Daniel > Recent Status Updates

I feel like it's time to try some fiction again, but if experience is any guide, I must make a sacrifice to the gods of "meh". Meaning, I need something crap. I hope for enjoyable crap, but the point is low expectations and no particular emotional investment in whether or not I end up enjoying it. Hmmm...

Not that it's bad or uninteresting in any way, but it's going to take me 6 months to get through this I expect. I don't dislike seeing all the book covers and photos, (not so big on illegible handwritten letters), but it would be so much easier to read the interview in normal size book or kindle format.

Ah, psychology. Where not only can the experiments underpinning some of your core beliefs not be reproduced, some of the ones that can be reproduced turn out to be bullshit too. :) This book could stand to distinguish better when it is discussing emotions as experiences vs emotions as concepts as conflating the two seems to at least occasionally lead to misrepresenting the other side of the argument.

Have you ever actually sat down and tried to read a coffee table book? Nice for pictures, but it's a horrible format for actual text. So awkward. And damn does this have a lot of words for a coffee table book. It's basically pages and pages of interview transcripts with photos, book cover art, and images of illegible letters scattered about.

Obtuse, muddy presentation of an otherwise fascinating subject makes it hard to get through a page without drowsing off or having to reread multiple times.

Why, yes. I am incapable of sticking with any particular book at the moment.

This is making me yearn for dry technical writing... :/

6: Sensory profile: interesting, though devoid of practical advice. what is this alien world where socks have seams and sockets have switches though?
7: Diagnosis, etc: meh.

4: Echopraxic behaviour. Ok explanations.
5: Anxiety: I kind of understand his framework but the specific examples of both PNT and autistic stability factors seem like nonsense.

Chapter 3: Explanation of common social interactions from the pov of autistic people so NTs can understand. With a side of bitching. The very last sentence mentions a resource potential of interest to people with autism. Points for explaining that not only is the social event itself stressful, but all the time leading up to it, and some time after it.

Pages of spent bitching about labels: 20/20
Pages of useful information: 0/20

Really? Did we need a 9 page discussion of labels / terminology in a 120 page book?

Apparently, in this book every chapter is chapter 1. wtf.

"The muffin-cupcake distinction is social reality"

I think my kindle downloaded this from an alternate universe.

Ugh, this is going to be so problematic, I can tell already. a. Trying to identify a physiological emotional fingerprint with the tools they're using is like trying to diagnose your car's engine problems with a thermometer. b. The text so far stinks of strawmen to me and I'm not sure if it's willful or just sloppy writing.

Not sure if it's me or the book. I really liked Mindfulness in Plain English years ago when I read it. I'm having issues with this one though. I cringe every time he mentions "the elements".

So this is just under 22,300 words, which puts it somewhere in the 60-90 page range depending on formatting choices. Where the hell they came up with 32 I have no idea.

There's no way this is just 32 pages.

Sooooo, boring.

This is really not what I was expecting.

Free, at last!!!

Yep. Saw that coming.

Ugh, so much good stuff in here, but why is it soooo long! This would have been amazing at half the length.

This is just such a weird book.

We have now entered the kids today, parents today, get off my lawn portion of the book.

It feels a bit like Grandin thinks language has no value beyond it's social function.