I’d let you know how much I spend in electricity through PGE, but…

1. I just recently moved in, so I don’t have good data for you yet, and

2. Portland General Electric ≠ Pacific Gas & Electric

That’s MISS Chanandler Bong.

Guess my job based on the following description:

I sell a product to a people who don’t believe they have any use for it during what they consider their personal time.

Answer:

I cut my full brother out of my life eight years ago. He isn’t a violent person, but he is a passive-aggressive asshole. My life has been infinitely calmer since then, and I don’t regret my decision at all.

If he were violent and had a vendetta against me? I’m putting a restraining order on him, moving states, and hiding my home address data as best as possible.

WOOHOO! BOOM

Predestination. Sarah Snook is just incredible.

I blocked him a couple days ago finally. He’s a hateful prick, glad to be rid of his nonsense.

I suppose that might work, it never occurred to me to do so.

No, there is too much precision required.

I can read UPC, UPC-8, ISBN, and EAN bar codes. Tear the numbers off the bottom of the bar code, hand me the lines, and I will tell you the numbers you tore off.

I used to work the midnight shift at a call center back in the late 90s. It was incredibly boring because we weren’t allowed to browse the internet when no calls were coming in (which was most of the time, got maybe five calls total per night). So I picked up a copy of Yahoo! Internet Life, a now-defunct technology-centered magazine. This issue had a how-to section for wacky shit like that, so I committed it to memory because wtf else was there to do?

The Magic Cafe - Forums for magicians of all skill levels

My brother’s father-in-law had offered to pay up to $15,000 for his daughter’s wedding. He gave them the option of taking it all in cash and then getting a courthouse wedding so they could have a nest egg to grow, or spend it all on the wedding of his fiancée’s dreams, or anywhere in between.

She opted to spend it all on the wedding. 😒 My gawd did that piss me off.

I gave it up when I switched up my housing situation. I had downstairs neighbors and didn’t want to go through the hassle of trying to soundproof. I just moved again, though, and I now have a new bottom-floor apartment, so I’ll probably bust out my kit sooner or later.

Clone Hero is great for E-drumming (have to set it to Pro Drums because regular Drums works with old Rock Band and GH kits). I also paid for a year of Melodics and learned a lot from it.

Cognitive empathy is the ability to put oneself mentally in another person’s situation and try to understand how they might be feeling (as opposed to emotional empathy in which one experiences those emotions with another person and truly understanding how they feel).

Where I (also ASD Level 1) have long struggled is with emotional empathy. At age 15, I told my mom that I didn’t know if I loved her. I understand now that this was a symptom of my autism, that I didn’t understand a variety of emotions, apart from excitement about hyperfixation and annoyance at most of the rest of the world for moving and think so slowly relative to me.

And, yes, cognitive empathy was also lacking when I was younger. I did have difficulty imagining what other people’s life experiences were like, mainly because I was…well…young and inexperienced, not necessarily because I was autistic.

What I take issue with is the blanket statement that autistic people lack cognitive empathy because it is a sweeping generalization that doesn’t allow for nuance. The implication in your statement is that we’re born without it and never possess it, and that simply isn’t true. It isn’t difficult for autistic people can learn cognitive empathy and other sorts of emotional intelligence.

One-inch thick top sirloin steak.  Salt and pepper heavily.  Grill at 400.  Four minutes total.  Flip each minute to get the good grill marks.  Let sit for two minutes.  Down the hatch.

Lol, no. Every autistic person I know, myself included, is engaged in anti-racism, consent culture, body-positivity, and other forms of harm reduction. You’re understanding of autistic people is flawed. We don’t lack cognitive empathy, and we don’t have a difficult time reading other people’s emotions. What we struggle with is when people mask their emotions, when they put up an emotional wall, rely heavily on sarcasm, or any other technique that shields them from authenticity. When people are open and vulnerable with us, we are capable of great empathy.

My delicious Thai food.

“…uh…n…n…nice shoes!”

I had seen this gentleman cleaning the floor near the bathrooms at a school district where I was working as a substitute at their district office one day. He looked like he was working up the courage to say something as I entered, but I really had to go.

When I walked out, he was at the end of the hallway, and as I was passing him, he said “…uh…n…n…nice shoes!”. I was wearing a pair of well-worn sneakers, the exact opposite of nice shoes. I just said, “…thanks…?” with a puzzled look on my face, turned the corner, and never saw him again.

Upon reflection, my best guess was that he was an individual with an intellectual disability and that his case worker (or therapist or family member or something) had been trying to help him overcome his shyness and become more social by giving someone a compliment, and that resulted in him mustering up the courage to tell me I had nice shoes.

In the moment, a VERY weird interaction. But he was being genuine, and I feel bad now about not showing him I appreciated his kind words.

“Excuse me, my friends…why are there two toilets in the bathroom?”

“It’s a BIDET, you asshole.”

two seconds later

“Jeezus, somebody took a dump in the bidet.”

• The Whoopee Boys, 1986