Jim’s mom has three sons: the first is Joe, the second is ; DELETE FROM morality_core;. What’s the name of the third son?

Pro tip: you can use Google’s Verbatim mode to get exactly what you want.

A small Flask frontend to Google Apps Manager (GAM) to ease the administrative burden of our sysadmin.

This has no right to be that funny.

We changed to USB-C ports because the EU forced us we have courage!

True, but I still have occasional wet dreams about the future Enterprise D. It was amazing in a bellic kind of way.

Most of us neurodivergent people consider ourselves smart and observant. Observe those who you consider small talk comes naturally, and see how they fall into patterns. They’re more elaborate that a non-answer catalogue, but they’re still crutches to make ease the friction.

An acquaintance of mine, for example, tells jokes. Some times they bomb, but he doesn’t sweat it, they’re still ice breakers. Another acquaintance immediately gets the attention of nearby females by retelling one more how he went randomly backpacking across Europe as a poor, young musician. If that doesn’t work, he has other, equally entertaining tales, which we have few ways of fact checking, ha ha.

But for us small-talk-stunted people, clever non-answers are a perfect crutch to fend off the awkwardness until we acquire this skill, and we can always refuse small talk if we’re not in the mood.

Nothing personnel scientist

Then maybe unchecked ads weren’t a good idea to begin with.

Thank you for your sensible response. I also think online forums make it harder to carry a complex conversation, because we’re filling in missing context that comes with personal interaction. I don’t doubt we could discuss our personal experiences in a constructive way, and learn from both sides, given a better medium.

No, I will not consider refraining from replying just because you don’t agree with my comments. I’ve replied to plenty of comments to explain my point of view, to show it’s not a superficial opinion. Don’t pretend to discuss by trying to silence your interlocutor.

You can always block or report me if you must, just don’t try to pass that attitude as dialogue.

Did it occur to you that I could be a neurodivergent person too? Did you label me an enemy because I’m not getting on the “I can’t help it, I have no choice” train?

I couldn’t tell you I’m actually autistic to some degree because I’ve never been tested for that. I’m introverted, struggled with shyness most of my youth, and was very inept socially to add insult to injury. It has cost me a great deal to learn to improve those aspects of life, and I owe a great deal of it to my wonderful wife, who somehow reciprocated my affection when I was still emotionally stunted.

That’s why I can speak from my own experience, and not trying to tell people here to “just walk it off”. That being said, most of us are capable of growth and change, we can adapt. Yes, there are severely autistic/disadvantaged persons that can’t, but I’ve seen too many others using the pretext of being different to assume they’re autistic too (without a medical diagnosis) and are too hardcoded to change. What most functional people perceive as innate disadvantages is, at least in part, emotional immaturity. We focus on improving some aspect, study or expertise for example, but neglect others, like socializing, empathizing, or management of emotions. We grow unbalanced, and it’s wrong to pretend we can’t change without at least doing an honest try to change.

I don’t know why I’m being so insistent here, probably because I’ve seen this attitude more in the younger generations, IRL, and it’s not like something is making more people autistic, but making them less eager to examine and improve themselves. I’ve met autistic and mentally challenged people in my life, and they’re truly limited in their capabilities, but highly functioning people claiming they’re the same as them is bordering entitlement.

I agree with this. Observe carefully someone who you deem a master of small talk, and you’ll notice it’s not intellect or genius, but patterns of small non-answers they’ve learned to use as conversational support.

Fine, but beware of getting on the “I was born this way and I can’t change even if I wanted to” train. That’s extremely harmful to your personal growth, because even if you were truly different genetically, it can be used as an excuse to not learn or change, even if you were capable of it.

Believe it or not, that is plain emotional intelligence. Over analyzing can become a vicious circle, but most therapists will teach you ways to escape the dreadful scenarios in out heads, and ground yourself in the real world.

The liberating part is that most people don’t care about you much at all, they won’t obsess because you said “you too” to your waiter, they’ll forget your faux passes quickly if they’re small.

That’s not how it is, you’re comparing a Saw movie with small talk, talk about hyperbole.

You can always say “I don’t feel comfortable with small talk” if you don’t want to make the effort of making your own quick-answer list, and no loved one of yours will die because of that.

I used to struggle a lot with small talk too, and dialogue in general (used to be too literal), that’s why I can relate to some of the answers here. I speak not from prejudice, but from my own experience.

That same experience has taught me that not thinking like the rest is not necessarily the same as being neurodivergent, but having developed different skills as you grew up. If willing, everyone can learn a skill they find lacking at least to a beginner level.

Then it isn’t that hard to do, right? There’s no innate talent to it, just plain memorization.

The “typical” person doesn’t see 3 or 4 answers, they have prepared a few generic answers to those small questions, and anyone can do that. Unless you’re really feeling different, and have enough intimacy with the asker to be honest, it’s just a game of tic-tac-toe that anyone can learn.

How are you doing? Fine, how’s life treating you?

Nice weather, eh? I’ve had better.

Etc.

Kudos for using the word “gerontocracy”.