• 2 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle







  • I have a strange relationship with masking these days. I had no idea I had autistic tendencies until I married my wife who has been diagnosed with autism. Since then it has been very rewarding having conversations about how our two flavors of autism differ. One of the things we differ tremendously on is our abilities to mask effectively. My wife has struggled with it, especially as a kid, but it always came naturally to me such that it is now my “default mode” when I am in public. Instead of missing social queues like many people, I find I have the opposite problem where I over-analyze social situations to the extent that I read too much into them and it drives me crazy. So masking has actually been very useful for me in that regard because I feel like when I am masking in public I am less “aware” of how I am acting because I feel like I am mostly coming off “normal” relative to the social expectation.

    My wife is also very socially aware but she struggles to turn off her over thinking meaning she frequently comes out of social encounters panicked that she said or did something wrong. Whereas I’ll be so blended into the situation I won’t even remember her saying or doing what she is worried about. We work together well in that regard because I remind her that if I am married to her and I don’t notice her say or do something “atypical,” then someone who doesn’t know either of us well almost certainly either didn’t notice either or won’t remember it five minutes after the conversation ends.

    So it is a mixed bag. It has been rewarding being able to unmask at home around someone I can trust and who I know loves me, but I still find today that I rarely completely unmask unless I am literally home alone in our house. That usually manifests in me walking around the house doing chores and things talking to myself about a thousand different made up scenarios, which even as a kid I always regarded would probably come off as weird to everyone else.

    I think the most important thing is striking a balance between masking and being genuine. I know many people struggle feeling like they are not being their true selves while masked and others even view masking as manipulative. But I think everyone has a different relationship with the practice.









  • Rule 2 of the community guidelines does state that all political pictures (defined as a picture of a politician of any country of any planet) are prohibited and will be removed. So they are not wrong, in spite of the down votes. I do wonder if the community were to have a similar poll today on whether these types of images should be banned how it would turn out, assuming the community has grown significantly since the months that have passed since the prior vote. The second choice was very close in the original poll which would have provided an exception of one political picture allowed per current event.

    Edit: here’s the link to the community poll for context if it helps anyone else!


  • Understood and completely agreed with your sentiment. Obviously any time of sweetened drink is going to be less healthy than water. It is also undeniable that our corporate funded research papers have frequently resulted in and continue to result in biased and often completely non-credible conclusions.

    I still assert that “safe” is a relative term, and one issue I have is the lack of nuance associated with certain headlines. For example, the IARC Group B classification that the WHO cites is the same risk for cancer as “engine exhaust or occupational exposure as a hairdresser.” So yes, excessive aspartame consumption is definitely objectively bad for you compared to drinking water, but the cancer risk is not extensive compared to many other things we are exposed to on a regular basis.

    “JECFA concluded that the data evaluated indicated no sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame. The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.”

    Also I very much appreciate the great discussion on this!



  • I sincerely hope this is a poor attempt at a joke because that kind of statement has contributed directly to the current situation. It is not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government, Zionism, or the IDF and its actions. It is antisemitic to say the reason you are criticizing those things is because they are all Jews.

    Conflating those two not only makes it impossible to speak out against the atrocities being committed, it makes violence worse against Jews.




  • It’s not a numbers thing, it’s a facts thing. That’s just how criminal justice works (or is supposed to). So to address your second paragraph―the number of people and whether they are men, women, or otherwise is entirely irrelevant. If someone can be proven to have done wrong, they did wrong, period. I’m not stating I agree or disagree with his acquittal, I was just making sure I hadn’t missed some news that he had, in fact, been found guilty. I’m well aware that wealthy people and, in particular, powerful men get unfair advantages in the criminal justice system.