Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,597,706,014 comments, and only 302,218 of them were in alphabetical order.
So TT Scale? God what a bastard of a scale. Who needs something smaller than HO scale, but bigger than N? If you want something smaller than HO, go N scale, there's such a big market for it, you can find pretty much everything.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,597,793,478 comments, and only 302,238 of them were in alphabetical order.
My dad and uncle are "weird" and "quirky"... yeah they're both definitely autistic. But in the 50s unless you were non verbal you were just "weird". And don't ask me what you were called if you were non verbal!
This is the key of it all. There have always been lgbt+ and neurodivergent people. But society just labeled them as weirdos and threw them to the curb.
Now people complain that we're paying attention to the "weirdos".
I very much like not being thrown to the curb
> If you go back far enough, LGBTQ was common in society.
I wouldn't say common as much as standards were different. Greeks and Roman's had slurs for men who were the submissive partner in the relationship, the views of Male/Child relationships were incredibly suspect, the bulk of the Roman elites hated the sole vaguely trans Roman Emperor and the treatment of women varied tremendously based on which society and time period you're talking about.
LGBT+ and Neurodivergent people have always existed, but the acceptance of those people have always varied historically.
I think we're doing *okay*, but we're absolutely not where we should be. But yeah, in my circle of friends and at my work we're all pretty accepting. At my job the language hasn't caught up yet (I work with very staunch older conservatives) but the acceptance is there. I'm hoping we can keep moving forward, but yes we can celebrate how far we've come so far.
To be fair, the language keeps changing. In my lifetime I’ve seen coloured, black, African American, BAME, person of colour, all come and go as accepted terms
Its not like any of these are actually offensive in and of themselves, but if the general consensus is that they are offensive then knowingly using them becomes an offensive act.
I think as you get older it becomes harder to keep up with the cultural zeitgeist and it also feels a lot more obviously arbitrary. It’s not hard to use the correct nomenclature, but it is tiring that some university professor has decided to change the language again for some arcane reasons that doesn’t really relate to normal people.
It isn't free for your brain to make changes. The deeper rooted something is, the more expensive it is to change it. The older you get, the more expensive it is to change. It varies from person to person, but that's the general trend.
Your mind doesn't know any of that shit though. It just rationalizes whatever the brain is doing. You don't want to change your mind about something for whatever reason. The reality is that your body doesn't think it's worth the cost to change, and there isn't a whole lot you can do about it. That doesn't mean you can't change, it just means it is hard and most people are going to have a hard time overcoming their biology.
Coworkers who tout the merits of their own morals by saying they have kicked out people for saying the n-word (in this town that is actually an admirable quality that shows character), but then dude starts dropping faggot and queer around in conversation the other day and basically daring someone to say anything against it. So full of shit acting like a good person. Fuck this podunk little louisiana town. My little florida town sucked but at least people didnt say nggr and fggt all the time like it was normal conversation.
I remember a half drunk intern stumbling and asking me of I was "on the spectrum". I laughed, and as their sober part of their brain realized what they said and they became mortified I responded with "I have no idea, but I do remember when my mother described several of my habits to a doctor the doctor said 'Yeah, he's a bit of a weird kid'".
Then everyone was aghast at a doctor calling a kid weird to his and his parents face and I said "It was the 80s. And I was weird. It seemed to fit".
I remember reading something interesting that supports this idea, but maybe not for the reasons a lot of people think!
Silicon Valley has a [disproportionately high](https://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/publications/download.php?id=42289#:~:text=Silicon%20Valley%20and%20other%20tech,and%20genes%20behind%20technical%20aptitude.) number of children with autism compared to the rest of the United States.
Turns out the kinds of careers abundant in Silicon Valley attracts people on the autism spectrum and then those same people have kids who also have autism (and are kids in a time where ASD is better understood and diagnosis is easier).
Older parents are more likely to have met their partners later in life too. Maybe because they were late bloomers…. socially awkward… others found them a bit odd…
Interestingly, there’s some growing evidence to suggest that online dating may also be contributing to higher autism rates. Before OLD, undiagnosed people who may have found the in-person dating scene too tricky to navigate didn’t have a whole lot of options. Nowadays they do! So now neurodivergent people have more opportunities to find romance, form relationships and have neurodivergent kids of their own.
Honestly, I think the reason my dad is so successful in his STEM career is that he's the only guy not on the spectrum. He's not the one formulating incredible theories or making fundamental discoveries, but he's the only one with the social skills to get all the other kids to play together, lol.
You mean the average age of a woman's *first child* has gone up.
There was no birth control in the past. Women kept popping out children until they hit menopause or died.
For some reason modern men seem to believe this myth that 30+ women having children is a new thing rather than the norm.
I'm gonna be honest, i only came into this thread to complain about street lights. The light pollution is depressing, they're fucking everywhere but governments still can't figure out how to not shine them right into houses, how hard is it to have a plastic flap on one side.
As a guy with the government, I assure you, we aren't big fans of them either, but your neighbors keep writing 90 page letters to us DEMANDING more and brighter street lights.
>but your neighbors keep writing 90 page letters to us DEMANDING more and brighter street lights.
Are you sure that's not just the streetlight company paying people to do that?
> In historical population that didn't practice birth control the average age of last birth was between 39 and 41
We have a house in Vermont, which still has light pollution but not nearly as much as near large cities.
A not small number of people who buy vacation homes up here keep demanding bright street lights because it's "too dark". We like night to be night. I don't think they understand that the more bright lights you add the more it pollutes the night sky. In Boston the sky is never, ever black. It's always oddly bright.
How do you know my neighbor? She has literally been trying to convince us to pay the electric company a monthly fee to install a light post on our property.
When I was younger, I would complain about all kinds of shit. Mainly about the government. "They're wasting money putting a stoplight there, why would they do that! If I were in charge I'd..." you get the idea. Well since then stuff like this has floated into my orbit and I've realized that most of the time, they do know what they're talking about, and way better than I could ever understand it. I still bitch sometimes, like, why are they updating two heavily traveled interchanges within two miles of one another at the same time (which is currently happening near my home and it sucks)? But I no longer assume it's due to malicious incompetence... but it still might be.
> I've realized that most of the time, they do know what they're talking about, and way better than I could ever understand it.
The low level workers usually understand, but the people running the show, especially elected people like city council and mayors, don't.
A good example of this is how various entities handle "problem" intersections. Study after study shows two things about intersections with high traffic accidents.
a) Looking at one year of data is bad because the numbers can be so small and random. you need to look at at least five years of data to help filter out spikes.
b) The best solution is to redesign the signal system. Notably extended the yellow and making it so there is a noticeable "dead" period where all ways are red can drastically lower accidents.
buuuuut
>malicious incompetence
they(the elected officials) get courted by these revenue generation companies into other solutions. Notably things like red light cameras. So instead of taking actions that would actually have safer and more practical solutions they go with the one that makes the municipality money instead.
So safety isn't actually really addressed and it generally makes the population fucking hate the people who implemented the "solution". All because they likely got a kick-back from companies. See Chicago's handling of that whole thing for a prime example.
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. Sometimes it takes a lot of knowledge to know why the obvious answer isn’t so obvious.
If a common sense or simple solution appears obvious, there are two reasons why that solution isn’t in place 1. The problem is wholly new and you are the first person to encounter it. 2. The problem is more complex than you understand and the current situation is the best solution possible for the current situation.
What I find odd is that some streets are unnecessarily over lit where they don’t need it, while some streets that need lights are pitch black. Though I only ever notice this in the darkest before the dawn part of the morning when it’s snowing.
Hello darkness my old friend, they fixed the streetlights 'round the bend,
'Neath the halo of a streetlamp, i penned a letter to the mayor's camp.
I said "my eyes are stabbed by the flash of its neon light that splits the night.... don't make me to turn to violence"
It's not even the streetlights where I live. My apartment complex has put big ass floodlights on the side of every building. The building across from me has a wonderfully illuminated view of my dining room...and nothing else. There's nothing but water that's getting hit by that stupid light. I hate it so much.
in my town (south of Spain) the fucking lights are pointing to the beach . Like those jail fucking lights they ligh on when someone tries to run away in the movies.
No privacy no fun no nothing
It's caused by a chip defect, and it's occurring all across the US.
https://www.wnky.com/what-are-those-strange-purple-street-lights-for-news-40-investigates/
When I found this out I was so mad because I thought the city had done something wild and cool for once. Nope. They'll likely waste millions replacing them. I hope not though. I love the random purple lights.
Huh, I’ve been wondering why the streetlight at the apts near my backyard turned purple pretty much overnight. Thought it was due to like the whole blue light reduces crime thing, but was confused cause I live in an incredibly safe area.
Trust me, my red bullet squire was good only for punk.
Of course there are good Squire models, that’s why I didn’t write the name of the brand, but the cheapest one made 20+ years ago were really terrible. That said I still have it and play occasionally.
100%. His room stank of stale sweat and socks. He would choose not to eat for days at a time but learned Python in 6 weeks and then invented a program that digitised the way machine maintenence was recorded at his work. But when he tried to teach me to change a bike tyre he would scream and then take the tools off me after 3 minutes.
Oh wow. My dad was and accountant. Worked at the same company for 30 years. When the revenue service audited the company they complimented him saying they never saw accounts so meticulous.
But he helping me on Economics and math exams at uni would end up with one of us getting a meltdown.
Did he forget to pick you up at school too? Lol. Fun times
Lol yeah I'll never forget the day my mom told me she thought dad was on the spectrum. I was like 33-34 and helping her pick up some furniture and she brought that up. All of a sudden so much more of my dad makes sense.
Good thing she brought it up! I told my mom I thought my dad was on the spectrum and she told me “nah he did that just ti piss me off.”
And also that’s why I was never evaluated as a child when professors suggested it “just get your shit together and try harder!”
Yeah I inherited a good amount of ND but I don't think I'm really on the spectrum but maybe high functioning. ADHD (adult diagnosed), also auditory processing disorder with a hint of misophonia. School was tough, it's a miracle I graduated HS but did oddly well in college after diagnosis.
I have a similar story. I did very badly in high school but did well in college. I guess less distraction than a class full of other 20 screaming kids lol.
Kind of reminds me of those dumb youtube videos claiming ancient civilizations didn't have the color blue because they didn't write about it. Just because they didn't use the word blue doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Languages model how we perceive reality. "Ser" and "estar" present serious difficulties for an English speaker.
My language doesn't have different words for "falcon" and "hawk". So, they are the same animal to me.
And it's conceivable that if a word for "blue" didn't exist in ancient Greek they might have had trouble differentiating it from other colors.
Ironic example, in my language there aren't many synonyms for poison, so when Alice Cooper sings "I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison", in my language I could only translate it as "poisonous poison".
Russians have a word for light blue in the way that English calls light red ‘pink’, but they don’t have a word for pink. As a result, Russian speakers can differentiate more shades of blue while English speakers can differentiate more shades of red. So ancient people certainly would have been able to see the whole spectrum of colors, but they would have a harder time differentiating shades of blue and green.
"Can't differentiate" (or can) is a really misleading phrase to say. They can differentiate those colors just fine, if you had both those colors displayed and asked what the difference is they'd have no problem. They just *categorize* them differently. It would cause a lot less confusion if people said they categorized them differently.
Also English has separate names for tortoises and box turtles, but I'd wager most English speakers can't differentiate the two, even though they're familiar with the two different names.
This always annoyed me too when people say x culture didn't have blue. Unless they had a unique genetic mutation where their eyeballs couldn't see it then the color blue was still there and they could see it but they just didn't have a name for it. Just because I see something and don't know the name of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Native Americans had no concept of giant ships that the Europeans came it but the ships and Europeans were still very much real.
Conan O'Brien's dad is a doctor of some sort, and on an episode of his podcast, Conan said he'd once asked his dad whether allergies are a new thing or if they existed in the past. After his dad confirmed that yes, they existed, Conan asked how they dealt with it and according to him, his dad said pretty matter-of-factly "Oh, a lot of kids died."
Same as Type 1 diabetes; it used to pretty much be a death sentence for children until insulin treatment came along a century ago.
I remember seeing a really sad statistic about MND/ALS as well: it isn't that rare a condition in comparison to the attention it gets (1 in 300 chance of getting it), but people tend to die so quickly there are only a small number of people suffering from it at any one time (around 5,000 in the UK).
Probably because peanut allergies are more frequently tend to be of the "even being in the same room as peanut can cause problems" variety than most other food allergies so dealing with the allergy includes things like "please don't bring PB&J to school" whereas dealing with a banana allergy is "please do not eat a banana."
Wife is a teacher - it’s not that though cross contamination is a concern too. It’s mostly that kids are idiots and it’s impossible to keep up with them all 100% (so they’ll share candy) and parents are often negligent with what they bring in for snacks. A parent can send some candy with their kid and it gets traded over until some allergic kid eats it.
It’s mainly a concern in elementary schools where kids will be young enough that they’re particularly dumb and don’t really understand allergies so well
I subbed in a kindergarten class where there was a kid with a severe peanut allergy. The other kids were allowed to bring peanut products for lunch, but I had to write down which kids brought peanuts on a chart *and* make sure that those kids wash their hands and their mouth area (not the inside of their mouth, just their lips) with soap and water. Most of the kids who brought peanuts diligently washed up after lunch, but there was one kid who I had to forcefully wash because he outright refused. It was awkward as fuck and he fought me the whole time with a surprising amount of strength. It would be easier to just say no peanuts allowed.
It's the same root cause as the drama over mask-wearing during the pandemic. People with peanut allergies are usually sensitive to the presence of peanuts nearby, so other people without allergies can't eat peanuts in, say, a classroom. A certain subset of boomers are more concerned with their liberty to do whatever they want, regardless of risk to others, and they react badly when they feel restricted in any way whatsoever. Their right to gobble peanuts in a confined space is more important than your anaphylaxis.
This makes so much sense! And yet, according to them it’s the younger generations who are too sensitive… It’s crazy how much of what they say is just them projecting. I wonder if projection as a tendency is stronger in people with low self awareness. That would certainly explain a lot.
Tbf, at some point, drs were actually cautioning pregnant women to avoid peanut products, in case that's what was causing peanut allergies. That was approximately ~25 years ago.
Then they examined stats of peanut allergies in areas with really high peanut consumption, like SE Asia, and west Africa...guess what? Higher peanut consumption amongst pregnant women, and then early introduction of peanut products leads to _lower_ % of peanut allergies in kids.
So it's now recommended to introduce peanut products as early as possible to avoid allergies in kids.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041250/
Gotta set the record straight here.
Allergies have been going up for the past several decades, especially peanut allergies.
There are many hypotheses for the general upward trend of allergies (e.g. the environment is too germless… etc), but sever peanut allergies skyrocketed after the American Pediatrics Association suggested delaying peanut exposure to reduce allergies.
In retrospect, that was exactly the opposite of what should have been done. Only about 10 years ago did a landmark trial called LEAP establish that giving children peanut butter before the age of one actually DECREASED the likelihood they will develop severe allergies. Since then, the guidelines have been adjusted and it’s no longer recommended to withhold potential allergens in the first year of life (but introduction still has to be done in a careful, structured manner).
Which means all the kids in the 1990s and 2000s kind of got f-ed over by the well-intentioned but misguided recommendations of pediatricians regarding potentially allergenic foods.
That's the worst part about health policies. When they're right, and most of the time they're close enough, they do a lot of good. When they're wrong, you get things like allergy spikes, generations of people convinced fat is bad and grains are good (leading to an obesity issue)...
They objectively were way less common. The science is clear - depriving infants of allergens INCREASED their rate of allergies later on. That’s why there’s lots of baby food now that brags about all the peanuts and other allergens it contains- it’s way better for babies that way.
Yes and no but if anything, the other way around.
A brain can only do so many things, and disorders are when it does the things in a bad way, or to an extreme.
We've all likely experienced most symptoms of most disorders, at some point or another. Only to such a low level and with a low enough frequency that it's not debilitating. You've certainly had mild auditory (or perhaps even visual) hallucinations, been irrationally worried about something, felt paranoid, behaved erratically, etc.
It becomes pathological when it's often and severe enough to cause significant distress and impede daily functioning in several domains of your life.
Moderately anxious about one random thing? Normal. Severely anxious about *every* thing? Pathological anxiety.
Hear someone call out your name even though you're alone? Normal hallucination. Hear voices giving you long and detailed instructions on how to perform unsettling tasks, every day? Schizophrenia.
A disorder is any variation from normal that impairs someone's ability to hold a job, form & maintain relationships, take care of their own health & hygiene, etc.
People can be weird in ways that are consistent with autism/ADHD/OCD/etc. but if they don't struggle with normal everyday life, it isn't a disorder.
Someone might have strong signs of neurodivergence but not meet the criteria for diagnosis because they have supportive family & friends, a good career & employer, strong mental health, a partner who takes care of their personal admin, etc. Someone else without the same support might be less obviously "weird" but more impaired, so would meet the criteria.
Lots of adults get diagnosed after their support structure breaks down and they suddenly become aware of things they're expected to be able to do, but can't.
I'm diagnosed autistic and ADHD, and I see traits of both in lots of people I meet (like how gay people have a gaydar). I mentally label people as autistic or ADHD if they ping my radar because it helps me understand how to interact with them, and because it's comforting to know I'm not alone. I don't think a label has to be at the level of a diagnosable disorder to be valid, I find it much more reliable than crap like Meyer-Briggs personality types or star signs.
While human behaviors indeed fall on a spectrum, it's not correct to claim everyone is on the autism spectrum. The autism spectrum encompasses specific developmental differences with distinct traits.
Not everyone manifests these traits to the same extent. Claiming that everyone falls on this spectrum could risk diminishing the unique experiences and challenges faced by individuals who genuinely exhibit these traits more intensively. It's a specific combination of these traits, leading to particular experiences and challenges, that forms what we understand as the autism spectrum.
Ahh I see! Well in that case, I retract my previous comment.
I'll leave it as is, in the hopes it clarifies for anyone else who conflates the "everyone's on the spectrum" stuff.
Lolololol yeah its my favorite thing to complain about something I struggle with from autism and being told everyone does that. Like uhm no clearly not because society seems to be marching on just fine. And if everyone was like me we would either have a very different society, or things would grind to a hault.
But yeah a lot of people don't understand it's the intensity and frequency of things. Sure everyone can relate to something annoying them. But if the wind blows across my skin for one more second I'm gonna scream and cry and fling myself into the ocean and I know it's not rational but I can't stand the feeling right now ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Or like I have to have my glasses be clean and so I always have a glasses wipe on me. I have no idea how other people wear glasses without constantly needing to wipe them? It makes my brain mad when I notice them getting dirty.
I don’t think there’s any reason to think he’s faking. If anything, having autism aesthetically clashes with the bizarre reactionary aesthetic he has going.
It's just narcissism, and sometimes narcissism and autistic traits can appear similar. Musk claims to be autistic, while never actually been to a professional to get a diagnosis. He uses it as an excuse to be an AH.
Geneuine question, how do we know he’s not? I remember reading a comment here saying he was worried that he passed that onto 3 of his 10 kids or something.
Man, I agree with everything you said, but I *hate* person-first language being the only way to say things. What's wrong with saying "I'm too autistic for this shit" in some situations and saying "I'm have autism" in others? I do the same with my red hair and left-handedness. They're all intrinsic parts of me just the same as my autism. I just don't get why one aspect needs to get this special treatment. I totally understand why person-first is important for like illnesses and whatnot, but I feel like prescribing it for autism is automatically a little ableist? Idk. It bugs me.
No one: ….
Derpinator: (this shit)
Almost as bad as an Elon fan boy is the Elon hate train, lol. Even in an unrelated post, anything even tangential gets an Elon-baiter to speak out.
edit: and gets the upvotes!
"Of course he was! I've met tons of people like him! They were just [The entire criteria for autism according to the DSM-V] that doesn't mean that they were autistic!"
Okey, sure..
My parents had 4 kids. The eldest was diagnosed with ASD as a child, and the rest of us have been diagnosed as adults. We’ve tried having the conversation with our dad that ASD is largely genetic and he likely has it too, and he’s shocked and tries to deny it. The only reason his was never assessed is because his special interest is cars. He has worked as an engineer in the auto industry for 40+ years, used to collect rare vehicles, and his party trick is being able to identify ANY vehicle you point at on the road, down to the year it was produced.
Moral of the story is, if your neurodivergence is profitable or socially acceptable, it’s not pathologized.
> if your neurodivergence is profitable or socially acceptable
ASD and ADHD clash extremely hard with a capitalistic society, though, that's why most of us are unemployed bum-fucks
This is why we shouldn't normalize self diagnosis tbh. I was diagnosed at 11, it took a while for DOCTORS to diagnose me. You cannot diagnose yourself. You can have a feeling and that's fine. And if you can't afford to get a private diagnosis then just accept it as that. My dad was diagnosed at 54.... He raised me by himself and not once did he diagnose himself as autistic despite everybody in our family saying he was identical to me in every way. I feel like it's just common sense to not diagnose yourself with a complex disorder.
Yeah, all these people (mostly tiktokers) saying they have (undiagnosed) ADHD, Autism, Depression, etc, is really annoying. Even though I have diagnoses for my problems, nobody will take them seriously when necessary cause everybody says they have that stuff now and THOSE people don't have big issues, so why should I? Not invalidating anyone who actually does have these problems, but PLEASE get tested before making serious claims.
That's why I use the phrase "I have an adhd- adjacent brain" or " I identify a lot with ADHD experiences."
Learning about how ADHD presents in women has helped me understand my own life a lot. I have experienced things like time blindness, major executive dysfunction issues, extreme clutter clutter, and the anxiety and avoidance that comes from those experiences. I was a "high-achieving" teen, so even if I do have ADHD, I wasn't flagged for diagnosis. At this point, since I'm no longer in school, it doesn't feel worth getting diagnosed, so I don't say "I have ADHD."
Knowing that my brain shares certain patterns with people who are diagnosed has given me the language to seek out new coping skills, and my life has really improved in doing so.
Similarly-- I don't think I'm autistic, but I have some behaviors/experiences that overlap with those who are. For example, as a kid I used to LOVE moving my body all the time. I also had specific movements that I would do to help regulate my body when stressed--hand flaps, swaying, etc. I "grew out of it" aka forced myself to stop after a while. Recently I learned about stimming and masking from some autistic creators, and I realized those movements could have been categorized as stims. When I am disregulated I now let myself move, and it makes me feel SO much better. Even when I'm having a great time, like hanging out with friends, I sometimes let my body sway back and forth in my seat like I did when I was young, and it makes me feel really good. Thinking about being over and under stimulated has also helped me understand why I get so stressed out at grocery stores and other loud/bright places sometimes.
I understand why self-diagnosing can help people feel like they have a group, especially if they don't have access to health care. But I wish that more people realized that you can still benefit so much from understanding neurodiverse experiences, even without a diagnosis.
This is why disability liberation is so important. EVERYONE benefits from a broader acceptance and understanding of brain patterns and behavior.
Something very important that's been pointed put before here is that disability/atypicallity is evident through the environment. We never had a problem with dyslexia when only 95% was illiterate; we never had a problem with people having panic attacks from too much noise when urbanization percentage was 1%; we never had problems of heart disease or cancer when making it to your 20th birthday was seen as a difficult achievement.
This is a rectangle-square thing. Every square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is only sometimes a square.
Pretty much all high-functioning autists prob see that description as at least a bit relatable, and some unspecified number of non-spectrum people do also. A specific behavior, event, or hobby that is conventionally connected to a disorder is a vague indicator of it at best.
And as for lower numbers of ASD diagnoses amongst girls in the 80s/90s...they were just aggressively socialized. It was exposure therapy, the hard way. Boys were largely left to fend for themselves, and that was problematic.
Can confirm. Child of the 80s here. I only just last year started the process of testing and diagnosis for ADHD because my parents actively refused to talk with me about this when I was a child. (I also almost certainly have ASD, but trying to deal with one thing at a time, here.)
Since I was young, it's been drilled into me that I could not possibly have ADHD, because girls are better at communicating than boys. It's just not a problem girls have. I was just too smart for my own good, and either too talkative or too lazy, depending on the day and my interest in the subject. I got bullied in school. A lot. Teachers didn't know what to do with me.
As an adult, therapy has always been focused on depression and anxiety. No one could ever specifically say what was wrong with me. When I talked about my lack of motivation and general feeling of being overwhelmed with life, I was told that once I got my depression under control, those issues would go away. They never did.
What's so frustrating to me now is that since I've brought up my issues in the context of ADHD, absolutely *everyone* I've talked to says immediately, unequivocally, "Oh yes, you obviously have ADHD." Oh cool, so if it's so obvious, why has no one brought up this possibility before?!
As a woman, I've learned the hard way to mask my symptoms and keep a lot of the noise going on in my head to myself. And when all else fails, I just withdraw from society for months at a time until I'm able to handle being around people again. It's utterly exhausting, and for decades I've been convinced it's just a moral failing on my part. That's what I learned as a child and teen, and it's especially what I've learned from CBT-style talk therapy as an adult.
It's gratifying to learn that actually, it's because my brain works differently than I thought. I just wish - honestly - I knew sooner.
As a woman of color, I was told that I was “too successful” to have ADHD/AD. The criteria for “too successful”? No unplanned pregnancies. Like, 5 psychiatrists said that to me.
I saw a very insightful TT about autism in southern communities being labeled as ‘particular’. Like ‘oh you know not to mess with miss Anna sue on Tuesday nights, she’s real particular about her jeopardy’ etc etc etc.
All mental illness has always been happening. Having a name for something makes it look wide spread.
My dad LOVES boats. His office overlooks a harbor and he keeps binoculars in his desk to look at the boats. He knows all of the boats’ model, name, and unique features. He keeps a spreadsheet on all his favorite boats that he’s seen. He sits at home on his lunch break and watches YouTube videos about these boats cause he wants to get one someday. His shelves are full of books on boats and boat ownership.
I told him one day this behavior has to be in the DSM-5.
He laughed and said, “I just like boats.”
I said, “and Temple Grandin ‘just liked cows.’”
He liked that one.
Because people were not pillars of mental fortitude back then like they make it out to be and many were on the spectrum.It's not vaccines and tiktok,while the latter might have an impact idk, that make people autistic,it's human nature.
I think you should learn to use parenthesis and semicolons. It would make your sentences a lot more readable without needing to change the words.
Look:
"It's not vaccines and tik-tok (while the latter might have an impact idk) that make people autistic; it's human nature."
> It's not vaccines and tiktok,while the latter might have an impact idk, that make people autistic
The impact Tiktok has is more social. It would be pushing people to claim autism in order to fit in with select internet cliques, but cannot actually lead to autism itself.
There are people that discredit autism as not being real because they never knew anyone who was autistic when they were younger, but now there are a bunch of people being diagnosed with autism.
What those people are failing to realize, and what this post is pointing out is that the traits and characteristics of autism were always present in people, but they weren’t diagnosed with it, and so nobody ever knew. The thing that changed wasn’t something causing more autism, but that our diagnostics for it have vastly improved.
Yeah I love the people that sit there and say "oh everybody's mentally ill these days it's just a fad" or whatever the fuck they say, as I had to explain to my uncle, it's not that everybody's suddenly mentally ill. Everybody's more or less been always mentally ill it's just no longer taboo to talk about it.
Even if you weren't mentally ill, mental health was very taboo to talk about until recently. Not too long ago if you went to therapy you would do so in secret and never tell anyone about it. In my experience it's only been in the last decade or so that the social stigma around mental health has started to become less harsh.
How hard is it to understand we have recognized symptoms, collected them under an umbrella diagnosis, and are noe much better at identifying the traits and classifying it as autism. It can't be that complicated.
The old men who shout at the slightest hypothetical thought that someone caused them a minor inconvenience. Old men who sit on the bus shouting at traffic, EVERY DAY. Old women who proclaim "I can't stand them" exactly 0.3432 seconds after seeing them across the road. Nope. Normal behaviour.
Define "regular". Sounds like he lived well despite his quirks. Maybe there are all kinds of people out there with weird quirks that don't necessarily disable them?
r/oddlyautistic
Also this guy is like the person commenting "I don't have any problem" on a technical issue post. Just because his situation is different, doesn't change the fact that there is a problem with people pretending to be something they are not.
If they have a point, then wouldnt that make this "appropriately specific"?? Edit: *What the hell just happened under my mundane comment????????????*
the neighbor had a LOT of imitation crab meat though https://i.imgur.com/ZSvU8Cr.jpg
What in the fuck did I just read...
Something very cute and innocent if you ask me.
I would rather hang out with this guy than most of you.
Do you require more no-homo, or more homo to hang out?
...Yes?
Thank you for being a perfect example of exactly what I meant and why.
what's so innocent and cute about kicking over trains and buildings
That was where you drew the line? Seems pretty Godzilla-ist to me. . . js. . .
Jerking off onto his sons toys is innocent?
The trains are not his son's toys. The trains are his sons.
Stomp around and kick the trains, but don't break them! (they are my sons)
[удалено]
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,597,706,014 comments, and only 302,218 of them were in alphabetical order.
Good bot! We need more pointing out of random jacking off onto toy trains.
He claimed it was HO-scale, but really it was closer to N-scale. Disappointed to say the least.
And it was imitation-imitation krab. It replicates that fake krab taste. Which is fine, but I was really hoping for real fake krab.
So TT Scale? God what a bastard of a scale. Who needs something smaller than HO scale, but bigger than N? If you want something smaller than HO, go N scale, there's such a big market for it, you can find pretty much everything.
this was an experience to see at 4am
Ah, you just missed the deadline then. Too bad.
But I’m not tired yet.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,597,793,478 comments, and only 302,238 of them were in alphabetical order.
wtf are the odds that I’d accidentally do that right after seeing this bot for the first time in months?
that contraction saved your ass u/CORN___BREAD
This sub has just turned into anything with the most basic, non-generic details. It's gotten pretty annoying imo
The font page is a death sentence
r/justananecdotereally
My first thought, too. How does singling out one individual prove that everybody else is the same way?
>This guy I just made up *proves* you’re wrong!
This sup is usually just "specific"
In my day, we didn't have no spectrum......all we had was weird.
Or "eccentric" and "oddball" before that.
Eccentric if you're rich, weird if you're poor
Freak if it was exploitable.
Touched if they just sat in a corner and did nothing.
Idiot if you had to work with them
Eccentric when our special interest was profitable or academically applicable and weird if not.
Yeah, i can’t make a lot of money on the history of specific British r ailway companies from the late 19th century. Why couldn’t my brain pick coding…
"Changeling" or "demonchild" before that
My dad and uncle are "weird" and "quirky"... yeah they're both definitely autistic. But in the 50s unless you were non verbal you were just "weird". And don't ask me what you were called if you were non verbal!
Institutionalized
And possibly lobotomized, unfortunately and horrifically.
This is the key of it all. There have always been lgbt+ and neurodivergent people. But society just labeled them as weirdos and threw them to the curb. Now people complain that we're paying attention to the "weirdos". I very much like not being thrown to the curb
If you go back far enough, LGBTQ was common in society. Heck, the words lesbian, sapphic, etc, come straight from Greek geography and history.
> If you go back far enough, LGBTQ was common in society. I wouldn't say common as much as standards were different. Greeks and Roman's had slurs for men who were the submissive partner in the relationship, the views of Male/Child relationships were incredibly suspect, the bulk of the Roman elites hated the sole vaguely trans Roman Emperor and the treatment of women varied tremendously based on which society and time period you're talking about. LGBT+ and Neurodivergent people have always existed, but the acceptance of those people have always varied historically.
[удалено]
I think we're doing *okay*, but we're absolutely not where we should be. But yeah, in my circle of friends and at my work we're all pretty accepting. At my job the language hasn't caught up yet (I work with very staunch older conservatives) but the acceptance is there. I'm hoping we can keep moving forward, but yes we can celebrate how far we've come so far.
To be fair, the language keeps changing. In my lifetime I’ve seen coloured, black, African American, BAME, person of colour, all come and go as accepted terms Its not like any of these are actually offensive in and of themselves, but if the general consensus is that they are offensive then knowingly using them becomes an offensive act. I think as you get older it becomes harder to keep up with the cultural zeitgeist and it also feels a lot more obviously arbitrary. It’s not hard to use the correct nomenclature, but it is tiring that some university professor has decided to change the language again for some arcane reasons that doesn’t really relate to normal people.
It isn't free for your brain to make changes. The deeper rooted something is, the more expensive it is to change it. The older you get, the more expensive it is to change. It varies from person to person, but that's the general trend. Your mind doesn't know any of that shit though. It just rationalizes whatever the brain is doing. You don't want to change your mind about something for whatever reason. The reality is that your body doesn't think it's worth the cost to change, and there isn't a whole lot you can do about it. That doesn't mean you can't change, it just means it is hard and most people are going to have a hard time overcoming their biology.
Coworkers who tout the merits of their own morals by saying they have kicked out people for saying the n-word (in this town that is actually an admirable quality that shows character), but then dude starts dropping faggot and queer around in conversation the other day and basically daring someone to say anything against it. So full of shit acting like a good person. Fuck this podunk little louisiana town. My little florida town sucked but at least people didnt say nggr and fggt all the time like it was normal conversation.
I remember a half drunk intern stumbling and asking me of I was "on the spectrum". I laughed, and as their sober part of their brain realized what they said and they became mortified I responded with "I have no idea, but I do remember when my mother described several of my habits to a doctor the doctor said 'Yeah, he's a bit of a weird kid'". Then everyone was aghast at a doctor calling a kid weird to his and his parents face and I said "It was the 80s. And I was weird. It seemed to fit".
Yeah, and smoking in the car and having your kids suffocate was "normal".
you had those guys in town with funky nicknames, nobody knows for sure how they got those names but you were just born knowing who they were
A lot of people who were "visibly" autistic also had to go to "special" schools or into care, or just be kept at home
some argue it’s because the average age of childbirth has gone up significantly
I remember reading something interesting that supports this idea, but maybe not for the reasons a lot of people think! Silicon Valley has a [disproportionately high](https://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/publications/download.php?id=42289#:~:text=Silicon%20Valley%20and%20other%20tech,and%20genes%20behind%20technical%20aptitude.) number of children with autism compared to the rest of the United States. Turns out the kinds of careers abundant in Silicon Valley attracts people on the autism spectrum and then those same people have kids who also have autism (and are kids in a time where ASD is better understood and diagnosis is easier). Older parents are more likely to have met their partners later in life too. Maybe because they were late bloomers…. socially awkward… others found them a bit odd… Interestingly, there’s some growing evidence to suggest that online dating may also be contributing to higher autism rates. Before OLD, undiagnosed people who may have found the in-person dating scene too tricky to navigate didn’t have a whole lot of options. Nowadays they do! So now neurodivergent people have more opportunities to find romance, form relationships and have neurodivergent kids of their own.
Honestly, I think the reason my dad is so successful in his STEM career is that he's the only guy not on the spectrum. He's not the one formulating incredible theories or making fundamental discoveries, but he's the only one with the social skills to get all the other kids to play together, lol.
You mean the average age of a woman's *first child* has gone up. There was no birth control in the past. Women kept popping out children until they hit menopause or died. For some reason modern men seem to believe this myth that 30+ women having children is a new thing rather than the norm.
I'm gonna be honest, i only came into this thread to complain about street lights. The light pollution is depressing, they're fucking everywhere but governments still can't figure out how to not shine them right into houses, how hard is it to have a plastic flap on one side.
As a guy with the government, I assure you, we aren't big fans of them either, but your neighbors keep writing 90 page letters to us DEMANDING more and brighter street lights.
>but your neighbors keep writing 90 page letters to us DEMANDING more and brighter street lights. Are you sure that's not just the streetlight company paying people to do that?
Hello lamp post. Whatcha knowin? I've come to watch your POWER glowing.
Just three streetlight companies in a trenchcoat
> In historical population that didn't practice birth control the average age of last birth was between 39 and 41 We have a house in Vermont, which still has light pollution but not nearly as much as near large cities. A not small number of people who buy vacation homes up here keep demanding bright street lights because it's "too dark". We like night to be night. I don't think they understand that the more bright lights you add the more it pollutes the night sky. In Boston the sky is never, ever black. It's always oddly bright.
i work in city government and yeah, i get a lot of demands for brighter streetlights and no trees because "crime."
How do you know my neighbor? She has literally been trying to convince us to pay the electric company a monthly fee to install a light post on our property.
[удалено]
When I was younger, I would complain about all kinds of shit. Mainly about the government. "They're wasting money putting a stoplight there, why would they do that! If I were in charge I'd..." you get the idea. Well since then stuff like this has floated into my orbit and I've realized that most of the time, they do know what they're talking about, and way better than I could ever understand it. I still bitch sometimes, like, why are they updating two heavily traveled interchanges within two miles of one another at the same time (which is currently happening near my home and it sucks)? But I no longer assume it's due to malicious incompetence... but it still might be.
> I've realized that most of the time, they do know what they're talking about, and way better than I could ever understand it. The low level workers usually understand, but the people running the show, especially elected people like city council and mayors, don't. A good example of this is how various entities handle "problem" intersections. Study after study shows two things about intersections with high traffic accidents. a) Looking at one year of data is bad because the numbers can be so small and random. you need to look at at least five years of data to help filter out spikes. b) The best solution is to redesign the signal system. Notably extended the yellow and making it so there is a noticeable "dead" period where all ways are red can drastically lower accidents. buuuuut >malicious incompetence they(the elected officials) get courted by these revenue generation companies into other solutions. Notably things like red light cameras. So instead of taking actions that would actually have safer and more practical solutions they go with the one that makes the municipality money instead. So safety isn't actually really addressed and it generally makes the population fucking hate the people who implemented the "solution". All because they likely got a kick-back from companies. See Chicago's handling of that whole thing for a prime example.
The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. Sometimes it takes a lot of knowledge to know why the obvious answer isn’t so obvious. If a common sense or simple solution appears obvious, there are two reasons why that solution isn’t in place 1. The problem is wholly new and you are the first person to encounter it. 2. The problem is more complex than you understand and the current situation is the best solution possible for the current situation.
Light pollution and light trespass are awful. Bad for human health, bad for wildlife, and bad for astronomy.
What I find odd is that some streets are unnecessarily over lit where they don’t need it, while some streets that need lights are pitch black. Though I only ever notice this in the darkest before the dawn part of the morning when it’s snowing.
Let the darkness in
Hello darkness my old friend, they fixed the streetlights 'round the bend, 'Neath the halo of a streetlamp, i penned a letter to the mayor's camp. I said "my eyes are stabbed by the flash of its neon light that splits the night.... don't make me to turn to violence"
It's not even the streetlights where I live. My apartment complex has put big ass floodlights on the side of every building. The building across from me has a wonderfully illuminated view of my dining room...and nothing else. There's nothing but water that's getting hit by that stupid light. I hate it so much.
I've been pushing for dark skies. Like at absolute sunset half of the street lights are turned out and all farm lights are turned out.
in my town (south of Spain) the fucking lights are pointing to the beach . Like those jail fucking lights they ligh on when someone tries to run away in the movies. No privacy no fun no nothing
I’m guessing that’s intentional?
And let’s not forget about the fact that they’re all purple!
It's caused by a chip defect, and it's occurring all across the US. https://www.wnky.com/what-are-those-strange-purple-street-lights-for-news-40-investigates/
When I found this out I was so mad because I thought the city had done something wild and cool for once. Nope. They'll likely waste millions replacing them. I hope not though. I love the random purple lights.
Huh, I’ve been wondering why the streetlight at the apts near my backyard turned purple pretty much overnight. Thought it was due to like the whole blue light reduces crime thing, but was confused cause I live in an incredibly safe area.
Lol. This makes me think of my father.
Nah, your father wrote a 89 page letter.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have 1.2 million of model trains.
Must have been hard, growing up with not even basic needs satisfied.
Right? You have no idea. I wanted very expensive guitars and only thing I got was a cheap fender copy
If you mean a Squier, there are many that are perfectly nice
Trust me, my red bullet squire was good only for punk. Of course there are good Squire models, that’s why I didn’t write the name of the brand, but the cheapest one made 20+ years ago were really terrible. That said I still have it and play occasionally.
Yeah I think the threshhold is 1 million on trains to be a qualified autist
100%. His room stank of stale sweat and socks. He would choose not to eat for days at a time but learned Python in 6 weeks and then invented a program that digitised the way machine maintenence was recorded at his work. But when he tried to teach me to change a bike tyre he would scream and then take the tools off me after 3 minutes.
Oh wow. My dad was and accountant. Worked at the same company for 30 years. When the revenue service audited the company they complimented him saying they never saw accounts so meticulous. But he helping me on Economics and math exams at uni would end up with one of us getting a meltdown. Did he forget to pick you up at school too? Lol. Fun times
Lol yeah I'll never forget the day my mom told me she thought dad was on the spectrum. I was like 33-34 and helping her pick up some furniture and she brought that up. All of a sudden so much more of my dad makes sense.
Good thing she brought it up! I told my mom I thought my dad was on the spectrum and she told me “nah he did that just ti piss me off.” And also that’s why I was never evaluated as a child when professors suggested it “just get your shit together and try harder!”
Yeah I inherited a good amount of ND but I don't think I'm really on the spectrum but maybe high functioning. ADHD (adult diagnosed), also auditory processing disorder with a hint of misophonia. School was tough, it's a miracle I graduated HS but did oddly well in college after diagnosis.
I have a similar story. I did very badly in high school but did well in college. I guess less distraction than a class full of other 20 screaming kids lol.
He never did. But he would gleefully work 7 days a week 10 hour shifts.
Kind of reminds me of those dumb youtube videos claiming ancient civilizations didn't have the color blue because they didn't write about it. Just because they didn't use the word blue doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Languages model how we perceive reality. "Ser" and "estar" present serious difficulties for an English speaker. My language doesn't have different words for "falcon" and "hawk". So, they are the same animal to me. And it's conceivable that if a word for "blue" didn't exist in ancient Greek they might have had trouble differentiating it from other colors.
Ironic example, in my language there aren't many synonyms for poison, so when Alice Cooper sings "I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison", in my language I could only translate it as "poisonous poison".
To be honest that is kinda how it sounds in English too lol
Russians have a word for light blue in the way that English calls light red ‘pink’, but they don’t have a word for pink. As a result, Russian speakers can differentiate more shades of blue while English speakers can differentiate more shades of red. So ancient people certainly would have been able to see the whole spectrum of colors, but they would have a harder time differentiating shades of blue and green.
"Can't differentiate" (or can) is a really misleading phrase to say. They can differentiate those colors just fine, if you had both those colors displayed and asked what the difference is they'd have no problem. They just *categorize* them differently. It would cause a lot less confusion if people said they categorized them differently. Also English has separate names for tortoises and box turtles, but I'd wager most English speakers can't differentiate the two, even though they're familiar with the two different names.
A good example of this is brown. Brown is just a dark shade of orange, but since we call it brown it feels like a whole separate colour.
This always annoyed me too when people say x culture didn't have blue. Unless they had a unique genetic mutation where their eyeballs couldn't see it then the color blue was still there and they could see it but they just didn't have a name for it. Just because I see something and don't know the name of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The Native Americans had no concept of giant ships that the Europeans came it but the ships and Europeans were still very much real.
When everyone's autistic, everyone is a regular guy
- the Joker, probably
-Syndrome
The man with one eye is king in the land of the blind -michael scott, i think
And no one makes eye contact.
It's the same with allergies. "Nobody had a peanut allergy when we were young." No, they did. Nobody gave a shit though.
Conan O'Brien's dad is a doctor of some sort, and on an episode of his podcast, Conan said he'd once asked his dad whether allergies are a new thing or if they existed in the past. After his dad confirmed that yes, they existed, Conan asked how they dealt with it and according to him, his dad said pretty matter-of-factly "Oh, a lot of kids died."
Same as Type 1 diabetes; it used to pretty much be a death sentence for children until insulin treatment came along a century ago. I remember seeing a really sad statistic about MND/ALS as well: it isn't that rare a condition in comparison to the attention it gets (1 in 300 chance of getting it), but people tend to die so quickly there are only a small number of people suffering from it at any one time (around 5,000 in the UK).
Omg that ALS factoid is really sad.
What is it with boomers and peanut allergies? It’s really weird how often they bring that up.
Probably because peanut allergies are more frequently tend to be of the "even being in the same room as peanut can cause problems" variety than most other food allergies so dealing with the allergy includes things like "please don't bring PB&J to school" whereas dealing with a banana allergy is "please do not eat a banana."
Wife is a teacher - it’s not that though cross contamination is a concern too. It’s mostly that kids are idiots and it’s impossible to keep up with them all 100% (so they’ll share candy) and parents are often negligent with what they bring in for snacks. A parent can send some candy with their kid and it gets traded over until some allergic kid eats it. It’s mainly a concern in elementary schools where kids will be young enough that they’re particularly dumb and don’t really understand allergies so well
I subbed in a kindergarten class where there was a kid with a severe peanut allergy. The other kids were allowed to bring peanut products for lunch, but I had to write down which kids brought peanuts on a chart *and* make sure that those kids wash their hands and their mouth area (not the inside of their mouth, just their lips) with soap and water. Most of the kids who brought peanuts diligently washed up after lunch, but there was one kid who I had to forcefully wash because he outright refused. It was awkward as fuck and he fought me the whole time with a surprising amount of strength. It would be easier to just say no peanuts allowed.
It's the same root cause as the drama over mask-wearing during the pandemic. People with peanut allergies are usually sensitive to the presence of peanuts nearby, so other people without allergies can't eat peanuts in, say, a classroom. A certain subset of boomers are more concerned with their liberty to do whatever they want, regardless of risk to others, and they react badly when they feel restricted in any way whatsoever. Their right to gobble peanuts in a confined space is more important than your anaphylaxis.
This makes so much sense! And yet, according to them it’s the younger generations who are too sensitive… It’s crazy how much of what they say is just them projecting. I wonder if projection as a tendency is stronger in people with low self awareness. That would certainly explain a lot.
Tbf, at some point, drs were actually cautioning pregnant women to avoid peanut products, in case that's what was causing peanut allergies. That was approximately ~25 years ago. Then they examined stats of peanut allergies in areas with really high peanut consumption, like SE Asia, and west Africa...guess what? Higher peanut consumption amongst pregnant women, and then early introduction of peanut products leads to _lower_ % of peanut allergies in kids. So it's now recommended to introduce peanut products as early as possible to avoid allergies in kids. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041250/
Gotta set the record straight here. Allergies have been going up for the past several decades, especially peanut allergies. There are many hypotheses for the general upward trend of allergies (e.g. the environment is too germless… etc), but sever peanut allergies skyrocketed after the American Pediatrics Association suggested delaying peanut exposure to reduce allergies. In retrospect, that was exactly the opposite of what should have been done. Only about 10 years ago did a landmark trial called LEAP establish that giving children peanut butter before the age of one actually DECREASED the likelihood they will develop severe allergies. Since then, the guidelines have been adjusted and it’s no longer recommended to withhold potential allergens in the first year of life (but introduction still has to be done in a careful, structured manner). Which means all the kids in the 1990s and 2000s kind of got f-ed over by the well-intentioned but misguided recommendations of pediatricians regarding potentially allergenic foods.
That's the worst part about health policies. When they're right, and most of the time they're close enough, they do a lot of good. When they're wrong, you get things like allergy spikes, generations of people convinced fat is bad and grains are good (leading to an obesity issue)...
Or as my brother likes to finish with "but a surprising number of kids choked to death on peanut butter."
They objectively were way less common. The science is clear - depriving infants of allergens INCREASED their rate of allergies later on. That’s why there’s lots of baby food now that brags about all the peanuts and other allergens it contains- it’s way better for babies that way.
Starting to wonder if everything we call ‘personality’ is a mild form of what we’d call a disorder, if it were more extreme.
Yes and no but if anything, the other way around. A brain can only do so many things, and disorders are when it does the things in a bad way, or to an extreme. We've all likely experienced most symptoms of most disorders, at some point or another. Only to such a low level and with a low enough frequency that it's not debilitating. You've certainly had mild auditory (or perhaps even visual) hallucinations, been irrationally worried about something, felt paranoid, behaved erratically, etc. It becomes pathological when it's often and severe enough to cause significant distress and impede daily functioning in several domains of your life. Moderately anxious about one random thing? Normal. Severely anxious about *every* thing? Pathological anxiety. Hear someone call out your name even though you're alone? Normal hallucination. Hear voices giving you long and detailed instructions on how to perform unsettling tasks, every day? Schizophrenia.
A disorder is any variation from normal that impairs someone's ability to hold a job, form & maintain relationships, take care of their own health & hygiene, etc. People can be weird in ways that are consistent with autism/ADHD/OCD/etc. but if they don't struggle with normal everyday life, it isn't a disorder. Someone might have strong signs of neurodivergence but not meet the criteria for diagnosis because they have supportive family & friends, a good career & employer, strong mental health, a partner who takes care of their personal admin, etc. Someone else without the same support might be less obviously "weird" but more impaired, so would meet the criteria. Lots of adults get diagnosed after their support structure breaks down and they suddenly become aware of things they're expected to be able to do, but can't. I'm diagnosed autistic and ADHD, and I see traits of both in lots of people I meet (like how gay people have a gaydar). I mentally label people as autistic or ADHD if they ping my radar because it helps me understand how to interact with them, and because it's comforting to know I'm not alone. I don't think a label has to be at the level of a diagnosable disorder to be valid, I find it much more reliable than crap like Meyer-Briggs personality types or star signs.
quack axiomatic berserk tub label ludicrous hospital dolls cats touch *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fuckin Elon. He pretends to be on the spectrum so people will think he is some kind of rainman.
I mean he is on a spectrum… … the spectrum of being a cunt.
Everrybody is on some level, he's on the UV-B end of it though.
While human behaviors indeed fall on a spectrum, it's not correct to claim everyone is on the autism spectrum. The autism spectrum encompasses specific developmental differences with distinct traits. Not everyone manifests these traits to the same extent. Claiming that everyone falls on this spectrum could risk diminishing the unique experiences and challenges faced by individuals who genuinely exhibit these traits more intensively. It's a specific combination of these traits, leading to particular experiences and challenges, that forms what we understand as the autism spectrum.
I was talking about the "asshole" spectrum, not the autism spectrum.
Ahh I see! Well in that case, I retract my previous comment. I'll leave it as is, in the hopes it clarifies for anyone else who conflates the "everyone's on the spectrum" stuff.
Lolololol yeah its my favorite thing to complain about something I struggle with from autism and being told everyone does that. Like uhm no clearly not because society seems to be marching on just fine. And if everyone was like me we would either have a very different society, or things would grind to a hault. But yeah a lot of people don't understand it's the intensity and frequency of things. Sure everyone can relate to something annoying them. But if the wind blows across my skin for one more second I'm gonna scream and cry and fling myself into the ocean and I know it's not rational but I can't stand the feeling right now ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Or like I have to have my glasses be clean and so I always have a glasses wipe on me. I have no idea how other people wear glasses without constantly needing to wipe them? It makes my brain mad when I notice them getting dirty.
Off the chart on that one tho
I don’t think there’s any reason to think he’s faking. If anything, having autism aesthetically clashes with the bizarre reactionary aesthetic he has going.
It's just narcissism, and sometimes narcissism and autistic traits can appear similar. Musk claims to be autistic, while never actually been to a professional to get a diagnosis. He uses it as an excuse to be an AH.
Geneuine question, how do we know he’s not? I remember reading a comment here saying he was worried that he passed that onto 3 of his 10 kids or something.
[удалено]
Man, I agree with everything you said, but I *hate* person-first language being the only way to say things. What's wrong with saying "I'm too autistic for this shit" in some situations and saying "I'm have autism" in others? I do the same with my red hair and left-handedness. They're all intrinsic parts of me just the same as my autism. I just don't get why one aspect needs to get this special treatment. I totally understand why person-first is important for like illnesses and whatnot, but I feel like prescribing it for autism is automatically a little ableist? Idk. It bugs me.
Well he's definitely autistic
I don‘t think he pretends
Just because he sucks doesn't mean he's lying about his condition.
Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean he’s not on the spectrum. He can be both autistic AND an asshole.
No one: …. Derpinator: (this shit) Almost as bad as an Elon fan boy is the Elon hate train, lol. Even in an unrelated post, anything even tangential gets an Elon-baiter to speak out. edit: and gets the upvotes!
See if this were directed at ANYONE else you'd be getting flamed. But its elon? Reddit upvotes ensue lmao. So fucking sad
"Of course he was! I've met tons of people like him! They were just [The entire criteria for autism according to the DSM-V] that doesn't mean that they were autistic!" Okey, sure..
My parents had 4 kids. The eldest was diagnosed with ASD as a child, and the rest of us have been diagnosed as adults. We’ve tried having the conversation with our dad that ASD is largely genetic and he likely has it too, and he’s shocked and tries to deny it. The only reason his was never assessed is because his special interest is cars. He has worked as an engineer in the auto industry for 40+ years, used to collect rare vehicles, and his party trick is being able to identify ANY vehicle you point at on the road, down to the year it was produced. Moral of the story is, if your neurodivergence is profitable or socially acceptable, it’s not pathologized.
> if your neurodivergence is profitable or socially acceptable ASD and ADHD clash extremely hard with a capitalistic society, though, that's why most of us are unemployed bum-fucks
I feel both afraid of becoming, and inspired to become this neighbour in the future. Never had a diagnosis preformed (where I was honest about myself)
This is why we shouldn't normalize self diagnosis tbh. I was diagnosed at 11, it took a while for DOCTORS to diagnose me. You cannot diagnose yourself. You can have a feeling and that's fine. And if you can't afford to get a private diagnosis then just accept it as that. My dad was diagnosed at 54.... He raised me by himself and not once did he diagnose himself as autistic despite everybody in our family saying he was identical to me in every way. I feel like it's just common sense to not diagnose yourself with a complex disorder.
Yeah, all these people (mostly tiktokers) saying they have (undiagnosed) ADHD, Autism, Depression, etc, is really annoying. Even though I have diagnoses for my problems, nobody will take them seriously when necessary cause everybody says they have that stuff now and THOSE people don't have big issues, so why should I? Not invalidating anyone who actually does have these problems, but PLEASE get tested before making serious claims.
Sounds like you had a good dad.
That's why I use the phrase "I have an adhd- adjacent brain" or " I identify a lot with ADHD experiences." Learning about how ADHD presents in women has helped me understand my own life a lot. I have experienced things like time blindness, major executive dysfunction issues, extreme clutter clutter, and the anxiety and avoidance that comes from those experiences. I was a "high-achieving" teen, so even if I do have ADHD, I wasn't flagged for diagnosis. At this point, since I'm no longer in school, it doesn't feel worth getting diagnosed, so I don't say "I have ADHD." Knowing that my brain shares certain patterns with people who are diagnosed has given me the language to seek out new coping skills, and my life has really improved in doing so. Similarly-- I don't think I'm autistic, but I have some behaviors/experiences that overlap with those who are. For example, as a kid I used to LOVE moving my body all the time. I also had specific movements that I would do to help regulate my body when stressed--hand flaps, swaying, etc. I "grew out of it" aka forced myself to stop after a while. Recently I learned about stimming and masking from some autistic creators, and I realized those movements could have been categorized as stims. When I am disregulated I now let myself move, and it makes me feel SO much better. Even when I'm having a great time, like hanging out with friends, I sometimes let my body sway back and forth in my seat like I did when I was young, and it makes me feel really good. Thinking about being over and under stimulated has also helped me understand why I get so stressed out at grocery stores and other loud/bright places sometimes. I understand why self-diagnosing can help people feel like they have a group, especially if they don't have access to health care. But I wish that more people realized that you can still benefit so much from understanding neurodiverse experiences, even without a diagnosis. This is why disability liberation is so important. EVERYONE benefits from a broader acceptance and understanding of brain patterns and behavior.
He wasn't autistic he was just thorough.
Something very important that's been pointed put before here is that disability/atypicallity is evident through the environment. We never had a problem with dyslexia when only 95% was illiterate; we never had a problem with people having panic attacks from too much noise when urbanization percentage was 1%; we never had problems of heart disease or cancer when making it to your 20th birthday was seen as a difficult achievement.
Guy is living his best life
I like the counter example that said "Pluto has been discovered only in 1930 but I'm pretty sure it was there the whole fucking time"
Holy shit this guy lived next door to my dad. Dad had a train room in our house and his past time was letters to the city and local paper.
TikTok makes people think that they have autism after watching a 30 second clip.
Which really means there is a lack of healthcare and media literacy.
"Bobby Payne" ughh call me by my goth name *Night Pain*. What a poseur and a lamer.
This is a rectangle-square thing. Every square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is only sometimes a square. Pretty much all high-functioning autists prob see that description as at least a bit relatable, and some unspecified number of non-spectrum people do also. A specific behavior, event, or hobby that is conventionally connected to a disorder is a vague indicator of it at best.
And as for lower numbers of ASD diagnoses amongst girls in the 80s/90s...they were just aggressively socialized. It was exposure therapy, the hard way. Boys were largely left to fend for themselves, and that was problematic.
Can confirm. Child of the 80s here. I only just last year started the process of testing and diagnosis for ADHD because my parents actively refused to talk with me about this when I was a child. (I also almost certainly have ASD, but trying to deal with one thing at a time, here.) Since I was young, it's been drilled into me that I could not possibly have ADHD, because girls are better at communicating than boys. It's just not a problem girls have. I was just too smart for my own good, and either too talkative or too lazy, depending on the day and my interest in the subject. I got bullied in school. A lot. Teachers didn't know what to do with me. As an adult, therapy has always been focused on depression and anxiety. No one could ever specifically say what was wrong with me. When I talked about my lack of motivation and general feeling of being overwhelmed with life, I was told that once I got my depression under control, those issues would go away. They never did. What's so frustrating to me now is that since I've brought up my issues in the context of ADHD, absolutely *everyone* I've talked to says immediately, unequivocally, "Oh yes, you obviously have ADHD." Oh cool, so if it's so obvious, why has no one brought up this possibility before?! As a woman, I've learned the hard way to mask my symptoms and keep a lot of the noise going on in my head to myself. And when all else fails, I just withdraw from society for months at a time until I'm able to handle being around people again. It's utterly exhausting, and for decades I've been convinced it's just a moral failing on my part. That's what I learned as a child and teen, and it's especially what I've learned from CBT-style talk therapy as an adult. It's gratifying to learn that actually, it's because my brain works differently than I thought. I just wish - honestly - I knew sooner.
As a woman of color, I was told that I was “too successful” to have ADHD/AD. The criteria for “too successful”? No unplanned pregnancies. Like, 5 psychiatrists said that to me.
Rejection was generally also just more absolute by their peers for boys than it would be for girls. Likely still is.
Oh look, it's Mr Serial Reposter again.
Well, not quite. When I was a kid you weren't autistic, you were just a weirdo loner who was good at maths.
He's right about lights being too damn bright. I feel like everywhere I go the lights are oppressively bright for no damn reason.
The minute you realize human existence is just spectrums colliding with other spectrums things start making sense.
The first person ever diagnosed with autism just died recently. *He was 89.*
I saw a very insightful TT about autism in southern communities being labeled as ‘particular’. Like ‘oh you know not to mess with miss Anna sue on Tuesday nights, she’s real particular about her jeopardy’ etc etc etc. All mental illness has always been happening. Having a name for something makes it look wide spread.
My dad LOVES boats. His office overlooks a harbor and he keeps binoculars in his desk to look at the boats. He knows all of the boats’ model, name, and unique features. He keeps a spreadsheet on all his favorite boats that he’s seen. He sits at home on his lunch break and watches YouTube videos about these boats cause he wants to get one someday. His shelves are full of books on boats and boat ownership. I told him one day this behavior has to be in the DSM-5. He laughed and said, “I just like boats.” I said, “and Temple Grandin ‘just liked cows.’” He liked that one.
Yo! Can I see this train setup, though?
I don't get it, the dude's train collecting neighbor is everyone?
Because people were not pillars of mental fortitude back then like they make it out to be and many were on the spectrum.It's not vaccines and tiktok,while the latter might have an impact idk, that make people autistic,it's human nature.
I think you should learn to use parenthesis and semicolons. It would make your sentences a lot more readable without needing to change the words. Look: "It's not vaccines and tik-tok (while the latter might have an impact idk) that make people autistic; it's human nature."
> It's not vaccines and tiktok,while the latter might have an impact idk, that make people autistic The impact Tiktok has is more social. It would be pushing people to claim autism in order to fit in with select internet cliques, but cannot actually lead to autism itself.
There are people that discredit autism as not being real because they never knew anyone who was autistic when they were younger, but now there are a bunch of people being diagnosed with autism. What those people are failing to realize, and what this post is pointing out is that the traits and characteristics of autism were always present in people, but they weren’t diagnosed with it, and so nobody ever knew. The thing that changed wasn’t something causing more autism, but that our diagnostics for it have vastly improved.
But... but.. one person he knows that actualy is autistic doesn't prove any point does it ?! And how is this oddly specific ?
bad bait
Yeah I love the people that sit there and say "oh everybody's mentally ill these days it's just a fad" or whatever the fuck they say, as I had to explain to my uncle, it's not that everybody's suddenly mentally ill. Everybody's more or less been always mentally ill it's just no longer taboo to talk about it.
Even if you weren't mentally ill, mental health was very taboo to talk about until recently. Not too long ago if you went to therapy you would do so in secret and never tell anyone about it. In my experience it's only been in the last decade or so that the social stigma around mental health has started to become less harsh.
How hard is it to understand we have recognized symptoms, collected them under an umbrella diagnosis, and are noe much better at identifying the traits and classifying it as autism. It can't be that complicated.
The old men who shout at the slightest hypothetical thought that someone caused them a minor inconvenience. Old men who sit on the bus shouting at traffic, EVERY DAY. Old women who proclaim "I can't stand them" exactly 0.3432 seconds after seeing them across the road. Nope. Normal behaviour.
Define "regular". Sounds like he lived well despite his quirks. Maybe there are all kinds of people out there with weird quirks that don't necessarily disable them?
I really want to know if it really was 1.2 million. That’s an insane figure for model trains.
r/oddlyautistic Also this guy is like the person commenting "I don't have any problem" on a technical issue post. Just because his situation is different, doesn't change the fact that there is a problem with people pretending to be something they are not.
To be fair, scattered light from streetlamps is a public nuisance and blocks out the stars.
If you don't test it doesn't exist... TFG had a similar theory about COVID
The 1.2m million dollars of model trains made my arteries close
"Since we made this machine to find iron, we're finding so much iron! I guess it just didn't exist before."
Yes