Day: July 10, 2017

tort-time:

laserpedidio:

Cleopatra è la tartaruga di alcuni amici; ogni tanto mi chiedono di andare a nutrire/tenere compagnia al cane, Tobia, e la Cleo ogni volta non si trova mai prima che loro partano.
Allora mi dicono “hey senti se la trovi mettila nel recinto!” E io “okay!” [ That means Chissà dove cazzo è sta tartaruga!]
E te va, entro in cortile e questa mi fa pure servizio accoglienza, ma che cuore❤🐢
Ciao Cleoooo

Is there anything better than an excited tortoise running up to greet you. 😍  nope. the answer is nope. 

loose translation:

“Cleopatra is m friends tortoise. Every now and they they ask me to care for their dog, Tobia, and cleo the tortoise who is always missing! They always tell me “hey, can you keep an eye out for Cleo” Then I go in the yard and am met with this greeting…

HIII CLEOOOO! “

bad-vixen:

brainstatic:

The media always mindlessly parrots the line of “defunding Planned Parenthood.” That’s Republican spin and they make no attempt to correct it. Planned Parenthood is not a governmental program, it does not appear anywhere in the budget. This so-called defunding is making a rule that Medicaid can’t pay for Planned Parenthood, which is the majority of their income. But here’s the thing: they’re still letting it pay for other healthcare providers that do abortions. This is an exemption for Planned Parenthood specifically. It’s a purely political assault on a single entity that the right has demonized, because it’s where poor women get healthcare. Making a law that targets one specific group or person goes against our whole philosophy of how a democracy should operate, and it goes totally unreported on. 

Not to mention that it’s already against the law for federal dollars to fund abortions anyways, so they are literally taking away Medicaid’s ability to pay for things like STI testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, prenatal care, routine gynecological tests, etc.

Let that sink in. They are stripping poor women’s rights to very basic reproductive healthcare in a non-existent war on abortion.

BRAAAAAINS or why non-spectrum brains tend to dislike Infodumps

allthoseotherworlds:

mortallyimportantwizard:

bonehandledknife:

bonehandledknife:

The recent “Why do non-autistics ask “What are you watching?” post and this post on how spectrum v. non-spectrum brains work finally made me have a lightbulb.

Spectrum brains: Takes in details, eventually arrives at context. Infodumps are HELPFUL.

Non-Spectrum brains: Takes in context, eventually absorbs details. Infodumps are OVERWHELMING.

When infodumps happen, for a lot of allistics, it’s like trying to fill a glass of water with a FIREHOSE.

They want a faucet. Low flow. Drink some water, then go back for more.

A lot of things that we complain about regarding allistics is that it looks like you take the conversational equivalent of two bricks, a wire, and some metal siding… and you somehow MacGyver a phone charger.

#that makes no sense #we can’t read your minds #WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS THING?

(Because Mastercard, that’s why.) 

Disclaimers: Allistics have different rates at which they get overwhelmed by infodumps (especially after factoring in other ND disorders). Autistics have different rates at which they arrive at context. Some of this info might be useful/relatable to people not of the demographics explicitly stated. Some of this might be cultural as language/culture can affect such things as spatial and temporal processing.

further lightbulb:

WHAT THIS MEANS WHEN I TEACH

Me, Spectrum, teaching people at my dojo: SO, here is this combo, you do this and this, punches go like this, and place your foot here, and your body here, and your weight does this and this, your arms are here, and it all looks like THIS.

Class: OVERWHELMED WTF? (with the exception of a couple neuroatypicals who come up to me after class like YOU ARE MY FAVE TEACHER)

WHAT THIS MEANS WHEN I LEARN

Sensei: So you just do This! I just explained it!

Me: Uh… I need more details? OVERWHELMED WTF.

Sensei: Just do it! You gotta just try it!

Me: But… I don’t even understand the movement? Or what’s even happening?

Sensei: Ok watch again.

Me: RAPIDLY TRYING TO TAKE IN ALL THE VISUAL INFO SO I CAN MIMIC, I am great at mimicking unless there’s rotational movement. Thankful that my sensory processing disorder is audio not visual.

Also? 

The natural way I write paragraphs: write the details, then come to the conclusion, then go back add in the first line

The natural way that people who say ‘read the first line of paragraphs to speedread’ think? maybe? (which never worked for me?): read the first line, read the details if still confused

Which is. possibly why they teach everyone to do both:

  • summary
  • detail
  • detail
  • detail
  • conclusion

That explains my whole life ever. (Although, I do have trouble with other people’s infodumps but then I have a kid on the spectrum and a kid and spouse with adhd so there tends to be a lot of infodumping in our house. That makes my overwhelm happen quickly if it’s all going on at once or in quick succession.)

This is really interesting!

Personally I find I learn best if it’s a combination of both approaches. If I’m given too many details without time to process them I get overloaded, but if I’m not given enough detail I get confused and have to push for more.

What works best for me is:
Detail (”Foot here, like this”)
Time to process detail (”Like this?” *Mimics*)
More detail (”Yes. Now hands here. Like this”)
Etc.

That way I’m being given all the details, but not all at once, so I still have time to process them without getting anxious about forgetting something. Actually using the details by practicing them or otherwise manipulating the information helps me process it better, too.

I do find that I tend to need more details than allistic students in classes, though. I try to ask questions to provide myself with context, but the instructor might say that he’s just trying to “give a high-level overview” so he doesn’t want to get into the details.

So I just have to remember the few details I have and forego the broader context I was aiming for.

The subtle gradations of Depression-era rural economic status: “I got to milk thirteen cows and hoe some corn before changing into one of my two obligatory dresses for school” vs. “I spent last night out in burlap sack snow boots spotlighting robins/hunting rabbits/etc. for the table” 😐

Another quote from the same book, which jumped out again doing some skimming. This one from Florence Soap, who was also Wilma Mankiller’s mother in law:

My mother taught me how to be a woman.

She kept a beautiful garden with beans, corn, potatoes, yams, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and mustard. We canned everything we ate back then. We made hominy out of the corn, and we ground our own cornmeal. We made our own flour with wheat. We were able to store potatoes through even the coldest winter weather by lining the potatoes on hay and then covering them in hay. We made big barrels of sauerkraut. We ate squirrel, rabbit, fish, and hog meat, which we dried, preserved with salt, and stored in our smokehouse.

When we were children, we would all go hunting for rabbit. When it snowed, we would wrap our feet in (burlap) and go out and hunt rabbit. At night we would find robins and use a flashlight to startle them, then hit them on the head. The elders would stay up late cleaning the robins or rabbits we brought home.

There was no separation between the boys and the girls. The boys helped out with the household chores and the girls went out to hunt, even in the snow. We very rarely had free time, but when we did have a little time to ourselves, the girls and boys played marbles, hide-and-go-seek, or other games we made up from our own imagination.

We lived in a log house with no windows. During the day in the wintertime, we never closed the door so we would have light in the cabin. We only had one room with a stove, a table for our meals, and shelves to store things. Mom and Dad had a bed, but the children all slept on a blanket on the floor.

We had a lot of chores: hoeing cotton and corn, cutting and gathering wood, pulling weeds, or doing other work. During the summer, we would hunt huckleberries all day long. We could sell the berries for twenty-five cents a gallon in town. We would use the money to buy salt or coffee. This practical knowledge and ability to make do with what I had was very helpful to me as an adult.

(I added some paragraph breaks, so it’s not one big solid wall of text as originally formatted in this Kindle edition, at least.)

I don’t have that many wording spoons to comment now, but that reminded me of my Nana talking about everyday life growing up. ( Very much in some places, actually.) They were also probably in close to the same age group, if she wasn’t a little older than my Nana, considering that her daughter in law was a few years older than my parents.

It sounds like my Nana’s family had a bigger farm, and I had never heard of anybody eating robins before. (Making do…) But, so many similarities underneath the details.

I mean, I’ve talked about that some before. But, that’s really not the same kind of role models and attitudes a lot of other people in the dominant culture have grown up with. As a big part of their own “how to be $gender” toolkit.

Enough that it can be kind of hard to relate sometimes, around certain subjects–and I am sure that goes both ways!

Some different experiences and perspectives, once again. Leading to some rather different challenges and useful ways to approach them. Not everybody seems to keep that in mind, though.