This sounds a lot like me. I was diagnosed as dyslexic in 1973. I I just attributed it all to being LD in general. I did not know that these specific issues now have there own category. Slow progress, but still progress.
Does it include a complete and utter inability to tell left from right? Because the Significant Other is forever asking in gently, exasperated, loving tones: Do you mean the other left?
Pretty sure that I do! Since there's very little way to get a diagnosis for it as an adult, I haven't tried to, but it definitely matches my experience.
I used to think I was good at math. It turns out I was good at memorizing multiplication tables, but I am very, very bad at formulas and word problems.
I'm learning lojban with my girlfriend right now for many reasons, I think this language would be absolutely insanely wonderful for autistics, for a few reasons
It's syntactically unambiguous, this means every sentence only has one meaning
Attitudinals, at the start of your sentence, you actually state the tone it is meant to be interpreted in (you can see how that could be massive for autistic people alone)
Text has the exact same meaning as the spoken language: Y'know how in english, you have to write punctuation marks? in lojban, those are words, meaning when combined with attitudinals, the written language has feature parity with the spoken language.
I looked into constructed languages for a while, but at this point I've accepted that they're just never going to happen. Language arises naturally, attempts at controlling it inevitably fail. No amount of "but that's not what that word means, though" will change that actually, it means whatever consensus people land on at any given time.
Besides that, lojban comes across more like a linguist's attempt at creating "lossless" written communication, whether or not anyone could actually keep it in their head. I'm not sure it was ever meant to be practical.
It won't ever be practical or adopted by anyone but weirdos, but it's great as a secret language between people, that's what me and my girlfriend are using it for.
I deal with this and its a pain, like if I'm not using my fingers to keep track when doing simple maths or having a calculator to aide me, then it becomes a bigger slog than it ought to be ughhhhhh
Plain text and markup languages are seriously the most versatile, powerful way of storing documents electronically and I wish more people understood that outside of software development. Heck, I wish within software development there was more focus on this. I guarantee you that a significant chunk of what you do with your phone or PC or whatever would be better if it was delivered to you as some text files in a markup language. I want to actually kill paper off for good.
I buy a lot of TTRPG rulebooks. Usually as PDFs because I'd rather not lug books around. But the thing is... PDFs SUCK outside of their real original usecase. Reading them rather than printing them? Awful. They don't adjust to fit your screen, the text within them is obfuscated to other software. What's frustrating is that of course, whoever published that PDF has a plain-text version of that document somewhere, because someone wrote it. Gimmie. Please.
So I'm gonna illustrate why plaintext and markup languages are awesome now.
I already outlined the biggest reason. You can't really extract text from a PDF sanely. Regardless of how you feel about totally fixed layouts, the fact that text is read incorrectly at least half the time? That's because your PC doesn't see it as text, really. It needs to convert it all back into text. When PCs can actually recognize text, it becomes searchable. Users can display it as they please. Accessibility tools can mess with it. Power users can sort and store things in pretty much infinite ways, command line tools can interact with them...
And that's without mentioning the world's greatest note-taking / knowledge compilation tools like Obsidian and Emacs ORG Mode. When documents are using actual text, oh my god. I can turn whole books into searchable, annotatable notes and have bits of the text link to other stuff as I like. (Speaking of, what the hell happened to hypertext fiction? They're still awesome. For those who don't know, people were exploring narrative ideas, or at least formats, that make heavy use of hypertext features. While it only halfway counts this story is rad as hell.)
Check this out. This is an HTML5 version of a legendary programming textbook, and it is beautiful. No matter what size screen you're on it'll look pretty and remain completely readable. And despite that, it also handles all the formatting that used to be exclusively for PDFs.
...But there's a problem! HTML5 documents like this can't really be packaged into one file and read later, as-is. That's what EPUB is for! EPUB3, as far as I can tell, pretty much "wraps around" the markdown / formatting capabilities of HTML5 so that you can zip it all up and have it easily usable offline. This is awesome. This is why EPUB is the standard format of ebooks. And yet EPUB files have a reputation for sucking.
Y'know why? There's literally no one teaching anyone how the hell to make EPUBs properly. There's so few places I can find on the web with any info on this. W3C themselves, this amateur tutorial which is the closest thing to a real introduction I've found, and this one book O'Riley wrote. So I'm pretty sure half of the time publishers aren't making proper EPUBs themselves, just auto-converting things. Probably. I don't know.
You know what's funny? I would hate to be a programmer as a job. I tried it. Hated it.
Sooo much this!!! I've been really getting into vimwiki lately. A syntax on plaintext. If I decide I hate this format for my notes later, they're still easily readable by whatever plaintext note organization tool I choose to use next. The markup might get a bit crunchy but it's all still readable, and editable later!
Me too! Haha your color palette is so grating because the colors are all wrong to me 😅 Interesting that some of them don't have a color, is it really nothing at all or just not as strong of a connection?
Ah, yep! Forgot to mention those. Months, as well for me.
Monday is blue like the letter M and is feminine, and motherly. Tuesday is bright yellow, masculine, and kind of young. Wednesday is dark green and is a tomboy, no idea about age. Thursday is yellow-orange, masculine, and fatherly. Friday is bright orange, masculine, and young. Saturday, dark purple and an old grandma. Sunday is baby pink, gender neutral and 20ish years old.
January is a blueish purple, cold (obviously), is feminine, and tastes like grape. February is an orangeish pink, feminine again, and tastes like citrus. March is blue and masculine, and smells like leaves. April is red and yellow, feminine and has a flowery scent. May is blue and feminine, kind of shy. June is dark purple and orange, feminine, and quite lively. July is dark purple and pink and is like the twin to June, but toned down a bit. August is rust colored, masculine, old, and a bit mean. September is magenta, masculine, young, and rebellious. October is vivid orange (didn't see that coming, did ya? lol), gender neutral, and fun-loving. November is the color of a schoolbus, and is masculine. It's basically Thursday, but in month form. December is light pale blue, cold, masculine, and has a gentle authoritative air about him.
There's an experiment you can give yourself at home to get a sense of what's a normal association for sounds and shapes. For example, you have an oval and an 8 pointed star shape. One is named Kiki and the other Bob. Which is which?
To me, my idea of neurodivergence is that it's a more neutral term what we'd typically call neurodevelopmental disorders, and could potentially be extended to personality disorders. Neurodivergent people are those with (typically) lifelong differences in brain function. I think it's a helpful concept at times but I also think it's far too vague and more specific diagnoses exist for a reason.
I'm torn on including personality disorders because on one hand, they feel more squarely problematic (particularly as someone whose mother is Borderline), but on the other, it's possible that "feeling squarely problematic" is influenced a whole lot by culture and personal opinion. I've experienced being judged by other people's shitty personal opinions too often to feel comfortable doing it with other people.
I completely see where you're coming from with the idea of including personality disorders because of that "feeling squarely problematic" definition. Drawing on some personal experience, I don't personally view myself as having a clearcut case of Asperger's because 1) it was never severe enough to be a huge problem and 2) it was diagnosed after I was already an adult, by one psychiatrist (out of many).
Saying to someone "I'm considered neurodivergent" makes more sense to me than saying "I might be on the Autism Spectrum, depending on who you ask."
Saying to someone “I’m considered neurodivergent” makes more sense to me than saying “I might be on the Autism Spectrum, depending on who you ask.”
I think there's also a lot of liminal space inbetween different diagnoses where people might otherwise need to say "I might have ADHD or maybe I'm autistic, or maybe both, but it's hard to say" and "I'm neurodivergent" might be a frankly more useful way to describe the situation.
...Granted, most psychiatrists are idiots when it comes to ASD. They're operating on outdated as hell info and their own biases. I've seen way too much "well gee you're holding a conversation with me, there's no way your autistic" to actually take diagnosis seriously. I was diagnosed at six years old- It was obvious then and there was a ton of intervention- If I went for a diagnosis now, oh boy.
That's a great point wrt: diagnosis as an adult. Many folks with ASD have learned how to mask effectively enough that they are then dismissed by psychiatrists later in life because they're not exhibiting specific symptom.
I’ve seen way too much “well gee you’re holding a conversation with me, there’s no way your autistic”
Twice in my life I tried to start a conversation on this topic with a medical mental health professional, like “Doctor, this feels relatable, can we…”, and both times the reaction was basically “we’ve talked for 10 minutes and that’s definitely not relevant, I won’t even ask you where that came from or explain why”, in a way that made me feel like a bad person even for considering. And then proceeded to blame me for any follow up miscommunications… One time this was a “specialist” on the subject and I fear for any kids coming to them, they were all around a condescending patronizing asshole that could not even be on time 90% of the meetings
Yeah I didn't realize it wasn't normal until late high school, when I asked my best friend what her color associations were, and she just didn't have a clue what I was talking about.
I like that neurodivergence is a great big broad category. Each individual type represents a very small population that is easy to ignore and scapegoat. Adding up the huge variety of neurodiversity, genetic and acquired, gives us enough numbers to get something done.
I am dyslexic, autistic and bipolar. Not one of these groups have enough numbers on there own to effect change. The same accommodations that I need to function with one issue are the same accommodations I need to deal with them all, adequate education, adequate health care, adequate tools & technology, adequate shelter, adequate nutrition, and an adequately civil society. Just like every other human on the planet.
We need to speak with one voice. How neurodivergence is dealt with is inadequate for all of us.
Numbers and vowels have colors for me. 1 white-ish, 2 red, 3 yellow, 4 green, 5 brown, 6 dark red, 7 blue, 8 gold-white, 9 dark green, 0 black, A green, E orange, I white, O black, U brown, Y turquoise. Some consonants "feel" like they have color, but far less pronounced.
Also sounds have colors and shapes but that may just be association.
Edit: does synesthesia qualify as neurodivergence? Am I neurodivergent? What does this mean??
Oh I don't know whether it counts as neurodivergent in the commonly understood way, but I wasn't sure where else to post it. I'm new, so I don't know all the communities on here yet.
I find it interesting how only vowels and numbers stick out to you! I hadn't heard of that before.
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