Talent, dedication, and luck. Spot on.

I am very successful in my career and earn more than my school-age self ever expected (tbf, I expected to be a teacher). I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for all three, though.

Lucky points include:

• Being the kid of small business owners who gave me/made me get a job with them at 16.
• Knowing someone at a company who recommended me for an internship.
• Working adjacent to a badass development team that made the best proof of concept to build a new app, so they brought me to their team to support it.
• My Lead retiring so I was able to move to her level after only a couple years.

I wouldn’t have gotten those opportunities if I didn’t also have the dedication and talent, but luck was a huge factor.

I have tried the metaphor that luck opened doors for me, but I had to get to and walk through them. I will never take where I am today for granted.

So there’s a lot of research suggesting neurodivergence has strong correlation with LGBT+ and there’s some indicating the BDSM correlation (not saying they are the same/related, but people who are in touch with themselves enough to identify as LGBT+ are more likely to be open about sexuality in my experience). It’s so present in my various social circles that I’ve connected nerd & neurodivergent and thought of those as the common factor.

But I realize there’s another commonality I hadn’t considered: they’re very community-oriented and attend community gatherings. There are three groups I’m thinking of: one has a ton of burners (not actually Burning Man, but smaller local variants), another are Quakers (and more specifically those who attend large regional/national gatherings), and the last are people who religiously attend DragonCon.

Maybe that has more to do with the sex-positivity and openness than the nerd piece? I don’t know. I just know I’m surrounded by it somehow, lol.

Sex. Neurodivergent/nerd social circles often have a lot of kink/BDSM and otherwise sex positive people, so my friends group is pretty open about sex.

I’m on the asexual spectrum and would rather forget that sex is a thing, but I love my friends and as long as everyone is consenting and safe, I’m happy for them. I sometimes get awkward when sex convos happen around me, but hey, I get awkward with many other convos too.

My company offers parental leave (generic, not gender-specific, and applies to adoptions as well as giving birth). Everyone I work with expects people—men included—to take it.

A guy on my team took his a couple years ago and now with his second child recently born, he is applying his lesson learned. Instead of taking the time as soon as his kid is born, overlapping time off with his wife, he’s letting his wife take her full time then he’s taking his. That way they stagger the full-time care of the newborn for about 6 months straight, after which his wife will be done teaching for the summer, meaning more like 8 months straight.

Another coworker (Director level) had his latest kid December before last. Our busy time is January to April, so he delayed and took his time off in May or June.

Fuck companies that don’t support it and the small-minded people who think men shouldn’t take it. I can understand how challenging it can be for a small business to support that kind of leave, but as humans we should care more about supporting the next generation than a couple hits to productivity at work for 2-3 months. (I write as a permanently child-free person.)

What you’re missing is that the people you work with are stuck in the mindset from 2 generations ago. Don’t buy in. Taking your leave IS supporting your family; you’re doing it right.

I agree the wall is convincing and that it’s not surprising that the Tesla didn’t detect it, but I think where your comment rubs the wrong way is that you seem to be letting Tesla off the hook for making a choice to use the wrong technology.

I think you and the article/video agree on the point that any car based only on images will struggle with this but the conclusion you drew is that it’s an unfair test while the conclusion should be that NO car should rely only on images.

Is this situation likely to happen in the real world? No. But that doesn’t make the test unfair to Tesla. This was an intentional choice they made and it’s absolutely fair to call them on dangers of that choice.