One of the many reasons I hate how post-literacy dictates everything must be in video format. HUGE waste of my time, when I can read the info a lot faster than some rambling presenter in love with the sound of their own voice can dribble it out.
This.
You realize, of course, that this only applies when the text version of the info has been written with something approaching competence.
Speaking of post-literacy. It’s a two-way phenomenon.
I can typically puzzle out dubiously written text more easily than I can filter through audio clutter and poor sound quality for those little nuggets of information. YMMV, of course.
Okay, I have a truly mini rant.
I moved to Portland, Oregon six months ago. The naming of the streets has been bugging me ever since. To wit: There is quadrant system for placing the addresses directionally, such that EVERY street name has its quadrant included. The axes are Burnside St., which divides the region N/S and the Willamette River, more or less dividing it E/W.
For instance, Causey Street lies entirely to the south of Burnside, and entirely to the east of whatever imaginary line is represented by the river. You’d think, therefore, that no quadrant identifier would be necessary, right? But NOOOOOOO, it HAS to be SE Causey Street. Glisan Street (to the north of Burnside) DOES cross the Willamette, and it would be perfectly adequate to designate East Glisan and West Glisan. But, once again NOOOOOOO, they just HAVE to remind us that it’s to the north of Burnside.
Sure, there are a certain number of streets that cross both Burnside AND the Willamette, and the quadrant designators save the City Planners the drudgery of having to arbitrarily decide whether they run primarily N/S or E/W. Other than those rare cases, whole scheme is unnecessary, and makes me a little stabby.
Also, it’s news to me that the city considers itself “The City of Roses,” or “Rose City,” or some such. When the fuck are they going to get around to moving the Rose Bowl, and the Tournament of Roses Parade up here? Those folks in Pasadena have some nerve. It’s time to put up or shut up, Portland!
Some of us are jealous that someone at least tried to have street numbers/quadrants make sense. Ever tried to get around Boston, where they literally made the meandering cowpaths into streets? [needs citation]
I grew up in Milwaukee, where the numbered streets started at the river (Water St.) and headed west. When I was a kid I heard of a Marquette University, so I looked it up (in the phone book, of course, no internet). “Hey, it’s at 1250 Wisconsin Ave., so it’s basically downtown.” 12 blocks from the river and 6 blocks from the Moon Fun Shop (that was my young self’s reference point).
I’ve always been impressed that they kept the addresses and streets organized, even out into the suburbs and way beyond: you could head west and Wauwatosa began at 60th street, Elm Grove at 124th street, Brookfield at 157th, and Pewaukee about 220th Street (at that point the rural addresses start, like N47W22279 … hey, can’t get more griddy than that).
Of course you could have the limit case of logical as we have down here in greater suburban Miami. Simplifying just a bit for dramatic effect …
Each historically separate town is a grid with a center point. All east/west roads are labeled “Street”. All north/south ones are "Avenue"s. Let’s say Beachville’s center is where Main St crosses Central Ave. So far so logical. Wonderfully, consistently, perfectly logical.
The first road north of Main St. is North 1st St. The first road south is South 1st St. Likewise the first road east of center Ave is East 1st Ave. The first road west of Central is West 1st Ave.
So the four intersections surrounding the center of town are all the intersection of 1st and 1st. Starting from the northeast quadrant and proceeding clockwise it’s the intersection at 100 NE 1st St and 100 NE 1st Ave, 100 SE 1st St and 100 SE 1st Ave, 100 SW 1st St and 100 SW 1st Ave, and 100 NW 1st St and 100 NW 1st Ave. Clear as mud yet?
Seems sensible until you try to talk to the geographically challenged. Who can’t tell Northeast from Southwest from widdershins upper-crust 3rd class.
Then of course each town has slowly expanded until sometime in the 1970s when they all bumped into each other. So SE 26the Ave in Beachville is also known as 37th NW Ave in Fishtown, the next 'burb to the south, whose east/west centerpoint is a long way east of Beachville’s centerpoint.
Over xmas I met my brother’s son’s latest girlfriend. She is Vietnamese and a very nice person. I hope they stay together.
She was introduced as a tattoo artist, so we talked about tattoos and tattooing a good bit. I asked if she was into stick&pokes and she was. At one point I looked around for some India ink I thought I had. We were all eventually too drunk to go further.
I found out yesterday that she successfully defended her thesis and now has her PhD in cellular and molecular biology. Turns out she is somewhat well known in her field, with a decent list of published papers including Adjuvant Screen Identifies Synthetic DNA-Encoding Flt3L and CD80 Immunotherapeutics as Candidates for Enhancing Anti-tumor T Cell Responses, which I’ve read and kinda-sorta understand.
All I can think about was how I was explaining some tattoo stuff, simplifying it for her so she’d understand.
You been had, my friend. But good.
But she still owes me a tattoo! I’ve seen her portfolio, she’s good.
I just feel like an idiot.
I’ve found that End followed by a Page Up or three gets me close depending on how much junk is appended to the page.
Yep. This is a pretty accurate paraphrase of a rant I posted a year or so back. I absolutely despise video articles.
But now you’ve got the perfect opening for your next conversation. “Hey! I’ve read your paper on … Could you dumb it down for me?”
I use a (paid) app called Plan to Eat, which among other things, auto-imports recipes after stripping them of all the extra text. It also lets you schedule meals and has a cooking mode so you can read the recipe without your phone going idle. I love it.
I’ve been going through some shit, not the least of which has been trying to figure out what exactly is going on with our toddler son. He’s got pediatric feeding disorder due to a sensory processing issue and a year of OT has not improved things. He’s got communication and social delays. He can speak whole grammatical sentences but he isn’t using them to communicate, more like describe things. “It’s raining outside!” etc. Then he will repeat the sentence over and over with escalating intensity, until you say, “Yes, it’s raining outside.” He can’t answer questions unless they are factual. He can’t hold a conversation of any kind. He’s obsessed with numbers, counting in particular, and he’s on a fast track to hypernumeracy. I don’t think there’s an upper limit to how high he can count, the highest we’ve gotten is 640- but he does this for hours a day, he’s very rigid in how to play with his toys, no imaginative play, mostly rearranging his toys in the shapes of numbers. He has a couple freakouts every night when he plays with his dinosaurs and they fall out of number formation. They have to form the number 20.
When you try to show him alternative ways to play with his things, he gets very upset and physically grabs his toys away and screams. When his schedule deviates the slightest bit, he gets very upset and cries and screams. When he encounters the most minor of frustrations, he cries and screams. And he seems largely indifferent to his peers. He’s also behind in problem solving and gross motor.
You see where I’m going with this? We think there’s a high probability he has autism. Probably on the higher functioning end of the spectrum. He doesn’t fit the stereotype in some ways. He can form strong bonds with adults. His eye contact is decent. He likes to be cuddled. He seems to grasp social smiling and smiles all the time, though I’m not sure he grasps other emotional states. So maybe we’re wrong. Maybe he just happens to have a lot of delays at once, I don’t know, but when I ask my son if he likes dinosaurs, and his response is “Water” while he stares at a running bathtub, I am going to very reasonably assume he needs some kind of help.
This is not my rant. My rant is about how the people in my life have responded when I try to talk about this. While some have said, “Yeah, we kind of saw that coming based on how you’ve described him,” most people have responded in a variety of dismissive and invalidating ways, ranging from, “he seems fine to me,” “COVID has put a lot of kids behind schedule,” and “they’re always behind in something” and “actually that’s pretty normal.” It’s almost like they are trying to talk us out of getting him evaluated.
The result is I feel so alone in this, and then I get angry at my FIL again because he was the one who was supposed to support us, that’s what he led us to believe and because he’s checked out, we really have to figure this out on our own. I try not to catastrophize about the impact this could have on my ability to work full time or the expenses we might have to incur. But yeah, hearing people dismiss my concerns both makes me insecure about my own perceptions and just reinforces the sense that we are utterly alone in this.
No, fuck, that would be a deal maker! A Chick tract with pizza? I mean, I would probably have to get stoned first, and I no longer use cannabis… but for that, I would give a big toke on a fat joint. Just for the entertainment value.
It is advertising. All the stories are loaded with keywords. Search engines read the keywords and rank the page higher. Then more people see the adverts.
It really irritates me too. If I want, say, to make a swordfish steak with pomegranite sauce, (something I would recommemd, by the way) I don’t want to page through some chef’s mindless bullshit fluff before I get to the actual recipe. I want the ingredients, and the method.
I don’t care if the chef’s mum’s aunt made this in Sicily, I want to make it in my home, and I want a recipe, not a story.
10.5% of my Facebook friends have died in the past week.
At this rate…
People still do this to us and we have a diagnosis. I’ll be like “Yeah, daughter’s been putting literally everything in her mouth again. I should probably get her to the doctor to test her for deficiencies again, just in case.” and they’ll be like, “Oh, kids just put things in their mouths, you worry too much.” But, inside, I’ll be like, “Not at 8 years old, they don’t. And not literally everything, they don’t. You don’t cut your kid’s hair short just to keep them from getting a hair ball do you? DO YOU???”
Sometime, you just want to smack people.
Regardless, you know your kid the best. And, from my point of view, it sounds like your kid might be on the spectrum. My daughter does smile when smiled at. She loves cuddles. But she also can’t hold conversations. She doesn’t understand social graces at all. She has NO stranger danger. She will, literally, in the literal sense, climb into strangers’ laps and has done this in the past. So, yeah, she could pass for neurotypical for about 5 minutes, she really isn’t.
I’m rooting for you, @Spice_Weasel. You are gonna get this figured out. There’s another side to this valley and you will get there.
Thanks. Glad I’m not alone.
Ha! Vindication. I spoke with one of Wee Weasel’s caretakers today. She mentioned that he had a hard time when a kid tried to play with him today, which led to a broader conversation about how he’s doing. She said the only time he tolerates being around other kids is during music and dancing time, but that he does get pretty overwhelmed by everything going on at once. She described him as “bright, sweet, and socially weird.” That’s my boy.
I told her we are getting him evaluated for autism and she encouraged me to do so. She said she sees a lot of parents wait until they are four or five years old to get help. She said to trust my own judgement. So that was validating.
Also apparently his numbers obsession is not limited to home. She says he counts constantly there, too.
First thing when he walked in the door tonight. “Numbers! Numbers!” So we’re doing numbers. I assume I have a future accountant on my hands. (Or engineer. He likes to see how stuff works, too.)
Or vampire?
I would like to inform the producers of Sesame Street that just because you have the title “Count”, it doesn’t mean that you’re obsessed with counting things. Cite: