Hello fellow Ruby-haver! Here is a picture of my Ruby. I have a toddler bed that her predecessor kitty slept on, but she hasn’t been interested in it. Instead, she sleeps on this cardboard couch on top of the bed.

So there’s a lot of research suggesting neurodivergence has strong correlation with LGBT+ and there’s some indicating the BDSM correlation (not saying they are the same/related, but people who are in touch with themselves enough to identify as LGBT+ are more likely to be open about sexuality in general in my experience). It’s so present in my various social circles that I’ve connected nerd & neurodivergent and thought of those as the common factor.

But I realize there’s another commonality I hadn’t considered: they’re very community-oriented and attend community gatherings. There are three groups I’m thinking of: one has a ton of burners (not actually Burning Man, but smaller local variants), another are Quakers (and more specifically those who attend large regional/national gatherings), and the last are people who religiously attend DragonCon.

Maybe that has more to do with the sex-positivity and openness than the nerd piece? I don’t know. I just know I’m surrounded by it somehow, lol.

Sex. Neurodivergent/nerd social circles often have a lot of kink/BDSM and otherwise sex positive people, so my friends group is pretty open about sex.

I’m on the asexual spectrum and would rather forget that sex is a thing, but I love my friends and as long as everyone is consenting and safe, I’m happy for them. I sometimes get awkward when sex convos happen around me, but hey, I get awkward with many other convos too.

FMLA does cover leave for fathers, and in 2020 the DOL said 56% of US workers were covered by FMLA. That’s still a lot of people who don’t have those protections, but it’s still demonstrably incorrect to say there isn’t “any legal right [for fathers] to take time off from work.”

My company offers parental leave (generic, not gender-specific, and applies to adoptions as well as giving birth). Everyone I work with expects people—men included—to take it.

A guy on my team took his a couple years ago and now with his second child recently born, he is applying his lesson learned. Instead of taking the time as soon as his kid is born, overlapping time off with his wife, he’s letting his wife take her full time then he’s taking his. That way they stagger the full-time care of the newborn for about 6 months straight, after which his wife will be done teaching for the summer, meaning more like 8 months straight.

Another coworker (Director level) had his latest kid December before last. Our busy time is January to April, so he delayed and took his time off in May or June.

Fuck companies that don’t support it and the small-minded people who think men shouldn’t take it. I can understand how challenging it can be for a small business to support that kind of leave, but as humans we should care more about supporting the next generation than a couple hits to productivity at work for 2-3 months. (I write as a permanently child-free person.)

What you’re missing is that the people you work with are stuck in the mindset from 2 generations ago. Don’t buy in. Taking your leave IS supporting your family; you’re doing it right.

I tell everyone that it’s both, “I had her for TWENTY years!” with excitement and joy for how long I had her in my life, and how lucky I was to have her such a long time. AND, “I had her for twenty years,” so I don’t even remember who I was before her; she was so much of my life and it is so much harder to live without her now.

I’m sorry you’re also dealing with this kind of pain. It sucks. <3

I lost my 20-year-old best girl in October and still feel the hole in my heart so strongly, even though I adopted a sweet new kitty two months ago.

As someone else here on Lemmy said to me: may his sunspot never move and may he rest in play. <3

lol, well I appreciate the confirmation it wasn’t my group of weirdos!

Any chance you know where this meetup was?

I ask because I’m wondering if I might have been there but, like, before it got to…this. I used to attend weekly reddit meetups at a bar in Houston and they also held a larger meetup (maybe annually?). I went to that once and the location looked kinda like this. But I don’t recognize anyone in the picture and definitely didn’t experience anything like what’s shown…

I did make a lot of friends that way. When I moved away I tried to start something in my new city but it wasn’t big enough to catch on. I did meet a couple cool people though, and ~10 years later I regularly have one of them and her husband over to paint minis about once every other month. I guess my point is that not all reddit meetups got this weird.

The filters are made of plastic cellulose. Once upon a time I believe they were just cotton which would have been fine, but it’s been a long time since that was true.

My partner and I have a theory that MacFarlane pitched The Orville as “Family Guy in space,” and he got to make it because of his success with Family Guy. But the actual goal he had all along was to make Star Trek.

In order to keep the game up and get a second season, he had to sell the pitch at least a bit. So the early episodes are like Star Trek with cringey Family Guy-esque jokes. But as the series goes on, the cringe stops, the jokes slow down, and the plots get deeper.

I can’t stand cringe humor and did not consider myself a fan of MacFarlane, but The Orville changed that.

I have a new 6-month-old kitten. She’s shown interest in the toilet. Last night I discovered what she’s been so interested in. Warning: the following story is equally disgusting and hilarious.

We use flushable litter, so after using the toilet, I scoop litter then flush it all together. After scooping, I caught her with both paws in the toilet and chased her out. She managed to get a little bit of her target, the toilet paper!!!, away with her. So she could EAT IT.

I was laughing and shouting in shock and horror so loudly my partner came to check on us.

After cleaning her up, as I continue getting ready for bed, she went back to the toilet to bat at the water. I pulled her off then took one square of TP to wipe the seat off where she left a couple drops and threw it in the toilet. She immediately grabbed the square of TP (from a thankfully otherwise empty toilet bowl) and ran away with her prize, carrying it like a proud huntress. I had to chase her around the bedroom to get it back and clean her paws again.

So yeah, she’s going to train me to always leave the lid closed because of my disgusting but adorable pet.

How pickles are made

Blueberries

I was kinda hoping to see blueberry pickles.

I was diagnosed in my 20s but didn’t believe the psychiatrist. She didn’t do extensive testing or anything, just named it and prescribed for it given what I told her about myself and what she observed. I thought she was so wrong.

But the content about it over the past 5 or so years has made me realize how right she was. I understand myself so much better now that I believe that diagnosis and I’m better able to handle the challenges that come with it.

I’m grateful that my generation has become outspoken about mental health and neurodivergence.

Thanks for speaking to the other side, because that’s so hard to believe. I don’t know about everyone with ADHD, but it definitely seems to be a common shared experience. The only habits I do completely without thinking are a) putting my seatbelt on in the car, and b) picking my phone up like 100 times a day. Anything bigger, even something like eating, is something I have to will myself to do.

And when I’m trying to form a “habit,” like certain types of note taking or task planning at work, no matter how effective it is and how much I like it, I never manage to do it more than about 3 weeks before my brain just completely shuts off that pathway and it’s like I forget that process exists altogether.

If I don’t put my meds on my nightstand AND have a reminder on my phone, I will forget them most of the time. Daily activity, takes almost no brain power, and it still doesn’t trigger in my head as something I need to do unless I physically see it.