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There's no false valour in Autism
I recently realised that I'm autistic. Here are the resources I found valuable in figuring out what this means. All of these links are about autism in adults, which can be a challenge to find. Where possible I've prioritised resources created by neurodivergent people.
Reasons why autistic people self diagnose
The medical system has long focused on young, white boys — at that, often cisgender, heterosexual, and from families with money — who exhibit very specific autistic traits when it comes to research, diagnosis, and accommodations.
This excludes everyone else, and means the most prevalent information we have only helps part of the community. As a result, the more intersections of oppression an autistic person exists are, the more difficult it can be for them to get a professional diagnosis. [more inside]
The jig is up ... and down, and sideways
This Guy Noticed Jigsaw Puzzle Companies Use The Same Patterns, So He Made Some Mashups. "Jigsaw puzzle companies tend to use the same cut patterns for multiple puzzles. This makes the pieces interchangeable. As a result, I sometimes find that I can combine portions from two or more puzzles to make a surreal picture that the publisher never imagined. I take great pleasure in “discovering” such bizarre images lying latent, sometimes for decades, within the pieces of ordinary mass-produced puzzles. As I shift the pieces back and forth, trying different combinations, I feel like an archaeologist unearthing a hidden artifact." Via shepgo@mastodon.social
Russ Jones: Your ADHD Big Brother
I want to share a podcast I've found helpful as I learn to cope with ADHD as an adult - something many of us working from home are discovering about ourselves. That podcast is ADHD Big Brother. Russ Jones is a single dad in his 40s who wants to help other adults who are also struggling with adhd and co-morbid depression symptoms. Each episode is a quick reminder to be kind to yourself, some advice about coping skills, and some high-energy banter thrown in too. Two good episodes are Why Affirmations Don't Work and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. [more inside]
You are the Army Corps of Engineers.
Enshittification
Who asked for a new Twitter disaster list thread? Here it is.
Twitter’s staff spent years trying to protect the social media site against impulsive billionaires who wanted to use the reach of its platform for their own ends.... This article rehashes the last three months of Twitter flushing down the toilet. [more inside]
Is Yunchan Lim’s Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto the greatest ever?
Yunchan Lim is South Korean pianist who June became the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn piano competition. Among the pieces that the 18 year old player were Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and Mozart's Piano Concerto #22. Most notable however, was his performance of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto, which created something of a stir. [more inside]
Tedious posts about infrastructure...
.. but in Antarctica! This is the premise of brr.fyi ⛄, a cool little blog written by an IT worker who is currently at the South Pole. [more inside]
Ukraine war continuing into 2023
The war has been going on for close to 11 months, and yesterday another donor conference in Ramstein was concluded. There has been significant support pledged the week leading up to the conference, but the thing on most observer's minds have been the German government's unwillingness to greenlight Leopard 2 tank donations or sales. No resolution was reached during the conference, but Germany stated that they ware looking into what stocks were available in-country, while stating that anyone is free to provide Leopard 2 training to Ukrainian crews.
Providing fighter jets have seemed like a lost cause, but the Netherlands said that they were open to providing Ukraine with F-16s, re-igniting hope. [more inside]
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy still not Speaker
For the second day, the US House of Representatives has no speaker. A new session can't start until a speaker is elected. McCarthy has lost six rounds of votes. [more inside]
Chronophoto
Chronophoto is a game in which you guess the dates of some photos — the closer the guess, the higher your score. That's it!
The entire early vocal style itself is ornamental
Medieval European singing sounded more "Middle Eastern" than is commonly believed. Musician Farya Faraji looks at "how the overall singing style of European Medieval music was markedly different from current Classical conservatory techniques, and resembled current Greek, Arabic, Bulgarian or Turkish forms of singing far more—styles of singing defined by less precise pitch and florid melismatic delivery."
A plain old-fashioned newspaper crusade.
Why Is the New York Times So Obsessed With Trans Kids? A detailed, scathing editorial by Tom Scocca.
This of course is Fflewddur Fflam, that outrageous bard
Lloyd Alexander (1924-2007) was an author of numerous beloved works of childrens' and young adult literature, most notably The Chronicles of Prydain, Westmark, and the Vesper Holly adventures. In 1994, his publishers produced a short film of a "visit" to his home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, in which he speaks about imagination, writing, and his love of place.
A "person off the street" solves 20,000-year Ice Age drawings mystery
A London furniture conservator has been credited with a crucial discovery that has helped understand why Ice Age hunter-gatherers drew cave paintings. (BBC)
NAH LLC
White contractors wouldn’t remove Confederate statues. So a Black man did it. He didn’t seek the job. He had never paid much attention to Civil War history. City and state officials said they turned to Team Henry Enterprises after a long list of bigger contractors — all White-owned — said they wanted no part of taking down Confederate statues.
[more inside]
Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard
"Car Brain" - the cultural blind spot that makes people apply double standards when they think about driving - is real, measurable and pervasive. [more inside]
Japanese Music Sirens
A lengthy post at airRaidSirens.net details the mechanical Yamaha Music Sirens of Japan. These can be played with a keyboard, but sadness: "some were being removed or are going to run until they die and will not be repaired." And if they're replaced, it will naturally be with something electronic. They play familiar old tunes which signal the start of a factory's working day, etc. There's a link to a playlist embedded in the article. [more inside]
A Damaging Charge
Electric Vehicles are Bringing out the Worst in Us. "This shift toward ever-larger trucks and SUVs has endangered everyone not inside of one, especially those unprotected by tons of metal. A recent study linked the growing popularity of SUVs in the United States to the surging number of pedestrian deaths, which reached a 40-year high in 2021. " [more inside]
The miracle of the commons
Even before Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ was published, however, the young political scientist Elinor Ostrom had proven him wrong. 3700 words from Michelle Nijhuis for Aeon Magazine [an update to a previous post] [more inside]