u/owen-3820

I've heard that losing weight makes it look bigger proportionally but idk if that'll have much tangible benefit. I've also heard that since exercise increases bloodflow and muscle mass it can help in this area too. Idk if that actually makes sense. Is there anything I can do? Am I just screwed?

Edit: 6 inches from base to tip, girth unknown

Edit 2: guys i'm already a real eater stop suggesting this

"If I die of ME/CFS skip burial, drop my body on the steps of the FDA"

I don't know how it's possible for him to receive three different secret handshake deals under the table and not know the purpose of them. There's a certain level of plausible deniability, if this were a court of law you wouldn't be able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But he had to be in on it, right? Just logically speaking? You think he's super passionate about the Rhode Island soccer community?

Sometimes i'll absentmindedly engage with something mental health related online, and the algorithms will bombard me with content from a bizarre new genre of "autism influencer."

I’m not going to call out any specific entities, because you know what I’m talking about and I can just paint you a picture. I’m generalizing a great deal, and admittedly constructing a strawman, but these are patterns I’ve observed across hundreds, possibly thousands of different people: 

This “autism influencer” is often a conventionally attractive person in their 20s or 30s, who is not intellectually impaired, doesn’t struggle socially, and is outwardly successful and put together. According to their own content, their main autistic traits are things related to organization, impulsiveness, and obsessive behavior, and when you read it, it sounds closer to ADHD or OCD, or maybe just depression or social anxiety. More often, though, it sounds like a common experience that isn’t indicative of anything at all. 

They find themselves desperately defending their diagnosis from any possible scrutiny, shadowboxing with detractors who aren’t there, because nobody is crass enough to question a stranger’s medical history (except for me, I guess.) 

They argue points to the effect of “just because I look a certain way doesn’t mean I can’t have it.” Nobody really claimed this, but autism does have certain physical characteristics related to gait, posture, and motor tics– needless to say, these people don’t exhibit any of this. 

Another common refrain is “I experience autism differently from somebody’s eight year old nephew”-- small children often catch strays from these people.

The people with the fake autism bring up the concept of "masking" to give plausible deniability. Masking is a real thing that's fairly well documented, however the way these people couch it is transparent bs. "I didn't show any behaviors or traits or symptoms of autism my whole life, because I was secretly hiding it the whole time without even knowing it." Again i'm generalizing but this is sincerely what they tell themselves.

I'm posting here because I feel like you guys will be more sympathetic to my position. Most ASD spaces online are more sappy and wishy washy and "everything is valid."

EDIT: responding to all of the counters to this with one comment:

The spectrum has become so broad, has been applied so liberally, has become so accessible to the general public, and the diagnostic criteria has been so rapidly expanded, that practically any person can claim "I have mild level 1 ASD because of xyz reason" and you wouldn't be able to reasonably dispute it. Not on an objective level at least. "It's a spectrum and everyone experiences it differently" has become a catch-all cop out, and in practice, it now means "everyone is on the spectrum and it encompasses all traits and behaviors."

Edit 2: you guys are harping on the conventionally attractive thing too much, I don't think pretty women can't be autistic or something, I was just describing the type of person that i'm criticizing writ large.

The Russo brothers introduced Spidey into the mcu in a movie that already had two dozen characters in it. They wrote him into the story as a stark protege. By necessity they had to skip over his origin entirely and give him 0 character development and nothing particularly interesting to do. The cgi in that one is also questionable at times, which is why the suit looks bald and gummy. All of this was happening during a period of corporate espionage and legal obligations between sony and marvel. I didn't realize until fairly recently that spidey is contractually required to appear with another mcu character in each film.

In retrospect I think Jon Watts' trilogy did a decent job building on this foundation, and executed this particular vision of the character as well as it could have. The last one he did also grossed a billion dollars and everyone loved it, it's weird to see everyone hating on his work now.

Edit: tangentially related take. People forget how torturous it was having all the characters' rights scattered among five different companies. Spidey showing up in the mcu at all was mind blowing wish fulfillment at the time. I don't like that Disney owns everything but finally having all of the marvel shit under one roof is objectively good.

One of the main criticisms of Nolan's Odyssey is that it applies a modern, didactic christian morality to ancient greece. I kind of get where people are coming from, but I think people misunderstand certain aspects of the movie.

Zeus' Law is not the Golden Rule. It is not "treat others how you wish to be treated."

Zeus' Law means "treat others as if they were gods in disguise, for if you mistreat them, the gods will punish you."

Ithaca is essentially a surveillance state. They believe their actions are being judged by the gods at all times. It is not some 21st century notion of empathy. It's more paranoid, and built on the fragile trust between men at the time. There will be serious consequences if you do not treat others with kindness and respect.

Some of you might recognize my username, i'm the guy with the superhero query that you guys don't like. Just put that aside for a minute.

The Black List isn't some scam like a hybrid publisher or something, it's a legitimate hub for both aspiring and professional writers to host their work. You can send them your manuscript and get feedback in return for a fee. I did this last summer and was actually very satisfied with the whole thing. They tell you what works, what you need to fix, and whether they think it could be successful in the current landscape. All well and good.

I did it again a few weeks later, but this time there was a simple, but significant error: the reader somehow thought my protagonist was a woman. He is a man. He is referred to as a man the whole time, and for all 100 pages they supposedly read. They probably got "confused" because the character's name is Jade, and Jade is typically a girl's name. So they might have "assumed" initially and "forgot to correct the error" (i'll get to the quotes later.)

I'll tell you exactly what I told customer support: "typically I wouldn't be so concerned with what amounts to a typo, but given the nature of it and the context, I think it's worth making a stink about." They apologized, removed that 2nd evaluation, and gave me a re-do for free. It was honestly no big deal, again, it was all up to snuff.

Fast forward to last week, i've done a significant round of revisions, particularly to the first act, so I sent it in again for another evaluation. This time the mistake is so egregious, so far from the truth, that it borders on insulting and disrespectful to my efforts.

They described the premise of my novel as such:

"Jade and a number of other people are kept in a high-security facility, where they are hooked up to machines that transport them to another world in
which they fight with superhuman powers. Jade soon starts to question their circumstances and how they ended up there, causing things to unravel."

This is not the premise of my novel.

As for potential prospects, they said this:

"Threshold Guardians could certainly find a ready-formed audience based on its similarities to
successful works, such as The Matrix movies and Neuromancer by William Gibson. However, the
book’s likeness to the former could, perhaps, be a bit of a hindrance in adapting it for film or
television (i.e., viewers might find it too similar)"

My novel is not like The Matrix or Neuromancer in any way. It has nothing to do with virtual worlds, it doesn't have any sort of cyberpunk aesthetic, it has nothing to do with computers, nothing to do with hacking. There is only brief mention of anything technological, and it isn't advanced sci-fi technology.

I know exactly what scene caused the "confusion." Chapter 2 starts with my protagonist being hooked up to medical devices in a hospital. The reader somehow conflated "medical equipment in a hospital" with "matrix style virtual reality surfing."

I put "confusion" in quotes because that's not what happened. Every evaluation thus far has praised the clarity of the prose, there hasn't been any complaint of things being difficult to follow, so I don't know how they could have misunderstood the basic premise.

No, they probably fed my work into an AI, had it skim the broad strokes, and write a summary for them. They didn't bother editing what the AI crapped out, and thought it would be okay to send it back to me. I think this is what happened last time too, but I didn't want to make a bold accusation. Maybe they did actually read it and AI was part of the process somehow, I couldn't tell you. This is an example of why "writers using AI as a tool" is stupid.

Some of you are going "oh, honey..." and think i'm gullible for paying someone to read my work and provide feedback. Sure, yeah, I'm a pretty stupid guy in general. But this is a company advertising a service and charging people for it, the onus is on them. And again, the first time I did this there was no issue, so I didn't really expect a rug pull.

TL;DR: The Black List made egregious errors regarding basic, fundamental aspects of my manuscript, probably owing to AI summarizing.

Philly's a great city! They'd love to have you! Just live there!

I discovered movies last week and just found this out