Playing devil's advocate, there may be some give on the "assuming room temperature" part. I recall reading about "negative thermocouples" a while back where they played tricks with materials and geometry to get a high view factor into cold space straight from the ground and used basically 2.7K of the sky as a heat sink.

what happens if a Westerner drives his Porsche into a tunnel (they have those in Germany, for instance) or parks in an underground garage?

There's people I get along with and there's people I don't. I feel no need to bend over backwards to please the latter given that I don't need to bend over backwards to get along with the former; I'm an adult, so I am comfortable with this.

The wonderful thing about a "spectrum" is that everyone is on it. Even on the "extremely high functioning but want to feel special about an aspect of my personality I may otherwise be insecure about" end.

Pathologizing the human condition is unhealthy. I'm not interested in playing.

NYT had an article last week about how stressful it is for autistic white collar professionals to constantly mask their perceived antisocial behaviors and fake being normal in the workplace.

This was said earnestly. Apparently it is a form of psychological trauma to refrain from interrupting your boss and forcing yourself to stop what you're doing to make eye contact.

I told the wife about this, and naturally her reaction was that I must have aspergers on account of I'm blunt anddon't always prioritize the emotional well-being of my interlocutors, thus I must be blind to it.

I told her
a) Asperger's doesn't exist in DSM 5 (was folded into the "autism spectrum disorder" everyone and their mother now has
b) It's never a good idea to bring your whole self to work. You bring your professional self, because your whole self may not refrain from the urge to tell your colleagues *exactly* what you think of their deeply-held subjective opinions on politics, religion, or lifestyle choices. And that would be bad for unit cohesion.
c) I'm not blind to other people's emotional states. Sometimes I just don't give a fuck. Especially when time's a tickin' and safe space calm down time with playdoh and stuffies is not on the agenda.

Hi, Prof. Here for the test. I've brought my emotional support nerd. Nerds aren't people, so he counts. Don't mind if we wispers emotionally supporting right answers into my ear.

TFA has a bit about a kid who brought his mother to class and she ended up doing all of his class participation for him.

To fuck with gentle reminders. Bring back caning, I say.

Sorry Chief, I need a little extra time
a) putting out this house fire
b) catching the axe murderer
c) appllying CPR to the patient
d) cooking up this burger the customer paid for
e) preparing the regulatory filings ahead of the legally binding deadline
f) sitting on the couch and smoking pot instead of making myself useful

Suburb of Boston. Median household income well into six figures. Houses going for a million-plus. And over a quarter of the kids in the school system have IEPs on file.

Even worse in some of the other rich towns around here.

Granted I didn't grow up in a million dollar school district, but back in my day, maybe 2 or 3 percent of the kids in my class had IEPs and you could tell they had problems.

A quarter of my graduating class did *not* have problems. And back then they did not have IEPs.

It is 110% a scam to cheat on tests and it has been for a long time. Let me repeat: there are real disabled people out there getting necessary accommodations, but they are outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by fakers and grifters at places like rich towns outside of Boston and the Ivy plus schools they tend to attend afterwards.

Similarly, don't pay for a single full body scan to clutch your pearls over.

Pay for several, taken several years apart. Then at least you can tell if the weird spot is still there, has always been there, or winked out of existence.

TLDR: learn how detection theory can work for you!

I understand it completely. Because I understand it completely, I will eat my own gun before I have anything to do with people who strap bombs to their own children and tell them that paradise awaits.

Yep. And in such a situation, mercenary considerations take priority: better to *not* throw in with the guys you have to pat down for suicide vests.

32 bit OS's coming back because no one will be able to afford 4GB :-)

Crucial was always my go-to for RAM upgrades. I'm getting my son some upgrades for Christmas, and when I saw desktop memory prices, I was stunned. It's the same thing everywhere. "AI vendors are grabbing all the RAM they can get their hands on, dramatically driving up the price".