What pissed you off today? Mark II

[Blue]

Myself as usual.
In an amazing display of procrastination I've lazily put off doing an important bit of personal work for a full week now, it would take two days at most to accomplish.

Cat just started licking me as I typed...
I've suspected that she could read English for a while.
Today it's English, tomorrow it's thermonuclear warheads...

 

[Azuldrgon]

the road after snow

 

[_Necrosomantic_]

Our jagoff, reality show president is feuding with our action star, former governor... I think I know what's happened. I've hit my head and it's hemorrhaging. That's the only explanation for this. That, or I've finally succumbed to insanity. Jesus...

http://images.amcnetworks.com/ifc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Shining-CIA.gif

 

[RjThoughts]

Receiving an email from a prospective employee that basically told us that, if we didn't hire him, expect a notice from his lawyer.

 

[SassyKatz71]

Receiving an email from a prospective employee that basically told us that, if we didn't hire him, expect a notice from his lawyer.

Oh wow. People do that ? On what grounds ?

 

[RjThoughts]

Oh wow. People do that ? On what grounds ?

His belief that we tend to hire minorities and veterans over white males.

We hire who's ever qualified, BUT we do give veterans and their families precedence, since the two owners of the agency are vets themselves.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Receiving an email from a prospective employee that basically told us that, if we didn't hire him, expect a notice from his lawyer.

That seems like a pretty good sign that he's not somebody you want to hire

 

[RjThoughts]

That seems like a pretty good sign that he's not somebody you want to hire

He lacks the education the job posted and he applied for requires. To me, he seems like a "Couch Programmer," someone who took online courses in C# and Java, and expects people to hire him.

 

[Bramblethorn]

He lacks the education the job posted and he applied for requires. To me, he seems like a "Couch Programmer," someone who took online courses in C# and Java, and expects people to hire him.

And a couch lawyer too!

Lack of quals makes it an easy decision, but even if he had a great CV that sort of stunt would be disqualifying IMHO.

I'm not saying all guys with that kind of attitude end up shooting up their workplace, but an awful lot of workplace shooters do start out with that kind of attitude. And who wants to work with entitled assholes?

 

[RjThoughts]

And a couch lawyer too!

Lack of quals makes it an easy decision, but even if he had a great CV that sort of stunt would be disqualifying IMHO.

I'm not saying all guys with that kind of attitude end up shooting up their workplace, but an awful lot of workplace shooters do start out with that kind of attitude. And who wants to work with entitled assholes?

My cousin, one of the owners, was ready to call his bluff, but her wife told her to not the lawyers, just forward the email and let them have a laugh.

This wasn't the first time we've had entitled little pricks apply, he won't be the last.

 

[LallyH]

Side effects of new meds affecting my breathing

Seems I've reached the point of having to accept relatively minor debilities to avoid major ones

Bugger.

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[seela]

My newly developed (as in the past few years) knee-jerk reaction to say no to everything even remotely uncomfortable but possibly fun.

Also the light on the mute button on my computer won't switch off anymore even if the mute isn't on. How annoying.

 

[Misshotndeep]

Nothing at all.

 

[RjThoughts]

Idiots who believe, since they own SUVs, can drive the speed limit and get in the way of snowplows.

 

[Vixandra]

Having my four year old banging on the door crying and begging for mommy after I collapsed on the tile and broke earlier. Well, more sad for him and hating the circumstances.

Damn movement disorder is getting worse and worse and no one knows why. It seems like I get 1/2 or 1/4 the spoons or energy units I got two years ago. I've seen specialists, I'm a pita drug treatment wise because I get the 1 in 1000 side effects to nearly everything and I refuse to give up my medical mmj until they find something that stops my pain. Then I would not have to mask it, which is all weed does and sometimes no amount can mask it.

Hurt my right wrist (dominant side) Tuesday night I think but by yesterday couldnt use my keyboard and trackball without whimpering and having to call off early (work from home, boss is amazingly understanding of my med issues). Still killing me today as I almost finished a big project. Out of 135 sections of data, I'm missing two, despite two days of asking for it. I don't like incomplete projects at end of the business day, especially once I take my pain meds I'm not suitable to work for 3-6 hours minimum depending on what and how much I took.

To:dr- fuck having a mystery movement disorder that makes me fall 2-13 times a day and is way fucking with my life and ability to get stuff done.

 

[La damnee elle la licorne]

 

[Bramblethorn]

Woo, somebody created an entire website to write about how awful Aspies like me are!

 

[Vixandra]

Woo, somebody created an entire website to write about how awful Aspies like me are!

What a craven sickening site. No "contact us here" or Facebook group to tell them their theories are horseshit. My son is high functioning autistic and has empathy for others. Hell, he gets sad when people around him or his cartoons are sad, happy when they are happy.

I don't think you're awful, Bramblethorn.

I think those running that web site are sickening.

 

[Blue]

Woo, somebody created an entire website to write about how awful Aspies like me are!

Hoo boy.
Want me to do a deconstruction of it?

 

[MeekMe]

That website is all kinds of wrong. WTF


My rant: stupidjerkfaceasshole! I don't get to see my husband much these days and you're digging into my time you fucking dirtbag!!! Argh!

 

[Bramblethorn]

What a craven sickening site. No "contact us here" or Facebook group to tell them their theories are horseshit. My son is high functioning autistic and has empathy for others. Hell, he gets sad when people around him or his cartoons are sad, happy when they are happy.

Uh huh. I have difficulty reading others but it doesn't mean I don't care. My partner's Aspie too, and probably the biggest thing I have to nag her about is that she spends so much energy on trying to look after other people (sick/housebound friends, me, ...) that she doesn't have enough left over herself.

I dug around a bit. The creator of that site has another website about psychopaths. Somewhere on that site she mentions that she closed comments on the Aspergers site because autistic people kept criticising her... wow, I wonder why?

Hoo boy.
Want me to do a deconstruction of it?

Feel free!

I did notice that she seems to be exhibiting several of the same negatives that she associates with Asperger's. She says we're obsessive, we see the world in black-and-white, we're prone to brooding excessively on past wrongs - and, yeah, there's truth in all that. But she's the one who's set up a website about how any relationship with an Aspie is doooooomed because of her bad experience with being married to an Aspie guy and having an Aspie friend who didn't disclose that to her.

(Me, I like for friends/colleagues/lovers to know I'm Aspie because it helps with mutual understanding, but I hold off on disclosing until I know I can trust them.)

 

[WS_D]

Waiting.

 

[Vixandra]

Uh huh. I have difficulty reading others but it doesn't mean I don't care. My partner's Aspie too, and probably the biggest thing I have to nag her about is that she spends so much energy on trying to look after other people (sick/housebound friends, me, ...) that she doesn't have enough left over herself.

I dug around a bit. The creator of that site has another website about psychopaths. Somewhere on that site she mentions that she closed comments on the Aspergers site because autistic people kept criticising her... wow, I wonder why?

So did ya know she's fucktarded enough to list her real name and links to her books? https://www.amazon.com/Adelyn-Birch/e/B019PLC03O/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1


Edit to add:
And the sow has a Facebook site- https://www.facebook.com/pg/PathsandLove/posts/?ref=page_internal


I get kinda (okay super) defensive of anyone on the autism spectrum, admittedly mostly because of my son. Second- While there are key differences, I read a lot of another Lit posters writings on Aspergers and her life and it gave me more hope for my son's future. They're not on her sig line anymore so I can't share (shoulda bookmarked on my desktop now that I think about it.). Someone saying she is heartless and lacks empathy is not only grossly wrong but needlessly cruel.

As to Birch- How many others has she hurt? I don't have the tech know how to bring her down but I can run a hell of a search engine. Didn't help today was a horrific pain day and if I can distract myself from it by dishing out truth, all the better.

 

[Blue]

Feel free!

eeeeee!

So...

The main purpose of this website is to illustrate the supposedly buried truth that people with Asperger's can have empathy problems.
Don't know about you but I've never come across an article about Asperger's which didn't illustrate that in some way...

Well, as you'd expect, 10 minutes of checking the validity of sources used on this site reveal an array of context-free quote mining, heavily academically criticized studies, obviously biased articles and a fundamental lack of basic nuance.

I can't deconstruct the entire site so I'll use some of the more egregious examples to give you a feel for it.

Examples:
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Quote mining, lack of basic understanding of psychology, lack of nuance;

On the page trying to compare Asperger's with psychopathy:

“It can so thoroughly destroy a relationship that at one time seemed invulnerable. If it’s well-hidden, and you’re not specifically looking for it, the condition can reveal itself slowly, one misunderstanding and baffling meltdown at a time. And it makes me wonder… How many of us are struggling with something that reveals itself in such cruelly deceptive ways?”
~David Finch, has Asperger's.

So this is a prime example of dishonest quote mining you see from people like Kirk Cameron, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Wakefield and others trying to push an agenda. Take a statement from a figure who you know would disagree with you, chop it up and make it sound like they'd be agreeing with you to make yourself sound more credible.

Original article by David Finch

Full quote:
That's how Asperger syndrome can so thoroughly destroy a relationship that at one time seemed invulnerable. If it's well-hidden, and you're not specifically looking for it, the condition can reveal itself slowly, one misunderstanding and baffling meltdown at a time. But for Kristen and me it's no longer hidden, and we used this knowledge of the so-called disorder to rebuild our marriage. With my diagnosis she found patience and understanding, I found self-acceptance and the will to learn to manage the behaviors that strained our relationship, and together-together-we are finding our way to the marriage we always wanted.

And it makes me wonder, as I sit here scripting tomorrow's inevitable didactic lecture on pygmy fruit bats: How many of us are struggling with something that reveals itself in such cruelly deceptive ways? How many of us are plainly misunderstood, even by those who know and love us best?

David Finch's piece is a sort of marriage counselling session which is meant to illustrate that, shocker, having an autistic partner can be troublesome. But the article describes his and his partner's attempt to get their marriage back on track for each other's benefit. Hardly a trait of somebody with "Zero empathy, much like psychopaths" as this site put it.

-

Now, about the nuance I mentioned. Claims are made all over the site that because certain forms of autism have symptoms similar to e.g psychopathy (Take note that the only symptom of psychopathy she ever seems to be sure of intertwining with autism is the potential for a lack of empathy) then they must be in some way intertwined. See the further reading listed on the website; A Link Between Autism and Mass Murder?, and the page I'm currently discussing for more examples.

Side note; I get the impression that the author's selection of horror stories committed by autistic people isn't supposed to be a "Hey, reality check, people with asperger's aren't all Messiah's despite what Tumblr would have you believe." but more an implication of "THEY ARE ALL CAPABLE OF THIS!!". Self defeating logic, barely worthy of comment.

It's worth noting that I, whose entire background in psychology comes from a single read-through of the DSM 4 and a comedy book about sociopaths, seem to have a more in depth understanding of clinical nuance than this alleged PhD recipient. A schizophrenic, a narcissist, somebody with excessive paranoia and an autistic will all have similar symptoms to each other, but clearly there's something uniquely different going on with the psychology of all of them. A diagnosis is determined by a subject exhibiting a specific collection of related symptoms, to say that schizophrenia and narcissism must be neurologically related because the afflicted hold unrealistic perceptions of reality would be just as preposterous as what the author of the site claims.

I'm perfectly willing to accept that asperger's and narcissism may corroborate, but do forgive me for not taking it to be true on the word of somebody with clear biases.

------------------------------------------------------------

Autism and narcissism, more quote mining.

Oh! Back so soon!

The primary reference for the author's constant claims that autism and narcissism may be linked is a woman called Dr. Susan Heitler, The story behind this one is much shorter. She's some doctor of (I think) 'clinical psychology' who makes her money as an online marriage counsellor. My problem's not with her, but the source material on the site linked me to a Psychology Today article where she repeatedly postulates a possible link between Asperger's and narcissism.

She's honest enough to tell us in the conclusion that her counselling has made her familiar with narcissists but she lacks any detailed background working with autistic people or familiarity with the condition, and so her claims are really just assumptions. So I guess a criticism I could throw at her is to not sounds so sure of herself next time round.
So the author of the site uses sources who admit that they don't actually know what they're talking about. Nuff' said.

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Framework of the author's view of Asperger's, criticized by other academics.
If you read through a few pages on the site you probably came across something about the 'Empathizing - Systematizing Theory', if you didn't but you've done reading about Asperger's before then you've probably come across some of the claims made in it. I have and didn't know the source until now.
It's not that it's total BS, the author just seems to heavily subscribe to the more dubious aspects of the *hypothesis. (Replications of the experiments used to justify the theory return different results)

Critique is too long for me to write, here's the wikipedia article on it.

I'll give the developer of the theory, Simon Baron-Cohen, some credit. He seems to genuinely be a major contributor to modern understanding of the neurology of autism and not just some quack selling autism-free vaccines. But hey, even Einstein once claimed he'd proven that the universe was static.

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Post Traumatic Relationship Disorder

I'll start this by saying that there is no wikipedia page, Mayo Clinic, Psychology today, WHO, scholarly articles or any other generally somewhat reputable source for information on this 'PTRD' phenomenon.

From what explanations that do exist (Thanks CafeMom.com) it apparently refers simply to PTSD acquired through an abusive relationship. Don't know why they couldn't just say that...

-CUT OFF-
I was going to write about how the author seems to claim that partners of Asperger's developing PTSD is just a by-product of being is said relationship. Effectively claiming that Asperger's people are destined to be so physically and emotionally abusive that their partners overwhelmingly develop PTSD from being with them. If that were true, I doubt this woman would be the only person I'd ever heard claiming that don't you? That would be a simple warning on every medical site just like you see on articles discussing the behaviour of hardcore narcissists and low functioning sociopaths.

I say I would write that, but my internet is being crappy and the site is no longer loading so I don't trust my memory to give an accurate depiction of the website's claims. But if that is the case, then refer to previous comment!

I'd keep going but without access to material there's not much I can do.