General thoughts

[LongRunner]

“Doing your own research”
My attitude is that you can do it on your own accord (provided you're not expecting a quick/easy answer); just not when someone tells you to.

So-called “professionals”
I'm used to – but still increasingly tired of – doing things better than them.

Particularly in the realm of low-tech products, they're doing well enough to be free of basic errors; and it's virtually cause for celebration when they do something substantively better than the norm. I guess most of the genuinely-skilled engineers go into high-tech industry nowadays, so what can you expect really

Maybe high-tech companies should make more low-tech things on the side (and involving the same actual engineers too – at least in a supervisory role – not just a separate department sharing only the branding and corporate ownership)… The mega-corporate factor does bother me to an extent, but it's not like I've found many products worth buying from small companies anyway, so I guess that wouldn't be too much worse than the present situation.

[LongRunner]

Conformism
Whatever gains modern society has made in tolerance of (and rights for) women/other races/alternate sexualities/etc., if anything it has become more conformist towards what we actually do (particularly with the rise of Political Correctness). On a related note:

Identity
I don't play that game; it's too toxic, and it especially feels twisted that it's often easier to get attention for group identity than for tangible accomplishments.
I suppose left- and right-wingers both give identities too much attention (right-wingers trying to invalidate/deny them; left-wingers celebrating them to excess).

[LongRunner]

Brutal honesty
Relatively few people apply it properly; many (seemingly mainstream leftists) water-down its meaning by being “brutally honest” in support of some accepted paradigm, while others (typically, though not necessarily, right-wing) use it to justify being gratuitously offensive.

[LongRunner]

Stereotypes
I suspect they aren't just natural and automatic to most people, but required in the way their brains operate (as a compression mechanism).
So it might be that adjusting them to be more accurate/usable is more workable than eradicating them… (then again, some say people already do so on-the-fly)

Morals (in the conventional form)
They exist for similar reasons; although flawed, they were/are more successful than an empiricist approach could be without adequate data (which didn't exist, for the most part, in primitive societies), or without adequately checking the data for that matter (which few non-specialists are capable of doing now).
People get so protective of their morals because they lack a comprehensibly better alternative.

Masculinity vs. Femininity
Whereas men are usually more physically aggressive, women have conventionally higher relational aggression. From what I gather, those forces managed to (mostly) balance each other out in the environment humans evolved in; but as hierarchical power structures arose, physical aggression won.
On the other hand, in today's increasingly-online world (where physical aggression doesn't exist), relational aggression is taking over.
So yes, there's indeed such a phenomenon as toxic femininity as well as toxic masculinity.
More generally (and to the point), the two forms of aggression manifest increasingly in separate contexts, so they can't balance out anymore.

Special interests
Besides not being inherently pathological (like neurotypicals assume), the term seems a misnomer to me; I get extra-passionate in everything I care about.

[LongRunner]

“Autigender”
No, autism isn't actually a gender. But I can see how that neologism came to exist: Contrary to the old “extreme male brain” trope, it seems that many autistics/Aspies (including myself) have less distinctly‑gendered behavioral traits, and definitely less gender‑conforming interests overall.
For example, I'm a heterosexual man but I do sometimes get involved in predominantly-aesthetic hobbies (like cable braiding), as long as they don't conflict with functional/logical matters. As such, we might not identify very well with either gender's (neurotypical) stereotypes, or even necessarily somewhere between them.

The “autistics are asexual” myth is even less true, but (at least for me) it would be fair to say sexuality isn't the big deal it is for neurotypical men…
Maybe Aspie sexuality is also more-flexible than the neurotypical forms, but I can't say I know enough other cases to give a population-level judgement.

If we entertain the speculative view (ala Tony Attwood) that Asperger's is a further human evolution (more on that below), then more-androgynous behavior might also work as an adaptation to social environments which have unbalanced the traditional masculine/feminine duality (previous post).

The relative “humanity” of autistics/Aspies?
Moralistic bigots view or portray us as “subhuman”, whereas some (though far from all) of us find it superior in many respects.
(To an extent the latter may be from overlapping with high-intelligence, which might actually have some good reasons for being the case…)

While a “human/computer hybrid” metaphor (ala Gary Numan) can be some fun, it might also be possible to argue the other way and describe the Aspie mind as extra human in having even-greater adaptability in some senses. (Such as moving from moralistic convictions to more empirical reasoning.)

I think much of the problem is that mainstream channels (apart from a handful of stereotypically-masculine fields, like computing) don't provide a place for Aspies to actually use our advantageous traits. So if you're stuck there (which is especially common for 'Aspergirls'), then you'll indeed remain at a net disadvantage…

[LongRunner]

Female internalization/Male externalization (of social problems)
An innate biological tendency, or is something else going on?
It's hard to tell definitively, but I suspect it has something to do with men being more involved in objective jobs (science, engineering, technology) and women in subjective jobs (arts, fashion, “humanities”), so men generally have more of the framework necessary to question norms.

But in seeking to increase female inclusion in objective jobs (and men in subjective), you need to correctly understand the problem.
(I'll admit that neurotypical women scare me quite a bit , but Aspergirls can be nice if they're in a decent place.)

[LongRunner]

Western economic prosperity
I don't find myself mourning its decline, as we (collectively) largely brought the decline on by becoming so greedy and complacent.
As for high technology, most people have more than enough of it to fullfill their general needs; only high-level science/engineering really needs cutting-edge power (although gaming does benefit).

With decent Internet connectivity still unavailable here, I'm rather fond of old-fashioned, lightweight “Web 1.0” sites.
(Even those sometimes struggle to load, but they're easy enough to save locally and then work with few or no modifications.)

[LongRunner]

COVID-19
From what I gather, the vaccines were about the only thing the health profession didn't screw up in its response. There, I said it.

Gender “spectrum”
By and large, I agree with this essay on the logical problems with the concept.

On a side note, I suspect the reported higher rates of trans (predominantly FtM) identification in Aspies/autistics are largely a function of their “gender” being measured against the neurotypical norms (which I don't expect Aspies to align with in the first place, as mentioned before).
It's not because us Aspies are more gullible, infantile or otherwise “wrong”.

And before the “concerned parents” welcome me as an ally: No, I do NOT support you in infantilizing mistreatment of trans-identified teens (or any teens for that matter), much less cutting off Internet access for them. If they're preoccupied with a toxic website (which to be fair, “social media” sites indeed tend to be), then the solution is to introduce them to a better website – this one, for example . (Or electronics or other hobby sites, more generally.)
Gifted youth (like me) often don't have many practical alternatives to the Internet, for learning skills.

HWI's founders were 16 and 17 (and I joined at 15), by the way. Count yourself lucky that I can't imitate Hitoha's death glare.
I actually avoid using the term “teenager” in normal conversation (the specific number is fine if it needs to be known), as its baggage outweighs any meaning.

[LongRunner]

“Screen time”
I have a sneaking suspicion that the school system's fuss about it “distracting” students is somewhat of a cover for the real threat it presents – the online world providing alternate learning resources, making school obsolete. If you ask me, the Web has long since won, not that school will admit defeat

It also feels like such a broad term was deliberately adopted as a smear tactic…

(Apparently, unfiltered Internet doesn't stop the much-praised Finnish schools from engaging their students. Granted that page is from 2008, but still…)

Child safety online
I think the easiest way to avoid online abusers (overblown though the fear may be) is to simply not give any evidence of your age.
Who needs COPPA when you have common sense? (Not that it'll save you from yourself anyway )

[LongRunner]

Australia
I see this country as more-or-less average overall (compared to Europe) and some of our traditional “luck” is running out; but to an extent I can piece together the better bits of our cultural mish-mash, so I get more out of it than most people do.

Language barriers
They don't just exist between different languages (or dialects); the language itself is a barrier in many ways.

I get the sense that British humo(u)r is good partly because they need it to survive the imprecision of the English language (although that doesn't explain the comparatively low quality of most American “humor”).