One Man's Web
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 >>>>
I read about a family adopted by a magpie, as magpies do. The magpie has learned to say the name of the family dog, and when the family cat begins to stalk that magpie, it calls the dog. Problem solved! Our farm cat hated the magpies who owned us, not least, I thought, because the magpies seemed to enjoy trolling it. And I've heard magpies doing incredible mimicry of other animals, so I have no problems believing this story of the magpie and the dog.
My interest is in what the magpie is actually thinking and doing. When we see the magpie trolling the cat, deliberately flying down to the ground and feigning ignorance of the cat's slow stalking, letting it getting closer, and then calling the dog, we are anthropomorphising. We are projecting upon the magpie what we might do. We don't really know what the magpie, or the cat, are thinking. It seems obvious, but that's our assumption.
As I seek to understand what was happening as I lived life as an undiagnosed autistic person... Read on >>>>
