Yeah, that was clearly just the group having fun, sounds like it might have been some kind of in-joke. Stuff like keygen music and adding extra fun stuff to your cracks has always been part of the culture. For the most part, while I’m not saying there is zero risk, but as long as it’s from verified groups with good reputation, your pirated software will be safe to use - also part of the culture.

Just another case of a small, unknown competitor trying to gain market share with the supreme life simulator sandbox CK3, smh frfr

So, I recently learned about my own autism, also in my 30s, and I have begun the process of consciously unmasking quite recently - not a lot of experience yet.

What I’ve been doing is using my overactive self-reflection that was honed from going undiagnosed and being high-masking, to analyse where I might have been masking, what behaviour I might have done just to fit a specific role. For example, today I accepted some cake that a friend advertised in a group chat, that no one else seemed to want. In hindsight, while it was delicious, I was neither hungry for it, nor did I want to deal with the stress of him coming over to deliver it. But when I reflected on it, I realised I actually did this because I had internalised it as behaviour that is conducive to social connection, and “what is expected of me” when someon offers cake, even when I now very much feel the stress of having been interrupted by the offer, by accepring it, by getting myself ready to leave my apartment, actually going outside to meet up, the smalltalk involved, walking with a cake through the street afterwards. All stuff that actually stressed me out quite a lot.

While waiting for him outside, I allowed myself to close my eyes, listen to music and rythmitically drum on my thighs consciously - something that I know I repressed completely before, without even knowing. Unlike in the decades before, I also did not focus on thoughts of self-loathing like “why is something so simple so hard for you? What the hell is wrong with you?”, consciously pushing thoughts and feelings like that away as best I could.

At the moment, I am very much still sorting what even is behaviour that comes to me intuitively from “myself” and what is a mask - mostly by reflecting on the amounts of stress and overstimulation I feel after the fact, and then trying to consciously avoid the things that I realise, after the fact, were most likely long internalised masking behaviour.

That all being said, I also try to appreciate my masks as something I can go back to as a talent, when the tradeoff of their use is worth the additional stress. Being able to speak publicly, being able to look people in the eyes/face if needed, and other things, are good to have in some situations.

I feel that, I am currently on a waiting list for an official diagnosis I managed to organise with the help of my current psychiatrist. For me, here in Germany, I searched for “adult autism diagnostic” on maps, and it gave me a clinic with a department a few kilometres away in a big city, with their waiting list being roughly a year long.

Resources for autistic adults are super scarce, considering how many undiagnosed people have gone undiscovered from lack of awareness in the past decades.

I ran an instance for a while out of curiosity a few years back - building the database seemed to work fine and appeared like a good idea, had a lot of fun to see the connections with other servers and my crawler filling holes of unknown spaces. But I think the search algorithm itself was (most likely is) not sophisticated enough, it just did not give relevant results often enough, and it was extremely vulnerable to very simple SEO tactics to push trash to the top.

Easy mistake to make, thanks for sharing the video :)

Did you want to link an article or video by DW? The link is just the image for me. If so, thankfully, you can still edit it in Lemmy.

Materially, they were often launched into the upper middle class or even outright capitalists, that immediately gives them a bias. Add to that a disdain for social sciences and the humanities as subjects, that is unfortunately often found in STEM fields. On top of that, many are really addicted to the consumer cycle with gadgets and idolise the “geniuses” that “create” them, unlike proper nerds that won’t trust this generation of tech nearly as much and much rather create and tinker with stuff themselves.

Everett just getting more and more based the more I learn about him

That is actually one of the reasons (have to emphasise: among others, mainly delaying more open repression) I have been advocating heavily for people to turn out to vote for Democrats as a German communist myself. I know it’s cynical, I know I have it easy to think about it like this, not living in the US myself, all valid criticisms. But I genuinely think any Dem president winning against Trump might bait the most fascist elements in the US into really stupid violence they are not organised and prepared for. They think they are, but they are not.

I genuinely think more chaos and conflict is in the cards in the next decades, globally, no matter what is done and who is in charge (unless miracles happen and systemic change is pushed somehow within the status quo, I can see no avenue for it at the moment, though). So to me, that would be provoking fascists into doing something really stupid, too early, and out of a position of weakness, that will leave them weakened and yield a lot of ground to the left overall, making organisation for radical change easier.

No guarantees it’s going to happen and end up playing out like that, of course, details are always fuzzy and there’s no crystal ball. Same goes for my assumption that violence and global chaos beyond what people have been used to in the last 70 years will be inevitable in the decades to come (climate catastrophe, the end of neoliberal consensus worldwide, continuing crisis of capitalism with proletarisation and vanishing of the middle class in western nations), although I am a lot more certain of that development as a broad trend that has already begun, IMO.

At this point, it’s all just about delaying the repression and concentration of power under a Trump presidency, as well as trying to slow down the climate catastrophe as much as possible on top of that. Things won’t get better any time soon, it’s simply not the historical situation and dynamic at the moment, but every year to organise people for radical alternatives for when the global collapse progresses further is valuable.

It would have taken some big, unexpected developments for him to win at this stage. Especially after the failed assassination attempt invigorated and united Trump’s cult further.

That’s something I think some people just missed when Biden dropping out was debated. Of course, the other potential picks were polling behind him at that point. But he was showing clear signs that he had peaked, and would only be able to fight not to drop further. His most powerful argument had been not being Trump - which any candidate can wield. And any candidate with charisma and the ability to speak, debate and campaign has a lot of room to move up, whereas Biden was fighting not to move down.

Your last point is actually not a bad analysis - but it is missing that the ones operating their propaganda and troll farms already also control the violence monopoly. And both entities also use violence where they deem it practical.

So, this is 100% speculative rambling at this point, but as a gut feeling on my part that can be proven wrong: I get the feeling it might have been someone from a Republican family, possibly shitty family psychology-wise, registered as Republican for his families sake but got f’d up by the pressure within his personal relationships and the state of the world, who radicalised himself on the internet.

I don’t remember him mentioning the exact year, it’s been ages and I was a child still when he was still alive, but I know it was before the Machtergreifung, because he told it as having been a rally during an election campaign, eerily fitting, I guess.

Two main effects are to be expected: More people leaning towards him, that might not have gone to the polls out of whatever reason (lacking enthusiasm for example) will be more fired up to go vote, and his base will be more fired up to support him in grassroots campaigning. Also, some undecided voters will likely switch from the martyrdom narrative.

Yeah, I remember my grandfather telling the story of how Hitler held a speech at a Stadium that was visible from his attic window, and his biggest regret was, that he did not have a machinegun to take him and the other Nazi officials with him out. The US has enough guns and desperation for someone to attempt this, definitely.

So, I am fearing this will not only rally all Trump supporters to really vote for and support him extra hard, and get some undecideds to his side for his martyr status, but it might also spark a wave of stochastic terrorism and shootings by some right-wingers acting out, who will want to deliver justice to whatever group they will blame.

There is definitely some danger of this potentially spiraling, not guaranteed, but that will depend on some more potentially chaotic weeks ahead. Stay safe, stay prepared, stay organised.

It’s a very common gut reaction to assume something like this has to be “staged”, I said it in the other thread in some discussions: It’s understandable to have it as this feeling. But everyone who feels that way: take a breath, remember the world is much more chaotic and much less controlled than you think, you don’t have to think of yourself as stupid for thinking it, but wait for more information to come out and be ready to give it up then.

Reacting properly to this new reality is much more important, than trying to adjust reality to fit an emotion. It’s human to do that, react instinctively in a first gut reaction, but it is also human to be able to let go of that.