I like to recite grammar rules or language facts to myself when I’m feeling stressed out, almost like a form of meditation.

Your lines are so clean!

In Danish we say “endestation” instead, which can be translated as butt-station. Sometimes the endestation is Middelfart, or somewhere on Lolland.

I think some people’s self-worth relies on them being “good”/right/perfect, so they can’t apologize without also hurting themselves. I don’t really get it either, because in my experience being able to apologize when you need to, is a huge strength. People will overlook almost any mistake you’ve made when they know that you feel bad about it, instead of having it turn into an useless conflict.

Even if you don’t feel like apologizing surely you can say “I didn’t mean to hurt you and I’ll try not to do it again” or even “I didn’t mean to hurt you but I don’t really care about your feelings/I think you’re being unreasonable” so you know where they stand.

I get that, but those were the kind of nuances and perspectives that I was talking about. You can think that drunk driving is a bad thing that should be prevented, without resorting to black/white thinking like: drunk drivers are bad and they should be thrown in jail.

Maybe they should be, but what is the downsides of that policy? What is the reduction in drunk driving and drunk driving accidents expected to be? Who are the drunk drivers and when do they drive drunk? What do they do in other places/countries? Anything about our country/area in particular that causes people to drive drunk? Is there anything else we could do that is more effective and/or less expensive? Could an alternative solution be to run busses through the night? Involve parents? Require alcolocks to be installed in cars?

It’s not about whether you are a good or a bad person, or about what your beliefs or values are. In my experience, poorly educated people are just more likely to think in absolutes, which makes sense, because analytical thinking and the ability to view things through different “lenses” and from different perspectives, is something they try to teach you in school.

Understanding that things are nuanced is not the same thing as not having opinions.

You can acknowledge that drinking alcohol can cause addiction, act as a social lubricant, and decide if you want to drink. You can even have an opinion on what you think alcohol’s role in society should be and what should be done to prevent drunk driving.

If only artists could hold copyrights to their works, this wouldn’t be an issue.

Corporations are usually not the ones who create art, they just hire people who do. If Disney spends an astronomical amount on money on hiring artists and producing a work, there should be a separate set of laws that protects them from someone sweeping in and stealing the franchise or the product. It shouldn’t be down to copyright-laws, because Disney isn’t an artist.

Copyright also grants the right to opt out of the commercialization of your work. Even if you really like a painting I have done, you should not have the right to demand that I or someone else sell prints of it. If I instead want to just keep it on my Instagram profile, in my attic or hanging on the walls of a gallery, I should be free to do so.

If you make something public people have the right to look at it and to get inspired by it, but I don’t think it’s unfair to ask that the artist retains the commercial rights to it.

Black/white thinking. Everything is either bad or good, the problem or the solution.

As a hobby artist, I think copyright should exist to protect individual artists commercial rights. Whether I sell my work or not, should be up to me. On the other hand, we should not punish people for finding inspiration in other people’s works or using them as wallpapers, and usually we don’t.

It should not be legal for H&M to scrape Artstation or Deviantart for images to print on their T-shirts, not even if 20 years have passed since it was posted. If they want to use an image, they should have to contact the artist and get permission first.

I think works owned by corporations is a different beast. Corporations should also be allowed to profit of their works, but I don’t think they should be able to hold copyrights as a default. Copyright should protect those who make art, not those who commission art.

I’m in a somewhat similar situation. My upbringing has been very atypical and somewhat traumatizing, and I am fairly certain that both my mom and grandfather are autists. They haven’t been diagnosed and aren’t interested in getting one, but they fit the description almost to a T. There has been some talk about whether I have Aspergers as well, but it has never been confirmed or denied and at this point I think it would be difficult for even an expert to say for sure, because everything has been so mixed together into a big ball of dysfunction. I think if I had been a boy who liked trains instead of a girl who liked horses, then maybe I would have gotten a diagnosis as a child.

I have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter if I fall outside or inside the spectrum. I have another diagnosis that I could use to get accommodations, if there were any available, and I don’t feel the need to declare myself an autist. I am just quietly and privately trying out this explanation (being autistic) and the tools that come with it. If it helps me, that’s great, even if I fall outside the spectrum. If it doesn’t, then there really isn’t any harm done.

I wasn’t socialized as a child either, and one of my big issues have always been that I don’t feel like I really get it, I spend way too much energy on it and I am, for a lack of better word, always masking. Even when I’m alone, I pretend that someone is watching me and I try to figure out if whatever I’m doing is normal/okay. After I had the realization that I might actually be autistic, I have started practicing being myself when I am by myself.

I have also started being more mindful of not overstimulating myself. I can power through anything uncomfortable by dissociating, but I think it is really draining me. I learned to brush my teeth while dissociating, because it hurt. Now I can get up to brush my teeth, blink, and I’m back in the living room with clean teeth and no memory of brushing them. Obviously I still need to brush my teeth, but I have become more diligent about limiting uncomfortable sounds and smells.

Sorry for the long ramble.