One Man's Web

… much of their social functioning is achieved through conscious effort, learned scripts, and ongoing monitoring of verbal and nonverbal behaviour rather than intuitive social understanding… Andrea’s social interaction is cognitively mediated… They reported that social interactions are effortful and mentally exhausting, explaining that they have a social "time limit" and will often withdraw once this has been reached... (My diagnostic report.)  What does that even mean? I had no idea about learned scripts and cognitively mediated interactions. I was just doing what I'd always done, and what I thought everybody had to do to get by!  Read on >>>>

I love our local shopping centre. It's smaller than many, and heavily Italian. It's a rare shopping day I don't hear Italian being spoken in the fruiterer's and the supermarket. The size and the ethnicity seems to make it all a much quieter and more intimate environment. Tony and Mark's has a radio playing, but not too loudly, and the aisles are the right width and height to feel comfortable, and the lighting is... gentle. And they don't shift stuff around—bliss! People chat with friends while shopping. Westpac was down yesterday, at all levels, creating havoc. A young couple with two toddlers was trying to pay the bill, and his phone would not connect to the bank, and neither would hers. Another customer stepped up and offered to pay their bill... Read on >>>>

Apparently, most Allistic people do top down processing and Autistic people do bottom up processing.

Top down means folk do an overview of a scenario, and generalise on what's going on, while filtering out data that might contradict their general observation. It comes with concepts based on previous experience, and essentially predicts what should be happening and tends to ignore contradicting data.

Bottom up means we look at each datum point and try to make even the outliers fit into our synthesis of a scenario. We start with the raw data and then build up an hypothesis of what's going on. It's very powerful, especially in noticing and accounting for outliers in data, but it takes longer and often takes a lot more energy... Read on >>>>

I have to go to the bank, aka I will not install their useless app on my phone. I think this reminded me of being unsure about going to university, 54 years ago. I tried unsuccessfully to find a journalism cadet-ship. And then, since I knew the Commonwealth Bank had interesting postings in PNG, I wondered about joining them. So I went over to the Port Pirie branch to ask about bank careers.

I walked in, waited about 30 seconds and walked out, quietly horrified.... Read on >>>>