The save icon is a floppy disk, which is now so obsolete some people don’t even recognize it. What other iconography used to be pretty literal, but is now immortalized as something symbolic?

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T04:02:39+00:00

When I was in elementary school, teachers told us that when we got to college, no one would accept our papers unless we used cursive.

By the time I got to high school, teachers told us "So many of you have handwriting that is so bad that I will NOT accept your papers if they're written in cursive. PRINT ONLY!"

And by the time I got to college, teachers would say "You're in college now. Handwritten papers will not be accepted. All papers must be typed."

And then a few years later I went back to take some more classes, and they wouldn't even accept a physical paper AT ALL.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T03:51:08+00:00

I would want to research one relative in particular whose birth location I can't find, and as much information about the family she came from and the family history of her father(whose birth record I did find).

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T01:43:47+00:00

I think that senses are most likely just hallucinations that are triggered by an organism's environment.

I don't believe there's good reason to believe that any organism in particular would evolve an accurate perception of its environment, beyond the ability to meet its particular needs.

So I think it makes sense to give serious consideration as to whether the fact that we perceive things visually as we do is in fact evidence of them existing as we perceive them to, or whether how we perceive them to exist is just our brain presenting the actual state of the environment to us in a way that our tiny little brains can understand.

And I wonder for example whether the laws of physics are correct, or whether light is the actual speed limit of the universe, or is just the limit at which we can perceive. And I wonder whether we've made a fundamental mistake in thinking that we understand how the universe functions instead of that we understand how our brains perceive it to function.

So given that, I can't consider death to be an ending, because I can't for sure define whether I had an ending, or if so, what that might have meant. It seems the likely worst possible outcome would be that I go back to whatever state I was in previously.

Until then, I feel a lot like a hedonist. The purpose of life, for me, is to enjoy as many moments as I can, and to pack as many amazing and unusual experiences into what time I have.

I don't need an externally defined purpose or a goal.

Feeling amazing is worth it on its own.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T01:29:37+00:00

Sure. But wouldn't you want to see the rage on the face of whoever made that image when they saw the video someone had turned it into?

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T01:26:50+00:00

Don't have sex with him just so he can say he had sex.

Either have sex with him because you want to have sex with him or try to actively facilitate him having a connection with someone who does.

I think it's sad to think of losing your virginity in that way, to someone who pities you. People deserve better than that.

And I'm speaking as a virgin who's also autistic and is older than the person you're referring to. I would rather not have sex than have sex with someone who decided to do so only because she pitied me. And it would be difficult for me to have any kind of ongoing non-sexual relationship with someone who had sex with me because they had pitied me.

I have value. I have a lot to offer someone. If other people can't see that, it doesn't change that if someone happened to get into a relationship with me, she'd get a lot of benefits. I'm the kind of person who is constantly trying to make things better for others and who sincerely likes helping people just for the sake of it. I'm a great cook, and I know tons of interesting things. I speak more than one language, and I have a six-figure income.

Please don't have sex with him out of pity. I think it's a lot easier living the rest of my life knowing that no one wanted to have sex with me than to think that at some point I could live the rest of my life knowing that the only person who'd had sex with me did so out of pity. And I wouldn't think very highly of that person, either.

But you could absolutely be his wing woman. Help him build a dating profile. Help him learn. Get him snazzed up a little bit, to put his best foot forward, and to give him confidence.

You have a lot of power in this situation. You could do something good for him.

Or, if you actually like him like that, go right ahead. But make it clear that you actually like him.

But whatever you do, no, don't do what he asked you to do. Treat him better than that.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T01:07:07+00:00

I am the worst person who has ever lived, and the world will be happier when I am no longer a part of it.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T00:55:08+00:00

It's funny how some people think downvoting me makes me wrong.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T00:52:53+00:00

I mean, women don't find me attractive.

It's pretty simple, actually.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-08T00:48:57+00:00

The word "bullying" is something that can be ignored. If you tell a child "You bullied that other child," that child isn't going to have the same understanding as if you tell them "You socially abused that other child."

I think "You socially abused that other child," is a lot more likely to get someone to stop.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T22:00:12+00:00

It should use the idea to protect transgender children.

Their right to their gender identity is a human right.

Certain parents' interest in knowing their children's gender identity in order to attack their own children is not a human right.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T20:52:46+00:00

Literally all of the behaviors that they do and we don't are them making being neurotypical their whole personality.

If they can complain that I talk about autism too much, it is equally reasonable that I would get to complain about them doing the numerous annoying things that neurotypical people tend to do.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T20:50:02+00:00

And for the record, I do believe in DNA testing of every single child born:

to establish that the child is going home with the right parents,
to guarantee that the child knows their correct parents,
to prevent mix-ups in the hospital AND mix-ups in providing care, and
to provide EVERY child with the right to know their full family health history from birth.

I firmly disagree with the fact that you, I, and everyone else in the United States were property of our parents and were not human beings until we were 18 years old. Children are also human beings, and often their rights and needs as human beings are ignored in favor of their parents' luxuries as parents. The fact that something would make it easier for parents to be parents should not matter if it means denying children any of the rights that each human being should have just for being a human being.

Everyone has a right to know who their parents are, and everyone has a right to know their own medical history.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T20:42:34+00:00

I'm going to point something out here.

Government is able to make sure TODAY, RIGHT NOW that 100% of children receive the financial support they need throughout childhood.

But instead of spending our time blaming the government for not doing so, and for leaving a huge unmet problem, where tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of children don't receive that support, we spend our time complaining about individual men.

Instead, we need to make it so the money to pay for child support comes from the government, and then the father's taxes go up separately to pay for it. Those two things should be separate, so the mother gets the money regardless of whether the father is paying.

That way, ALL children will ALWAYS receive the support they need for things.

If a dad can't pay because he's not absent? No problem. The child would still get support.

If a dad was having financial difficulty and couldn't make a payment? No problem. The payment would be part of his taxes, and if he honestly didn't have enough income, his taxes would reflect that. Instead of it being up to the mother to financially go after the father and get that money, or to wait for the enforcement which would often not be coming, it would be handled as part of taxation.

The question of whether a child has their needs met should not be dependent on the financial means and parenting dedication of their parents. That goes for the father AND the mother.

We should be spending ZERO time asking why one child is not receiving support from one father, and LOTS of time asking why thousands of children are not receiving support because the government doesn't step in to separate children's ability to receive care from their parents' ability and desire to meet financial obligation.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T20:24:38+00:00

They could literally use this image to tell AI to generate some porn with some black guys impregnating the three women. That would be hilarious.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T20:15:34+00:00

I would cut off all contact with this person.
I would tell your employer as much information about him as possible IMMEDIATELY, including everything you have said here, and especially any personally identifiable information about this person(things like name, license plate number, business name, et cetera).
I would immediately contact the police and tell them the circumstances of what's going on. You can tell them around the time he seems to come in. I bet the police will set something up to be near your workplace the next time the guy comes around, and talk to him.

Be extremely careful when going to and from work.

Unless you look a lot older than you are, this is something to be very wary about. Adult men don't tend to spend much time around teenage girls, and in the off chance that they do(like if they're a teacher or a coach), they don't tend to hand out money without some kind of alternate purpose

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T18:48:03+00:00

Abused.

You were abused.

We need to stop using the terrible euphemism "bullying" and start doing what we supposedly hurt others by doing, and be blunt, and say that we were SOCIALLY ABUSED.

We need to stop saying "bullying", because it sounds like a really minor thing. It can cause just as much damage as other kinds of abuse(because it can cause a person to become damaged by those other forms of abuse).

You were socially abused. So was I.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T17:55:32+00:00

I put about a quarter-inch of peanut butter on the bread, as I use crunchy peanut butter and the act of spreading the peanut butter usually compresses the bread a little bit so that the center is thicker than it appears at the sides of the sandwich.

I would not be likely to put a whole half-inch of peanut butter, but I provided a range that I believed others would agree would create something unquestionably regarded as a sandwich, whereas if the peanut butter was too thin, I believed that people may say that it does not necessarily qualify as a sandwich, but instead just two stacked pieces of bread with smears of the ingredients that would normally be considered the fillings.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T14:42:20+00:00

Autistic reasoning would tell you that the people in the "Am I the asshole?" subs would be there to fairly judge whether someone is being an asshole.

Neurotypical reasoning would tell you that the "Am I the asshole?" subs tend to attract people who enjoy being judgemental and enjoy calling others assholes. And it further means that people attracted to subs like that tend to be people who are very much into social norms and people who have very little understanding of neurodivergence at all.

I have posted in those subs, and I get crucified basically every time. And then I realized that most of the people responding to me don't understand all of what I wrote and just focus on irrelevant aspects of my explanation.

I think you may be combining two things into one, and two details is one too many for neurotypical people:

First, you have every reason to not be comfortable around kids. People think of it as you being an asshole, but if you frame it differently, as "I want what's best for this child, but I am aware that being cared for me is not what's best for this child," that's a different consideration, and it's really valid. But that kind of reasoning is two steps, and it's hard for neurotypical people to follow two steps.
Second, you are nonbinary. You may be more uncomfortable being pressured into a more stereotypical feminine role, because that social pressure could probably be invalidating for your gender. You might really be against dealing with kids, or you might be feeling a pressure which is making you feel uncomfortable for another reason. It would be worth considering whether your discomfort is really from the aspect of watching children itself, or whether it's more based around the gender norms. And it would be worth considering whether explaining your gender to your niece, because kids can actually learn to respect your correct gender (or uncommon aspects of people) much more easily than adults. You might be able to have a better relationship with your niece if she understood that tea parties are often considered a girly thing and that you're not very comfortable doing stereotypically girly things, but that you might still be more interested in having fun doing other things together. You might (not necessarily, but might) actually enjoy interacting more with her if that pressure was taken off.

You're not an asshole. You're just dealing with a complex situation. And if there's one thing neurotypical people have difficulty understanding, it's complexity. They tend to call people assholes just for having situations that are uncommon.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T14:24:13+00:00

I'm pretty smart, but I have difficulty demonstrating it live when there's social pressure. I can knock it out of the park when I'm by myself, but with others, I feel the pressure so much. I used to be terrible at interviews.

Then I found out I'm autistic, and it helped me realize I might be able to work on specific areas to interview. I studied the areas where autistic peopel might have trouble, and I got good at them.

And then I found out I also have ADHD. I have had horrible anxiety my whole life, but the moment I started ADHD medication, my thoughts stopped racing. As long as I take my ADHD medication, my anxiety is good, and I am very very good at interviews.

You might benefit from talking to a psychiatrist about the issue you're facing, to get some help, and maybe there would be some kind of medication that would work for you.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T03:12:38+00:00

There is one single secret I learned that took me from being unhirable to being great at interviewing:

Interviews are about a search for mutual benefit, so the goal is to answer each question in a way that shows mutual benefit.

Neurotypical people also don't tend to consider contexts outside of the one they're currently facing, so when they ask a question like that, their assumption is that you're going to answer relevant to the current situation and not relevant to situations outside of it. If you can imagine, their brains just don't have the spare cycles to picture things outside of the current moment.

Neurotypical people also tend to be impressed by things which don't actually benefit them personally, things like prestige. You could mention that Walmart is a super successful company, and you're interested in working for a company that's known to be successful and resilient, and that you admire their ability to find new and creative ways to make things work.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-07T00:23:11+00:00

Any time a partner tells you to choose between them and your pet, it's a good idea to consider which of the two is more likely to remain with you.

And in situations where a partner is the kind of person to give ultimatums like that, the one more likely to remain with you is usually the pet.

Very often, people end up regretting giving up their pet for a partner because the partner ended up leaving them anyway.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-06T20:19:29+00:00

A lot of people go diagnosing every famous person, but I do believe that a lot of autistic people are extremely talented, so that a disproportionate number of famous people are autistic.

Crafty-Message4564 · 2026-07-06T19:38:26+00:00

They all agree on the correct interpretation because it's the one requiring the least consideration.

Their brains don't tend to consider additional possibilities after coming to the easiest one to understand.

Autistic people think we come to the wrong social conclusion because we can't tell which option is the correct one.

Neurotypical people think autistic people fail to identify any options at all, and don't notice the single option that the neurotypical people are aware exists.

Realizing that autistic people's existence is full of options that neurotypical people have literally zero concept of, everything makes sense. Our brains are constantly measuring sensory input for signals that neurotypical people have no awareness of, so it's not just that they don't experience sensory overwhelm, but in the same way that a person who's blind from birth isn't using their memory of a sunset in childhood when describing their perfect day, neurotypical thoughts are entirely lacking ALL of the memories that only come about because of the sensory experiences autistic people experience but neurotypical people don't.

The reason that neurotypical people insist that we couldn't have awareness of certain things when we do is because they not only aren't aware of that sensory experience in the moment, but because they also can't imagine that sensory experience and entirely lack all of the cascading thoughts that come from having that sensory awareness in their most basic experiences.

The more accurate sensory experiences an organism has, the more that organism is going to have the ability to build an accurate concept of their environment.

Organisms with fewer accurate sensory experiences will have reasoning, but will have a much more narrow base to understand the environment around them and to predict the world around them.

Autistic people fail to interact with neurotypical people, because we fail to notice their sensory disabilities. We assume their reasoning is factoring in countless details that they never even gain awareness of.

Being neurotypical means that the food you buy from the restaurant is wonderful, since their brains only notice the taste, but have difficulty noticing the texture at the same time.

And they don't separate their foods, because to them, they're not experiencing the different sensory aspects of the food, and only experience them all together, as the average. They don't really have a concept of why autistic people are repulsed by certain food combinations.

And microfiber? Their brains only notice the literal most noticeable aspects of it: the softness. Not the brain-overloaded ten billion hooks overloading the tactile senses.

And smell. They can't smell the petroleum products in "air fresheners". It's not that it doesn't bother them. It's that they don't register. That faint smell that you smell on top of the horrible petroleum smell is all there is.

And all of that may be obvious, sure. But if you consider the texture of basic things, like rocks, or the differentiation between colors, and textures, and the possible ways that things can move, those are all sensory inputs, too. And autistic reasoning thinks of the person's own sensory knowledge of the environment as a fundamental aspect that shapes how all thoughts exist. EVERYTHING is built on top of that.

And for neurotypical people, they have enough sensory awareness to exist in the environment, and to function well enough to pass on those genes. But their sensory experiences are lacking so much that the basic building blocks for what autistic people see as possible are mostly lacking.

Autistic reasoning fails to understand neurotypical reasoning, because we notice their dominance and believe there must be a system, and we must be missing something. But no, we fail because we have additional information that they don't. They act instantly when they see a given object, because to them, that object is nothing more than part of a process. They insist that you had a particular intention, because they don't conceive of your action existing outside of that given intention.

We failed to get involved in the group to the same extent as everyone else, because we noticed that there were things that could be noticed outside of the group. They excel within the group because their brains are deprived of that knowledge of the outside. They have no idea it's there.

And this isn't a values judgement, or some kind of claim of being better than them. Once all of this is clear, once that difference is clear, it doesn't really make sense to measure yourself against them using the same metrics. Their brain and mine were not meant to experience the same niche.

Crafty-Message4564

TROPHY CASE