At this point, I think most people who qualify as merely conservative are Democrats. The Republican party in general has moved far right of “conservative” and well into “fanatical”.

I honestly can’t tell if he’s trolling, or just unhinged. Either way, he’s getting blocked.

Lmao what a shit take.

Great summary of every comment you’ve made in this thread.

Pretty sad that providing a better life for children than we had is apparently a controversial opinion.

I take great joy in providing my son a life free of the home life experiences that made my youth hell. It still remains to be seen how well he’ll avoid the pitfalls of social interaction I suffered through, but I do feel like I’m preparing him far better than I ever was.

There are posts and threads where people say that they can see images when they close their eyes.

I honestly don’t know if that’s just people not being specific with their words. I mean, “I can see images when I close my eyes” is still an accurate statement for me, even if the images don’t appear unprompted. The idea of unprompted images forming every time I close my eyes is frankly rather terrifying. Closing my eyes is part of my strategy for dealing with over stimulation; if I didn’t have calming dark when I closed my eyes, I think I’d freak the hell out.

For what its worth, I definitely do not have aphantasia, but that first description of closing your eyes and non seeing vivid imagery is nonsense. If I close my eyes, I don’t just randomly start seeing things. I only “see” mental images if I think about what things look like. Unless there’s music playing (that I enjoy). If I close my eyes while listening to good music I frequently get all sorts of mental images. However, they don’t start as what I’d call vivid. Instead, they’re faint at first, but get stronger the longer I keep my eyes closed and the music keeps playing.

As a side note, I have prosopagnosia (face blindness), so even though I can visual a tree, or an apple, or even a person, I almost never can visual a face. Like right now, I cannot picture my wife’s face, or my son’s. Sometimes I can, but I’d say that its rare, and I have no idea why sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t.

So yeah, those are terrible descriptions of aphantasia (and to be clear, I’m agreeing with your overall point).

It’s funny that someone is so triggered by implications that ABA even exists that they downvoted you for factually pointing out what the acronym stands for.

Way to double down on your hypocrisy.

As I pointed out, your demand for examples of licensed doctors providing formal referrals as the only acceptable proof is ridiculous. In the US that is covered by HIPAA, and illegal to share without permission from the patient. You’re essentially saying “the only proof I will accept is anecdotal evidence provided by a patient willing to share their confidential medical records.” The fact that you skipped right over addressing that when it was pointed out suggests that you are operating out of a position of emotional investment, rather than actual interest in discussion.

The fact that I actually provided you the google searches I used, then to have you not only refuse to bother trying then but also pretend that I never supplied them in the first place (pro-tip: “I googled the phrase ‘aba therapy clinic’” is functionally the same as “https://www.google.com/search?q=aba+therapy+clinic”) just makes it more hilariously clear that you started with a position (that doctors are reliable and would never do anything abusive), and are simply approaching discussion by looking for ways to immediately discredit and dismiss any and all statements that don’t agree with your preconceived worldview.

The funny part is that I don’t even know if ABA is “abuse”. There’s certainly a lot of literature about how it was, but more recent material claims that the most egregious elements of abuse have been removed. I only chimed in to point out that ABA is absolutely a current thing, despite your hilarious attempts to insist otherwise. Your imaginations of my own “prejudice” mixed with your mewlings about “the reality of today’s healthcare” only add to the humor of your clownish responses.

Picking a random location (New Haven Connecticut), here are some clinics advertising ABA therapy: https://www.achievebeyondusa.com/locations/connecticut/ https://cultivatebhe.com/locations/connecticut/new-haven/ https://www.autismlearningpartners.com/locations/connecticut/new-haven-county/new-haven https://www.autismspeaks.org/provider/proud-moments-aba-new-haven (of course the ultra-shitty “Autism Speaks” currently endorses ABA!) https://www.abrandnewdayaba.com/

Here’s a couple of “top 10 ABA therapy providers in New Haven”: https://beaminghealth.com/aba-therapy/new-haven-06510/all https://m.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Aba+Therapy&find_loc=new+haven%2C+ct

But yeah, let’s just go with “ABA doesn’t exist any more because no one is showing me an actual physical referral from a doctor specifying ABA on it” so you can pat yourself on the back and feel safe from being wrong on the internet :D

I just searched “aba therapy near me” and “aba therapy clinic” and got dozens of results. They’re not close-but-not-exact matches, either. These are places that literally describe themselves on their home page as focusing on delivering ABA services to children.

Considering referrals issued by a licensed doctor are considered confidential, and illegal to share without patient consent in many areas, the ability/inability to present such a referral as evidence is not a good criteria for whether it happens or not. But the prevalence of specialists that offer these services certainly indicates that specialists are finding it a profitable business model. I suppose it is possible that the vast majority of their business does not come from doctor referrals, but that seems unlikely.

Nah, wombats just lure you into sticking your head in the hole they’re hiding in, and then crush your skull with their muscly ass. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats

Okay, that all I can agree with. And I feel like there’s a huge difference between buying items on Amazon, and buying groceries on Amazon. I find it really hard to justify the later, but I can still imagine some circumstances where it would be justified (e.g. someone with a disability who can’t travel/carry groceries, and no other local store has viable delivery options).

It’s a shame. I used to love Amazon. Back when they just sold books they were one of the sites that really highlighted just what the Internet could be. More than a place for entertainment, but a place to obtain things that were otherwise unavailable. Their transition from ‘we sell books’ to ‘we sell everything and we’ll actively destroy anything that might compete with us if we can’ was terrible.

They managed to even screw up the cost of gas for me. I live in a small town that happened to be chosen by Amazon to be one of their major distribution centers. Our area is filled with their delivery trucks, and as a result the cost of gas is a full $0.20 USD more here than if I drive to the next town over.

Fuck Amazon. But I refuse to judge people who shop there as harshly. Judging them requires too many assumptions about their personal circumstances.

And why do you think you have no other choice than Amazon and Walmart in America?

That’s what you said, which is somewhat ambiguous phrasing. It could mean “why do you believe that there are no other choices, because there are?” or it could mean “yes, you have no other choices than those two, but how do you think that happened?”

Given that you started off by arguing that it was infuriating that anyone would ever shop at Amazon, and have been pretty consistent in your other comments that the solution is to just go to “an actual shop”, the first interpretation is much more appropriate to the context.

If you really meant “yes, you have no other choices than those two”, then sure, I’ll accept the back pedaling. It doesn’t change that you are infuriated that anyone would shop at Amazon, and accuse those that do of personally destroying the climate because we are lazy. The fact that you are aware that many people simply don’t have a better option, and yet you still judge them so harshly, only makes you look worse.

Yeah, I’ve been making a real effort to look for alternatives to Amazon whenever possible. It’s hard, though, depending on what you want. Sure, there’s a ton of stuff on Amazon that I can get local if I’m willing to put up with some inconvenience. I don’t buy books off of Amazon anymore, for example, because I’d rather call the small independent book shop that’s about 35 minutes drive from my house, have them order the book for me, and then drive out and pick it up.

But the sheer volume of things Amazon sells means there’s going to be LOTS of things that they have that just aren’t available around me. A new fan for my specific model of laptop? A replacement knob for my specific washing machine (for less than a dollar)? Amazon it is.

No, your comment was clear: anyone who doesn’t make whatever level of effort it takes to never shop at Amazon infuriates you. Furthermore, you assume that there are always other choices besides Amazon and Walmart. What you obviously still aren’t getting is that those other choices besides Amazon and Walmart may not be practical for everyone.

Amazon is bad. No one is disagreeing. But if I need a left-handed monkey wrench and my choices are either buy from Amazon or drive 2 hours to the closest major city, go to a big box store that let’s be honest, isn’t really much better than Amazon in terms of economic impact, and then drive 2 hours back, you being infuriated by my choosing to not waste half a day to choose the slightly-lesser-of-two-evils is a lovely demonstration of privilege.

So did you just skip the first half of my comment, or did you not understand the words?

Newsflash: not everyone in America lives in a major urban area where a wide variety of shops are available, let alone small independent shops. I live 30 minutes from the nearest city, which is a small city. There’s a huge amount of products that are not available in either my immediate area or even in the closes city. I don’t mind paying extra to avoid major chains, and I typically look elsewhere before resorting to Amazon, but paying extra and spending 2+ hours in a car to avoid Amazon is not a viable alternative.

If you’re going to talk about the “natural state of things”, then I assume you simply go out into the nearest forest, cut down a tree, and build whatever you need using the assortment of stone tools you’ve hand crafted?

So do you just assume everyone lives within convenient travel distance of a wide variety of shops that would supply everything that they could possibly want, or are you claiming moral superiority because you shop at Walmart instead of online at Amazon?

How do the other countries find out about the diagnosis? Are you expected to self-disclose?

I was especially freaked out when I realized it works offline.

I don’t think its too uncommon for tourist areas to try to pressure tourists to pay with foreign currency that has a favorable exchange rate to the local currency. That way they can make extra money by quoting a figure in USD (or other currency) that they know they can exchange for much more than the regular cost in local currency. If pressured with “I don’t have USD, so its either local currency or I go elsewhere” they’ll usually give in and accept local currency.