CSotD: Neurodiversity & Other Amusements
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Dan Piraro has a fascinating and important piece on his blog that ties in with my own experience of having been punished as a young lad for what we now recognize as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and being fortunate enough to turn it into an advantage.
He was punished more savagely, since I was only in the hands of Sister Mary de Sade for a year and he spent all of elementary school getting whacked with rulers in Catholic schools. However, while I missed a lot of the physical abuse, we each got a full dose of being called spoiled, lazy and not living up to our great potentials.
I noted the other day that my ADHD gave me hyperfocus so I could buy the book and write the paper the night before it was due, but Dan goes further to describe how his “disabilities” have become superpowers in his highly successful career. You really should click and read it.
It struck me in particular because I had a conversation yesterday about the same thing: How my ADHD had turned into a career skill for a reporter.
Hyperfocus meant I could do a complex interview and hit those same-day deadlines, while the ability to work under that kind of pressure also makes people with ADHD particularly skilled as first responders. When all Hell is breaking loose, the world is running at our speed.
Dan also describes a relationship with graphics that sounds to me as if it drifts into synesthesia, but, in any case, at least gives him a focal point:
I have a theory of why doodling allows me to pay better attention: Language and creativity operate from opposite sides of the brain. If I calm the creative side with drawing, it allows me to pay better attention to speech with the other side. When I look at those doodles later, I can remember what was being said when I created them.
It may be why he draws so much better than you or I could, just as Carlos Santana has a relationship with his guitar that few people share. For my part, when I write, I go into what athletes call “The Zone,” and I think it’s the same place the surgeon who spent 12 hours saving my life was working from.
I wish it were possible to identify everybody’s zone, because I think we’ve each got one but I know how fortunate I’ve been, and Dan has been, to find ours.
Here’s what that lazy, spoiled kid produced for this past Sunday at Bizarro (KFS).
Not only is the art spectacular but the theme ties into all sorts of things I’ve been pondering lately, which started when I watched the 1978 Superman movie and realized how untwisted it was, and how not only have superhero movies become miserably dark and violent, but the bad guys seem to be becoming the heroes.
Just as the Wicked Witch of the West has turned into the beloved star of a major musical. If she weren’t green, she’d be up for a cabinet position.
Also my inner Scrooge is getting its annual workout with all the stores filled with Christmas music. I came to the realization in Target yesterday that the only thing worse than hearing Gene Autry sing Rudolph for the 10,000th time is hearing someone else trying to make it sound hip and happenin’.
However, I’m not prepared to make Scrooge the hero of any movie unless Carol Kane whacks him upside the head with a toaster.
I’d like it even more if it were just 120 minutes of that.
And speaking of unwanted innovations and my talent for complaining, F Minus (AMS) reminded me of what I used to refer to as “Kids in the Kitchen,” when restaurants let their staff invent “fun, innovative takes on classic dishes,” which I guess is still going on or Tony Carrillo wouldn’t be mocking it.
I don’t deal with the issue anymore because I’ve found a hole-in-the-wall Greek pizzeria that knows how pizza works and a place called “that gas station Chinese place” because it’s in the corner of a convenience store. The woman who runs it is from Fujian and homesick Chinese-American kids from Dartmouth flock there because it’s food like their mothers make, and neither fun nor innovative nor Chun King.
Juxtaposition of the Day
So, when AI takes over the jobs of cartoonists, characters will have the right number of fingers, but not intentionally.
Meanwhile, the scenario in Brewster Rockit is tragically realistic, because while AI is incompetent, it’s inexpensive, and when owners contemplate those two factors, we know which one comes out on top.
Case in point is the LA Times, where the billionaire dinglefritz who owns the place is adding AI to provide balance for reporters’ stories, which assumes that (A) their reporters are biased and that (B) AI is genuinely, not just artificially, intelligent.
AI is not intelligent and any competent journalists there are either quitting or polishing their resumes. I suppose whatever dregs are left won’t be any smarter or have any better judgment than the Uniblab criticizing their work.
Or the jackass who owns the paper.
It’s not just the newspaper owners, as First Dog on the Moon reminds us, as warehouse workers put their tools down at Woolworths.
Woolworths seems to have a much larger footprint in Australia than it does here, perhaps because the one here went belly up some years ago. Also the one in Australia wasn’t related to the one here in the first place.
Which I guess means that their Woolworths may be run by greedy nitwits, but they’re smarter greedy nitwits than the ones who drove our Woolworths into the ground.
Glen Le Lievre notes that the strike has ended but he ran the cartoon anyway and why not?
Here’s the logo he’s riffing on, and it does look a bit Grinchy, doesn’t it?
All those empty shelves make me dream of what it would be like to live in a place where picket lines are honored. Not only is their Woolworths still in business, but so are their trade unions.
The workers haven’t always won, but they’ve produced some good music and they haven’t give up.
Good on ya, mates.
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