Edith: fixed link
The first factoid surprised me.
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What factoid?
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Somehow, I shortened the link by accident and didn’t notice.
Fixed.
Also: autocorrect has hit, but I like it and leave it at this. We did this in the olden days when editing, like “Edith says: [something something]” instead of “ETA:”.
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Thanks. This is the first I’ve heard of Monotropism. I’d heard Autism explained in part as people who hang out at one end of the “details focused / overview descriptions” scale, but I didn’t know what to look for when looking for something deeper.
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Thanks.
For the record, it was the first person diagnosed in the U.S. who died last year.
He wasn’t even born when Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva (there are MANY spelling/patronymic versions) first wrote up her findings in 1925 (then translated into German so as to be published in the only neurology medical journal in the world at that time in 1926). And then the Nazi eugenicist and the Austrian Jew who escaped to the U.S., who both spoke German as their native language, somehow supposedly came up with the concept a couple of years later independently of each other. Funny how that works.
I mean, you can’t give a Russian Jewish woman the credit, right?
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Moved here, seemed the right place to make the connection…
Oh the irony… 
The Identity Theory of Autism: How Autistic Identity Is Experienced Differently
By Terra Vance
Neuroclastic - October 17, 2021
Quoted in another post:
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I’ve been wanting to post this but there doesn’t seem to be an ideal topic for it, and it doesn’t make sense to make a new one. But it is tangentially relevant to NDs and closely related to my own ND needs and interests:
I’ve come this close to buying a Boox Note Air multiple times over the last couple years. I want an e-ink device with a good reader mode, and, weirdly importantly, stylus support and a paper-like surface, so that I can doodle on it. I think an e-ink device will help me do much better with reading, and having a large format tablet seems like it’s the way to go. And the doodling thing is 100% ADHD cope.
But I’ve held off on the Boox for Reasons, other than the cost – not sure why. When this thing came across my feed, I was super excited: the 60fps refresh rate I think puts paid to my concerns about e-ink, and it has hardware buttons that you can assign to paging in reader mode! Plus full access to Google Play store (which, incidentally, the Boox also has).
I’m not ready to commit $750 to a machine that’s not yet on the market and basically untested in the field. But a $100 refundable deposit? Absolutely! Even though this is considerably more expensive than a comparable Boox device, it really ticks every box that I could want on an e-ink tablet. And the stylus support seems super slick and responsive.
I don’t super buy the “enhanced focus for These Troubled Information Times” angle they are marketing with, but nevertheless this is definitely a device that I think my ADHD brain wants and (I think) could benefit from.
Anyway, some of y’all might be in the same boat as me. Take a look.
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I also have an article that is tangentially relevant to neurodiversity, and it’s one that I think everyone will find some ideas which make them ponder and some ideas which make them angry or frustrated:
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Wait… Is she actually wearing a dirndel?
and the names of the kids…
Octavian George, four, Torsten Savage, two, and Titan Invictus
Also… there are 8 billion of us fuckers on this rock… 
I don’t think we’re remotely in any sort of population decline?
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The imminent arrival of their fourth child, a girl they plan to name Industry Americus Collins, …
Don’t break eye contact, back away slowly until you’re at a safe distance.
I mean, sure, if we had had a son, I wanted to name him “Alaric”, but there are limits.
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That sounds fine to me, sort of elfish! … but these names… just… shudders…
One thing that does strike me as interesting is the wife, Simone, talking about her experiences around sex and romance, and how she evolved from not wanting to marry and have kids to being pro-natalist…
Also, they do seem invested in equity in their relationship… him saying that he would basically help ensure she got to pursue a career and family, and planning around their shared goals is interesting…
Eugenics is state-sponsored selective breeding to influence the dominance of certain genes, he argues. What he and Simone are doing is polygenics, using technology to give parents the choice over which traits they value most.
Torsten has knocked the table with his foot and caused it to teeter, to almost topple, before it rights itself. Immediately – like a reflex – Malcolm hits him in the face.
WHAT IN THE FUCKETING FUCK… He just straight up SLAPPED his kid in public, and wonders why THEY HAD CHILD SERVICES CALLED ON THEM!!!
Malcolm tells me that he and Simone have developed a parenting style based on something she observed when she saw tigers in the wild: they react to bad behaviour from their cubs with a paw, a quick negative response in the moment, which they find very effective with their own kids. “I was just giving you the context so you don’t think I’m abusive or something,” he says.
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Alaric is Gothic and the name of the king who first sacked Rome. Not exactly common now but at least there’s no question it’s a human name. Industry Americus sounds like a trade magazine.
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But HEY, they crunched the numbers and figure out that “gender neutral” names will mean more moneys for girls!!! /s
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I like the idea of Future Day instead of Christmas, where the kids have to write essays to get their toys back. This should help them realize they hate their twisted upbringing long before they are old enough to understand parents shouldn’t smack their kids around. 
This might not be religious, but calling it hyper-rationalist is a terrible abuse of words.
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Nopenopenopenope. Way too many atudies demonstrate the negative effect of this parenting “style” to seriously refer to it as “hyperrational.” Next they will talk about “programming” their kids.
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I am guessing the ostensible rationality relates to the idea that evolution means life is about having as many children as possible…it mentions Musk a few times, and his father was quoted as “only reason we are on earth for is to reproduce”.
Of course not only is that the naturalistic fallacy, it completely misses that it’s also a viable evolutionary strategy to maximize the success of offspring rather than having more, which is sort of why social life forms exist at all. They complain about people in stable environments having fewer children and never consider there might be a reason for that. Instead these scumbags are explicitly trying to do the opposite of providing well – for instance they say they’re not going to send their kids to good schools so they can have more instead.
But hey, maybe they can make up the difference by giving them awful names. It worked in Boy named Sue, right?
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Yeah, I read the whole article twice, just to see if I missed something the first go-round.
Where is the love for these children? I kept asking myself.
Because love is so utterly necessary to raise a healthy human being.
Love and time. And patience.
Parenting is not some assembly-line work project, some numeric goal, some video gaming for highest score, some livestock ranchin’ breeding for traits and temperament. And for 99.999999% of the time, it is not ok to hit or swat at a child. (Hot stove? Rattlesnake? Edge of a cliff? Oncoming train? There’s always some exception somewhere, but managing a baby and toddler is a full-time job if done properly, sans corporal punishment.) That whole restaurant scene felt like a set-em-up-to-fail scenario. And using an iPad as a babysitter for very young children is a recipe for ungood things to follow–I sure hope that isn’t the dad’s main coping strategy when he’s on duty.
May those children find some true allies in their lives, somewhere. And may they find unconditional love and acceptance in all the places they need when they need some.
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Also, that whole “their bedroom at night, my study by day” thing is teaching them that they have no refuge. There is no place which is theirs, to which they can retreat. Their parents aren’t just responsible for everything in their lives (which is normal), they inhabit, literally, every part of their kids’ lives.
It won’t be an issue right now, but give it five years, and it’s definitely going to start being a thing.
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Well, see, unconditional love isn’t rational, so better just to give them a smack when they annoy… /s
And no matter what, we’re all gonna get stuff wrong. None of us are perfect, and none of us know everything, so we’re gonna screw up sometimes… but as long as the kids know that we love them unconditionally, and they can always count on us to have their backs, things are gonna be okay…
That struck me too… But I guess they probably justify it, by claiming that computers are ubiquitous, so they need to learn how to use them early if they’re to be the captains of industry they’re being raised to be…
So much that. Younger kids need less of that then older kids, but even little kids need their own space…
Those folks will be seeking out “reasons” why their kids are so rebellious, and they’ll take on the time-honored tradition of blaming some “outside, alien” force in the world… punk music, pot, POC, etc…
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