The Weekly Infodump, 2023/09/13
Welcome to The Weekly Infodump, which contains a short write-up of whatever is on my mind. You are allowed to share this newsletter with others and I hope you will.
Once again, I'm off schedule because I now have a Kindergartener.
And with less than a full week of school under our belts, we've already received the Traditional Note from the Teacher, acknowledging our child's intelligence, curiosity, and sense of humor, but also his inability to sit still, stop talking, or follow instructions the first time they're issued. Which...yep, pretty much.
With our powers combined, and to precisely nobody's surprise, my spouse and I have produced a child with Double ADHD and before you say "wait that's not how genetics works" consider: the other night I was accidentally kicked in the face by a five-year-old who, instead of putting on pajamas, like I asked at least 27 times, was pretending to be Hitmontop, a breakdancing Pokémon of the Johto region.
(television) Speaking of public school, we are finally, entirely caught up on Abbott Elementary. It deserves all the praise it routinely gets, which is much, and actually that has actually always surprised me because...I mean, y'all realize that this is a sitcom full of autistic people, right?
I don't want to say it too loudly, in case it turns out we can't have nice things. (Remember how Everything's Gonna Be Okay got cancelled as soon as its main character got diagnosed? Exactly.) But...I see you, Abbott Elementary. I see you and I recognize you.
Besides, I think maybe that's the trick: as long as nobody points out the obvious, we can all pretend that this is a perfectly normal show about totally neurotypical people doing all kinds of ordinary NT stuff. NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS. Kind of the way that everyone on Frasier was Entirely Straight, Doing All the Heterosexual Things.
Not long ago, my sister and I were discussing how being autistic in the today times must be similar to being queer in the early-to-mid-20th-century, where it's dangerous to live out in the open and thus, everything is coded in a very Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink "Do you like TRAINS, Squire? You know, MODEL RAILROADS. Eh? EH??? TIMETABLES????" way.
(film) We also watched the 2022 horror-comedy M3GAN, which in my head I will always, always pronounce "Em-three-gan" (thanks in large part to Who? Weekly). I found it to be a wholesome and heartwarming film about a neurodivergent family battling the bullies of the world with charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, though a perusal of Rotten Tomatoes suggests that this is perhaps not a mainstream opinion?
But if my ongoing immersion into the world of Hollywood Autism has taught me anything, it's that most of the time, what I get out of a film is very different than what the normative viewer comes away with. The things that are heartwarming to the NTs are terrifying to me, and vice versa.
To me, both aunt and niece read as autistic -- they way they move through space, and dress, and interact feels extremely familiar; both are fairly isolated, and utilize technology to meet the needs that society can't or won't. But to me, the most autistic part of the film is the intense bond between the little girl, Cady, and M3GAN, her lifelike AI doll companion, and (no spoilers!) the way in which that bond is eventually broken.
(links) And now for some IRL horror! I've been trying to keep this space free of the current reigning Worst Autist*, Elon Musk, but alas, his bullshit has finally burst the pipes and flooded the Infodump-o-sphere. I'm not going to link directly, but...here's a hint!
*Yes, I do keep a list, because I think it's an important reminder that autism does not preclude someone from being a flaming asshole, one capable of inflicting great harm upon humanity.
I will also say that I find it Very Interesting that 2 (or 3, depending on how you count the Hipster Eugenicists) of the Top 5 are literal white supremacists on quixotic pro-natalist quests to populate the Earth with their offspring.
(My hypothesis is that it's part of the toxic legacy of the Asperger syndrome diagnosis, which was a well-intentioned move to improve access to support to autistic kids without intellectual disabilities and/or language delays that nevertheless ended up, in practice, creating a harmful divide that persists today.)
Now, generally speaking, I feel about the ratio of autistic:allistic people much the way the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt about the appropriate number of women on the Supreme Court. Like, 1 in 36 is pretty good, but it could be better.
Still, JFC, not like this!
Incidentally, as someone with a higher than average number of siblings (due to a combination of older Catholic dad, younger Ex-vangelical mom, and the totally foreseeable reproductive coercion that resulted from such a union), I gotta say that "too many kids" is THE weirdest rich person flex.
Just buy another yacht! Or build a space yacht, since apparently the plan is to abandon us all on the dying Earth? Fun times, late-stage capitalism.
(social media) As my faithful readers know, I always try to end this newsletter on a positive note, so -- with the usual disclaimers, i.e., I don't know anyone's life or journey, this is a purely an observation and does not constitute any sort of diagnosis -- may I present the most autistic thing I have personally seen this week: Mandy Patinkin's Instagram.
There is no more to read.