User:Paul S

An aging geek who owes his sanity and well being to skepticism and rationalism.

Bluesky

I should perhaps go into a bit more detail.

First, I'm on the spectrum and I grew up at a time when such things were not nearly as well-understood as they are now. So, yeah, that was a bit rough.

Born in Chicago, but moved to Columbus, Ohio before I was even three and have been here since. Not ideal, but at least it's cheap.

I was raised in a Catholic family, but attended public school. It wasn't that bad, really. Mom used to code for IBM back in the 60s and even helped teach math at one of the local schools until she died. Dad was career US Army, served in Vietnam, and after resining worked for the Department of Defense in logistics until he left in his 50s and became a funeral director. He had a rough time dealing with raising a teenage kid on the spectrum, but once I got a proper diagnosis he put forth the effort to educate himself on the subject and things got a lot better until he died. I give him a lot of credit for that.

As for things being relevant to here, I had that period in the 90s when I was into UFOs and other woo... until you got into all the millennial doomsday crap of the era. Not a good thing for a teenager on the spectrum. But eventually I learned about skepticism and atheism, which pulled me out of that hole. Of course, other holes would pop up over the rest of my adult life... but I'm learning to deal with them.

Education was a bit rough for me, having to decide between work and school for a few years before earing a PC repair certification. Years later, I'm now semi-retired and I sometimes pick up work at the local schools. Not glamourous, but at least it feels better than working for some guy who complains about sales while owning both a Hummer and a Mercedes.

Political tests put me well in the Left Libertarian camp. I'm the kind of guy who concluded that things like a military and police are needed for a functioning modern society, but holy shit do they need some serious reform, if not flat-out restructuring. I'm not sure if Marxist ideals would work without somehow achieving post-scarcity first. I don't think highly of techbros and their sycophantism of Musk and other obscenely wealthy nitwits. Tankies and others who uncritically go on about "western propaganda" and the like are not helping anyone and gives ammo to regressives who dream of bringing back the days of the red scare.

In short... No one is perfect. Be mindful of your actions. Look at things critically. Be nice to other people.