Neurodivergence, masking, and mutual empathy: joeross.me

_Note: The phrase “sad weirdos” is aimed, with love, at fellow users of Letterboxd, where this review wasoriginally published._ I know I’m supposed to shit on this movie with the rest of you sad weirdos who watch things we hate for two straight hours. And sure, you could have done much better giving Neal Blomkamp $10 million and a long weekend to make this. And sure, I could have written better dialogue, especially for the sibling interactions at the supposed heart of the movie, on an all-night instant coffee bender. And sure, it was a mistake to give Chris Pratt the only direction he obviously received, which was “Starlord, but less good.” And sure, hiring Giancarlo Esposito and Colman Domingo to be low-res faces was a profound waste of profound talents. But, I am not sorry to say, I enjoyed the movie. It could have, should have, been much, much, much better, given the quiet, transcendent horror-nostalgia of the source material. But as stuff-I-watched-while-folding-laundry goes, it could very easily have been worse.

Trishla Ostwal, writing for _AdWeek_ about Perplexity’s sponsorship of right-wing jackass Ben Shapiro: > The deal, structured as an annual partnership for 2025, marks Perplexity’s first native ad integration with a media outlet. It’s not just that Perplexity chose to advertise with one of the loudest anti-American voices in the country, it’s that they chose to make this their first native ad integration _with any media outlet_. I wondered, after reading the AdWeek piece, what Perplexity would have to say about Shapiro. It… did not go well for him: > There is evidence suggesting that Ben Shapiro frequently employs rhetorical techniques that can be characterized as deceptive or misleading. […] While Shapiro’s style resonates with his audience and is effective in certain contexts, these patterns suggest a reliance on rhetorical strategies that may prioritize winning debates over substantive engagement with complex issues. While it’s nice that Perplexity is, at least as of this writing, honest about Shapiro’s intellectual chicanery, I deleted my Perplexity accounts and removed the app from my devices. I’m trying to be more proactive about listening to people — and companies — when they tell the world who they are. It will take a while, for example, to excise Google from my digital life, but the process is underway, and I don’t want to start incurring that kind of techno-ethical debt with any new companies with demonstrably flimsy standards if I can help it. _(ViaMediagazer)_

<p><img src="https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/5757/2025/1289485-craig-ferguson-im-so-happy-0-600-0-900-crop.jpg"/></p> <p><em>This review may contain spoilers.</em></p> <p>The big laughs come and go, but I’m just a sucker for Craig Ferguson so I was smiling the whole time. I thought his mini-rant about context and not filming on phones was well done, especially because, in context, his “attack” on young millennials lands well in that context (though, at 41, I'm an elder millennial, so who really knows), and he extends a few olive branches qualifying the more critical stuff. He always knows when he is a bit too close to any given line for audience’s comfort and, like Bill Burr, seems to revel in it.</p><p>If anything, the special just makes me miss his show, a full (albeit unofficial) archive of which is available, at least for now, <a href="https://youtube.com/@latelateshowwcraigferguson" rel="nofollow">on YouTube</a>.</p>

Attached: 1 image The TODO statement in your code waiting for you to come back to it

<p>The purveyor of Kagi, the indie search engine, <a href="https://kagi.com/changelog#6155">on a new pricing feature</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>In months where you don’t utilize any searches on your plan, <strong>we will automatically apply a full credit to your account</strong> for that month. This credit will be applied to your next billing cycle, effectively covering your subsequent month’s subscription at no additional cost.</p> </blockquote> <p>I used the base plan in the past, and after I exhausted my 300-search monthly allowance in about three weeks, I swapped all my default search engines, with some frustration, back to <a href="https://www.startpage.com/">Startpage</a>.</p> <p>I then proceeded to basically forget about it for the next month. I suspect I’m not the only one, and that’s probably what catalyzed this feature.</p> <p>I have vacillated for a while between Kagi, Startpage, DuckDuckGo, and Brave Search – search engine comparison is the new to-do app comparison for my dopamine-starved brain. Kagi feels superior to the others, but even at $5, I’m just not sure the value sufficiently exceeds what I can do with the others, given the right ad blockers and keyboard incantations.</p>