Dumb used to mean someone who is both deaf and mute.

The problem I have is that there is a loss of specificity, not that Asperger’s and autism are fundamentally different. Autism used to be defined as the cluster of autism-like symptoms paired with a developmental problem with language. Asperger’s was very similar, except that the impairment was with social interaction and non-verbal communication rather than linguistic aspects. Nowadays, while there is a lot of overlap, the difference is more like car vs truck rather than car vs SUV. You can classify a truck as a type of car, but you can’t classify a car as a type of truck.

In the US, you are sometimes given the option to opt-in to a handoff, especially if the package is valuable. Delivery engines like Amazon typically don’t do this because of how incredibly strict delivery quotas are, but I know at least UPS and USPS allow it.

Of course, UPS and USPS drivers also have qoutas, so if you don’t get to the door I within a minute, they take the package back and try to deliver it the next day.

I think what you’re experiencing is more just a consequence of increased package delivery use rather than anything inherently to do with Americans(unless you consider getting packages delivered a uniquely American characteristic).

I disagree that comments are an indication of messy code. The purpose of comments are to 1) translate low level concepts into higher ones for improved readability and 2) to maintain information in the design process that can’t be represented by the code itself.

Obviously I don’t have to comment mathematical operations, but it makes sense to comment the algebra of how I derived an equation and it’s use in the code. Now, I could refactor that section of code into a function in order to give it a name, but that would make it more difficult to read as the programmer would then have to find the definition of that function somewhere else in the file. It is objectively more spaghetti-like to pull out single-use code into a function rather than just label the block of code with a comment.

I’m guessing old CRTs. I’ve heard they can emit radiation if they aren’t lead lined.

I’ve been working on developing a CPU architecture based around my own variant of lisp called “dollhouse lisp” the big twist is that DHlisp executes code by reducing a syntax tree, so all code is destroyed once it’s been executed. It’s a very elegant solution, but a very difficult implementation. (Especially when it comes to loops and garbage collection.)

No one really realizes that they consume propaganda. To most people, there are true statements an propaganda. True statements align with their beliefs, whereas propaganda doesn’t. The way we conceptualize propaganda means that we are all ‘resistant’ to it by definition.

I like to think I’m resistant to it, that I recognize nuances in places where other people don’t. But I know that when I think something is good, there’s a very big chance I only have one side of the story and my opinion may be completely different if I had approached it from that other perspective.

I personally think the change from master & slave was kind of silly, as far as I’m aware, it was a bunch of people with no background in CS who thought the application of the term to something that has neither race nor agency was an insult to black people.

But I digress. It led to better guidelines in the Linux kernel, which I think are useful. You should tailor the terms you’re using to the specifics of the task. If you have a master process that only has outward interfaces through the slave processes, you could use the term ‘director’ and ‘actor.’ if the master process is managing slave processes which compete over the same resources, you can use the terms ‘arbiter’ and ‘mutex holder.’ If the slaves do some independent processing the master does not need to know the details of, you can use the term ‘controller’ and ‘peripheral.’

Basically, use a term that is the most descriptive in the context of your program.

Edit: also, I don’t know why no one mentions this, but you can also use master/servant. Historically, there wasn’t a difference between servant and slave, but in modern days there is, so it’s technically different, technically the same.

Unused memory is not useless, it is just unused. If I want to pull up a guide on how to giggle the grables in my favorite game Grable Giggler, I would be very happy if I had unused memory which I can now use for my browser.

Also, smaller RAM usage generally correlates to smaller file size, which is very useful on computers with limited storage.

And finally, there’s also low spec gaming and accessibility. Minecraft, at least prior to the microsoft acquisition, was a very low spec game. I wouldn’t say it was optimized, but a game of minecraft took less ram than chrome. There was nearly no computers at the time which couldn’t run minecraft. At the time of minecraft’s early boom, kids were getting low-spec hand-me-downs, and so minecraft was one of the most open-ended games they could play. What I’m trying to say is that minecraft—and Doom for that matter—owe a large part of their success to low memory usage.

GIF compression is endearing, though. It only has 256 colors, but it tries its hardest anyway.

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.

What’s your preferred default pronoun? As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a universally accepted replacement, since any pronoun comes with drawbacks. ‘he’ & ‘she’ are gendered, ‘it’ typically refers to non-sentient things, and ‘they’ can cause confusion about number. Of course, there’s also neopronouns, but people have come up with a billion, and there’s no consensus or standard, so I can’t confirm the person I’m talking to will understand.

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.

Neurodivergent guys be like: “I have to account for every single possible way someone could react to something, because otherwise I’ll say something rude and the two people who voluntarily talk to me will hate me.”

The double-down is so much worse than the original statement.

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.

I struggle to learn rust because the semantics and syntax are just so awful. I would love to be enthusiastic about rust, since every seems to love it, but I can’t get over that hurdle. Backporting the features into C, or even just making a transpiler from C to rust that uses annotations would be great for me. But the rust community really does not seem interested in making stepping stones from other languages to rust.

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