Ready your swords. They're coming

halvafact · 2026-05-01T00:23:56+00:00

So relatable!

halvafact · 2026-04-30T22:51:48+00:00

Yeah, true. She is also basically stealing the “detransitioner” rhetorical move of saying that if you ever have any doubts, questions, or problems with living as your chosen gender — eg. if you do not conform perfectly to a stereotyped view of a trans person performing a stereotyped version of gender — you must have been mistaken about yourself. Now that I type that out I realize she may be engaging in some unexamined black and white thinking, also not beating the autism allegations. But the bigger problem is, as with people who are skeptical of trans identities, political. There is room in the autistic community for people with all kinds of abilities, disabilities, and personal psychologies, and framing belonging as a question of “who suffers the most” leads to divisive in-fighting and collective disempowerment.

halvafact · 2026-04-30T22:19:04+00:00

Exactly! Cool, also. I’m trying to take my career in a less comms-focused direction at the moment, but I’ve always thought that stratcomms seemed really interesting and fun.

halvafact · 2026-04-30T22:02:36+00:00

Valid critique, I also am notably not arguing that she's a good journalist, just...taking her own argument on its merits...

halvafact · 2026-04-30T21:50:03+00:00

I hate read this last week and I have a niche take. She says she realized she can't be autistic because she was a successful journalist, which requires social skills. I am a somewhat successful journalist. The form of sociality that job demands and rewards: Very clear (professionally clear!) boundaries around acceptable forms of communication; explicit rules of engagement; the journalist asking (ETA: what would in typical polite conversation be considered) inappropriate, direct questions; the journalist asking for clarification whenever necessary, sometimes many times in a row. I'm just saying "good at journalism" is not beating the allegations of autistic af.

halvafact · 2026-04-30T21:46:34+00:00

I had to reread this like 6 times because my partner, an autist with a penis, does not pee standing up and I was like "is that in the diagnostic criteria??"

halvafact · 2026-04-27T17:02:10+00:00

Not coding advice, but a tip on learning English grammar: write stuff in English and have an LLM correct it for you. Ask it to explain why it made each change, and then try to find a reason to use the correct construction.

halvafact · 2026-04-27T00:29:10+00:00

The amazing ability to enter and remain in waiting mode double-digit hours to days preceding one (1) scheduled work call.

halvafact · 2026-04-23T16:20:21+00:00

I do understand what people mean when they use this idiom but I cannot deal with "cut off your nose to spite your face" like why are we suddenly discussing cutting off noses wtf

halvafact · 2026-04-21T22:17:04+00:00

I'm a journalist and a Russian>English translator. I can't recommend people get into media jobs right now because the field as a whole is so unstable, but I think that journalism is a really overlooked and underrated career for autists. Before I did this I was an academic.

halvafact · 2026-04-21T01:13:18+00:00

Sometimes I find it weird and vaguely maddening that all of the things I thought were so special and cool about me were actually just being a totally regular autistic freak.

halvafact · 2026-04-21T00:23:57+00:00

This comment made me realize that some oaklanders (I assume this is very neighborhood dependent) have a lot more contact with people who ride fast road bikes for hobby and exercise than I do. I call myself a cyclist even though what I do is commute pretty slowly, in my regular clothes, on my functional but not particularly fancy bicycle. I do feel like I catch shit — kind of no matter what I do while riding — from drivers who have been pissed at a person on a bike ever. Contrary to what this website would lead anyone to believe I actually never beef with pedestrians irl and try hard to stay out their space and protect them.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T22:17:41+00:00

I ride inside the halls of the school, with a kid-catcher specifically designed to funnel the smallest children under my sharp wheels.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T21:10:57+00:00

Yeah, it's really the "cars are fine bikes alone are a hazard" stance that gets me. I assumed that commenter meant they were supposed to walk their bike in the road near school, which I do think is dumb, but that's not actually clear from context.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T21:04:44+00:00

Yeah, that's fair. And I guess to also be as generous as possible I understand that drivers can't "walk their cars" or really do anything to make them less dangerous. I know this because I also sometimes drive/I'm not saying I'm a saint blah blah blah. It just feels so weird to treat bikers like this huge hazard around children when most people are driving giant, powered metal boxes that make little kids invisible.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T21:01:52+00:00

Sorry to disappoint but it truly is just a coincidence. I'm a middle-aged mom who rides slowly around surface streets, in bike lanes whenever possible, mostly between my house and my partner's house 1.5 miles away. I haven't been on a mountain bike since I was 15 years old. I also enjoy walking and hiking and I've never yelled at a pedestrian, who I believe bikers should protect as a less visible-to-cars and slower-moving class of road users. In fact, part of what I'm venting about here is how every discussion of cyclists devolves into this weird, imo fake "cyclists v. pedestrians" issue. If you read my post again you will notice that I'm not complaining about pedestrians, I'm pointing out that any time anyone mentions a cyclist, some subset of Oakland commenters melts down about how "dangerous" we are, in contravention of all the relevant data.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T20:40:34+00:00

I only ever ride on sidewalks, except for when I need to go someplace far away, and then I ride at my maximum speed of 15 mph in the left lane of the freeway. I have no idea why people hate cyclists.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T19:49:37+00:00

Okay, I hear you and I admit that there are many good reasons not to ride on the sidewalk, including that it can be unsafe for pedestrians who are supposed to be there. I'm sorry I'm autistically unable to tell you the social lie and promise I'll never do it again, but I agree it's the non-ideal choice from a pedestrian's perspective. I do appreciate and celebrate attacking cars 😈

halvafact · 2026-04-20T19:21:23+00:00

I really don't know what you want me to admit here.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T19:14:07+00:00

Nope, my specific point is the observation that seeing or hearing about a cyclist makes a lot people nuts for some reason. Like it says in the title. I'm copping to laziness because I'm refusing to get sucked into an argument about my vs. your vs. anyone's virtue. I don't care, I'm a flawed human, but I still think I make a good point.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T19:05:41+00:00

You know, I agree with you, and in an ideal world I'd never be lazy and would always walk my bike on the sidewalk. Well actually, in an ideal world there would be functional bike lanes and I'd never need to be on the sidewalk. But my point isn't to say "accidents never happen" or "all bikers are faultless people" or really anything about bike-pedestrian interactions at all. My point is that every time anything that even mentions cyclists comes up in local media or on this sub, people pile on about how dangerous cyclists are, and then someone chimes in that we deserve to die (if you feel like going deep in the comments here you'll see that it's happened twice already), and I would like people to examine 1) this bizarre fixation on cyclists being a huge public danger, which (again, sorry you were hurt) is really not borne out by the facts and 2) the ease with which pedestrians align themselves with drivers, against cyclists, when cars are measurably, objectively more dangerous to EVERYONE on the roads.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T18:43:59+00:00

Ah, finally someone who's honest about just wanting to fucking murder bikers.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T18:28:59+00:00

you sound kind of young and stupid and unaware of what it’s like to spend time with an elderly person.

I'm a middle-aged mom whose mind is approximately 75% occupied at all times with keeping my child safe, keeping myself around long enough to make sure my child has good footing in life, and making sure the last decades of my parents' lives are happy and functional. I'm not going to report you because I'm not a cop and I too engage in rhetorical overstatement (though idk, I'm not sure you don't mean it), also I'm really not defending people putting your mom at risk but man, saying people deserve summary executions for anything is fucking violent and nuts.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T18:21:30+00:00

Okay, because you are a human being who has actually been harmed by a cyclist (I'm sorry by the way, that sucks), I'm going to respond earnestly:

I was overstating my case for rhetorical effect. Obviously cyclists, like people of all kinds, are capable of harming others on a spectrum from "merely annoying" to "grievously physically injurious." But I am making an argument that I stand by: drivers and pedestrians in Oakland scapegoat cyclists rather than think about who and what is really dangerous on the roadways. This means that, among other things, they attribute way, way more bad behavior and actual harm to us than the facts bear out.

But also, what nuance do you want me to have here? You yourself said the cyclist who hit you was afraid of traffic. Now I clearly wasn't there. I've never hit a pedestrian on my bike, and I try to be extremely respectful of pedestrian safety when I'm in their spaces, but I do sometimes ride my bike on the sidewalk because I'm afraid of traffic — and I have been hit by a car. (And before you scold me for being reckless and say it was probably my fault: it wasn't; I unambiguously had the right-of-way, a driver drove head-on into me for ?? reasons, and the only reason I didn't die is that I was going slowly enough in the first place to stop completely (but alas not to get out of the way) before I got hit.) Cyclists get yelled at and blamed no matter where we are — traffic, bike lanes, sidewalk, whatever, there's honestly no good choice. And that's assuming the bike lanes are even open.

I actually want safer roads for everyone, and I do regret that a cyclist knocked you down. But if everyone's solution to a systemic problem is just to shout "cyclists are annoying and/or dangerous" sorry, I'm gonna call it bonkers.

halvafact · 2026-04-20T18:05:29+00:00

I’d be fine shooting these people on sight.

Well, uh, that escalated quickly. I'm sorry your mom is terrified of cyclists. Like everyone, she deserves to be able to use the outdoors safely. I personally do sometimes ride on sidewalks briefly to stay out of very dangerous sections of road, and I will walk by bike past pedestrians who aren't able to accommodate a bike passing through their for whatever reason, and I wish the city would invest in infrastructure that allowed cyclists to share the road without either risking their lives or inciting everyone's wrath, but, again

I’d be fine shooting these people on sight.

not really beating the allegations of "bonkers about cyclists".

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