If you shift-click on the thumbnail, it will open full size in a new window.

We used to. Some people complained that it was an eyesore and the city hauled it off to a commercial dock or something last summer. It had history on our waters, and used to offer tours during the summer to tourists. I don't think it was ever very fun, but nevertheless it was a part of history and it filled in the waterfront. I didn't agree with the decision (especially because it cost taxpayers 10's of thousands of dollars to move because the non-profit that owned the ship had no money). It's hard to say whether the decision was right or not because now with COVID-19 the marina is completely empty.

It's generally not flat at all, but it's not very mountainous either. There are plenty of hills and valleys and a few small mountains. From an airplane it looks pretty flat, but from a car it does not. Our highways often pass through rock walls because the only way to build across this part of the province was to blast through rock (and even doing so our highways are twists and hills, making travel take longer). When I think of flat I think of Saskatchewan. When we visited there last summer it was the furthest I have ever seen an inland horizon.

1. This is the thread that never closes
2. It just goes on and on like Moses
3. Some people started complaining that the threads here lock too soon
4. And they'll just keep complaining because Matthew has better things to do

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday where I reported mostly positive results. The doctor seemed quite satisfied with my progress, and wasn't concerned about my relapse (3-4 drinks per day) because it's still a big improvement over my starting point.

I asked him about an Autism diagnosis. Initially he kind of blew it off nonchalantly, saying something like "you wouldn't want to excuse behavior on that." But then he kind of circled back and said it might be useful to know where your limitations come from to work at improving them... Uhhh, thanks, I guess? He searched their system for diagnostic information, but all of it was for children. He saw a mention of an "Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire", but he wasn't able to find/print it. He said I'd probably have better luck and told me to do it at home.

This is the one that I found:

https://autismcanada.org/about-autism/diagnosis/screening-tools/adult/

I don't know if it's the same one he referenced. The dog literally chewed up the piece of paper the doctor wrote it on this morning. It's also difficult to answer the questions honestly when I'm biased because I already believe I'm Autistic and am afraid of being told I'm not (because then I lose my explanation for why I am different). Anyway, I did answer honestly to the best of my ability.

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According to that I am at "high risk" for Autism (seems an odd choice of words). Of course, I may be blocked there now because it doesn't sound like my doctor sees any value in pursuing an actual diagnosis... My next appointment isn't for 2 months so he'll probably have forgotten all about it by then. I could message him to report my findings, but I feel like that will just look desperate for a diagnosis...

Append:

I think that the doctor was actually referring to ASSQ which can be found here:

https://gillbergcentre.gu.se/english/research/screening-questionnaires/assq-screening-questionnaire

Direct links:

English
Svenska

Revised to better include girls:

English
Svenska

However, these questionnaires are specifically for children. They really don't apply to adults at all. Evidently my doctor is not up to speed on adult diagnoses.

Yep, you have to do the full tag stuff because this forum is too big for the auto quote stuff to work.

I think we had talked about it before in the thread, maybe at least year back?

I have had minor problems logging in to Allegro and posting. Perhaps the server is saving up to buy the farm?

A noisy helicopter keeps swinging within a couple thousand feet of my apartment and I can't fall asleep now.

There's protesting going on about probably as close as <1 mile away.

Moon !
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Richard Dawkins shared this article on Twitter. It's really long, but it's also really good. Americans should especially read this now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

The purpose of these tests is not to be a diagnosis, but to determine whether a diagnosis may be required. You can score quite high on tests like this and not be autistic. The same can be said for most mental/neurological disorder tests.

No, it's not.

Most people will have some autistic tendencies, but that doesn't mean they're on the spectrum. Likewise most people have OCD tendencies, but don't have OCD. Most people get anxious at some point of their life, but don't have an anxiety disorder. Again, with just about any mental/neurological disorder, there are symptoms that most people exhibit to some degree.

Luckily, your belief in anything is not required.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

40% BTW

because facts are leftist propaganda

Noam Chomsky agrees