TechyDad

The last one is Imposter Syndrome. I struggle with it too. Despite having worked in web development for 25+ years, I’m constantly finding myself thinking that I don’t know anything and any day now everyone else will realize it. It’s a constant battle to remind myself that I’m actually talented and knowledgeable and not just a huge fraud.

Building with LEGO can be fun, but obviously buying tons of sets costs a lot of money and displaying them takes up a lot of space.

A nice alternative is using BrickLink Studio. This software lets you build LEGO creations using a 3D CAD-style software. You can not only build creations, but can generate photorealistic images. Here’s a recent virtual build of mine:

You can upload your creations to Rebrickable.com and download other people’s creations.

If you really want to build your creation, you can upload the parts list to BrickLink and buy new or used pieces. Obviously, this last part takes real money, but buying used pieces can bring down the cost.

Republicans seem to want to turn back the clock to the 1950’s and in one aspect I agree with them. The top tax rate back then was 90%. That should be returned for anyone making over $10 million.

Unlike Republicans, though, I think people should be free to be who they are - whether they’re LGBTQ or straight/cisgender, black or white, Christian or Jewish or atheist, or any other group I didn’t list. (I didn’t list all groups only because I don’t want this comment to be novel length.) Basically, as long as your actions affect only yourself and consenting adults, I’m fine with them.

I’m also fine with parents having some control over what their kids do. I’m a parent myself and know that as a parent you need to make judgement calls as to what’s best for your child. I wouldn’t want someone else questioning my parenting based on their beliefs. However, there are limits. If your child is LGBTQ and you try to force them to be straight/cisgender, you aren’t acting in your child’s best interests. If your 10 year old child is raped and their life is in danger, but you refuse to allow them to have an abortion because your religion doesn’t allow it, then you’re harming your child.

Also, a person’s “parental rights” shouldn’t mean that they get to decide that certain books are banned from everyone reading them. My son actually just finished reading a book because it had been banned and we laughed over how innocuous the “ban triggering passage” was compared to some stuff in the Bible.

Basically, I think I’d call myself a Pragmatic Progressive. I advocate for progressive causes, but I also realize that society can often be slower to adapt than we like. While we would love to be able to pass X and have it be widely adopted immediately, there’s often a series of slow moving battles to get X passed and another slow march to get wide acceptance. We can’t simply throw in the political towel at the first setback. Neither can we pass up 10% of our goal being within our grasp because we’re holding out for 100%. We need to get whatever advancements we can while continually pushing for more.

I make “egg muffins” and freeze them to reheat every morning. To make these, I steam a bag of broccoli florets. I break these apart and put them into greased muffin tins. Then I add some shredded cheddar cheese and egg beaters. I bake these (400° for about 15 minutes or until done). Then, after they cool, I stick them in the freezer. I make sure I have 12 in a Tupperware tub in my refrigerator.

Every morning, I microwave 3 of them and have that with some whole wheat toast and cream cheese. (I take more out of the freezer as needed and they are mostly defrosted by the next morning.)

Does the money go poof if you spend it? For example, say I buy some jewelry with half of the million dollars. Then, the time limit passes. Does just the half a million I still have on hand disappear or does the cash I spent vanish as well?

If the cash I spend vanishes, then I might be opening myself up to fraud charges after the hour is up. Going back to the jewelry situation. I buy half a million in jewelry and hand over the last of the cash just as the time limit ends. If the money in the store clerk’s hands suddenly vanishes, they’re going to demand their merchandise back. If I’m already walking out the door when it goes poof, they’ll call the police on me.

Of course, if the money that I spend doesn’t vanish after the time limit expires, then that’s a different story.

My worst experience came just before the API disaster started. Someone posted on the ELI5 subreddit asking what autistic people experience when they are nonverbal. Now, I’m autistic and, while I’m verbal most of the time, I do have moments where I can’t speak even though I want to. Typically in moments of high emotion or stress. (It feels like the words are in my brain, but the highway to my mouth has a twenty car pileup blocking all traffic.)

My comment was upvoted many times and many people replied positively to my comment. Then, suddenly, my comment was deleted. The mod said that because this was my personal experience, it was too subjective. Meaning, only an “objective” experience from someone who wasn’t autistic would be allowed.

Needless to say, I was upset and needed to vent. I vented in the Autism subreddit about the situation and got people replying in support of me. Now, I did make a mistake where people started asking to see my original comment and I posted a screenshot. That was on me - especially because I forgot to blank out the original poster’s name. (In my defense, I had nothing against the OP or their question so nothing lept to mind saying “better blank that out.”)

The whole thread was suddenly deleted from the Autism subreddit for “doxing.” I deleted the person’s username and asked for the thread to be restored. Instead, I was given a 30 day ban. Then, I quickly got notified that I was permanently banned from ELI5 for “sh*t-stirring.” My goal was never “raise an army of autistic people to attack the ELI5 mods,” but just “blow off steam for something I felt wasn’t just.”

I decided not to contest either and just stop going to either sub. In fact, I was deciding to reevaluate my Reddit use altogether. And then the API debacle started.

I read the headlines there daily but steer clear of the comments. A few years ago, Slashdot had a Nazi problem. There were a group of users who would invariably post full on Nazi content no matter the article. It would get down voted eventually, but if you were early and headed into the comments, you were treated to some vile conspiracies about Jews running the world and calls for Jews to be exterminated.

(Given that I’m Jewish and have been told by such people to my face that “the only thing Hitler did wrong was not finishing the job”, it’s distressing when I see posts of this nature.)

Clumsy Vision. You shoot rays out of your eyes that make the person mildly clumsy for a few minutes. Not like Slapstick Comedy levels of clumsiness, but just like tripping over their shoelaces or looking back and running into a pole clumsy.

You’ve won a few battles (like that time the purse thief mistook you for an A lister superhero, ran away, tripped over their own feet, and twisted their ankle), but you’re mostly useful for anything other than occasionally stopping petty criminal behavior.

One of the very few subreddits that I am probably going to keep going to is the one for my local area. I’d love to see a replacement for it here, but I’m not sure it would be active enough.

I installed a “focus” app on my phone. I set it to prevent launches of Boost (my third party app of choice) and the Reddit app (which I installed a while back and never bothered getting rid of) for the next two days.

When I try to launch either app, the focus app will tell me that I can’t. I tested it this morning just to make sure it was working. Now, even if I try to visit Reddit out of force of habit, I’ll have blocked myself from going there.