I'm a pretty introspective person. I grew up with an emotionally abusive parent, struggled with my mental health from teenagerhood, and been to more therapy than I can remember since the time of my parents' divorce when I was eight. My siblings and I have done a lot of deconstructing over the years to figure out what the heck happened to us (the abuse was pretty insidious and, of course, we normalized it) and how it affected us internally. I'm also most likely autistic and have always struggled to socialize correctly, which led to a LOT of observation and imitation that was both conscious and unconscious.

Despite all this practice at introspection though, in the past few years, I've come to realize I am wildly out of touch with my own emotions. I am tempted to blame much of this on the fact that I was always collecting social "scripts" to follow, so that I could react appropriately to jokes, or good/bad news, or whatever. If you're acting, you don't actually need to know how you feel. And if you feel something different from standard, it's irrelevant because it's "wrong" to feel that way, so you ignore it. So it took me a long time to realize that my display for other people was actually pretty disconnected from whether I was actually feeling anything. I don't feel it was dishonest, though, because I still would have wanted to show sympathy, excitement, etc. for the people I care about. It just takes me so long to process things that I wouldn't have been able to do it within the same conversation if I didn't have a ready script.

I know that some autistic people experience alexithymia/emotional blindness, but it doesn't look terribly well understood. I know I should probably get back on the therapy horse, for a number of reasons including this one, but I'm pretty leery. I never felt like it helped me much. (Although most of it, at the time, was to help me with "depression". Which I certainly had, but there was no understanding from either my end or theirs that the cause was likely rooted in ADHD/autism.) And I did try to start up again last year; I found a psychologist who specialized in ADHD and autism, and although she seemed understanding at first, I felt like I couldn't establish any clear communication and we just kept talking past each other. At this time, I super don't have the energy to keep trying new therapists, and waste weeks or months on each one before I figure out we won't click.

So I ask: have any of you folks ever dealt with emotional blindness? If so, how have you learned to identify your emotions? Do you keep a feelings journal, and how do you even know what to put in at first? Any advice is welcome!

I've been doing some research to try and find a way to turn a Wyze bulb on and off with a button on the wall, or cheap switch, but I'm struggling.

Situation: I have a Wyze bulb that I have been turning on/off with voice for a couple years. It's not something I want to be on a schedule. I just want to turn it on with a switch/button. I have switched outlet in the room, but the lamp is on the other side of the room from the outlet. The switched outlet has a neutral wire but it's being used at the end of the run of the circuit (14/3 from panel going to outlet, and the from the outlet to the switch with 14/3). So essentially I cannot use a cheap Wyze switch or other smart switches to replace the current standard switch.

I have heard of some smart switches that don't need a neutral but I have not found any. I also wanted to see if I could get a simple battery stick on button to just trigger an automation to turn the bulb on. However I have not found anything that seems to work with Wyze or the Google Home app. However I'm probably just missing something.

Any advice would be appreciated!

For the first time in a long while I was able to follow along with a basho while it happened and only finish it a day late.

What was everyone's thoughts for this basho?
Favorite storyline?
Did anyone do poorly that you thought would do well and vice versa?

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Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet (for those in the US), but Christmas shopping season has already started.

What gifts would you enjoy receiving this year? Large, small, fun, functional, or anything in between. I also acknowledge that some people try not to request anything as part of a minimalist or reduced waste mindset. In that situation, what do you request- money, donations to specific charities on your behalf, something else?

Hey, Tildes! cqns here -
After four-ish years, I've finally sat down and realized that my "novel thing" is...non-conventional at best. As such, it required a whole rewrite of the introduction, beginning with a cold open, an autopsy report. Problem with that is (1) I'm not a medical professional in any capacity and (2) I've already looked up how to do this (Reddit's no help, obviously). Basically, I want this autopsy report to look realistic and to also increase my understanding of how to decipher one so I can get an idea of how to write it...

Did you or someone you know go to [edit public private, parent paid] school, esp if the students' parents can't easily afford it? Did their parents actually move to be closer to a prestigious school? Is it worth it for folks who aren't old boys/old girls and in general are neither new nor old money? Does it ever make sense to use the college fund to pay for secondary education?

My mom was interested in a smart doorbell to let her know what’s going on at the house when she’s not there, if a package gets dropped off or if someone tries to in. She does have a number of Google Pucks and an Android phone with some smart plugs set up with Google Home, but also has Roku TVs if that ecosystem is a major value add. I’m not super interested in yet another subscription service, but if it’s a “monthly fee to make the problem go away,” I can be convinced. Are there any must have recommendations or considerations I should keep in mind?

Edit: As far as I can tell, there’s no wire leads on or around the doorframe. The old setup had a chime wired to the wall of the foyer, but that was uninstalled and the wall was repaired, so I don’t think there’s a lead if that changes recommendations.

So perhaps I should have done more research , should have known, etc. But their recent news post took me by surprise:

Your subscription money at work:

Image search enhanced with Yandex

They're just out there bragging about giving money to Yandex. This bothers me.

As I said above, I should perhaps done more to research this before subbing, but that news post.

Shame, as I quite liked the search, but it's back to DDG I guess.

Am I over reacting here? What do others think?

I'm not a very heavy tablet user, but generally like to have a tablet around for stuff I won't do on my phone. I bought a Pixel Tablet last year when I did my big tech upgrade (new phone, new smart watch, new upgraded tablet), but found the experience a bit lacking with the more important stuff I use my tablet for, largely taking notes with OneNote, and very light mobile gaming (which I usually use my phone for, since it's right there).

I'm curious if anybody's got any advice for a non-dedicated Apple user with an iPad. I'm already thinking about synergy with my multi-platform apps like Microsoft 365, Google Drive (free tier) and Mega (which I use as a backup repo for large data that isn't documents like games, music samples, etc).

I'm thinking some music apps would be great to take advantage of the generally lower-latency audio capabilities of the iPad, but aside from that can't think of too much. Otherwise, due to the 64GB, it's going to be my cloud-oriented low-storage tablet.

I saved $70 on a black friday deal on Amazon, so I bought a pen to go with it, which isn't the Apple Pencil and would be curious to know if I'm missing out on a ton doing that as well?

Side question: I would be curious what the third-party app world is like as well, ideally something like iOS F-Droid.

Have a friend who has raved about using these for cooking meet during the work day and pan searing it for a quick easy and delicious meal. Plan on doing that with steaks/chicken, but wanted to see if anyone else on Tildes owns one and has any tips or favorite use cases to share.

The World Chess Championship started today between reigning champion, China's Ding Liren (2728 Elo, 32 y/o) and India's young prodigy Gukesh D. (2783 Elo, 18 y/o). It's taking place in Singapore with games starting at 5PM local time (10AM CET, 4AM EST). Commentated coverage can be found at Chess.com or FIDE as well as numerous smaller channels.

Coming into the match, Ding is far more experienced, but has been displaying terrible form since becoming World Champion. Meanwhile Gukesh has looked far stronger and has the chance to become the youngest World Champion ever, beating out the likes of Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov by several years. Former World Champion Magnus Carlsen is still ranked as the #1 player in the world, but has declined to participate, just like last year.

The match is 14 games from November 23 to December 13, with potential rapid chess tiebreaks if the score is even after 14 games. The players will have a rest day after every 3 game days.

And that's a wrap on the WDC! Congrats to Max on his 4th Drivers Championship in a row!

So I need to rewatch the race. The race was at 1am my time, which isn't super late for me...but I fell asleep between laps 16-45. Oops.

Anyway, we are back in another triple-header -- anyone else think the schedule sucks this year? Only two more races left. Next weekend in Qatar, and then the season finale the following weekend in Abu Dhabi. The WCC is still in play, so hopefully we'll get an exciting end of the season.

Next race:

Qatar Grand Prix
Lusail International Circuit
Sunday, December 1

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!