Looks pretty standard to me.

Oh, and you interrupted the cleaning cycle. Now Mittens will have forgotten where she(?) was up to.

This is definitely not satire.

Right.... cue follow-up posts when the city fines them for operating a business without a licence.

The best case is when I am (1) well-rested, (2) not hungry or thirsty and (3) not already agitated/close to being overwhelmed going into it. Socialising definitely drains me, though, and I have gotten better at recognising when I need a break before it becomes critical. That way I can politely excuse myself (if it's a social function, usually I have a plan in advance to go outside or away from people for a bit to recover).

Unfortunately it's just reality that some people are energised by that type of conversation or social interaction, whilst for others it is exhausting. Energy management is the key thing for those of us who find it draining. Interoception is sometimes impeded for individuals on the spectrum, so if it's hard to identify or keep track of how are you going (and hence whether it is time to politely exit the conversation), there are exercises one can find online to help improve interoception.

It takes practice, but a good approach is not to go beyond a few sentences on a topic at a time. Give them a chance to change the direction of the conversation (which will happen if they are not interested) or ask follow-up questions (typically indicates that they are interested, although sometimes it may just be that they are being polite, in which case you'll usually only get one or two before the other person moves on to something else). As one of the other comments says, it's a dialogue, not a monologue - most of the time the other person isn't engaging to get information from you but to connect with you (and yeah, that can be a really nebulous concept at times!). It's really easy to infodump but most people don't have the context or depth of knowledge to follow a deep dive on a subject.

Just.... why?

This doesn't meet many of a cat's needs and the kid is going to outgrow it so quickly it's pointless.

Keep them apart for a week or so if you can to let any incubating infections show up. I recently had an upsetting experience with a family of stray kittens and their mother that my wife and I rescued, only to find out that they had feline parvovirus and had to be euthanised (whilst the kittens seemed fine when we caught them, the prognosis for kittens with parvo is horrendous; even the mother only had a 50/50 chance of survival). We kept them separate from our cats (and they are vaccinated anyway), but we still had to bleach the bathroom almost to oblivion to kill any trace of parvo. It was just a horrible situation.

Autism is not a deal-breaker. My spouse has ADHD and I have ASD. Granted, each of our neurotypes causes the other some frustration, but both are also factors in why we were attracted to each other in the first place.

Neurodivergent individuals often select for each other in partners and there are a lot of similar patterns in my extended family (to use your phrasing, they're all a bit "off"!). None of the relationship failures have been as a result of neurotype and most are still married, with the failures due to the same problems that NT couples deal with - poor communication, emotional immaturity, refusal to learn and grow, etc.

The key thing is to be yourself. If she likes you, you want her to like you for you, not the facade that so many of us have to wear to survive in the NT world.

And if she ghosts you, that's not a failure on your part. It says more about her than you - you took the risk and put yourself out there. If she doesn't show, perhaps she is insecure and afraid of telling you she's changed her mind, or perhaps something happened to prevent her from being there (since you mention films, this is a common trope too). Just be kind to yourself.

This is one case where I think Windows is appropriately designed for its target audience.

Hell no. Do not give machines the ability to lie. We already have enough trouble with people using technology to deceive without it choosing to be deceptive on its own.

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Faction Paradox was an interesting concept. Be aware that some of the Eighth Doctor BBC books are a real slog to get through (Interference comes to mind - there just isn't enough plot for it to be two books). The main thing I didn't like about the wilderness years books (Virgin & BBC) was that they were distinctly more adult than the show, which I found jarring.

I do wonder what we would have gotten had Moffat left with Smith as he originally wanted. From what I heard, it sounded like he was stuck in the same situation JNT was in the mid 80s - if he wanted the show to continue, he had to run it. Unfortunately in both cases this corresponded to a decline in the show's quality (Colin Baker really shines in his Big Finish audios, but a lot of his TV episodes are terrible due to the writing; Sylvester McCoy fared slightly better, but still had stories like "The Happiness Patrol").

I haven't actually seen any of the Whittaker episodes apart from part of "The Power of the Doctor" (which my wife watched in its entirety and thought it came across as bad fanfic), but after I heard about the whole Timeless Child arc (which apparently Chibnall came up with as a kid watching the Seventh Doctor), I was not impressed. It felt like there was no respect for the show or its continuity. The Whittaker era might have been okay by itself, but as the part of the larger universe, it really grates on me.

We work in protoduction.

Eight is one of my favourite Doctors, so I was really pleased with the references in "The Night of the Doctor". You are probably right that given the common contributors to both the Big Finish and BBC productions (e.g. Nick Briggs), Moffat couldn't ignore it. The fact that Sam and the others from the books aren't name-checked, though, was an interesting point and suggested that the BBC had rejected that continuity (especially since the new series destroyed Gallifrey all over again, not to mention much of the Cartmel Masterplan -- which I personally am glad never made it to TV -- that manifested through the Virgin Publishing series and which was implicitly accepted by the BBC Books, since many authors worked for both publishers).

Fair point about Jenny, although the Doctor certainly treats her as his daughter in the episode. In either case, though, I think the stronger argument is that Fifteen's comment simply indicates that he (in that incarnation) has not had children.

As for abandoning the show in the Capaldi era... The writing of the show was on a steady decline since 2010, with each season weaker than the previous. "The Time of the Doctor" was one of the worst regeneration stories and proved once and for all that Moffat is simply incapable of resolving plot arcs satisfactorily -- the whole Silence arc from 2010-2011 is explained away in basically a few sentences, plus "The Time of the Doctor" makes the resolution of "The Day of the Doctor" feel like a plot device just to provide an easy out for Moffat to resolve the issue of Eleven being the last incarnation of the 13-long cycle.

I think Capaldi would have made a fine Doctor (and the clips I saw of him later on supported that), but he was given rubbish to work with a lot of the time. Moffat only knows how to write one female character and too easily falls back on tropes (his favourite being "all the enemies at the same time", which worked really well in "The Pandorica Opens" because it was such a rare thing). I could go on, but from what I have seen and heard, the show has basically been unwatchable since 2014.

The closest we get to an "in-universe" explanation for the Shalka Doctor is actually in The Gallifrey Chronicles, the final BBC Eighth Doctor book, where one of the surviving Time Lords (from the pre Time War BBC Books arc where Gallifrey is destroyed) notes that Eight's timeline is an utter mess and he has at least three separate "Ninth" incarnations. At the time, this was intended to cover both the Shalka Doctor and Eccleston's (although post "The Name of the Doctor", that would have been retconned to the War Doctor; in either case, one of them was meant to be the Time War incarnation). My personal view is that "Scream of the Shalka" is the timeline prior to the changes caused by the Time War.

Of course, "The Night of the Doctor" then seems to establish that Big Finish's Eighth Doctor continuity is the accepted one, rather than the BBC books, as Eight name-checks companions from the BF series rather than the BBC book series. Regardless of which continuity you accept, Eight's timeline is very convoluted in both cases (and probably the most complex of all Doctors).

I stopped watching after Capaldi's first season (as far as I'm concerned, the show ended with "The Day of the Doctor"), but the most obvious explanation for Fifteen's comment in "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" is that that incarnation hasn't had children. The implication was always that Susan was the First Doctor's biological grandchild, plus Ten not only mentioned having a family at one point but there was also Jenny (from "The Doctor's Daughter"), who one could argue was Ten's biological offspring.

Unfortunately most of the world isn't even taking it seriously anymore. People treat it like it's a mild flu or common cold.

The virus is still producing waves of infection consistent with the pandemic phase of spread rather than the endemic phase and has not moved into a seasonal pattern like the flu or colds. It's just not publicised in the media. Scientific studies show that Omicron was just as lethal as the original Wuhan strain and the current Omicron subvariants are similar - the virus has not actually gotten less severe as hoped (and in the case of Delta, it actually got more severe; thankfully that lineage did not give rise to the variants we now face).

The only difference between 2020 and now is that we have vaccines, but people need to keep up to date with the boosters. The efficacy of vaccines to prevent severe illness and hospitalisation wanes quickly, with a recent study showing it can be as low as 50% after four months.

We also know that the risk of long COVID is cumulative - i.e. it goes up with each infection and the increase in likelihood depends on whether you're up-to-date with the vaccine (having the most recent booster roughly halves the increase in risk from an infection). A recent study estimated that 400 million people now suffer from long COVID at an annual cost of $1 trillion to the global economy. This will only continue to get worse if people continue to catch COVID every year or two.

Not surprising to me. Politicians everywhere want COVID to be over, but it isn't.

Agreed. I think we'll still see "The Collection" Bluray range completed, but I have to wonder what will happen with the remaining incomplete/missing stories. Will the animations be in the Bluray boxsets, or will future ones (especially if Disney is involved) be limited to their streaming service?

100% cotton.

I find wool to be incredibly itchy and hate the coarse texture of jeans.

One of the things I enjoy about the Classic Doctor Who DVDs and Blurays are the production subtitles - almost every episode has production notes/commentary as a set of subtitles that provide background information on the episode and often the specific scene on screen. No idea if this is made available on Disney+ (which now has the rights to Doctor Who).

I'm not even American and I'm keen to see what the debate will be like. I seriously doubt Trump has enough self-control to stop himself lashing out at Harris, let alone the presence of mind to listen to his advisers!

Fair call. Both major parties need to lift their game!

Question time has always been a spectacle demonstrating just how badly our elected officials can behave and I'm glad someone is calling it out. Of course, it should come as no surprise as to which party is the worst:

Figures provided by the Speaker’s office show there have been 198 ejections during the 47th parliament as of Tuesday 20 August. Of those, a Guardian Australia analysis shows 161 have been Coalition members, 36 Labor and one from the Greens.

ABC News segment on the theme remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoEHf21KgFk

Well, they didn't want to be party of society, so they shouldn't be surprised when they don't get to participate...

If you're happy with OpenDNS logging your traffic, you could set the router to use them as the DNS server (assuming your network is DHCP and your father-in-law's devices just use whatever DNS server your router says). As long as one of your devices keeps OpenDNS updated with your IP (the one provided by your ISP), then you can look through the traffic to see what is being accessed (and even enabling category content blocking if you wish). Of course, if your father-in-law is IT savvy, he'll just manually set the DNS server on his devices.

The crew should come back on the Dragon and Boeing be required to solve the problems and carry out another test flight. It is unacceptable that Boeing wants to bring the astronauts back without understanding some of the failures on the Starliner.

Well, of course.

Nope, just inherited a colleague's codebase when they left. It's years later and I still haven't sorted it all out.

There's some relevant commentary on the Jaws 3 release at blu-ray.com, particularly about its use of AI in upscaling (it's not pretty):

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=372655&page=28

As someone who has inherited code like that, I would like to strangle the first programmer in the comic.

It's way better than nothing and (last I saw) was still quite effective at preventing hospitalisation and severe disease, but definitely suffers a significant drop in preventing infection and symptomatic illness.

Egon Spengler and his grand-daughter Phoebe from the Ghostbusters franchise. The character of Ray Stanz also has some traits, no doubt assisted by the fact that actor Dan Ackroyd is autistic.

What a cutie. Hope you manage to find a home for her!

Unless you happen to live in Australia, that's going to be a challenge...

Yep. Especially if they're DVDs that have been superseded by Blurays, the DVDs are almost worthless, sadly. For example, I upgraded my Stargate Atlantis set to Bluray and want to rehome my DVDs, but they're barely worth $5 a season at this point (and that's assuming you can find a buyer). Usually I check with family and friends first to see if they want my hand-me-downs.

This is why you do staged rollouts of updates... not the entire planet at once.

This. Especially looking at the quality of your sleep (poor sleep can trigger or exacerbate depression). There is a high prevalence of sleep-related issues in the autistic community. If you haven't had a sleep study done, I recommend doing it (it's uncomfortable and not a good night's sleep, but it will help identify issues such as sleep apnoea or restless leg syndrome).

Also go through all the typical sleep hygiene stuff (I know it can be annoying and tedious, but these factors can play a bigger role in autism than for neurotypicals due to sensory issues) such as temperature, noise and light. Are your pillow and mattress comfortable and providing the support you need, or are you tossing and turning, or waking up sore or uncomfortable?

Make sure it's not whitespace sensitive and requires explicit typing, just to mess with everyone.

Can someone who speaks sovcit interpret please? I can usually follow their "arguments" to some degree, but I'm completely lost with this one.