(1/4) I don't really consider myself old per se, but I'll be 50 in a year and a half so I'm not exactly young either. There are so many things that have changed since I was a kid. I see so many ways in which life is better but also so many ways in which today's kids in public school have been robbed. There are classes I had that no longer exist in the US public school system anymore like wood shop or home economics.
@monkeyninja This trend away from trades and skills, in preference to Tech Bro IPO and standardized testing as a measure of success, has had some tremendous impacts on society and the economy. And in #neurodifferent circles there are opportunities for success lost when youth don’t have avenues for success that aren’t part of #ableist hegemony. Bring back skills and trades!! We need them! @actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd
A couple of months ago, I read something on here that quite literally changed my life. It sent me on an unexpected journey of self-discovery that continues to this day. When you’re 54, you don’t expect too many surprises about who you are. But when I read a thread on here about being autistic, something just clicked. So I went down the rabbit hole, read a bunch of articles, did some self-evaluations, and came to the inescapable conclusion that I am autistic. #actuallyautistic
I read Iron Curtain by #VesnaGoldsworthy. A page-turner set in the 1980s. A young privileged 'red princess' from a poor unnamed central European country elopes to London in the name of love. The sense of displacement has echoes of the Patricia Engel book I read just before this. There's also enjoyable farce here even if the clichés about the UK are laid on a little thick at times. #bookToot#bookstodon#keefsreads
Given I enjoyed Okwiri Oduor's short story in that collection so much I read her novel Things They Lost. A story of dysfunctional families and love between two girls (Mbiu Dash from the short story is one of them.) Set in a strange shifting world inhabited by wraiths. Feels like visiting a strange dream. #keefsreads#bookstodon@bookstodon
#Warhol after Warhol by Richard Dorment. The story of the charlatans and grifters who ended up deciding what is and is not a Warhol. But given the artist's rather hands-off approach to his work perhaps it is fitting it ended up like this. A real page-turner. Can't remember the last time I read a book in a day. #bookstodon#KeefsReads@bookstodon
has anybody ever received a #medical#diagnosis where the #doctor told you that your illness will likely cause a significant reduction in your #lifespan? Not that you are dying, but that you likely will not live to be an old person? How did you deal with this news? How do you handle that?
For those with #MECFS, do you find yourself struggling with #Depression and/or #Anxiety since becoming ill, especially if it seems different from depression and/or anxiety that you experienced prior to becoming ill? If so, how are you managing your depression/anxiety? Have medications helped? Are you using non-medication approaches that work? @mecfs
@flowerpot@mecfs@actuallyautistic This hit hard, which is probably my sign that it’s accurate. Feeling bad about feeling bad is definitely a trap for me, and it could make a difference to work on reframing my thoughts about this. Back to self-compassion and self-acceptance—which might be the core issue. Maybe I’ll create some 5 minute reprieve coupons and put them where I’ll see them throughout the day. My partner would probably love to be able to hand me one when I spiral. Thank you.
@dsmith@cogsci@cognition@neuroscience Absolutely right, yes. Active ongoing auto-perception triggering pattern completion. I've actually been thinking a lot about this cognitive process recently, particularly in terms of mnemotechniques used by the bards of old to facilitate both learning and retelling of epics. E.g. the first pair in a rhyme propels recollection forward via pattern completion, etc.
Besides semantic and acoustic factors, prosody can also play a role. Like most classroom Ts, I sometimes confused the names of students when I had a lot on my mind (not a memory issue -- it's excellent). I noticed I was much more likely to confuse names with the same # of syllables. While Mitterand is one more syllable than Macron, it rolls out in fluent speech like a 2-syllable word.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s #shortstory “The Bottle Imp” was first published (in English) #OTD, 8 Feb 1891, in the New York Herald. It was originally published in #Samoan translation as “O le Fagu Aitu” in the missionary magazine O le sulu Samoa (The Samoan Torch)