torpak

I’m German myself but since I am a programmer I like the US-Keyboard more than the German one. The easy fix for me was using US-intl-nodeadkeys so I can use the right alt key to type those stupid German umlauts. This should work at least for most (Western-)European languages.

This is definitely true for me. That’s one of the reasons I love anime and manga because in most of those the innermost thoughts of the characters are shown to the audience.

It’s not really a single tool but using Arch Linux helps me greatly since it gives me full control over my computing environment and it’s look and feel.

Oh no, you fell into your own trap!

Nope, the burden of evidence is on the one claiming something contradicting current scientific understanding.

In this post I have been using that term “non-speaking episodes” because it factually describes what is happening. Some people suggest “autistic shutdown” which is common in the community.

I am not arguing we should use non verbal but autistic shutdown is way to general because for me being (temporarily) unable to speak is only one of the first syptoms. It feels like a litteral “loss of words” since in those situations I’m unable to translate my thoughts into words.

Don’t worry, I’m sure you won’t have to translate any overly long sentences in the first semester.

Funny how culture shapes perception. As a German that sentence didn’t even strike me as overly long.

When I have a mild headache, usually from a stiff neck, it impacts me like any other mild pain. It is just a source of stress, like children screaming near by or a Light flickering. It lowers my concentration and my mental capacity but unless there are other factors I can still somewhat function at least for a time.

Migraine is something different all together for me typically it starts with flickering in the center of my vision. Usually I recognize it because it gets hard to read text. The flickering then spreads out and slowly moves to my peripheral vision over about 10 to 30 minutes. When it moves out of my field of vision it takes another 10 to 30 minutes until my brain feels like a bucket of snails. I can’t concentrate even on interesting things and even simple thoughts take effort. About a third of the time a really bad headache starts at the same time. The headache usually lasts about 1 to 3 hours but feels like 10. The sluggishness and fuzziness of my brain will slowly fade over the next one to three days.

This seems to be called migraine with aura. Luckily it hits me only about 3-5 times a year.

I have this “waiting mode” too but it’s only for things happening on the same day. The more important the appointment the more hours before it starts. In this time it’s close to impossible to concentrate on anything not related to preparation of the event (even if it requires none) and absolutely impossible to get real rest.

edit: The best strategy I have found so far is scheduling important appointments as early in the day as possible.

I did the switch twenty years ago, starting with dual-boot and Wine. Nowadays dual-boot is gone and I never use Wine outside of gaming.

I don't consider ADHD a superpower and I struggle with executive dysfunction every single day. I would love to be able to understand other people and their non verbal or indirect communication better. On the other hand I love the fact that my personal combination of disabilities has allowed me to learn to extremely quickly research enough of any given topic to have relevant discussions with experts. My widespread intereste allowed me to learn a huge variety of facts most of which are useless most of the time but many of which were surprisingly useful at least one time in my life. My bad working memory forced me to learn to use general principles to get useful results based on very little information and to quickly distill the most relevant information out of heaps of text. Nearly every single strenght I have is literally the flip-side of one of my weaknesses. On the whole I would say that while my ADHD and ASD have clearly made my life more challenging on the whole those challenges helped me become the person I am. I recognize that not everyone is as lucky as I am in that regard but i"m quite sure there are others who are even more lucky than me many of which won't even suspect they are neurodivergent, just as I didn't a few years ago. So I think your perception of the "objective" ammount of neurodivergent suffering may be squewed because only people who suffer at least a bit have reason to get a diagnosis.

• I am autistic and have ADHD and I still prefer having been born to the alternative thank you very much!
• Comparing the intentional breeding of universaly harmful traits in dogs to taking a slightly higher risk of ASD which is rarely harmful is quite a stretch.
• Without autistic people many great things wouldn't exist today. I would argue that without the special interests and hyperfocus of neurodiverse people a lot of scientce and engineering wouldn't have happened or at least a lot later.
• While ASD and ADHD are often percieved as harmful, they are rarely only harmful and often bring special talent or at least a unique perspective.

Autistic people aren’t suffering unless you’re putting them in a system that treats them as subhuman.

While that is true for many of us, it's not true for all of us. But I'm still sure most of us still like being alive, so i'm not disagreeing with the sentiment behind your argument.

Do you know what type of community this is? While I don't suffer to the same degree as OP I need some time to wind down every day. Being interrupted in that time is a stressful experience for me and negates the benefits of at least half an hour of relaxation. I am married and I do have friends and they respect my clearly communicated boundaries just as I respect theirs.

Bullying is a tactic to raise your own perceived worth by stepping on others. I think most people who have any real talent or education don't need that. Also, it is not universal, but intelligence makes introspection more likely.

My safe food is mostly junk food because of its reliable taste and consistency. I can eat most food that doesn't contain banana (extreme aversion) or lactose (lactose intolerance) but I don't enjoy most vegetables or meat which is not homogenous.

So the answer is no.

And cats.

At least most problems under Linux have solutions and if you are really desperate you have the option to fix it yourself in the source or pay someone to do it. Under windows, if microsoft doesn’t care about your problem, you either find a workaround or live with it.

I have to use windows at work. I have to spend a lot more time trouble shooting there than on my bleeding edge rolling release linux at home.