I remember when the smoking ban came in. A lot of local pubs had to do emergency renovations. It turns out, without the cigarette smoke, people could smell how bad the carpet etc were!

I watched a documentary on it a while back. Basically, baby talk actually follows a lot of rules religiously, that often gets blurred in normal speech. This lets babies lock on to the rules faster. The sounds are also emphasised. This makes mouth movements more obvious, and gives a better reference for practice. It also includes a lot of repetition, which also helps with practicing hearing words, rather than just sounds. The sing song nature also acts as an indicator. This talking is for you to learn from.

Once they start speaking however, you want to transition to full sentences. The sing song nature can hang around, along with slightly simplified language. Think of it like training wheels. Great for early learning, but a detriment if left in use too long.

Mine was reliably responding to commands at around 3 months. About 6 months for first words. They were talking in full sentences happily about 18 months (I think. We didn’t get full night sleeping till gone 24 months. The period is slightly blurry.)

Baby talk has its place. It’s structured to help with learning to talk. It also acts as an indicator “pay attention to this”. The mistake most parents make is continuing it too long. Once they start talking, shift out of it to full sentences etc.

That said, if they only hear you talking baby talk, you’re doing them a disservice. They need both.

In the OP, the baby likely just wanted more attention. Non-baby talk = less attention, in their mind.

It’s not for everyone. The continuous grind is exhausting. However, having a little bit of your soul outside your body, and vulnerable, has an incredible effect on your motivation. I find myself happy to push through exhaustion to set something up for my little minion. For them it’s a fun activity for an hour. For me, it’s several hours of work to give them a fun experience.

Can’t we just put him in jail for fraud and be done with it? We’ve hopefully moved on a bit since Guy Fawks.

I would personally be happy with a large chunk of the hyper rick parasites joining him, but I’ll settle for prying our democracy back from them.

A relative was caught out recently. They pretended to be the bank. I missed the beginning, but what I heard sounded extremely professional, and exactly like a bank employee. It was only when they seemed confused I paid more attention. I jumped in rapidly when they gave them a code they got via text. By that point they had practically forgotten that the scammer called them, not them calling the bank.

I immediately put a stop to it. Even when ending the call, they were calm and professional. I told them that we needed to call them back on a confirmed number. And got a bunch of details in case it was real. I still wasn’t sure at that point if it was actually a scam or just our bank having a REALLY bad procedure.

Long story short, it was a scam, and the bank confirmed it. I don’t know if they managed to cancel the gift cards in time. However it was a credit card, so that was between the bank and the supermarket who sold them.

I personally wouldn’t have fallen for that one. I’ve got a bunch of mental “hell no” filters. Outside of those however, it was more professional than the conversation with the bank’s actual fraud department.

True, but you can send a letter etc without a postcode. They will get it to a local (ISH) sorting center, and let their local knowledge get it further. The postcode just automates the process a bit.

https://youtu.be/tFL5GTKwonQ

Find somewhere you can let your weirdness shine and have people be happy for you!

Ditto, though it’s a spectrum, rather than an either/or. Now I know (some of) the rules, I can understand why a lot of them exist. The difference is I can also help educate people on them. I’ve also learnt to take it with grace when someone does the same courtesy for me. Us neuro divergents need to have each other’s backs as best we can.

There are a bunch of deeper rules that no-one tells you. Everything from timing, to topic taboos, to social pecking order.

There’s a whole world of unspoken social rules we have to figure out. Even worse, most NTs follow them instinctively, and so can’t articulate them. They will instinctively punish you however, if you break them.

It happens surprisingly often in the UK too. Royal mail take a smug pride in figuring out where it needs to go, and delivering it. I know of several times they have successfully delivered postcards to tents at a festival.

Most postal companies treat it as a challenge and a break from the more mundane work. A chance to show off their local knowledge.

Unfortunately pessimistic can still be right. At least it’s on its way.

I got the shipping notification (tracking code generated). 2nd day afterwards, I got an update, out for delivery. The 6-10 days seems to be a pessimistic estimate.

I use the triangle rule. I let my eyes track between both eyes and the mouth, in roughly equal amounts. It shows continuous interest, without being overly intense.

Staring at 1 spot can (apparently) get unnerving if the other person notices it. Staring at their eyes only can come across as far too intense.

The element can cool the air below zero. They have to play games if it gets to the due point of the outside air to keep from frosting up however.

Also, there is an efficiency hit, as the temperature differential gets larger. This is why ground sourced, or even water sourced are more efficient in colder climates.

The naming makes an unfortunate sense.

Autism (among other things) disrupts your ability to read other people. This is a critical first step in empathising and socialising. We often learn to do this manually, but it’s an exhausting process.

Narcissists overly weigh their own feelings and opinions higher than others. This is useful for mental self defense, but can be problematic with social interactions later.

Sociopaths can read emotions fine, but don’t generate the emotional empathy response expected. Most can learn to fake it, but there are technically no social limiters on their behaviour. Best case, you have doctors playing god to snatch someone back from death, by taking blades to their skin, and power tools to their bones. Worst case is a serial killer playing the same games the other way.

Externally however, all 3 can present similarly. An autistic can’t read, a narcissist won’t read, and a sociopath won’t care. They all break the same chain. The big difference is the internal states.

I personally thought I was alarmingly sociopathic, until I realised that autism wrapped in narcissistic armour looks the same externally. I can care, when I connect. I had to manually build the emotional reading stage however, that gives me an “off switch” that behaves very much like narcissism.

It’s worth noting, I wasn’t abused or anything to develop this. It was facing a normal life with an incomplete toolbox, and a lack of guidance on that front. A cycle I am braking with my own offspring. A task that seems to be going spectacularly so far.

Also, none of those traits are bad in their own right, only when misused. If you can look at yourself and say, this is the person I truly want to be, then go with it. I had to shatter and rebuild a good chunk of my personality tonne who I wanted to be. My autistic and ADHD nature are rocks within that. I wouldn’t give them up (pros and cons) if given the choice.

Which one?

Very few people use “Queen’s English” as their normal mode of speech. It was created as a reference accent, since we had so many across the empire, the toffs could struggle to understand their staff.

Outside of that, it varies wildly. E.g. the “pirate” accent is actually just a rural Cornish accent.

Often, you can figure out where someone grew up, down to around 10-20 miles, based on their accent. Though that goes out the window when people move around and blend multiple accents together.

I thought it was found to likely be ice crystal related.

Shaking chips tiny bits of ice off, that our tongue can detect for a while, until they melt. Stirring doesn’t create these.

Not really. The biggest issue is motion sickness. A lot of games have you teleport around for that reason. I can personally handle it quite well, but some games still mess me up e.g. subnortica.

That said, some people do have eyes that are slightly off level with each other. That can cause interesting problems for them. It’s not hugely common however.