Right… cue follow-up posts when the city fines them for operating a business without a licence.

The best case is when I am (1) well-rested, (2) not hungry or thirsty and (3) not already agitated/close to being overwhelmed going into it. Socialising definitely drains me, though, and I have gotten better at recognising when I need a break before it becomes critical. That way I can politely excuse myself (if it’s a social function, usually I have a plan in advance to go outside or away from people for a bit to recover).

Unfortunately it’s just reality that some people are energised by that type of conversation or social interaction, whilst for others it is exhausting. Energy management is the key thing for those of us who find it draining. Interoception is sometimes impeded for individuals on the spectrum, so if it’s hard to identify or keep track of how are you going (and hence whether it is time to politely exit the conversation), there are exercises one can find online to help improve interoception.

It takes practice, but a good approach is not to go beyond a few sentences on a topic at a time. Give them a chance to change the direction of the conversation (which will happen if they are not interested) or ask follow-up questions (typically indicates that they are interested, although sometimes it may just be that they are being polite, in which case you’ll usually only get one or two before the other person moves on to something else). As one of the other comments says, it’s a dialogue, not a monologue - most of the time the other person isn’t engaging to get information from you but to connect with you (and yeah, that can be a really nebulous concept at times!). It’s really easy to infodump but most people don’t have the context or depth of knowledge to follow a deep dive on a subject.

Autism is not a deal-breaker. My spouse has ADHD and I have ASD. Granted, each of our neurotypes causes the other some frustration, but both are also factors in why we were attracted to each other in the first place.

Neurodivergent individuals often select for each other in partners and there are a lot of similar patterns in my extended family (to use your phrasing, they’re all a bit “off”!). None of the relationship failures have been as a result of neurotype and most are still married, with the failures due to the same problems that NT couples deal with - poor communication, emotional immaturity, refusal to learn and grow, etc.

The key thing is to be yourself. If she likes you, you want her to like you for you, not the facade that so many of us have to wear to survive in the NT world.

And if she ghosts you, that’s not a failure on your part. It says more about her than you - you took the risk and put yourself out there. If she doesn’t show, perhaps she is insecure and afraid of telling you she’s changed her mind, or perhaps something happened to prevent her from being there (since you mention films, this is a common trope too). Just be kind to yourself.

Hell no. Do not give machines the ability to lie. We already have enough trouble with people using technology to deceive without it choosing to be deceptive on its own.

We work in protoduction.

Oh, that’s painful.

Unfortunately most of the world isn’t even taking it seriously anymore. People treat it like it’s a mild flu or common cold.

The virus is still producing waves of infection consistent with the pandemic phase of spread rather than the endemic phase and has not moved into a seasonal pattern like the flu or colds. It’s just not publicised in the media. Scientific studies show that Omicron was just as lethal as the original Wuhan strain and the current Omicron subvariants are similar - the virus has not actually gotten less severe as hoped (and in the case of Delta, it actually got more severe; thankfully that lineage did not give rise to the variants we now face).

The only difference between 2020 and now is that we have vaccines, but people need to keep up to date with the boosters. The efficacy of vaccines to prevent severe illness and hospitalisation wanes quickly, with a recent study showing it can be as low as 50% after four months.

We also know that the risk of long COVID is cumulative - i.e. it goes up with each infection and the increase in likelihood depends on whether you’re up-to-date with the vaccine (having the most recent booster roughly halves the increase in risk from an infection). A recent study estimated that 400 million people now suffer from long COVID at an annual cost of $1 trillion to the global economy. This will only continue to get worse if people continue to catch COVID every year or two.

Not surprising to me. Politicians everywhere want COVID to be over, but it isn’t.

100% cotton.

I find wool to be incredibly itchy and hate the coarse texture of jeans.

I’m not even American and I’m keen to see what the debate will be like. I seriously doubt Trump has enough self-control to stop himself lashing out at Harris, let alone the presence of mind to listen to his advisers!

Well, they didn’t want to be part of society, so they shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t get to participate…

If you’re happy with OpenDNS logging your traffic, you could set the router to use them as the DNS server (assuming your network is DHCP and your father-in-law’s devices just use whatever DNS server your router says). As long as one of your devices keeps OpenDNS updated with your IP (the one provided by your ISP), then you can look through the traffic to see what is being accessed (and even enabling category content blocking if you wish). Of course, if your father-in-law is IT savvy, he’ll just manually set the DNS server on his devices.

The crew should come back on the Dragon and Boeing be required to solve the problems and carry out another test flight. It is unacceptable that Boeing wants to bring the astronauts back without understanding some of the failures on the Starliner.

Can’t see Kirk ever giving in to the dark side, but Sisko or Janeway…

As someone who has inherited code like that, I would like to strangle the first programmer in the comic.

Yeah, I didn’t like that one either. I get enough politics elsewhere.

Congrats, I think you’ve successfully crafted an insult to both Pike and Biden at the same time.