck. Probably the critical issue is whether you can self-host or not:

• Wallabag has a paid public instance, but Readeck you’d have to host yourself until their public service launches later this year (see https://readeck.org/en/start)
• Wallabag uses the Pocket API to transfer data (so I think you’d need to migrate before Pocket shuts down), whilst Readeck can import the file produced by a Pocket export.
• Wallabag has phone apps, whilst Readeck is browser-only (does your e-reader support a browser?)
• Readeck can export to ebook formats (so might be more useful for e-readers in this regard); not sure about Wallabag

Really disappointed to lose Pocket. I am a big user of it and found it very convenient to save articles of interest as well as collecting anything that looked interesting that I might want to read. Have both the Android app and use it on the desktop.

Now I’m going to have to find a substitute.

Unfortunately if you’re high-masking they usually disagree with you and say you can’t possibly be autistic.

Vile and dystopian.

Burnout is a common experience for those of us with ASD. Autistic burnout in particular was only formally defined in 2019, even though the concept had existed for a couple of decades prior.

In your case I’m wondering if it’s the more classic occupational burnout since you’re feeling up to hobbies (which presumably you enjoy?) after just 48 hours away from work. My personal experience with autistic burnout is that it is really hard going and takes a long time to slowly climb out of.

I find it useful to distinguish between getting overwhelmed (which eventually will result in a meltdown) and burnout itself. Think of it this way: burnout drastically reduces the cognitive resources and energy you have available to deal with life. Effectively that means your available “bandwidth” to manage both sensory input and cognitively demanding situations is vastly reduced. That makes it much easier to get frustrated or overwhelmed. The reduction in cognitive resources also means that our ability to mask breaks down, so we more readily upset people (particularly NTs who don’t understand autistic behaviour).

On the work front, I can empathise with points #1 and #2 (not so much #3 as my interoception is apparently quite acute; if you struggle with determining your internal state then I recommended looking up some exercises to help with this, as you can improve it through practice). For years I was the single point of failure at my workplace so I was carrying a lot of stress. There were plenty of tasks that if I didn’t do them, nobody else could/would; there were also time-critical things that if I didn’t push myself to do in time, I would inevitably end up dealing with the clean-up. My manager did his best to work with me to reduce my workload (I even worked part-time for a while, much of work-from-home), but I was already too burnt out for this to enable me to recover. I eventually collapsed in a heap, prompting my employer to hire additional staff. My (very slow) staged return to work has started with just some knowledge-transfer and advice meetings so that they can continue working on the projects I’ve been involved with.

Determining when to return to work is not easy and it depends on how badly burnt out you are. If this is a repeated issue with your workplace, then I’d encourage you to talk to your manager/supervisor (if you can) to flag that the workload (and/or environment, if it provides high sensory input) is pushing you into burnout on a regular basis. It is in the interests of the business to avoid doing this, as it means you don’t work as effectively when you’re burning out and then have to take time off to recover. Usually employers can provide accommodations or restructure the work to some degree to help. The goal should be to avoid you burning out again, as not only is that the best for you and your health, but also gives your employer the best outcome (a productive, reliable employee).

You mention work-from-home, so that’s something to look into further - if your job allows (and your home environment is less demanding than your workplace), you could either try to get a regular WFH schedule or have a staged return to work starting with lots of WFH and slowly increasing the time in the office.

I don’t know if this applies to you, but I find meetings very draining and so avoiding back-to-back meetings is essential for me at the moment. If you have regular meetings, see if you can arrange with your colleagues to space them out a bit to give you time to recover inbetween.

On the home life front, prioritise your health. Sleep is crucial and anything that disrupts it must be addressed. After that focus on nutrition and exercise, but don’t push yourself - that only exacerabates burnout.

The toughest part of all of this is going to be learning to pace yourself. It takes time and practice to identify how much energy or bandwidth you have for a given day and how much you can realistically achieve without making the next day a write-off. Again, if you can look into some interoception exercises to help you better judge your internal state, I think it would help with this (and eventually help you prevent burning out again too).

That is remarkably coherent for a sovcit.

Of the thousands of books tucked into the library’s stacks, one author has emerged as a patron favourite: Louise Penny, the bestselling Canadian novelist and creator of the detective Armand Gamache. … Penny made headlines in recent weeks after donating C$50,000 (US$36,000) to help fund a new entrance to the library, an “elegant” solution to the diplomatic snafu created in wake of new restrictions. “I have the resources to help because of the support of American and Canadian readers. The least I could do is give back,” Penny said. “Plus, it’s like giving the finger to the current administration: you close one door, we will open another one.”

This is exactly what I would do - make sure there is an accessible entrance on the Canadian side. Make it so that if the US really wants to be difficult, they have to put up a wall down the middle of the library.

The full study for those interested: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354152560_The_Psychology_of_Online_Political_Hostility_A_Comprehensive_Cross-National_Test_of_the_Mismatch_Hypothesis

At least you could get away with using a chair cover and share the chair.

I ended up getting not only a second chair, but an elevated cat bed too so that both my cats had somewhere comfy to sit whilst I was at my desk!

This. All the Christians that support a theocracy need to stop and realise that there’s no guarantee that their particular denomination is going to be the one running said theocracy. The whole concept of freedom of religion depends on the separation of church and state.