lyth

Watch silent films and marvel at the theatery exaggerated acting. You can talk over silent films much easier and they demand less attention from the viewer. Some have their own scores attached to them so you aren't just hearing silence or someone's classical music playlist. Many are public domain and trivial to find online. Success scales with your interest in film criticism and how much you can tolerate thinking about a pretty messed-up period of history while blazed.

Also try SomaFM for picking a music vibe. It's donation-supported and ad-free, and a nice way to come across new artists.

Some quick extra bullet points as I'm short on time and much of what I want to say has already been said in this thread:

• I strongly recommend Behind the Bastards' 2-parter on fake autism cures (huge trigger warning for child abuse though), and just as strongly Rowan Ellis' video essay on autism representation. Both could be listened to during chores or work. https://youtube.com/watch?v=WA9B4_e6sS0
• If you're making an intentional, good-faith effort to be kind and curious, then as an autistic person I deeply appreciate your showing up, and please don't let the downvotes make you any less curious.

It depends on the region and culture you were born into, but I'm gonna have to lean toward no since I can't personally find any evidence that any other person has ever had this name. It'd make it hard to find shirts and stuff that already have your name printed on them

Usually for the same reasons you'd get entangled in a movie or book? Games are allowed to be emotionally complex just the same as any other form of media, and the interactive aspect gives them some extra leverage for it that others lack.

I've cried really hard to the track "Confronting Myself" from Celeste, which counts as "because of a video game" even though I wasn't playing it at the time.

I'm crying again now thanks

how can you be confident that anything supplied here will be retained if you were previously unaware you even needed to know in the first place?

The information I'm looking for wasn't immediately important for me to know earlier in life, and because of a mix of the ADHD issues, a lack of home economics-type education and a lot of these kinds of responsibilities being handled by someone else growing up, I wasn't really in a place to think of educating myself for the future. This all changed a while ago and I realized I needed to do a lot of catching up to be a functional, self-autonomous person. I've gotten the impression that there are a ton of folks who feel this way about stuff like learning to do taxes.

TL;DR, my brain holds it as useful, very important information now.

I understand and appreciate the intent of what you're saying, but I have really bad executive dysfunction/ADHD/whatever issues that make this not a realistic choice for me. This post wouldn't need to exist if I had the motivation to sit down and read my way to victory. Long-form listenable content is also just much easier for me to multitask with.

In the last 48 hours they've only posted on their Facebook about how they helped get Trump elected and criticized (insulted) a study that examines "the relationship between community-level firearm violence and dental health". They seem pretty unconcerned

When you make this kind of comment it really just adds to the reasons to not use the nostupidquestions and ELI5 communities on this platform. There needs to be safe spaces to admit to being biased and uninformed and to ask people to help you out of it without being berated.

You'd have to specify which talking points you're looking to verify/falsify. A nonzero amount of people surgically transitioning and then regretting it doesn't do much good for the verifiably made-up points or eliminationist points that "right wing talking points surrounding Trans issues as a whole" often contain.

Anyway, here's Some More News talking about detransitioners. His content tends to be a bit on the ranty side but I hope you'll consider giving it a watch.

• Six-year-olds have very little agency over their minds and so little understanding of the world that IMO it's not really worth it to view them as "guilty" of things.
• I don't know whether this is a useful way of thinking about things for you, but most of the matter in your body has been replaced with new matter since you were six years old. I expect most of the way you think and the things you know have been replaced since then, and how your cognition works on a very basic level has changed. Like, if you're over age 27 you have a developed prefrontal cortex that wasn't all there before. You've changed enough that you could safely regard yourself as a different person in a material sense, and a much better person. Sometimes when I remember something terrible I've done ages ago, the way I'll think of it is that I can destroy that other version of me by becoming a different, better person.
• You could see life-changing benefits by seeking therapy resources like DBT and CBT. Web searching these can lead you to free video resources that you could listen to while doing whatever else you do with your day.

Autistic adult here:

I do feel like I have a more childlike appearance sometimes, less so in recent years. I think that because of the seriously messy place my mind was in from the very start, it took me longer to interact with other people enough to develop the social awareness I needed to "fit in", and not "fitting in" is often equated with being childlike, IMO. I still occasionally mutter to myself in public, have odd movements and posture, and generally act in a way that diverges from the social norms of the people around me, for better or for worse. Medication has changed all this around in ways that are too complicated to get into in one comment.

My mind never stopped developing. My brain chemistry changed as I went through puberty, and then through adulthood when the prefrontal cortex starts doing its thing. I kept gaining new knowledge from my surroundings and my peers and that changed how I thought about things on a basic level. There are certain specific areas in which I was always considered "more mature".

My experience doesn't necessarily reflect those of other autistic people who've had different hands dealt to them. I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have.