Oh When The Odds Go Marching In

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

We live in profoundly weird times, in case you haven’t yet looked out the window this morning.

And I don’t say this (only) because this post is coming to you as we careen through America’s big beautiful highways in excess of seventy miles per hour, with my laptop on my lap and my fingers making with the words as I look out at the unusually green Western US landscape.

I won’t be home for at least a week (what are we doing? We don’t know. We might be looking for a home, except for a reluctance to leave younger kid and DIL behind. But we miss Colorado terribly, and the Colorado we miss is no longer there, and sometimes we go poking around. Consider that — despite knowing the story behind it, yes — this is our song.) This has certain problems.

Mostly because when I’m traveling wars break out. Which is weird, but not as weird as the fact that this is inherited. My mom had the same problem.

I’m sorry. No. You can’t lock me in my house.

Anyway…. so, you know. Things will be interesting for AT LEAST a week.

Next as an exhibit of how weird this time is: When did “thank you for your attention to this matter” turn into another term for “FAFO?”

I was joking that this was like datarepublican’s ‘Hi, I’m datarepublican” when you’re talking sh*t on twitter (Everybody gangsta until they get the Hi, I’m Datarepublican) and it occurred to me…..

The problem — if it is a problem, not a bonus — is that this digital world of ours, this strange new world that is still being aborn and as all births seems to come with a lot of sh*t and blood, seems to be the ideal stomping grounds for our people.

Our people? Well, yes. People have taken to referring to it as autists and the way we operate as “the tisms.” I do it myself on occasion because I find it funny. Attending a graduation almost two weeks ago, in a field prejudiced FOR our people, I told the new graduate “it was a tisms parade, and you masked best of all.”

But it’s not. Or at least I don’t think it is, unless you widen it to the ridiculous point. I know most of our people — geeks, obsessives, ADD-compulsives — have bits that get called “on the spectrum.”

As my being an introvert was totally unknown to me until someone told me the real difference was that being out in public exhausted you, I never thought of myself as being “on the spectrum” or ADD. The ADD thing took effort, okay, because I’m so ADD that if I have to wait at a register more than five minutes, and I’m alone, I’ll forget I have a cart and wander off. (If I’m with Dan it just drives him nuts.)

Anyway, I realized maybe I wasn’t quite standard after dealing with quirks from my sons. Things like sensitivity to loud sounds/certain lights which affect younger son suddenly made me wonder if that’s why I spent all of fourth grade UNDER the desk, writing on the seat.

Other things, like the fact I can’t stand gravy or sauce. Any sauce. Mustard in small amounts is tolerated, but even salad dressing has to be on the side and the salad gets dipped in it, or I can’t stand it.

And yes, I eat anything not surrounded by bread (I’m okay with sandwiches) with fork and knife, because touching cooked meat is an unbearable sensation.

Anyway, I have issues calling it “autism” because the “on the spectrum” is so broad that the fringes don’t much resemble the other end.

There will eventually be another name for us: the people who understand text better than interactions, who are as likely to write long letters to people they share a house with as to talk to them; the people who learn how other people function like a rigorous discipline; and who manage, despite all the best efforts of our teachers and parents, and no matter how successful we are to do things in a way that normal people tilt their heads at and wonder where and how we got so weird.

Because of that, I call us Odds. We are ODD. We stick out Oddly. We come up with solutions that would never occur to anyone else.

We are Odd other ways, too. We acquire strange, often temporary obsessions and fall down rabbit holes no “normal” person would think of. Some of us are foremost experts in tiddlywinks. Others know every possible detail of imaginary spaceships in an imaginary world, better than the man who wrote them. And others turn these obsessions into professions.

But even those of us who pass — and like with being an extreme introvert, I “mask” passably well — do things sometimes that are so strange they either get us killed or become memes.

…. like finishing presidential announcements with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

For various reasons, including technology, we’re in an age that is perfect for us. Let’s face it, most of the time in the past our kind didn’t even marry. Or if they did, they married perfectly normal people who, to be fair, probably knocked some of their sharp edges off. Now — looks at best beloved who is driving and making gestures as he listens to the first half of No Man’s Land read by AI. (And cackling when the AI for reasons inexplicable refers to Skip as Sheep. I checked. I never spelled it that way.) Now, we can marry our own kind. (This is either good or bad, people, we might speciate.)

And now, thanks to the net, and the ability to interact directly online our strange quirks can become memes instead of reviled.

Datarepublican, of course, has other issues which she overcomes with magnificent grace, and I’m so glad no one tried to eugenically cull her before birth or institutionalize her after, because she is needed and she was born for this time. She is magnificent and I’m in awe of her.

I’m only a little Odd. An Oddling. But an egg. But how can I cower when the president can close his presidential statements like a business letter? And when Datarepublican can collar liars with “Hi, this is datarepublican?”

I shall carry my Odd flag into this brave new world, and plant it where I think it needs to go.

In the future perhaps tyrants will cower and “Have a nice day” and armies will disband at “Anyone want some chocolate?” And perhaps “pull up your socks” will be the most motivational phrase ever.

Oddlings advance. Who’s with me?

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

164 thoughts on “Oh When The Odds Go Marching In”

  1. As for the “Thank you for your attention to this matter”, Trump was a businessman for much longer than he’s been President of the US. 😉

    Liked by 1 person

      2. Or he is a crazed marketing idiot-savant, and how he thinks about closing the sale with ordinary Americans makes it normal for him.

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        1. Democrats are screaming now that “our boys” flew the planes. Because one of “our boys” was a woman pilot. Rolls eyes.

          Then I thought. Hmmmm. Given the Mullahs reaction to powerful women … How about Trump, Vance, and the pilots, all state (DIE aside) “In fact, it was Our Gals, who wiped out your facilities.” I mean if the girls just want to be one of the boys, what is wrong with poking idiots, with the guys being one of the girls? Asking for a friend.

          Liked by 1 person

          2. Then there’s that story from another war, when the Kurds (?) let it be known that they were fielding women because to be killed by a woman would mean the Islamic man in question would not go to heaven. Do not pass go, do not collect 72 semi-autonomous sex dolls.

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              1. LOL

                I have heard that section didn’t refer to “sex partners”.

                And no, it didn’t refer to “72 Virginians”. LOL

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  2. Fellow oddling:

    If your travels take you near Middle Tennessee, give us a look. Could be the God’s County for which you are looking.

    BrianinTn

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m not even going to try to get you to land here, Sarah, since I know you tried this area (the larger Charlotte metro) once and hated it. Although we do love it far, far from the city lights out here on our little overgrown hill on the edges of nowhere.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Aye, a nice place that. Just avoid inner city Nasheville. And Memphis. Lots of good little towns, though, with access to proper features like decent hospitals and darn good bbq.

        Me, I prefer my little mountains. Just not Chattanooga, save Libertycon, because that place makes my allergies spaz out. Western North Cackallacky, East Tenneseeum is lovely though.

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      4. Well, you don’t need me to warn you off from WA, but for anyone else reading along, it’s horrible. Born free, taxed to deth. Yes, I was BORN HERE and I’m taking a stand, but however it ends, the middle right now is ghastly. Gas over four-fifty a gallon for MID-GRADE, for instance.

        We could use more red voters and less machine fraud, but be aware of what you’d be getting into.

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        1. I just moved back to the Soviet of Washington, as my beloved Papa used to call it.

          Elevation zero is what my body requires, and this is my home, dangit. Plus, it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, including the Alps, and a bunch of very beautiful America.

          I’m in Arlington, not too awfully far from the Canadian border. Many if not most of the people here are MAGA. It’s the cities that tear us apart.

          Unless you are cool with a communist state that’s likely to stay such beyond my lifetime–we have universal mail-in-voting, and you bring a crap-ton of money with you to insulate you from the effects of that communism, I’d look elsewhere.

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          1. Once BBB is passed.

            Next the DOGE codification passed.

            Next mail-in-voting made illegal. Not much in the news on the FBI scandal regarding the 2020 voting fraud suppression. Nor China providing false whatever so illegal border cross could vote.

            Already have an EO regarding voter id. Once that gets codified into law. Mail-in-vote states have to prove what id is used is safe. Do not think they can. Mail-in-vote is going to tank (please!)

            Doesn’t do anything for the ranked voting, unfortunately. Which is also manipulative.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. Indeed. I’ve been in WA for almost 25 years now, and for the past 12 it’s been an accelerating political shitshow. Luckily I’m on the east side, which offers a bit of insulation, but this whole state is being systematically demolished by a bunch of progtards who saw what California was doing and said “hold my beer.” You knew what you were doing in coming back, but I would NOT advise anyone to move here now. Live in Idaho and commute in, maybe…

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          3. Hey! I’m from Washington. I used to live in Sumas and do my grocery shopping in Mt. Vernon so that I could avoid the Canadians that would camp in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Bellingham. I also used to live in Long Beach and commute to Oregon. Astoria is full of homeless drug addicts (my favorite is the guy who left a dead fish and the Gooneys house, stole a boat, and wrecked it – last I looked he was in jail in BC. Heh).

            2004 or so, it was King County that basically dominated the state. <opens the trunk of a car> Hi kids! Need some Gregoire ballots?

            Or how about the Chaz where people were filming themselves violating the state’s gun control laws, but those aren’t important right now. Then the vagrants stole their food and their community garden turned out like a collective farm in the Soviet Union.

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            1. We were in Washington for 6 years; Longview. Used to work both sides of the Columbia, but didn’t have to pay Oregon State income taxes on the hours worked in Oregon, job type was excluded back then (it is not now). Hubby was briefly based back in Washington (Randle) for about 17 months (did not pay Oregon taxes on his income, but had to on mine).

              I swear that, Oregon and Washington compete on the “hold my beer” regards to California craziness.

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            2. I remember 2004, and the Rossi-Gregoire debacle.

              One bit that didn’t make it into the OFFICIAL accounts was the part where a RED county came up with some “late” ballots, you know, like the deep-blue Puget Sound Megalopolis was doing. THOSE ballots were disallowed. Only BLUE-county ballots may be counted late.

              Liked by 1 person

        2. Raises hand for Oregon. Can visit either the mountains and the coast, in one day. Can even visit both on the same long drive, in one day.

          Fourth generation born. Damn if I’ll give it up. Okay, if the kid goes somewhere, we might tag along. Depends on where he goes (only child). OTOH the thought of packing up and moving? Eek. Sell most everything, maybe. Still a lot left over to move.

          Would consider Montana (mom is second generation there), but the high elevation wouldn’t be good for Sarah.

          Liked by 1 person

  3. And from all accounts — the man being NY tabloid fodder since the early 1980s — apparently a pretty good one. Aside from serially marrying rather gorgeous women, which seems to have been a personal foible, in all the years that he was tabloid fodder, no woman who worked with him seems to have had any complaints of his general conduct towards them. To use a slightly vulgar expression – he didn’t dip his wick into company ink. His female coworkers and underlings, his ex-wives – in all the time that he has been in the public eye, the media couldn’t really find any disgruntled woman who would spill confirmable dirt, sexual or otherwise. (Well, there was Stormy Daniels, although –did they ever really meet privately at all? He has a type, and she’s not it…) His children appear to be well-adjusted and useful citizens (unlike others that I could mention **cough*cough** Biden **cough) who appear to have good relations with him. I rather wonder if he isn’t a bit of an Odd himself, with a public persona of a brash, crude, outspoken big-city guy … who in private is a very pleasant, considerate and all-round nice person.

    YMMV.

    As for going forward … after dealing with Iran as the mullahcracy should have been dealt with ,six or seven presidents ago — I’m afraid there will be a fair number of crazies, Islamic or just plain deranged wandering around, randomly committing mayhem where they can. I’d suggest keeping a high level of awareness as to your surroundings when in public among a lot of other people, and knowing where the safest place to make a quick exit is.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. aye on your final paragraph. And as for Trump, oh, yes. I’m convinced he’s of us.
      The “front” makes it so much easier. We call mine “Con Sarah.”

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      1. If you’re an Odd that has to deal with people- and everybody does, eventually, you gotta have a people mask to deal with them. Some rote responses, something that fits in the expected category of what normal non-pod-people behavior. It’s too exhausting when they keep giving you those looks, worrying about you, or the like.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. At a we age of around 13, some years after my parents divorce, mom pulled me up from my third reading of “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” and said “There are no more jobs for lighthouse attendants and ship captains need to lead a crew. You have to learn to deal with people”. She gave me a worn copy of (don’t laugh) “How to win friends and Influence People”, the old Dale Carnegie book. It was like the manual for my old Radio Shack electrical kit (the one with 200 diodes, transistors, etc. on a breadboard) but for people. As, I guess, a self described “Odd”, it was a godsend. RTFM my fellow Odds, they do make manuals to understand those annoying other people. And for the more adults out there, I insert a blatant plug for any of the YouTube shorts from Rory Sutherland on marketing.

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    2. What ex-wives of celebrities DON’T rat out the ex’s if there is anything there? One way or another. Guarantied. If the divorce has proscriptions? It’ll be worked around.

      Yet with Trump? Crickets. Less than crickets. None of his ex wives nor any of his children. His grandchildren adore him.

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      1. The ONLY other politician with that track record in my memory was Fred Thompson.

        Who was married twice, spent 10+years playing the field in both Hollywood and DC, and had every woman he’d ever been involved with come out to a media event and tell the vultures:

        “Fred was a Southern gentleman of the old school, he treated all of us well, and you buzzards can buzz off. Bless your pea-pickin’ hearts.”

        I still salute him and them for that.

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  4. I am an Odd and damned proud of it. I’m a screaming introvert who can’t stop typing in Discord. I’m a nerd at nearly sixty. I can’t get enough of police bodycam videos. I am a weird walking encyclopedia of useless World War II facts.

    And by the grace of the Author, I found myself a beautiful fellow Odd in a Compuserve forum devoted to the X-Wing PC games from the ’90s, married her, and have spent coming up on twenty-four years with her while creating an amazingly Odd child who out-Odds us both and is going to do great things. Such as survive. And love.

    I like being an Odd. I don’t think I want to be a Normal.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. That is the point– being boring, so that people don’t have to constantly adjust, guess, adjust again, observe… they can just do whatever-it-is and get on to what they actually want to do.

        The problem comes when folks want to make “polite company” both an actual baseline of being, and make it what they are comfortable with– not the general purpose “make for as little trouble for everyone as possible” standard.

        Liked by 1 person

  5. I work at a research institute. April last, the internal web page noted Autism Awareness month. I noted to our lab manager that if you work with scientists and engineers, you are aware of autism. She laughed heartily and agreed. This April it was Autism Acknowledgement Month. Next April I guess it will be “You are Autistic”

    Liked by 1 person

        2. They’re also represented in multilingual scientific translation. TRUST ME ON THIS.
          One of my veteran fans who should know “Oh. Linguist. Nuke for those who aren’t good at math.” :-P
          I’m proud to stand with the mad priests of the atom!

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          2. Number one son is finishing piling it higher and deeper in linguistics. Corpus Linguistics for those who know. An odd’s odd sorta thing to do. His undergrad was classics and Latin. As was the daughters. Number two son said a pox on all that and studied …. History. Sigh

            I suppose that makes up for me (Math and Economics) and the wife’s BE Electrical Engineering. Fair do’s number two son is doing an MSc in Supply Chain and Logistics so there’s hope of employment somewhere.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. I must not be very observant, because I have been around a few research scientists and engineers, and I just about do not recall any of them striking me as notably or particularly autistic.

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      1. Does a fish observe the wetness of the water?

        (Of course, Bob, you are somewhat more Odd than many of us. There are days that I want to grow up to be like you…)

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      2. MomRed has a friend who married a nuclear engineer of sorts. He’s mildly Odd, and she once observed that when he worked at [redacted], he said that he was the most normal one who wasn’t a contract manager. Coffee breaks were silent as people read unrelated books or stared at the wall and waited for the (union required) break to the over so they could go back to doing nuclear nerd things.

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  6. It is a time of catastrophic change, where nothing works and everything works. And we’ve lived our entire lives fitting polyhedronal pegs into round and square holes.

    I am going to have to start tracking when people are going to be at which cons where. The girls need to meet you all, for their own sakes as much as any. Older daughter has the chaos story brain. But it just hit me, younger daughter, the far more social one, does exactly the same thing with sauces. She takes her burgers plain without a bun. Cheese goes on the side, and ketchup comes nowhere near the patty. Ketchup is strictly for dipping fries in.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My wife and sons always order things plain and none, including the daughter, will eat gravy. Since I love gravy, especially on mashed potato, it’s a bit of a faff. They will eat sauce on macaroni though — don’t call sauce gravy, it throws me back to literal fistfights when I was a boy.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. Younger son, the by far Odder-presenting one is also the most social one. And also a raging introvert. but he has this group online, and they adore him and he’s their “daddy” even those who are older than him.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Yes, I could see her turning into Team Den Mother Bear.

        And she has a cousin who is about her age who is always on the gas, never touch the brakes. The two of them remind me for all the world of the two female leads from Trigun, the tiny firebrand, and the big gentle girl who periodically drops an artillery piece on some troublemaker’s foot. By accident, totally.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. Datarepublican is one of many odds that have been questioning the narrative and sifting the sands for truth. She is truly one of the best in communicating the important details to those whom are concerned. We love her as a Sister in Christ that uses her talents for good.

    No current data projects outside of work on my plate. I am looking forward to the enrollment stats of elementary public schools this year to see if there is a drop due to illegal alien student exodus like there is at colleges. Current project the local data team is working on is teacher/administator abuse of students and it’s not a good fit due to my childhood.

    Four schools are closing in the local district and I’d like to see the money train from the property owners via property taxes drop if enrollment continues to decline. Texas passed some property tax relief, but the usual response from the appraisal districts is to hike the appraised value of the property to overcome any short falls for their political buddies.

    Working with some fellow odds on countering harmful corporate enshittification into Open Source Software. There’s a metric poop-ton of crazy blue idiots backed by Big Tech pushing the Left agenda into technical projects, so folks are looking for better alternatives. I’m facing a migration for my main workstation to some Linux distro/desktop that’s less woke.

    More data coming out of Japan validating the decision not to fall for the Covid Vax pressure. Also my niece who works in oncology is making bank due to the high demand.

    Massive family coming to visit next month and my spouse says I can’t hide in my office. :(

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    1. “Texas passed some property tax relief, but the usual response from the appraisal districts is to hike the appraised value of the property to overcome any short falls for their political buddies.“

      –

      Oregon prevents that with two ’90s initiatives. First limits how much assessed value can go up. Second how much taxes can go up. Third tax assessed value doesn’t change to the sold value when house sells. Value was set to 1990 for existing homes, and original sell price for new homes. California lacks the last (Washington might too, IDK). Max +3%. Also means even though our perceived actual value dropped, the tax value grows. This is because the tax value is 45% lower that perceived actual value. (Ours has almost tripled in the last 35 years. There is a proper “future value” math for this ($78 * 1.03^35). Granted county system is just taking prior year taxable value * 3%, but formula works.

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    2. The Reader would appreciate suggestions for less woke Linux distributions. Linux is coming to his household this fall and it is about time to pick a final distribution.

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      1. Some quick searches seem to indicate Lunduke saying some stuff about OpenMandriva and Devuan apparently fitting the criteria.

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      2. No recommendations at this time. Your choice of Linux distribution depends on your needs, skills and time. You can try more than one before you settle. Helpful to have more than one computer when distro hopping. Also backups.

        Currently I’m using Fedora and Parrot (Debian) on my main laptops. I’m looking at Devuan and possibly FreeBSD once I get a new router in the office. I’m already running OpenBSD on a spare tower and I’ll leave the Steam Deck on whatever version of Arch Linux that is native. I trust Valve not to f things up.

        I’m usually pragmatic about software, not religious, but the sponsorship of Linux and related projects by corporations that are allowing the loud crazies to destroy a mostly libertarian technical community that normally did not care about race/gender/Marxist politics has me concerned about security and quality that comes from certain projects.

        Basically looking to avoid systemd and Gnome as well as certain distributions. Also any Microsoft OSS like VS Code, .NET, etc…

        Note: I don’t need specific applications beyond what a basic distribution provides. Besides browsing and reading, every system comes with utilities, database options and development tools.

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        1. Yes, many distributions (including Slackware) have “live distribution” disks that let you take it for a test drive. Haven’t used it, but I suspect you can get something close to real work done with them.

          Slackware doesn’t use systemd (perhaps some tiny portions of it, but init.d does the job.) GUI: My preference is xfce. I tried Kde Plasma, but it’s just different enough to bother me. OTOH, there’s an occasional bug in xfce where it doesn’t start up properly. Need a repeat or three (on my wife’s account, several. Haven’t figured why it’s worse for her than in my account.

          Other options are available, even Gnome. [VBEG]

          I use Libreoffice, which is OSS and free, and Just Works for me. I’ve used old Windows datafiles, and it happily converts.

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          1. I find the MATE desktop unobtrusive. It just works, and doesn’t get in my way.

            I’ve been using OpenOffice/LibreOffice for more than 20 years. It does everything I need.

            I use Gimp for images, Audacity for audio, MakeMKV and HandBrake to import DVDs and blue-disks. I do use iTunes (err, ‘Music’, now) to import CDs because Apple’s AAC codec seems to outperform every other implementation.

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          2. I feel the need to correct one minor mistake in your comment: init.d does not, in fact, do the job. It does part of the job — starting services at boot time — but the other, IMHO more important, part of the job (detecting when a service has failed and restarting it) init.d doesn’t even try to do. Which is why DJB wrote daemontools, and someone else wrote runit. Neither of which I have experience with, so I can’t say why they are better or worse than systemd. But init.d, by itself, is inadequate and needs another tool to do the job of fully managing services.

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            1. Well, most distributions might come with runit or daemontools, but runit isn’t part of the main Slackware distribution (it is available as a slackbuild), and searching for daemontools came up blank. Can’t take the blame for ignoring something not on the machines nor in the distribution. :)

              I don’t stress my machines (that much, usually), and haven’t had issues with services needing runtime help. YMMV.

              It’s been a couple decades since I last had Red Hat, and all the machines at home run Slackware. Chose S-ware for various reasons, not least because I could get it piecemeal at the time. The only broad-band-ish service I could glom onto was at the $TINY_TOWN library, where I had about 10X dialup speed. Sigh. Took a few days to download the distribution. Got a lot easier when broadband hit Casa RCP.

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      3. Speaking as a well-cured Linux geek, I’m fond of Slackware. (15 years of marination in HPUX had something to do with it.) Warning: If you’d rather not know about the gory details of the OS, run, quickly.

        Run largely by one person (Pat Volkerding), with independent assistance from Eric Hameleers (aka AlienBob), who does a) 32 bit compatible packages for those Windows-type things, and b) SlackBuilds, ways to build interesting/useful/too-obscure-for-mainstream-release packages. As a side note: rpm2tgz and deb2tgz utilities let you use Red Hat and Debian binary packages.

        I can get my paws on all parts of the system, but am aware that lots of people, Odds and Normies, don’t wish to deal with fun things like cfdisk (I’m too lazy for fdisk…) and ssh-keygen.

        AFAIK, no committees, no HR, no woke, but There Be Dragons. If you aren’t familiar with some Linux/Unix, pass on it.

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        1. What’s the main reason you prefer Slackware over Arch? I find Arch to be the best balance, for me, of having up-to-date packages and a system I can configure the way I want to, but also having some default config that helps me get started and means I don’t have to configure every single thing. (Plus, the Arch wiki just can’t be beat as a documentation resource, even if you’re running other distros). Slackware being pure vanilla upstream would be an advantage in certain situations, but I got so used to Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu, but removing much of Canonical’s and GNOME’s idiocy — hey Unity and GNOME designers! Keyboard/mouse and touchscreens are different interfaces and need different design!), which had a lot of things configured for you (pretty much the way I wanted them, too, I only needed to make minor tweaks) that I don’t really want to have to configure everything.

          Only reason I recently switched from Mint to Arch is because I was getting a little tired of Mint releasing only every two years, which meant that at some point some of the software I needed for my job (software development) was a year and a half out of date and I was starting to run into issues where the updated version I needed wasn’t in the Mint repos yet. Arch has also allowed me to play around with Wayland and Hyprland. I can’t speak to Wayland’s wokeness or lack thereof, but the Hyprland developer was kicked out of … something, I can’t remember what… in 2023 for failing to be sufficiently respectful to Church of Wokeness. He preserved the emails on his blog, so you can read all the details if you want to.

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          1. Re: Preferring Slackware over Arch. When I started getting serious about dropping Windows (roughly the same time as Win 7 was getting kicked to the curb), the best (for values) of bandwidth I could get was 50kB/second at the town library. (They had one microwave link, and it was shared by all users. 10X over dialup was best case.) I had to pick a distribution and could not spend the time cruising the field.

            Slackware suited my needs and experience, and I went for it. First download was V12.0. When I got broadband-ish satellite internet (Jan ’15), it was up to V14.x. As I got more familiar with that version (and more machines; refurbished Dell business machines have been quite helpful), I started with Slackware Current on a non-production machine until it was released as V15.0. Yeah, major revisions roll out slowly; that’s the downside of a tiny group. OTOH, focus seems to be pretty good.

            So far, the biggest change I’ve had to deal with for the latest machine was the switch from LILO booting to eLilo. Guess I could have kept the Micro$oft partition/bootup, but “I don’t do Windows”. Now I have better satellite coverage and maybe a surplus machine (100G a month; still geosynchronous, so not full broadband), I can consider putting one of the machines on Current; not sure when V15.1 is due.

            Side note: just added 4 GB of RAM to a 2016 Dell Inspiron. (Very low end Costco special. It started doing things like deleting minor directories, and I suspect I ran out of RAM+Swap. Seems old plastic and snap-together bits are not a happy combination. Had to break some internal posts to get the back plate off. The business machines are wonderful to work on in contrast. If it works, $SPOUSE gets her preferred game/music machine, and I get a spare. Rubs hands together, contemplating daily updates with the bleeding edge version.

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            1. TL;DR for your question: No experience with Arch, so it never crossed my mind. Major downloads take more resources than I want to spend.

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            2. And the memory addition worked. Had to: remove optical drive, remove keyboard, unlatch the back plate (where the 9 year old plastic wouldn’t let go of a couple of brass pins), then I could do the memory. Getting the [redacted] back plate off was a challenge, though the broken locator sockets don’t seem to have hurt anything. OTOH, reconnecting the keyboard cable was not something I want to repeat before coffee.

              In contrast, for the business laptop machines, it’s 1) remove the base cover, 2) remove the internal battery, 3)add memory. OTOH, on the consumer machines, the built in sound system is really good. The 2019 business, not so much (possible damage to the speakers? dunno. Haven’t tried the other one barring beeps and blips.)

              Liked by 1 person

      4. Is there some reason Mint would be considered ‘woke’? I rebuilt my wife’s old laptop using Mint on the recommendations that it wouldn’t challenge non-geekish Windows users too much. I haven’t really used it a LOT, but it seemed to do the job well enough, but she had been making do with her phone and getting advice from her boss (She does in home healthcare for the elderly) about how to do all the stuff the company needed on her phone. So now she has become one of those people she railed against, and is doing Facebook on her phone, as well, and never uses the laptop, anyway. I am still planning on setting up dual boot on my tower to alternate Linux with Windoze, especially now that I have been pressured into Win11. We have the Enterprise version at work now, and other than putting the Start button back where it belongs, it hasn’t been TOO annoying. So I finally gave in and accepted the insistent urges on my desktop to accept the free “upgrade”. Uh,oh, on my home system WordPad disappeared; THAT’S annoying. Now I’m having to use LibreOffice to access all of THOSE files. Gee, I might as well just use Linux, then!

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        1. Mint is a fine distribution for Linux nexcomers that want to access the Internet via browser, and run LibreOffice.

          The “woke” the experienced users are complaining about are details that the newcomers don’t notice. Details like systemd and Gnome are usually more technical details that concern the experienced user, developers or OSS advocates.

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  8. Odds to the end! Please sign in at the registration table, name tags are on the left…

    Anyway, I firmly think that ‘odds’ bring life, spice and unique opportunities to life and I have been lucky enough in life to be around (and part of) the odds where ever I am.

    As for place to stay – Iowa! Oh, come on now… sure it’s flat, open and mostly rural but it sure seems to be stable and accepting. I’m on the edge of Des Moines and will gladly show you around should you drift this way. We’ve got a fairly good mix of odds, and the usual suspects too. Eh, maybe not your cup of tea but remember, we have coffee too!

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I would prefer not to live in Johnson County, but there are plenty of other nice places in that area (I grew up about an hour south of there)

        Like

      2. Dallas county, just west of Des Moines metro, is growing nicely and could fit the bill nicely I would think. Anyway, offer to visit is open as well as me providing local color!

        Like

      3. I grew up on the prairie. There is a joy driving seemingly endlessly under a bowl of sky toward a flat featureless horizon.

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        1. Shudder.

          Seems like being a bug under a microscope. Being able to see where you were yesterday? Nope.

          A place without mountains and trees? Shudder.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I am the opposite. Being hemmed in by forests, hills and mountains makes me feel almost claustrophobic. I feel closed in and can’t really see anywhere. Worse is visiting a hive with a teeming population that there is no escape from. I must be an introvert.

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            1. My mother grew up by the sea and found going in college somewhat claustrophobic, though she acclimatized.

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            2. “hive with a teeming population that there is no escape from“

              –

              With you there. Downtown Eugene is bad enough. Salem and Portland, any bigger city? No. Just No. I have no clue how people can live in bigger cities. I just don’t.

              Even our busy national parks are hard on hubby and I. One of the reasons we choose spring or late fall.

              Went to Tetons, last week of October 2024, drove up into Yellowstone early in the week, then drove out that way home, Oct 31 (last day interior roads for both parks were open). Few animals. Including buffalo and elk, which is really rare. No pronghorn, and no bear at all. Did see bull moose, including the big daddy dominate one. Also what we did not see? Very few vehicles and almost none people. For those of you who have never gone to either, this is rare, very, very, rare.

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              1. I lived for 47 years in Grand Forks, ND (pop about 50K), drive 15 minutes in any direction one was in the country with the next “large” city (Fargo/Morehead) 80 miles away. Ten of my summer vacations were spent being invited to spend a week or so on paleontology field trips by a friend (and prof that I took occasional graduate classes [for fun] from). No well-known tourist places, just different locations in beautiful, rugged country that few people other than the local ranchers ever see. Camping out, being moderately useful searching for fossil clams and snails while listening to a running lecture on the history, geology, and paleontology of the area. It was hard to leave.

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          2. If I can’t see weather coming, and can’t see the sky without looking straight up, I get twitchy. Flat’s fine, rolling’s fine, a few trees are a delight, but please give me a horizon. Yes, I’m a child of the grasslands.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. If CINCHOUSE’s family weren’t here (and now Darlin’ daughters spouse and in-laws), and being past the age of needing to find employment in any field I’m remotely qualified for, I could happily return to Iowa.

      Like

    3. :grins and waves: Heh, us too.

      Husband and I knew we’d like Iowa when we were here house hunting before the move and I saw a custom plate on a well used farm type pickup– yeah, not uncommon in Iowa– but it said MBRYDA and the lady had this hair style:

      That is Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn.

      We knew anyplace that such geekery was, would be a good fit for us.

      And that was before I figured out that the cyclone fans make “clone wars” jokes on their custom plates.

      Like

  9. What do you call the anitmatter equivalent of an Odd? That’s me, I think – I’m about as extroverted as a human being can possiblly be, except all through high school and college (and of course, beyond), my best friends were definitely among the Odds. Perhpas it how our minds would not think along those linear paths, but would pick up associations among what are normally (or is it Normally?) considered unrelated items. We think alike, even if we’re just weird.

    Mybe not a Odd, but ya know? So what! We’re all in this together.

    Like

    1. You can be an extrovert and an Odd. I’ve taught several of those. Once they channel the Odd into something not-dangerous, they go very, very far. One makes very nice money by translating from Odd to Manager/Customer and back.

      Like

    2. So appropriate the word Even, then. :-) And mention how there are many people who can’t do it — so many people, especially online, will admit that “I just can’t Even”. ;-)

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      1. I definitely gave a big old grin at using the term “Even” but appropriating a perfectly fine word for categorizing people has rubbed me the wrong way ever since *they* started to refer to “cis” people. Being an organic chemist (to the core) the terms cis and trans are complementary nomenclature, and some clever snot probably took a chemistry couurse and thought they were opposites (or something) so started calling people who agreed with the reality of who they biologically are “cis”. It’s been a peev of mine for many years, but ain’t no going back now.

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  11. My last baby tooth just got extracted yesterday! Woot, I’m a big kid now!

    (It got stuck onto my jawbone, but its absolute final expiration date has been coming up for the last couple of years. It finally decided to crack right down to the roots; but the roots had quietly gone away, in much the same fashion as they were supposed to do in elementary school. So the dentist just sawed through about a millimeter of leftover calcium, and suddenly my jaw was free.)

    So I don’t know if that counts as Oddness, but it’s a data point.

    Also, the Tooth Fairy doesn’t show up when you’re over 50, lol!

    (The dentist didn’t even offer me the tooth, but I didn’t ask for it, either.)

    Also, don’t chew ice, kids. Allegedly that’s what originally did a number on that tooth, although it certainly didn’t finish off the tooth, given that it lasted for decades and decades.

    If you do want to chew ice, you probably are craving iron. This is a Dentist Secret, apparently, or at least it’s something that they don’t point out to you when they are admonishing you to stop chewing ice.

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    1. Also, the Tooth Fairy doesn’t show up when you’re over 50, lol!

      That doesn’t seem fair. If I were you, I’d write a letter to the Seelie Court Office of Dental Affairs and complain.

      Like

      1. The Court was getting USAID grants for a number of departments. ODA was sacrificed and they’ve cut back to a single operative for the TF team. He used to be a janitor over at OPM (Supernatural Division) and since the original Tooth Fairy was set to retire they figured why not?

        Between training and a world-wide workload, he’s pretty overwhelmed right now.

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        1. The fact that you guys wrote this with straight faces, and we read it thinking, “Yeah, that makes sense,” is proof we are all Odd. Or mad. Whatever. Tea, anyone?

          Liked by 1 person

  12. Love sauce. Hamburgers, etc., must have sauce. Won’t touch salad without dressing. Love gravy.

    OTOH food touching? Forget it. Exception is holidays with turkey, etc., where everything gets gravy on it.

    I hear on the social exhaustion. That as much as anything clued me in.

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  13. From my experience, most kids outgrow the ‘food cannot touch other food’ stage around puberty.

    My kids had that. I don’t recall that I ever did.

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    1. Not 100% sure about that – Son, in his fifties, still does the food segregation thing without fail. He also MUST leave something on the plate at the end of meal time. He always ate well so it was never really an issue, just a quirk for our family.

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      1. That’s why I said ‘most’; I have a 40-ish year old niece who still places her foods in isolation.

        Somehow “C’mon, it all gets mixed in your stomach!” never seemed to convince them.

        As you say, really a harmless quirk, or perhaps training for Asian or Euro ‘haute cuisine’ presentations.

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          1. Me too.

            There are things I will not eat, period. (Liver/cream corn/jello with cottage cheese …)

            Also means I won’t buy or make.

            For awhile that included salmon. Drove hubby nuts. He understood because he heard the story. Folks had a salmon commercial boat (one boat, crew of 2). When they could still sports fish before the season started, they did. Week before I left for the summer USFS season, they were limiting out every day (I didn’t go out, it is illegal to chum for fish, besides I had finals). Mom gave me a cooler with 3 huge salmon. “This is your meat until your first pay check comes in.” It was 6 weeks that summer before I had any money. Six weeks of salmon steaks, salmon loaf, salmon sandwiches. I was trading salmon for anything other than salmon (coworkers thought I was nuts). Salmon for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. … 6 weeks! It was decades before I willingly bought and cooked salmon or stealhead at home.

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            1. Grin. Had something like that as a kid with rhubarb. We lived in a suburb of Detroit, and the soil/weather made for abundant growth. So, we had rhubarb pies and I ate a fair amount of it raw.

              Burned out completely. Can’t stand it anymore. On a road trip to visit family years ago, stopped at the Amana colonies in Iowa (niece lives there, upstream of the Quad cities, semi rural) and saw a bottle of rhubarb wine. Gave it to Mom, with the condition that she was not to pour me a glass of it.

              Agreed on liver. Also strawberry/banana anything. Fine separate. Together, no way.

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              1. Yet.

                I love strawberries + bananas + blueberries … And, tis the season!

                Each to their own.

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              2. Banana squash. Mom loved the stuff, and the only way she cooked it was boiled. Every few weeks during the winter she would break open a new one. These things were four feet long and a foot + in diameter. And she grew them every year.

                Just the smell makes me gag.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. I could never stand any kind of squash. YECCCH!! Pumpkins included. I know yams are not squash, but for me they fell into the same category of YECCCH!!

                  One of the greatest things about being a grownup is not having to eat YECCCH-y stuff. :-D

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          1. There is a reason why fine dining experiences has palette cleaning drinks between the multiple dinner dishes and final dessert.

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            1. Wait …

              ‘Final dessert’? There can be more than one?

              Tell me more of this custom in your country!

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        3. Somehow “C’mon, it all gets mixed in your stomach!” never seemed to convince them.

          Life hack, don’t respond to this attempt at motivation by inviting the helpful person to dump their food in a blender and drink that.

          It derails everything and the only folks who remember it are the ones who got mad.

          Liked by 2 people

    3. If it weren’t for three pieces of evidence – you might think that I never got past puberty… (Of course, there is still contrary evidence from some of my childishness.)

      Still really, really dislike much of my food being in contact. Actually bought some platters on Amazon that have three compartments to them.

      Rest of the family can make their food into a big pile of everything, so I guess they got those genes from their mother.

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      1. Re: food touching other food, it also kind of depends on what culture you’re from. I’m American but I grew up in France due to my dad’s job (my family went to France when I was 4). I didn’t absorb any part of French culture except food culture: if a dish has a sauce, I don’t want that sauce on other food that it’s not meant for. E.g. if I have a salad with salad dressing, I don’t want that salad dressing on my meat. So I will either put the salad on a separate plate, or have my salad first, go rinse the plate so there’s no dressing left, then load up my plate with meat and potatoes. (But the gravy that goes on the potatoes, if it gets on the meat, doesn’t bother me: it tastes right because both are savory tastes, but a sweet salad dressing doesn’t belong on meat. Note that I have no issues with sweet & sour sauce, so it’s not the mixing of sweet and savory that bothers me, it’s the mixing of tastes that really aren’t intended to mix).

        Liked by 1 person

    4. Age 68 and I have the “no food touches another” with some exceptions. Even though I might dip or swipe food in another item.

      Have a funny story. First Christmas dinner at inlaws (we’d been married a whole 9 days). Usual argument with the new SIL and new nieces regarding “food touching”. Youngest points out none of my food touching. Not wrong. I’d not taken potatoes, dressing, or any meat, yet (because that I smother in gravy, and this has evolved since then, I was 22). Just started with salad and veggy. Response “I don’t like my food touching.” (Also didn’t take any cranberries, jello mix – the kind I despise, or cream corn. But those topics didn’t come up.) If there had been Liver & Onions? I’d have starved first.

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  14. The guy who wrote the summer Sunday School lessons said in last week’s lesson that he was diagnosed as an adult as autistic. And was warned it could hurt his career. He sees it as a point of witness: if God can make him a pastor…

    Among his peculiarities, he likes to go to cons. Mostly comics/media cons, but still.

    Personally I think autism has become trendy and therefore gets overdiagnosed.

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  16. My department (Physics) before I retired was filled with Odds, yours truly not excepted. My best friend in the department (not the same as a best friend) openly joked about being autistic. He was, too, much more than I, and also a brilliant physicist (his work made the cover of Nature). Also was the best department chair we ever had before he had to give it up to accept an endowed research chair. He knew all the ins and outs of funding and scheduling for the department and played it all as a game. Fascinating fellow, don’t hear from him much now that I’ve retired.

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  17. That doesn’t seem fair. If I were you, I’d write a letter to the Seelie Court Office of Dental Affairs and complain.

    Don’t send any such letter! If you get called to the Court, we won’t be seeing you again in our lifetimes!

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  18. We’re in an era when all the rules that let introverts and nerds prosper-or at least survive-are being overturned and thrown away. Many of the tools we created are being used by the psychotic and the extroverted to drive us out of the things we love.

    I know that I’m trying to get an autism diagnosis, because with that I can figure out better ways to handle my own issues.

    (Food issues? Hate yams. Used to love them when I was a child, now I hate them. Don’t like nuts and tomatoes-not allergies, just don’t like them.)

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  19. Jimmy Akin actually had a sort of related podcast this week.

    It’s mildly hilarious to listen to a guy who is at least as “on the spectrum” as I am laying out the definitions, how they got there, how it works, and then kinda viciously digging in “if it’s not these things causing the problem, the it’s not a disorder.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. On that last sentence: yes. I have had ADD since childhood, but in school it was easy to mistake it for “smart kid finishes worksheet before rest of class, gets bored because nothing to do, looks for something to do” so I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood. And for me, it was a disorder, because it was interfering with my ability to do normal, basic tasks such as laundry. It wasn’t until I found medication that worked for me that I could actually complete an entire load of laundry without wandering off with only half the clothes folded.

      BUT… for some people, ADD is not a disorder. One guy wrote an essay (or was it a book?) titled something like “Hunters in a Farmer’s World”. He pointed out that ADD means you don’t really have much control over your attention (it should perhaps be called Attention Control Disorder, but ACD would sound too much like OCD when spoken so perhaps it’s for the best that the acronym was ADD). BUT in some situations, like hunting, that’s an advantage. There was a sound over there: it’s very important to notice it immediately so you can spot whether it’s a deer and you should nock an arrow, or whether it’s a tiger and you should get out of Dodge. Or whether it’s a squirrel and you should ignore it. Which is why ADD people so often do well in roles like scouts (if military) or explorers/rangers (if civilian). Because they can’t help noticing everything. Which is a distraction if you’re trying to do sit-down-at-the-desk work, but if your job needs you to notice everything, ADD may actually be a benefit to you in that particular job.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. :grins: You know what job needs you to hear and respond quickly to a wide range of Red Alert stimulus?

        Watching small children.

        Guess who tends to not be diagnosed with ADD very often compared to the other sex….

        (I also giggle over how this attaches to “multi-tasking”.)

        I figure most of these things are a [heh] spectrum, and that either end is non-functional. Beyond that, there’s cultural demands and coping mechanisms that can make things work or not work.

        I’d argue that “hey I can take medication for this” is a coping mechanism. No less than other lifestyle adjustments, possibly including completely locking out toxic-to-you subcultures.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. As a programmer I could go from hyper focus probably ignore a direct hit nuclear bomb to distracted by a comment in the hall, especially if it raised the “um, wait a minute” radar. What’s that called.

        Yes, I am horrible at household completion tasks. Drove hubby nuts. Better now. But still end up working on multiple tasks at once. OTOH these days tend to complete multiple tasks at once. Although takes longer than each task individually would have taken, if that makes sense.

        Liked by 1 person

  21. If I ever get my blog started, I’ll probably call odd to the end.

    I can mask and pretend to be a normal but it burns me out fast and sends me to a mental breakdown if I have to mask consistently for a prolonged length of time. I think that’s why I have trouble staying employed.

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  22. Why is Trump going to NATO? Why is NATO still a thing?

    NATO served its purpose. The Cold War is over. We won. Communism imploded. The USSR disintegrated. NATO is now nothing more than a fossilized bureaucracy, running on inertia. Time to disband the last lingering remnant of the Cold War.

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  23. For various reasons, including technology, we’re in an age that is perfect for us. Let’s face it, most of the time in the past our kind didn’t even marry. Or if they did, they married perfectly normal people who, to be fair, probably knocked some of their sharp edges off. 

    I’ve got a theory, that it’s a demon– er, I mean, I’ve got a theory that a lot of us did marry, mostly going off of my family existing at all; it seems to either be other folks who were able to fake being normal enough to not be identified as a threat (“they’re very cold until you get to know them, but have beautiful manners”) or being weird-but-useful, both of which tended to get you matched up with another nonstandard person. My mom’s mom was probably some form of manic depressive, but she was also able to keep her husband on track instead of wandering around doing various shinies and forgetting things like “eating.”

    A famous example would be Einstein.

    Liked by 1 person

          2. Oh, good, I thought I’d forgotten a bunch of steps again. :D

            It’s been doign the “refuse to load videos” thing since they put in the “push this button to insert video/image/whatever” ‘upgrade’.

            Liked by 1 person

  25. You might look around Wyoming. There are places where the elevation isn’t too high, but it’s still really pretty. And fairly conservative in general. The taxes thing has positives and negatives. And the population is pretty small.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. There’s low elevations in Wyoming? If SAH has trouble in Denver, Cheyenne would be out of bounds, and I’d shudder at her traveling to/through Laramie.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. This was my thought too. OTOH geography is not my strong subject. Wyoming, and Montana for that matter, isn’t “all mountains”. There is a lot of rolling prairie coming in from Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, but don’t think either is considered low elevation. Lowest point in Montana is > 1800 feet and is a river canyon at the Idaho border. Wyoming it is 3100 feet, another river canyon at the South Dakota line.

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        1. Looking at cities, Cheyenne, Casper, Green River, and Rawlings, all of them are 5150 feet or above, most in the 6000′ range.

          Looks like the NE corner of the state is below 4000′, but the towns range from small to tiny; AFAIK, our Hostess prefers some city services, and those are fairly high up.

          Going to Nebraska, Sydney in the west is around 4000′, but I recall the winds. 55 mph crosswinds make driving a Subaru Forester interesting. North Platte is lower, but I’m allergic to tornadoes, and don’t much care for LAL 6 lightning. Had both one memorable night in 2014. (The next day, snow further west. It was the beginning of May, and I thought I was home already. OTOH, impressive tornadoes and Flyover County don’t coincide. EF0 to EF1, yes. :) )

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Same with the I-5 corridor. EF0, which includes “dust devils”, to EF1 “is that a tornado?”

            Used to say western Oregon didn’t get tornados, until someone pointed out that dust devils are tornados by definition. Have seen upto half dozen in smaller fields in middle Willamette valley. Rumors of more in the larger fields on both sides of the Columbia in the gorge.

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              1. Didn’t know the F0 scale went less. Just remember I’m part of the naive crowd looking at a developing funnel pointing “Is that a tornado?”

                Just know that it an interesting ride when one blows from the field across I-84, and one is a 15 year old driving. Early ’70s. ’60s something (big heavy) 4 door sedan, so while car registered the blast of wind, the worst it resulted in was a sudden unintended lane change. Imagine in most of today’s vehicles, a semi, motorhome, or towed trailer/5th wheel. Never mind, no imagination required. There are reasons why parts of I-84 and I-80 through Idaho at minimum have “High wind warning. RV’s and semis pull off next exit”, electronic signs.

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        2. I mean, below 4000 ft isn’t sea level, no, but it’s not high elevation, either. You don’t have to change your cooking temperatures/times or baking powder. And there is more humidity in general than Colorado. Since I don’t know the elevation cutoff for her, it was just another suggestion.

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          1. “more humidity in general than Colorado“

            –

            Not that I’ve ever noticed. But then never been much further east than just east of Tetons, Yellowstone, and Glacier/Waterton. I’d notice humidity. I have not done well in it the 3 times I was inflicted. (Yes, Oregon has humidity. Just not hot humidity. We generally call it rain. Though it can seem humid sometimes: 60 F, heat index 72 F, maybe 75 F, and cloudy.)

            Yes, figured that is what you were doing. Just thought I’d add some stats.

            Liked by 1 person

  26. Like I say, Everyone is “on the spectrum” and that’s why it’s a spectrum
    Also, Boomers and GenXers tend to never have been “diagnosed” (read “Drugged to the gills”) and learned to live with it, or had dealing with it. or masking it thumped into them.

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    1. Gaaahhhhhhh! That’s not how the autism spectrum works. It’s not a line from “a little autistic” to “a lot autistic”. Rather it’s a spectrum, a collection of traits, that autistic people tend to show. Some folk show more of some traits and less of others while others show less of some traits and more of others. I think of it like a sound engineer’s mix board with a bunch of sliders which can be moved around with individuals having different sets of sliders.

      People who show some of those traits, are not necessarily “a little autistic” any more than someone occasionally forgetting things has “a little dementia.”

      And, yes, Boomers and GenXers (raises hand) did tend to not be diagnosed (Praise Odin, since at that time autism was considered a form of schizophrenia and was “treated” with things like electroshock therapy.) As for “drugged to the gills” there are no drugs for autism specifically, just for comorbidities like anxiety and depression that many autistic people suffer. They/we lived with it, or not (suicide rate is high among autistic people), they dealt with it (autistic people have a life expectancy about 15 years less than allistic people), and masked (which, like forcing a normal gait when you have a leg injury is not without cost).

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    2. I’ve noticed the folks most likely to actively yank my coping mechanisms out from under me are the ones who are definitely on the spectrum, and not super good at dealing with it– so they internalized the not-healthy-for-them behaviors as “this is how you respond to that,” and they’re hyper sensitive to finding it.

      Like the screaming in my ear because I “over-reacted” to something headed for my face. And then showing that they can catch whatever it was…. I’m in my 40s, now the physical reactions didn’t kick in until my 30s to be able to do most sports ball.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. “dealing with it. or masking it thumped into them.“

      –

      This!

      I still remember the first time I was told a co-worker was home sick with a migraine. Internal response was WTH? Migraines are a valid reason to call in sick? When did that happen?

      FWIW, I not only get migraines, but they start out as Visual Migraines, then the Migraine takes a club to me. Ever try to drive, let alone work on a computer, with your vision having rainbow fog swirling in waves across? When I take Tylenol during the visual phase, that might head off or tone down the club blow phase. Anything stronger than Tylenol (and sometimes Tylenol does) guaranties a 3 day sleep. I don’t ever remember not having to deal with migraines.

      Liked by 1 person

  27. I was just channeling my Inner Lefty for my beloved to give her opinion on Mahdami and his, “city sponsored groceries,” promise, when in mid sentence I said, “There’s a tiny, tiny bunny behind you (other side of the dining room window). It’s so cute! I wish I could hold it.” At which point he said, “squirrel!”

    So I guess I am easily distracted, too. But it is a very cute baby bunny. It wou,d fit in my hand. *sigh.*

    Liked by 1 person

  30. I’m an Odd, married to an Odd who is different type of Odd. It can cause clashes, but it has been 67 years and counting. While our children are also Odds, they are all different types of Odd. We, the Odd parents tried to encourage them in their special interests and there were many. We once came home to find the second story of our house with copper wire wound around it. Seismograph crews used to use coils of copper wire in the Gulf of Whatever in the search for oil and we found those coils while we beach combed. Our neighbors thought we wished death upon the boy we gave the unicycle, but he wanted it and mastered it, and survived to have children. ADHD be damned it’s just intelligence busting out.

    Maybe there is no typical Odd, we are all different. The one I am married to will be 90 tomorrow.

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      1. Thanks, it has been a very interesting life. And my kids are following in the interesting stuff footsteps. One son sailed his boat from Portugal to Martinque last Dec. This month through the Panama Canal. We’ll see him tomorrow for his dad’s 90th, The other son has a character in the Xfiles named for him, his sister and his daughter. He wrote a musical in the last couple of years and is now a certified flight instructor. ADD is great.

        Liked by 1 person

  31. Per the issues of Autism being “A Spectrum,” I wrote up my own theory several years ago, and while it has required some refining, the meat of it is still basically the same:

    https://aspergris.blogspot.com/2013/10/dont-fade-me-to-black-new-paradigm-of.html

    The toddler is now in High School, and still very much “on The Spectrum” at age sixteen. So are his two sibs, in different ways and to varying degrees. It seems that whatever the causative factor(s), the “Spectrum” is the outer flange of a bell-curve, and “Normal” or “Neurotypical” (so-called) is in/under the middle. But we are looking DOWN on the bell from above, and the “ASD” portion is all the way around the lip of the bell. Yes, that makes the opposite of “autism” also “autism” and the shortest distance between most any two “ASD” diagnoses crosses “Normality” and continues out the other side. If you know more than two or three autists, though, you will probably say “that tracks.”

    Whomever decided it was “a spectrum” was a D-Grade eejit, in my opinion.

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    1. I like taxonomy of cancer as an analogy for taxonomy of autism.

      The wiring in humans for social behavior seems to be pervasive, complicated, and powerful. Lots and lots of motivation and action from whatever this social stuff is, and however it works.

      Cells have a lot of behavior around splitting, with a complexity of mechanisms. We notice some patterns of abnormality, and call those cancer. But the mechanisms and other stuff may be pretty different, and what to do is not uniformly the same.

      Lots and lots of ways for the social stuff to break, or only partly or inconsistently function. We are labeling a bunch of stuff as ‘autism’. Doesn’t mean we know enough for a good sorting.

      I really like your two or more dimensional guassian distribution explanation.

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    2. Mr Griffing I think your idea has merit. The single spectrum diagnosis of DSM V is a lazy way of trying to diagnose something that likely has MANY root causes. Likely there is more than one axis to graph these behaviors on based on a plethora of genes and underlying causes. The old DSM IV split was probably closer to reality than the DSM V bovine excrement.

      As usual the Psychiatrists/Psychologists have based their decisions instead of upon actual data and observation. They’d like it to be one phenomenon instead the melange of interacting and orthogonal behaviors it likely is. I believe

      1. There are likely MANY different genes involved
      2. Some of those genes are polygenes like hair color or melanin content
      3. Some of those genes are activated either in the process in utero or after being born by environmental effects (epigenes)
      4. There may also be purely environmental effects (physical and mental)

      Like many things in medicine it is an (e.g. mental health, diabetes melitus) it is an observation based description of a condition. The Root cause is NOT understood nor the mechanism(s). Example Type I diabetes has a fundamentally different cause (rejection of cells in the pancreas that create insulin) than type II diabetes (long term response to insulin by cells is reduced so MORE insulin is needed, or the response needs to be fixed). Yet until maybe 75 years ago they were viewed as primarily the same, and until the advent of the GLP-1 drugs the treatments were essentially the same.

      Consider Asperger’s which is now considered part of the autism spectrum. It displays as a tendency to hyperfocus and as a tendency to overloading easy from environmental inputs. It ran from mild cases to extremely strong ones (which tended to be called Idiot Savante). Certainly the ability to focus starts to become very useful as we become tool users. Perhaps it showed up as a more capable tracking ability, or an ability to shape stone tools more effectively. It probably doesn’t get selected against or selected for explicitly so the genes keep flowing through the population. It goes in and out of value as our societies change until near the start of the industrial revolution. At that point the hyper focus becomes VERY valuable tending to confer increased value and/or status. So maybe these genes gain some advantage in the population. Since then the advantage has only grown. On top of that as we started to take females with the same attributes (who had probably always existed but got shuffled off into corners mostly before mid 20th century) and put them with young males of the same attributes (at say college or workplaces) we tend to get the various folks producing offspring. But not all the genes are the same and some of the combinations are rather detrimental. That piled on with the fact that we don’t have the children dying at an early age and having a plethora of other issues meaning doctors have time to notice other issues combined with the fact that BOTH of their parents are hyper focused fix it type of folks and voila an explosion of folks judged to be on the spectrum.

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  32. I don’t know if it’s simply shifting awareness, or that people are aging better nowadays. But it’s interesting that within a human lifetime “tism” has changed definitions. It used to be having a/the”tism” meant rheumatism.

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