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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   483 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 3, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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"Am I German or Autistic?"

http://german.millermanschool.com/

(I am neither German nor autistic, but it's good to confirm, through a psychometrically validated instrument that I'm a regular dude. Uh, I don't remember my results but I think it was 38% German and like 10% autistic?)

CategoryRating
German47 %
Autistic58 %
OverallWittgenstein

You have, apparently, both the cultural formation that produces systematic people and the neurological substrate that makes systematic thinking feel like breathing. This is either a significant advantage or an explanation for certain recurring difficulties in your life. Probably both.

Schopenhauer also fits here. So does Ramanujan, though he wasn't German. The category isn't German or autistic—it's people for whom the gap between how things are and how they ought to be is not an abstraction but a constant, low-grade irritation.

My mother tells me that I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at some point, but she doesn't have any of the court files to prove it.

I doubt that I have any German heritage, though my mother does hail from a former Danish colony.

Just show me the formatted table post and not the username and I could've guessed it was you.

This website's Markdown implementation does not support the fancy hyphens-and-pipes table syntax that Reddit's implementation supports, so users are forced to type the table HTML manually—and that's a good thing™. More people should learn (X)HTML. Typing HTML in a plaintext editor often is more relaxing than typing in a WYSIWYG text editor.

  • You don't have to mess with Character Map or AutoCorrect in order to type en and em dashes, subtraction, multiplication, and division symbols, directional quotation marks, etc.; and you don't have to guess at what specific character a horizontal line is when you see it long after you typed it. Instead, you can just type a character reference (picked from a default list in HTML or a fully custom list in XHTML)—& ndash; & mdash;, & minus;, & times;, & div;, & ldquo;, & rdquo;, etc. (without the spaces)—and it will remain perfectly legible in the plaintext forever.

  • You don't have to mess with invisible section divisions and style changes, constantly having to guess whether Word has actually done what you wanted it to do. Sections are clearly visible elements, and styles are clearly visible classes. Nothing is ambiguous.

  • I think there was recently a discussion here regarding how learning a second language enables a person to better understand his first language. Likewise, learning HTML enables a person to better understand what Microsoft Word is trying to do behind the scenes while you clumsily interact with its interface.

Entirely within my expectations, ngl. I do think Aspergers deserves a place in modern psychiatric taxonomy, when up to 80% of people with autism have learning disabilities, then it at least served as a convenient shorthand for those of normal or above average intelligence. Well, I don't get consulted on either the ICD or the DSM, at least not yet.

When I was younger my friends swore that I was autistic because I was never afraid to say ‘anything’ to anybody. It was made worse by the fact that I spent a lot of time growing up in the hood. My friends were afraid I was going say something that was going to get us shot. And I’ve been jumped before a number of times by over a dozen people. But it wasn’t uncommon with most of us, we all got into several fights. Once you’re in hell, only the Devil can help you out. You had to fight to establish yourself in the pecking order among the boys and even if you didn’t gangbang (which I didn’t), you still had to be affiliated with the clique, just to get by and survive. I can remember doing homework in the hospital with bruises all over my body once when people used to come and visit me. One of my friends, she still makes fun of me and laughs on the rare opportunities we now have to hang out, because I have this habit of walking I sometimes slip into that she calls my “ghetto strut.” The influences sometimes still rub off on you.

Socialization was always one of those things that was difficult for me because I had no capability to be fluid with it. I improved enormously as time went on, but things still seem rigid at times as if I’m searching for the appropriate or correct answer that speaks to the moment, and there isn’t a lot of natural flow to it. I tend not to pickup on context very well. If someone comes up to me and restarts a previous conversation we had from the point we last touched upon, I’ll have ‘zero’ idea what they’re talking about unless they clarify things prior to picking it backup (e.g., “so about earlier,” “to answer that question you asked awhile ago,” “remember when you said X earlier today,” etc.).

Never been diagnosed in any way. But my friends were always fascinated by things I could do and why I was the way I was. They’d always have me take these personality tests, and in a couple instances paid for the exams for me to take; and had me do all these complex mental challenges. I never liked doing them though and always got tired of it, and after awhile I think they finally picked up on it.

I obviously am not an illustrious doctor, but it appears to me that the ICD has more or less retained Asperger's syndrome in its table of diagnoses.

6A02 = autism spectrum disorderFunctional language
Mildly impaired or not impairedImpairedCompletely absent or almost completely absent
Disorder of intellectual developmentAbsent6A02.0 ≈ Asperger's syndrome6A02.2—
Present6A02.16A02.3 ≈ childhood disintegrative disorder6A02.5

In the sense that that it recognizes {no intellectual deficit plus some generic autism traits} as a sub-category? Yes. But Aspergers was handy. We got rid of it without a handy epithet to replace it.

It would be like replacing "mild depression" with "depression without suicidality, severe anhedonia, psychomotor retardation..." You have replaced a convenient and pragmatically helpful diagnosis with a more unwieldy one, with no clear benefit.

I am obviously am not an illustrious doctor

Don't worry, neither am I. At least the illustrious part.

… psychomotor retardation...

That almost sounds like a term for road rage.

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