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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • Popular Christianity is heavily based on paganism, which is incredibly ironic considering that paganism is generally posed as the antithesis of Christianity. The story of Lucifer is syncretized with the story of Prometheus, although Lucifer doesn’t really benefit humanity at all. According to the popular interpretation, Lucifer is the origin of all evil, became a snake in the garden of Eden, and then tempted Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, the snake isn’t actually connected to Lucifer in the text—that interpretation was added later to explain the problem of evil (why it exists if God is supposedly good)

    The idea that Lucifer is insubordinate and violated the natural hierarchy is very old, but the idea that Lucifer is the origin of evil is relatively new.

    Christian theology contains many holes like this because there’s a tendency towards treating every word in the Bible as literal, where it may have been written allegorically or as a parable, as Jesus often did. (Just to be clear, Jesus did NOT write the Bible, I’m just pointing out that the writers of the Bible may have tried to replicate his style.) This issue is compounded when you include the Old testament, as it contains portions which are clearly mythological, but are nonetheless treated as fact by certain modern Christians.



  • I once tried to make a ridiculous multi-processor computer, which took advantage of the TMS-9900’s weird clocking to allow it to run faster CPUs in between slower clock cycles. The 9900 has a four phase clock and a maximum speed of 3mhz. I wasn’t skilled enough to pull it off, but it’s still a really interesting idea.


  • I can very much relate to feeling like a sociopath. But masking is a form of disassociation, so I can’t really help it if I don’t feel a lot of the emotions I put on. And after doing that for a long time, I started picking up on the grander strokes of conversation. It makes me very guilty that I ever even think about how I could manipulate the conversation when I’m detached from it.



  • I’m not sure I understand your feelings, but I’m going to offer uninformed advice anyway.

    First of all, what does an ‘alternative option’ mean? Does the rest of your family pick a single thing off the menu, and you’re embarrassed you don’t want to eat the same thing, or is it more like you go by the drive through of another restaurant than everybody else? Picking different options off the same menu is generally the norm where I am, so I don’t think other people would find it that weird. If it’s the latter, I think most people would interpret that as you making a strong effort to engage and be supportive of your family, even it’s difficult for you.

    As for your family being concerned about the amount you eat, there are a couple ways you could approach it. The easiest way would probably be lying about having eaten before. People are very unlikely to be concerned about you eating too little if you say you already ate beforehand. It can be a little bit rude if you know someone will be cooking in advance, though.

    The second option would be saying you have a slow metabolism. This option wouldn’t completely stop your family worrying about your food intake, but over a long period of time your family will probably pick up the hint.

    The third option would be to increase your metabolism through exercise, so you’re more hungry and eat more. This is kind of a weird option, but it also gets close to the root of the problem.

    Regardless of which option you take, it seems like your family is trying to accommodate you, even if they’re doing it poorly. In these situations, being direct and honest can be very useful, since they are likely to accept your feedback. First of all, try to examine all the support they are already giving. If there are any situations when they anticipate your needs accurately, tell them that those situations are very helpful for you. If there are any situations where that isn’t the case, try and tell them why it went wrong and if you actually want support in that case. A very useful phrase is “I need to learn how to do X on my own.” It both explains why you want them to stop, while at the same time it doesn’t imply they’ve done anything wrong. Lastly, regarding the restaurant thing, try to be clear about your feelings, why you are embarrassed, and if you want help trying to solve that issue. They will probably try to brainstorm different ways to ease your embarrassment, and they might have different ideas than you.

    If your family is being earnest about trying to help, the best thing you can be is earnest about the help you need.


  • Supported typing/facilitated communication is widely regarded as a pseudoscience. Studies have shown that FC is unable to produce answers not known by the facilitator. FC proponents believe that autistic individuals have the same linguistic ability as neurotypical individuals, and difficulty speaking is merely a motor issue.

    As someone with autism, I can tell you: my brain can barely keep up with conversation. It’s not a motor issue. I have to actively think about appropriate word choice, how to structure sentences correctly, and neurotypicals don’t. If I don’t take enough time to finish the sentence in my head, the intonation is wrong, I’ll skip words, put them out of order, and just generally be unintelligible.

    FC, like many other ‘theories’ surrounding autism, are made by people who have put years into researching autism, but have never thought to ask an autistic person anything about their experience.

    Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication


  • I’m aware of that, but what I don’t know is if background processing usually interferes with regular processing. I do occasionally step back from a problem specifically to let my subconscious process it, but that doesn’t typically come at the cost of other things I can think about; It doesn’t cause me to see, think, or do any mental processing worse.

    I don’t think a ‘zero-sum game’ ever occurs for other people’s subconscious problem solving.






  • My dyspraxia (and dysgraphia) aren’t very pronounced, but they’re in that range where I am significantly less coordinated than other people, but not enough that people recognize the disability. I didn’t even know I had dysgraphia until my senior year of highschool, and my mom refused to believe I had dyspraxia.

    Whenever I draw on a digital tablet, I have to use fast arcs and lines because my hands wobble too much when I draw slow, intentional lines.

    I’ve been practicing the piano recently. I wouldn’t say I can play the piano, since I can’t associate each key with the note they play, but I am apparently good at improvising. I can’t use two hands at the same time, and when I play too fast my fingers press the keys in the wrong order, but I am slowly getting better.