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bhawthorne

@[email protected]

Long Covid/PASC/CFS since Oct. 2022.
My brain is different. If there is a bright center to the neuroverse, I’m on the planet that it’s farthest from. Do not follow if you aren’t prepared for bearish and at times splenetic posts.

I don’t have strong gender or pronoun preferences. He or they or per is fine. Bonus points for naming the book that “per” is from.

New English naturalist descended from privileged white European settlers, now living on Pocumtuck and Nipmuc land.

Anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-bigot.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the USA.

Warning: I sometimes post full-length blog posts here.

Header pic: Coastal Plain Pond in SE Massachusetts.
Thumbnail pic: Me looking out the window and remembering.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

chevalier26 , to ActuallyAutistic group
@chevalier26@mastodon.social avatar

@actuallyautistic Does it bother anyone else when someone folds your laundry for you? I do appreciate the effort and the intention, but half the time I have to go back and refold everything because it wasn’t folded the way I need it to be for me to put it away or organize it properly. I would rather just do all the folding myself lol. Idk, I know that probably seems selfish but it does irk me sometimes.

bhawthorne ,
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@chevalier26 @homelessjun @actuallyautistic Makes perfect sense to me. I am very particular about how my clothes are folded or hung up.

I do the same folding with the clothes in my chest of drawers. Fun t-shirts on the left, plain undershirts in the middle, uniform t-shirts on the right. All folded so the folded edge is towards me when I open the drawer, and I can easily grab whichever shirt I want without them unfolding.

filmfreak75 , to ActuallyAutistic group
@filmfreak75@mastodon.social avatar

@actuallyautistic i do a lot of meeting requests and receive a lot of emails that start like this:

"Good morning!

I hope you all had excellent weekends.”

I start mine like this, and because of this, am considered an asshole:

“[Name] would like to set up a one hour call on this topic. Please let me know if any of the following times work:”

…because heaven forbid we be efficient and clear in our communication

bhawthorne ,
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@filmfreak75 @actuallyautistic I just realized that my lack of small-talk in email made people think I was a jerk. I am now doing my best to include plenty of small talk so they will know for sure that I am a jerk.

AnAutieAtUni , to ActuallyAutistic group
@AnAutieAtUni@neurodifferent.me avatar

Anyone else finding Mastodon very slow to load sometimes? Do you know what causes it?

I’m using the ‘Ice Cubes’ iOS app, not sure if it’s that.

Or could it be the instance I’m on? Could that would make any difference?

My internet is pretty fast: 840 Mbps download / 100 Mbps upload (tested this just now via the same device I’m having issues with Mastodon on).

@actuallyautistic

bhawthorne ,
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@AnAutieAtUni @actuallyautistic Slow loading is usually caused by the instance having insufficient server capacity for the load.

niamhgarvey , to ActuallyAutistic group
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You know when you start a big tidying project, with great intentions, and then get overwhelmed by the mess you create?

Yeah.

That.

@actuallyautistic

bhawthorne ,
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@mtechman @actuallyautistic @niamhgarvey That’s the best kind of gardening.

bhawthorne ,
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@niamhgarvey @mtechman @actuallyautistic I have recently learned to break every project down into ever smaller parts. Right now, I have dozens of small piles of pruned branches around my garden, waiting to be carried to the hugel once I have confluences of nice weather, time, and energy. I can usually only handle a couple of piles at a time, but that way, I keep my kips small and organized.

pathfinder , to ActuallyAutistic group
@pathfinder@beige.party avatar

@actuallyautistic

Autistic brains be stupid. Well, obviously not stupid, they just seem to work, or not work, in mysterious ways.

The main one that has always got me, about mine, is that I have no memory for sound, absolutely none. I can't remember a song, or a sound. I can't remember what my parents sounded like and none of my memories carry, for want of a better word, a soundtrack. I can remember what I was thinking and what others were saying, but not hearing them say it, nor any other sound. I also don't dream in sound, at least as far as I know. All my dreams are silent.

And yet, and it's a big yet. I have an excellent memory for voices and sounds. Like many autistics I have near perfect pitch, at least when I'm hearing others sing, or music playing. Just don't ask me to reproduce it, because I can't. If I meet someone I haven't met for a while, then I will almost certainly not recognise their face, or remember their name, but there is a very good chance that I will recognise them from their voice. I am also very good at detecting accents. Even the slightest hint of one in, say, an actor pretending to be an american, will get me searching Wikipedian to see if I am right about their actual nationality.

So, if I can tell the sound of a Honda CBR engine two blocks away, or a voice, or an accent buried deep, I must have the memories to compare against. And yet... nope.

So, as I said, autistic brains be stupid.


bhawthorne ,
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@olena @actuallyautistic @pathfinder @devxvda I remember the stories I tell about memorable events in my life, but other than that I have very few memories, and rarely are they visual.

I also don’t really consider myself to be the same person. Sure, I seem to have some continuity in the stories, but there are distinct divisions in my life as told by those stories and therefore my memory. I think of myself as just the latest person to play the lead role in these stories. I have warm feelings for most of the previous people who occupied this body, but they don’t feel like me.

bhawthorne ,
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@pathfinder @olena @actuallyautistic @devxvda Merely?

I think the concept of a continuous and unitary self is vastly overstated and feels like a missed opportunity to me. I know who I am in this moment. I feel a connection to the stories of who I was before. That’s really all I can be sure of. I also feel relative disconnection from some of the people in earlier stories. Of course, the fact that I have had different names at different times or in different places reflects some of those intentional changes.

bhawthorne ,
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@everyday_human @pathfinder @olena @actuallyautistic @devxvda Honestly? I don’t do that.
It’s not really a concept I feel a need to explain. I know it’s a bit Cartesian of me, but given the primacy in my worldview of sensation and subjective experience, I don’t particularly feel a need to explain the human experience to others. I figure they are capable of experiencing it directly, to the extent that they choose to do so.

My philosophical journey could be approximated by an arc from childhood solipsism (I am all that is), to young adult anthroposophy (there is an accessible and objective spiritual world on par with the physical world), to atheist animism (there are no omnipotent/omniscient beings outside of ourselves, but all things are imbued with spirit). Each of these stages has had at its base a distinct focus on my subjective experiences of the natural and spiritual worlds, as opposed to the built and intellectual worlds.

Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances made a big impression on me when I read it in university, as has four decades of practice in a nature-centered spiritual tradition.

LehtoriTuomo , to ActuallyAutistic group
@LehtoriTuomo@mementomori.social avatar

I've been trying to understand what it means that an autistic brain is bombarded with so much information. We spent some time at our summer cottage and I think I got some insight in this.

Instead of seeing the lake in front of my eyes, everywhere I looked I saw a detail. Its size would vary but it would still be a detail. A swan there, its partner there, no leaves on that tree yet, what a cool pattern on the small waves, what does it look like when I move my eyes this way, or that way, a car on the opposite shore, the shadow of the tree, I wonder what seagulls those are etc. A new detail with every single glance.

At the same time my attention tried to keep track of the dog and listened to birds singing and bumblebees flying around.

Now I wonder what it feels like just to see the lake.

@actuallyautistic

bhawthorne ,
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@dorian @actuallyautistic @callisto @alexisbushnell @roknrol @Zumbador @melindrea @LehtoriTuomo That’s a really interesting way to look at it. The benefit of top-down is speed and efficiency. The drawbacks are getting the mind model completely wrong by filtering out the key components based on preconceived notions.

I do a hybrid, where I posit an initial high-level mental model, then do a bottom-up analysis, looking at all of the details, looking for similarities and differences, and seeing what fits the initial model and what doesn’t. If I am lucky, I got it right, otherwise, I modify my initial model to fit the facts and details, then go back to the bottom up approach.

The benefit of this is I am less likely to overlook important things because of preconceived notions. The drawback is that I can easily get stuck in an infinite loop of looking at details, calibrating my mental model, looking at details, changing the model, looking at details, throwing the initial model out entirely, etc.

It once took me 6 months to choose which television to buy. Of course, when I finally figured it out, I got exactly what I wanted, and used it for 15 years before getting a new one.

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