I have a small partition that has a copy of Linux Mint live USB. I also have another partition that holds my backups. When I inevitably break my system, I launch Mint and use an rsync command I keep in a text file to revert back to the backup I made.

Using Mint’s live usb image has multiple benefits. It has Gparted for partition management. It has basic apps like LibreOffice and Mozilla in case I need them. It has proper printer support too. And since it’s a live usb image, every time I launch it, the environment will always be the same. No changes are permanent and will disappear after a reset.

My days of using Mint may be over, but it’s too reliable to ever truly leave my system.

I kept saying “cd up” in my mind so I just made an alias for cdu, became a reflex within the next day

I was installing Alpine Linux on a Raspberry Pi 5 and was using the kitchen TV as a temporary monitor. My parents thought I was sending encrypted messages. I was just updating the repository list to find the quickest mirror.

It’s funny to me how some people see text scrolling by on a screen and immediately think witchcraft.

This reminds me of when I had apprenticeship classes that got interrupted by the covid lockdowns. I was forced to do theory classes online over zoom. Every morning my wifi connection would drop for a few minutes at a time during my classes.

Turns out it was the microwave. Every time someone used the microwave, it would disrupt the wifi/router for the whole house.

Ended up making a sign to let people know I was in class. My classes were only for 8 weeks total. I had about 4 or 5 weeks remaining by the time I figured it out so it wasn’t too long of an inconvenience.

There are times when I hang out with someone and I’ll be unbelievably happy for a couple days afterwards. Then I begin to feel a bit sad and unmotivated for a few days after that because I want more of that happiness they gave me. That kind of happiness high can be a bit intense.

I have only a small handful of friends these days but the ones I have now are able to show me trust, appreciation and love so easily. Something that has not been very common in my life in general.

I just keep reminding myself that there are people who genuinely care about me as I am and it gets a bit easier to motivate myself again. Little by little.

Also helps that my parents stopped watching the 24 hour news channel so much. Not hearing the news has saved a bit more of my shrinking sanity.

I’m not a fan of labels because I can never keep up with the constant changing of meaning or the new labels that keep appearing.

Instead I focus on peoples actions to figure out how I am to handle them. The most common behaviour I see in people who act more in their own self interest is manipulation. They want to control as much as possible. That includes the situation and the people around them.

The simplest thing to do is observe. Watch what they do. Watch how they interact with people around them. I often ask myself a bunch of questions about that behaviour. Do the words they say match what they do? Where is the attention coming from and where is it going? What tools do they use to bring attention to themselves? Is there a power imbalance between them and someone else? What tools do they use to control that power imbalance? Who is gaining something and who is losing something in those interactions? Why do they care so much about something that seems insignificant?

That’s not a complete list or anything. People are creative in good and bad ways so it’s more of a developed skill which takes time to grow. You may find other observations or questions to help you filter out manipulative people.

As a quiet person who has spent more time observing than talking, I’ve always been a target for manipulators. They seem to think my quietness is submission. I’ve dealt with far too many manipulators so much of what I said comes from those experiences.

I often deal with manipulative people by either acting dumb or figuring out the tools they are using or willing to use on me and deny them the chance to use those tools on me any further.

I saw three garter snakes on my last hike a few days ago. They look so soft but they are content watching me watching them. They are so cute.

I once saw someone in the irc channel jokingly refer to Alpine as Alpine linux pine. Now when I goto the website, all my mind reads is Alpine Linux Pine Linux…

D:

I got fixed a couple months ago. Best decision ever.

For nearly 40 years, I’ve been told the horrors of climate change. For nearly 40 years, I’ve watched climate change unravel. And now at nearly 40 years on this planet, I’ve reached a point where I am more concerned about immediate human activity affecting my life rather than the breakdown and collapse of our planet’s environment.

At no point in my life has there ever been a desire to bring a new life into this horrifying existence.

Now if only those weird and miserable old men would stop calling me selfish for not having children. Their obsession with my genitals makes me uncomfortable.

I had a former coworker come pick me up one day after work to go for sushi and catch up. I just got home from work and needed a shower.

Tried to get him to wait outside because it was a beautiful day. Nah, he wanted to chill in my room. First thing he did was call my room a jail cell…

I’ve upgraded since then. Now I have a bunch of pothos plants and a depressed chilli pepper plant I keep watering because this creepy, demonic little puking worm lives in there. Only seen it a few times but it’s there. I throw bits of food in the pot to keep it happy :)

I hate flirting. I just don’t understand it. It’s this weird social dance that no one explains but expects people to understand. It all feels hypocritical that comes with unreasonable expectations.

The biggest source of frustration for me comes from the fact that I have to act in a way that says I am interested while not saying I am interested. That just does not work for me.

I don’t flirt. I don’t even try. I don’t want to be with someone flirty because from my past experiences, flirty people are also not straight forward about other parts of their true selves.

Flirty people also misinterpret a lot of my actions as a result of me not understanding flirting as well. Many flirty people from my experiences have assumed I am flirting. I was just being nice. I was treating them like a person. Just like I treat family like people. And friends like people. And strangers like people.

As a not flirty person, the number of times people have pushed me up against a wall and kissed me, or just jump to kissing me has been way more than I ever expected out of life. Each time has been equally confusing. I wasn’t flirting. I was just treating them how I wanted to be treated.

I have no advice to give but I have some thoughts to share from my life experiences. People like being treated like people. People who make mistakes. People who have their own thoughts and feelings. People who are themselves. I’ve made more genuinely close connections with people, intimate or not, by just treating people as people. And it’s really something as simple as that. Also having a genuine smile helps quite a bit too. When I smile because I’m enjoying the moment, I notice that it draws people towards me. It’s a type of energy that draws people in and it makes me feel even better about myself too.

Emotional intelligence has always been a sort of hidden magnet in my life that’s pulled me towards people who had the emotional capacity to treat people like people instead of treating people based off any first impressions or preconceived labels.

The people who I remember and hold closest in my memories have been people who understood that I’m my own unique person, with my own experiences that shaped me, with my own way of solving problems, and my own way of learning from those experiences. They were able to assist and guide me in a more human and understandable way. It felt more positive and encouraging. I learned so much more from people with a stronger sense of emotional intelligence in comparison to people who lack emotional intelligence.

Unfortunately, with what I believe to be a global mental health crisis brought on by the arrival of a global pandemic, it’s been obvious to me that there has been a critical lack of education in any form of emotional intelligence. Thinking back on my own education, there was more a focus on employable math and science skills, language with a heavy historical perspective, history with a heavily propagandized perspective and obedience within a narrow and confined learning structure. The only class that taught me any sort of life skills was the lowest level math class I had the option to take. The math class only “stupid” kids took.

After the initial uncertainty wore off and reality set in with the global pandemic, those who lacked the emotional intelligence to look within began to lash out at everyone around them. To them, the world turned against them as they were expected to be empathetic towards other people. It’s been difficult to process and deal with such a critical lack of emotional intelligence on such a large scale.

Those who are filled with hate for themselves and the world around them have far more energy than those with a better sense of their own emotional intelligence. Those who are filled with hate are burning out everyone else around them.

I think now more than ever, there needs to be more emotional intelligence education for both young and old. It will be very difficult to help ourselves move forward if we aren’t being empathic towards each other and the world around us.

I’m aware what I’ve said isn’t very specific to autism but it’s a topic that was made much more clearer to me after figuring out I have autism and understanding how it’s affected my life.

As with many travelers in Australia, we both had work/holiday visa’s that allowed us to stay in Australia for 1-2 years. This wonderful comment was thrown at me within the first week of arriving at a hostel in Sydney.

Fortunately they left a month or two later but I still avoided them when they did still live there.

Amazing. Layers of ignorance for an already dumb thing to say.

I’m a person of colour who has a white step parent and has grown up in Canada in a fairly mixed area.

My family history would have started in India but my parents were born in South America and migrated up to North America (both Canada and the US) where my sister and I were born. I grew up “white.” My voice, appearance and behaviour are “white.” I was born and raised Canadian. I’m far from proud of this country where I have spent my life but I will identify myself as a Canadian. My family history had been thoroughly white washed and erased.

I say all this because for all this history I have behind me, it means nothing to most people.

The majority of Indian people here will look at me one way until I speak and then promptly ignore me because I’m not “Indian.”

West Indian people want to be my best friend until they find out I’ve never visited any West Indian country. Then I’ll be treated as an idiot for not embracing a culture I have no real knowledge of and have not been immersed in.

Then there are the white people… No matter how white I act, I will never be “white” enough. I’ll always be the colour of my skin. I could look, act and behave as awful as a white cop and still not be on the same level.

In fact, I have a “friend” who is a cop. He’s not really my friend, more of an acquaintance I’ve known for 10+ years through another more decent friend. This guy is just fucking awful and every molecule in his body is racist and vile. He looks at me, arms full of tattoos and tells me I’d be a perfect “UC.” Undercover Cop. My only value to him is to be used to incriminate fellow people of colour. I’m just not a person or anything close to equal. Always something less.

I’ve never really had a place where I felt I belonged while growing up. Hated for being me from multiple angles for reasons beyond my control while doing nothing harmful to anyone. There are good people out there who treat me as a person first but they are few and far between.

Another quick story, I once had a Dutch guy in Australia tell me that his last name Hoffmeister means “House Master.” You know, from the times when they used to own slaves. Thanks for telling me that to my face, you absolute weirdo.

Judging from the stories of autistic women who are in my life, as well as stories I’ve read online, there seems to also be the issue of being heard or taken seriously when attempting to get diagnosed or treated. This is on top of societal or gendered expectations which makes masking that much more of a challenge to maintain.

One of my closest friends had to stop seeing their therapist because she would leave her sessions crying and was only able to improve her mental health by refusing to visit that therapist again. Another really close friend had a doctor that kept prescribing the same medication to her even after stating multiple times at multiple visits that the medication was causing her suicidal thoughts.

In comparison, as a male myself, I was able to walk in, tell them why I thought I had ADHD and later autism and was able to walk about with prescriptions or a plan of action within the same visit.

I do think the the video spoke broadly enough that it could be informative about autism in general and could have added a bit more context to align the title with the video content.

Many people get annoyed that I often give vague answers. If I over explain myself, they’ll twist my words into a new meaning. I’m confused :D

I’ve had stocks in a couple forms over my lifetime and after a while, both times I have pulled all my money out.

The first time was shortly after the 2008 crash. All those reassuring words my investing manager person told me were simply sweet nothings. I decided that taking the hit of losing half my money was a life lesson and used the remaining half to go travel and live a life for myself. That investing manager later went on to have a covid party out of defiance for masking requirements, caught covid and died. Felt good knowing my stranger-danger alarms were working even if I didn’t understand my decisions fully at the time.

The second time I simply put my money into a low risk, government stock option for a few years. After watching global leaders fumble the handling of a global pandemic, I lost faith my own government to have my best interest in mind. I pulled my money out again.

I personally feel super uncomfortable allowing other people to make money off my money that I am risking. Even if it is low risk. It make me feel exploited.

Ultimately, I decided I don’t need my money to work for me because I don’t even want to work. I hate the concept of money. To me, money just disconnects us from community and nature.

If you are curious to how I live, it’s with very little. I spent a number of years of my life living out of a 34 liter sized backpack. Living minimally while making sure what I owned had meaning, purpose or intention transfered over to when I finally started settling into a certain location.

No car.

I’m “content” where I am now. I understand you want to help in some way but sometimes listening to someone vent helps more than any advice anyone can give.

People like to talk. People like being heard. People like being understood. Being too proactive can easily get in the way of listening sometimes.