I’m rather tired of people making claims about the belief systems of groups they have never been a part of. People make such vapid takes and always try to paint their opposition as entirely evil or entirely stupid. It’s possible to argue that harm is being done by others without making the assumption that they have no internal logic or ethics to their belief system. Doing so only proves your own ignorance and makes you a less credible source for critique.

I’m tired of arbitrary social rules being upheld as moral absolutes.

That includes from the people you think are right.

And especially when the rules involve being cruel to others who are thought to deserve it.

I'd like to find more books on extremely specific subjects of interest to me. The kind that go on a deep dive into a subject, rather than covering all the surface level information about something.

There are problems with this though:
The first is that I'm not well enough educated or particularly smart. The second is that such books tend to be difficult to find and expensive. The third is that such books are very infrequently published, as they have a very niche market, and publishers don't tend to want to take the risk, hence point two. The fourth is that such books are hard to write in a way that isn't dry and boring.

I can't believe you can get 1 TB microSD cards now.

That's just so much for so small a thing.

Every time there’s a partial solar eclipse, the news says it will look like someone has taken a bite out of the sun.

And I think I know who to blame.

The Pokémon Company seems rather confused on what constitutes a “species.”

So many vastly different Pokémon species can interbreed and have viable offspring. The same creature is a different species at different phases of its life cycle.

And don’t even get me started on Nidoran.

After work: Teeth.

Then it's on to the rest of the face.

Y'know, I have no diagnosis for it or any reason to believe it's the case, but I do have a lot of experiences that seem to be in common with a lot of neurodivergent people.

The one I've been thinking about today that caused a lot of stress for me was being the child who was treated as "More adult and mature" than the others by adults, and like I had no emotions by my peers. A lot of people thought I was quiet and a bit cold, when in reality my emotions seemed to run so much deeper than those of others, only with me having a reduced affect. Then people would suddenly be surprised when I'd reach a breaking point after dealing silently with things I shouldn't have had to deal with for far too long and would explode.

A lot of small differences like this always made me feel like an outsider when I was a child. Now they aren't as prevalent, and I wonder how much of that is growing up and how much is just masking. Because I honestly can't tell if I'm masking a lot of times. I've gotten very good at pretending to be sociable after working retail and customer service for more than six years, at jobs that punish you severely if you're not (whether by management or customers...), and I know from experience that a lot of it is an act. It's just hard to tell what's "growing up a bit" and what's masking.

To make things more complicated, I often wonder how much of that reduced show of emotions was intentional too. Because there was a time when I became aware that a lot (and I do mean a lot) of bullies were targeting me for emotional responses and especially those they thought were "weird." So I would actually try to control and limit my emotions, to become Mr. Spock and not feel anything, such that I would be unable to be hurt and the constant bullying might stop just because I could give them no reason to continue. And that muddies how much my feelings were different and how much was me reacting to outside stimulus in a weird way.

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I come across this feeling every now and then of feeling like the term neurodivergent applies to me, while simultaneously feeling like an imposter for even thinking as much. As if me relating to others' experiences in some way is a lie that I tell myself to justify my own experiences. As if my differences are shortcomings that I've deluded myself into thinking are valid by latching on to the validity of others. And that's a harmful thought process.

Many demographics I fall under (e.g. furry, nonbinary, trans, otherkin, etc.) have a relatively high prevalence of neurodivergence. So many stories I've heard and feelings that have been shared with me have struck home. I have more than enough evidence from my own life and own mental state to self-diagnose with some degree of confidence.

Yet I am resistant.
I don't feel I count.

And I've felt this way for a long time. And sometimes when I express these sentiments, some more radical leftists will tell me I'm stepping on toes and I'm saying the wrong thing or I didn't express my feelings in a way that matched with accepted discourse on ablism, so I'm evil, part of the other, part of the enemy. And though I try to learn to express things in a way that validate others while being open about my own experience, that still makes it harder to identify with neurodivergence if I'm already being labeled the enemy of it.

Still, feelings persist and are complicated. And while feelings are pure in a sense, they can be problematic, just like any other aspect of existence in this world.

People have asked if a label would help me. Or if a diagnosis would help.
And the answer is "I don't know."

I'm inclined to think, if anything else, that I wouldn't be so hung up on this if that weren't the case. But I can't think of any specific way it would help.

So I guess I'll just keep wondering for now.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on it right now. I think I'll try to condense things and take a stronger, more specific stance on something tangential elsewhere. But for here and now, that's the end of my rant.