🔗 Jan. 6, 2021: NPR’s visual archive of the Capitol attack ➚
I will always link to something Bari Weiss doesn’t want people to read or watch or know. In this case, she spiked a 60 Minutes segment about one of Trump’s more egregious presidential crimes, the CECOT renditions, but it aired in Canada anyway, and made it onto the Internet Archive.
Source: The Verge via Daring Fireball
Neurodivergence, masking, and mutual empathy
I don’t often post stuff that’s as personally revealing as this essay is going to be. But it’s about a dichotomy that I’ve noticed recently and which has radically altered how I see being neurodivergent, almost exclusively for the better. Really, it’s about cultivating empathy across neurotypical/neurodivergent lines, which can be easier said than done.
And to be clear, this is meant primarily as a marker of progress I am trying to make in improving how I treat other people without using ADHD as an excuse for being shitty to someone, or some kind of super power or reason I should be evaluated more leniently than other people when I mess up. To whatever extent I seem critical below of how neurotypical people sometimes perceive neurodivergent people, I intend only to observe and adapt, not to criticize, or at least not to unproductively criticize. (With the caveat, of course, that assholes indulging discrimination, prejudice, or bullying should be fed to Cthulu.)
I focus on ADHD because I was diagnosed with it about four years ago at age 38. I can’t say with certainty that I know what it’s like to be autistic, though there is evidence that the two conditions are significantly comorbid, and let’s just say the possibility has been raised to me by lay people with frequent-enough exposure to me to have earned the right to speculate…
Anyway, many people with ADHD will tell you they are constantly accused of not caring or not taking problems seriously or belittling someone’s anxiety or being “flighty” or hard to connect deeply with in vitally important everyday contexts like family and workplaces.
However, if they aren’t as late to the following realization as I was, they will also tell you ADHD has two settings in high stress situations:
- Surrender to the explosion. This means you fully crash out, without resistance. You give up and fall down and stay down until the shockwave and the flames and the screams and the aftershocks have passed, then you emerge, reluctantly, in fear, like a cat that’s just survived 30 minutes under a passing freight train because, while it was unlucky enough to be caught under the train, it was lucky enough to be standing between the tracks when the behemoth bore down on it. _Or… _
- You keep that demeanor steady to preserve morale, to use limited time, energy, and resources as efficiently as possible, and to be ready to say fuck you to the perfect when the good is all you need to get safely across the chasm. Another way I like to think of it is: A bad plan means you’re almost certainly going to need a better plan later, but no plan means there may be no later…
When the shit hits the fan for us or someone we love, the stress, worry, anxiety, empathy, sympathy, care, concern, and love are all there. But we are highly experienced in masking for three quarters of every single day simply to fit into a neurotypical world that is too quick to write us off as lazy, disinterested, unreliable, unloving, unlovable or broken.
The truth is, for me at least, but I suspect for many other neurodivergent people, the less we seem to care in high pressure moments, the more we absolutely care. The quieter and more disconnected I seem, the harder I am working internally to overclock my brain and, by some combination of emotion, intellect, and sheer force of will, slow down the matrix of everyday life (an ability that comes naturally to most neurotypical people and which they therefore often take for granted), and find a solution.
It doesn’t always work, but whether it does or not, it’s always incredibly exhausting and even painful in the context of having to do it almost constantly just to get through most days.
But when the shit hits the fan, that masking has the potential to let us watch the floodwaters start crashing over the levees and just take a few deep breaths, part the waters of disaster like some elder millennial Moses with a pocketful of prescribed amphetamines, and walk ourselves or our kids or our partner or our team across the damp sand to the other side of the problem.
But that brings me to one of the worst parts about ADHD: our subjective experience of time is the reverse of that of people who don’t have ADHD. When a neurotypical person is chugging along at the mental equivalent of a saunter, neurodivergents are sprinting around an expanding outward spiral. And when a neurotypical person is watching a rock and a hard place approach them at equally high speed from opposite sides, a neurodivergent person is picking at the wallpaper, to see if maybe there’s a earlier layer of wallpaper under the top one, and maybe a layer of paint under the first layer of wallpaper, as they wait, consciously or subconsciously, for the seed of a solution to the end of the world to germinate in their otherwise racetrack-erratic mind. The tactile equivalent of elevator music.
Sometimes, the seed never comes, or it does but it dies instantly, like a star born into a black hole and never seen again. In both instances, of course, the solution never comes.
In those moments, we are likely to give up and vocalize our constant inner microwave background monologue about how sorry we are to have failed you again and yes of course we care and we’ve been trying and what do you mean what do we mean when we say we’ve been trying, haven’t you seen us thinking until our brain felt ready to leak out of our ears and our hearts went supernova in our chest cavity and oh well no of course you didn’t because who can see someone else thinking or feeling if they aren’t outwardly manifesting it in actions that evidence the authenticity of their care and concern?
But other times, maybe that seed does germinate, and an idea bursts into existence where just a few moments before, there was only empty space. we get on our phone, and start searching the internet for ways to assemble the components of our idea into something that more closely resembles a solution. Meanwhile, the neurotypical folks standing around us, still crashing out, but louder now, start to think, to themselves silently, or if the situation is dire enough, out loud to one another, or, in a worst case scenario that frankly puts the taste of battery acid in my mouth just thinking about it, even directly to the neurodivergent person, that they don’t seem to care that the world is ending, and that they wish the neurodivergent person had a contribution to make.
By now, the neurodivergent person is done searching the internet on their phone, and now they are making improvised measurements based on a random memory that just hit them about a documentary on how standard pencils like the one they just picked up off your desk are 7 inches long without an eraser, and 7 1/2 inches with an eraser, give or take a centimeter or so. They are flipping the pencil over end-to-end across a surface important to solving the problem while someone who liked them well enough until they saw this display of apparent dissociation at what seems like the least opportune time leans over and whispers in that exasperated screaming whisper people sometimes do, why aren’t you helping?
The time it would take to make himself understood would jeopardize holding this focus for which he’s worked so hard, and he’s too close to a solution to give up now, so rather than answer the perfectly reasonable question, he smiles gently at the inquisitor, maybe winks if he’s feeling especially confident, playful, or hopeless, and continues to chip, slice, hack away at the problem. This, of course, only serves as evidence in the minds of the inquisitor and other onlookers that the neurodivergent person is so disinterested in their collective fate as to apparently be fidgeting or reading or doodling. And why shouldn’t it? To them, the only evidence they have in that moment of crisis of the neurodivergent’s subjective experience is their own subjective experience.
Anyway, you get the point. I hope. Maybe the neurodivergent solves the problem that the neurotypical people could not solve. Maybe he does not. But, sadly, the likelihood that either type of person has correctly identified, and appropriately responded to, the subjective experience of the other is close enough to zero to break your heart if you think (or feel) about it for too long.
And that’s a problem for which there isn’t really any complex solution. We probably just need to assume better of each other until we’re proven wrong. Sure, it’s a risk.
But you know that feeling when you just dropped your last quarter into the claw machine and, while you’re mumbling about what a scam these things are, it suddenly grabs the exact worthless toy your teary, tired four-year-old has been begging for since you first walked up to the machine, cursing quietly to yourself that there’s no way you’re going to waste ten dollars of quarters on this thing, and then the kid’s face turns a shade of smile you didn’t know humans were capable of, and for a few minutes you forget every hurt and loss and pain that has ever burrowed into your soul?
That’s how it also feels to discover someone you didn’t think understood you or cared about holds you in the center of their own personal universe, even when it doesn’t look like they do, maybe especially when it doesn’t look like they do.
Stuff like this fills a geek’s heart to bursting.
This is a sentiment I share. There are too many normies in the law.
“A never-before-seen 1996 interview of Steve Jobs”
Mr. Cantu may need a pardon…
I set up Alexa Plus on an old Echo Dot and—reputation aside—it’s impressive. I also enabled early access on the Google Home devices we use daily, but no Gemini yet. I’ve come to prefer Alexa Plus for silly questions and smart-home control, but that could change when I can compare it with Gemini.
This feels both more momentous and more silly than it should:
The last penny was minted Wednesday afternoon at the US Mint in Philadelphia, overseen by US Treasurer Brandon Beach. […] The penny costs nearly four cents to mint, more than the coin’s worth.
I imagine Sotomayor & Kagan sometimes ask Jackson to tone down her rhetoric & she replies “absolutely not, if the Republic must burn, let those who still love it see us defending it even as the flames climb our robes.” 🔥
🔗Supreme Court lets Noem end legal status for many Venezuelans in the U.S.
There are few greater recommendations of a piece of literature than its banning by fascists.
#Books
My 5yo daughter’s take on the Mona Lisa: “I wish they would have done braids and a better dress.”
Has there ever been a greater gift than being given a playlist idea or request to agonize about and overthink and still remember and listen to long after the intended listener has outgrown it and moved on?
Asking for a friend, of course.
The Internet Phonebook is “an annual publication for exploring the vast poetic web, featuring essays, musings and a directory with the personal websites of hundreds of designers, developers, writers, curators, and educators.” What’s not to love? I’ve already ordered a copy.
Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.
Most people’s to-do lists are, almost by definition, pretty dull, filled with those quotidian little tasks that tend to slip out of our minds. Pick up the laundry. Get that thing for the kid. Buy milk, canned yams and kumquats at the local market.
🔗 Leonardo Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renaissance Man ➚
“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!”
Currently reading: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien 📚
Just because apparently too many people either are too ignorant to know, or too bad-faith to care: it’s not political violence, it’s gun violence.
If your spouse or partner hasn’t decided they are going to make a brown sugar and cinnamon sourdough loaf from scratch every week, I feel sorry for you.
I follow almost 200 RSS feeds. It’s is the most efficient, consistent, and privacy-respecting way to track updates on the web.
But I set all the feeds in my “Bloggers” folder to “web view” because seeing how real people cultivate and evolve their site is the best part of the web.
🍿 Man of Steel, 2013 - ★★★ (contains spoilers)
This review may contain spoilers.
This is a one-star movie but Michael Shannon carries it two stars forward on his formidable acting shoulders, all alone. He is in a far better movie than everyone else, simultaneously campier and far darker than the milquetoast performances almost everyone else was serving. And they did Costner so dirty with what ranks among the worst most nonsense death of any modern movie.
Originally published at Letterboxd
WikiTok is “a TikTok-style interface for exploring random Wikipedia articles,” and I absolutely love it.
🔗 WikiTok ➚
Wherein I learn I give off “civil vibes”
Me, at the courthouse, realizing my appearance may have been moved to a different floor: Is this all landlord-tenant today?
A lawyer I’ve never met, in the room I was originally scheduled for: Yeah, you’re not here for landlord-tenant day, are you? You give off civil vibes.
Me: “Civil vibes”?
Her: Civil vibes.
Me: … … …
James Ball, in his Transformer newsletter:
It has been noted that Amodei told staff the company would accept investment from Gulf states just days after Alsup said the case would go to trial, a major reversal for the firm. Anthropic turned down money from Saudi Arabia as recently as last year, while Amodei had written that only democracies should be able to influence frontier AI.
Two things can be true: a trial loss would threaten Anthropic’s viability, and that just isn’t enough to convince Alsup a stay pending appeal is appropriate.
For what it’s worth, I do think Amodei’s preference for restricting influence of frontier models to democracies was genuine, and he must really see the litigation as an existential threat to the company to so quickly abandon his principles.