yareal

Not in the US, and only partially adequately in other wealthy countries.

And even then it's often uneven or comes with stigma.

I'm pro abortion, I think it's reasonable for a parent to say, "I'm not equipped to deal with this".

But I'm also extremely sensitive to people saying, "an entire category of person like me is disappearing due to eugenics".

I think it's important to understand and acknowledge the tension between those two positions and recognize that it's not a simple problem.

Kind of a dehumanizing comment, to be honest.

It really depends on what you mean by treatment. Because therapy absolutely can ease things like anxiety, depression, and fear while building strategies for managing sensory processing issues, change anxiety, and executive functioning.

What about when people with Down's syndrome say they are living fulfilling lives? Obviously paternalistic "look how happy they are" is a shit take, but "I'm genuinely content with my life" from a person with Down's syndrome seems like a pretty important voice to listen to, surely.

If we structured society to provide that management and support, would that change your opinion? If the government offered community caregivers who would come and assist parents with autistic children, helping both ease the load and also teaching skills to the kids and parents, do you think that might change the calculus?

Our options aren't just "cure", and status quo. We can choose to adapt in other ways.

I've been through some shit due to my autism, including a period of homelessness and trauma. It's caused me massive amounts of pain over the decades, but... despite needing support to function, I'd still keep it.

I don't think it's necessarily wrong for people to say they are autistic and would stay autistic given the choice. I don't think it's wrong to say the opposite. I get much, much more uncomfortable when that choice is external. If my parents knew I would be autistic, they would have aborted me. I think I've been a force for good in the world even with my trauma. I dunno, that makes me sad to think about.

Mostly access to healthcare, like, "why don't we offer this? Why are there barriers? Why can't we get automatic approvals for this?" Etc.

It turns out there are lots of groups who have greater than median barriers to access even basic care (trans folks, Black folks, immigrants, neurodiverse folks, disabled folks, etc). I happen to have a "I'll just keep calling and escalating until I've called every person in the company" attitude that doesn't seem to find that exhausting.

That's... complicated. There are multiple opinions about aborting fetuses that test positive for Down's syndrome. For one, the tests aren't always accurate. For two, people with Down's syndrome can live fulfilling lives, and have spoken out against the practice. But also it does place an additional burden on parents, and parenting well is already a hard job.

But I don't think it's a reasonable comparison -- autism has a much wider variability in how it expresses, from relatively benign (but still impactful) to fully incapable of self sufficiency.

I'd also argue just because we practice eugenics in case makes it ok to generalize to other cases (and furthermore, just because we practice it doesn't necessarily make it ok even in that case).

Typically software engineering projects in a variety of domains, but mostly distributed systems.

Autism is considered primarily genetic and it's inheritable.

What we don't yet understand is the complex set of genetic interactions that result in ASD.

Here's one study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2215632120 but there are dozens if not hundreds more like this.

Your claim that ASD is not genetic is extraordinary and counter to the prevailing scientific understanding, and requires significant evidence to back up.

You invented all those quotes and then argued against them. I said none of them. It's probably not your intent but it feels like you are coming after me angrily with these long text responses.

I'm medically diagnosed autistic. I struggle with a lot. But some upsides I've encountered:

I tend to form stronger empathy and justice models, and commit to them wholly. This has allowed me to, for instance, work on improving access to benefits or healthcare for others while other people around me burn out. But I often fight way too long, and I get upset when people disagree.

I often hyperfocus on projects I'm interested in and can produce a high level of output if given an interesting task.

I enjoy counting, categorization, and organization tasks. Find all bugs that meet these rules, or, double check every unit test to check we're meeting coverage goals. Give me those tedious, repeatable, rules based gardening tasks and I'll churn through them all day every day.

I believe I have a more systemic way of thinking than my peers, and while this does cause problems sometimes it also enables me to decompose systems more easily.

I tend to maintain my cool under pressure or bullying. I simply do not notice nor care about emotionally loaded conversations. This causes problems often but also helps often, I can mediate with "we're here now, let's focus on how to improve".

These, of course, are not the upsides of every autistic person. They are my upsides for me. Again, I am medically diagnosed and do require support to operate as an adult. My childhood was... not good.

I do not want to say it's only upsides, but I do think for some autistic people there are things those people do consider up sides.

Edit: if I could choose to not be autistic, even with the massive burden it has for me, I would choose to remain autistic and I would fight tooth and nail against anyone who tried to change me to remove it.

The term for this is "eugenics", and it's generally considered a negative.

As an autistic (yes, medically diagnosed, with obviously difficulties in communication and self care) who has survived to adulthood and is able to care for themselves with support now: fuck you for this "real autism" bullshit.

Yes, some people are hit real fucking hard, some of us improve into adulthood, some of us don't get hit that hard in childhood but suffer more as adults.

You don't get to decide what real autism is, especially as an outsider, and excluding people who have that diagnosis is shitty, petty behavior. Grow the fuck up.

The article says that someone was fired for wearing a keffiyeh. Your response is people shouldn't mix personal and work.

Your response is directly to an article saying a keffiyeh got someone fired, so it's absolutely reasonable to assume you are responding to the article and consider it an example of mixing personal and work.

Why is "I dress partially in traditional clothing, which management ok'd" an issue? Would you object to someone wearing a cross necklace, turban, yarmulka, niqab, kilt, durag, hijab, kente kufi hat, or other traditional garment at work? Why does a keffiyeh stand out to you?

Firing a Palestinian for wearing a keffiyeh is a bad look, especially after they asked permission and were told it's ok.

Gwynne Shotwell isn't a guy, though...

Alternatively, people who try it and don't like it understand themselves sufficiently to say, "this isn't for me."

Nothing is objectively cool, it's super great that you enjoy it. It's also fine that other people don't.

Right? Sarcasm is so easy to detect using only text with no additional signifiers.

Wait.

Was that sarcastic?

Who could say. /s is just the same as using a sarcastic vocal tone, eye roll, or hand gesture. Surely you aren't against those?

Lisp is cool, but also not everyone reasons in the way lisp operates. For some, lisp extremely "ain't it".

I've never seen lisp in production, but if I had I'm sure I'd be like, ok, we use lisp here.

Lisp is just a tool, and some people with find it ergonomic and powerful, and others will find it awkward and cumbersome. Use the tools that make you happy and productive and don't worry too much about trying to find the best in an ambiguous space.

In my state, bicyclists can treat stop signs as yields. Yes, that means if there is other traffic it returns to being a stop sign. Yes, there always is right of way for pedestrians.

So no, I definitely shouldn't be stopping at stop signs, but I should be following the rules of the road. Eye contact with peds, sometimes you can quickly negotiate "no, you go ahead". If not, stops for pedestrians.

My work has bike cages, which are right at the entrance and require a badge to access. If not, my bike parks vertically on its own and I could just bring it inside.

I can bike to the office faster than I can drive. Car infrastructure is slow because cars are big and heavy and dangerous.

Door to door, my car trip takes about 20-30 minutes, my bike trip takes 15-20. Not having to deal with parking, stop signs, traffic, etc genuinely does speed things up.

I'd grant you that the US government acts like an authoritarian regime, but communist is a laughable accusation.

"This reads like social media status seeking " is absolutely an accusation of doing it for clout, lol. My reading comprehension is just fine.

Is that not what I described, more or less? None of the components are particularly complex or expensive except the part where they join with the glass in the structure. Trying to do it with video is a much, much harder problem.

Accumulate in this context means that there are several small errors, and it's a function of summing or multiplying those accumulated errors. It does not mean that they accrue over time.

You accused a story teller of only doing it for the clout.

Considerably more than five senses, actually. We rely on a huge variety of inputs beyond the basic ones when we drive.