I found myself thinking “this dude seems autistic”, and I felt guilty for such a thought, because being autistic myself doesn’t render me immune from projecting problematic notions onto other people (autistic or otherwise). However, my thoughts went there because I’ve seen this kind of single minded obsessiveness manifest for good or for ill across many different people.

I remember one time discussing the grim state of the world with a friend, who quipped “man, I’m glad I’m autistic, because I’d have probably topped myself if I didn’t get this level of obsessive joy from my train set”. Similarly, I have friends who have made their special interests into their career (which certainly can go wrong, due to inability to “switch off”, and decreased life compartmentalisation). It is sometimes hard to find a healthy balance when some people genuinely do thrive in revelling in their obsessions.

As it turns out, the dude in the article is autistic — it sounds like maybe the diagnosis happened after this incident, so at least something good came of this. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, given that support for adults with autism can be pretty grim, but I hope he’s able to find the support to chase his passion in a manner that’s healthy and fulfilling for him. My nerdy interests have never driven me to things like arson, but that doesn’t mean I don’t relate to that level of intensity

I had a similar experience. The video that helped me had pretty poor video quality compared to some of the other results, so I only turned to it when I was burnt out from basically every other video being useless for my task. Props to all the Indian educational YouTubers

I already have it in a virtual machine: the past ✨

I can see why the French right love her so much, given that the right wing do a lot of “rules for thee, but not for me”

I feel like there’s a joke in here about Linux users propensity to distrohop being like a ritual reenactment of switching to Linux for the first time (without having to defile one’s computer with Windows again)

“All Swedes are basically fluent in English already and there’s no point keeping tiny little language around in a global world.”

I find this perspective interesting, because to me, this same justification would make me less inclined to support kids learning Swedish (if I were Swedish). This is a purely abstract question for me though, as I am English, and salty that I didn’t get a chance to learn a foreign language in school.

Edit: just seen your comment about Scanian, which gives additional context to your viewpoint

I wonder if this might have been why they shared it. Sort of like “We’ve got an idea that we think is good, but it also clearly needs work”

I hadn’t noticed this until you pointed it out, but yeah, their logos are fire

I’m just an internet stranger, but I’m proud of your growth. Many people in similar positions would’ve spent those years digging themselves deeper, because confronting the cognitive dissonance is not easy (you may well have spent some of that time digging deeper, but you made it out, and I’m glad you’re here with us)