octoperson

(first post)

Thanks to everybody who took part. Now it's time to see the results. I've counted up everyone's agreements and disagreements (using some amount of reading between the lines. I didn't count any that were unclear). The 'autistic' answer for each statement is indicated with bold type:

So, lemmy.world/autism picked the autistic option every time and scored a perfect 10/10. Interestingly, if we weight it proportionately according to how many picked each option, we only get 6.2, barely over the threshold.

Scores of 6 or over indicate possible autism spectrum disorder, so lemmy.world/autism should seriously consider the possibility that they may be autistic.

(Personally, I got 8. Go me!)

My intentions for running this test was it would be interesting and fun, and I think it was (One respondent was concerned I might have some undisclosed professional interest - I don't, but thanks for looking out for the community). I think the main takeaway is that interpreting self-report questions can be really hard.

Should I do another? If so, should I do anything differently?

Björk and Rosalía are donating all their rights to income generated by this song to the AEGIS non-profit organisation to combat open pen fish farming in Iceland. Their record companies have agreed to do the same. All funds raised will support legal fees for protesters, taking action to stop the development of intensive farms that harm wildlife, deform fish, and pose risks to salmon's DNA and survival. Immediate action is crucial.

donate directly at: https://www.bjork.com/aegis

This is one of a series of discussion posts based on questions from the AQ-10 autism test.

10. I find it difficult to work out people’s intentions.

• Definitely Agree
• Slightly Agree
• Slightly Disagree
• Definitely Disagree

Is this statement true for you? Can you think of any examples? Is it an easy or difficult question for you to answer?

You can take the full AQ-10 test here. Note this test is intended as a quick screener, and cannot diagnose or rule out any condition on its own.

First post in this series
next post (conclusion and results)

There is (as far as I know) no easy way to copy a user handle to mention them in a post or comment. There isn't a UI element or menu option on a post to do this. I can go to their just page and use the share button, but then I get (for example):

https://lemmy.guide/link?target=%40zachatrocity%40sh.itjust.works

That's not Zach's instance, it's mine. To get the user handle I'd have to edit out the URL part, and change to the correct instance @zachatrocity@lemmy.world.

Is that how it's supposed to work? Is the instance change thing a bug? Is there a better way I don't know about?

This is one of a series of discussion posts based on questions from the AQ-10 autism test.

9. I like to collect information about categories of things.

• Definitely Agree
• Slightly Agree
• Slightly Disagree
• Definitely Disagree

Is this statement true for you? Can you think of any examples? Is it an easy or difficult question for you to answer?

You can take the full AQ-10 test here. Note this test is intended as a quick screener, and cannot diagnose or rule out any condition on its own.

First post in this series
next post

This is one of a series of discussion posts based on questions from the AQ-10 autism test.

8. If there is an interruption, I can switch back to what I was doing very quickly.

• Definitely Agree
• Slightly Agree
• Slightly Disagree
• Definitely Disagree

Is this statement true for you? Can you think of any examples? Is it an easy or difficult question for you to answer?

You can take the full AQ-10 test here. Note this test is intended as a quick screener, and cannot diagnose or rule out any condition on its own.

First post in this series.
next post

In Fern Brady's song, she says John Kearns is obsequious and Dara is an imbecile. But, then when they talk about it in the studio she says John isn't obsequious but Dara is. So then why did she write the song that way?

My thought was: if she calls Dara obsequious, then she has to call John an imbecile*. At the time she still didn't know that John had been purposefully trying to lose in the team task. Maybe she suspected he had genuine cognitive impairments, and it wouldn't be ok to joke about it?

(*There were also 2 other teammates, and the 2 hosts that she could have substituted into that line. My thinking here is that, since she had already worked with 2 of the teammates, she felt it was right for the song that they were the ones to get dissed individually.)

This is one of a series of discussion posts based on questions from the AQ-10 autism test.

4. I usually concentrate more on the whole picture, rather than the small details.

• Definitely Agree
• Slightly Agree
• Slightly Disagree
• Definitely Disagree

Is this statement true for you? Can you think of any examples? Is it an easy or difficult question for you to answer?

You can take the full AQ-10 test here. Note this test is intended as a quick screener, and cannot diagnose or rule out any condition on its own.

First post in this series.
next post

You know The Culture novels by Iain M Banks, right? How it has sentient starships that choose ironic names for themselves like these;

• Sanctioned Parts List
• So Much For Subtlety
• All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff
• Attitude Adjuster
• Of Course I Still Love You
• Funny, It Worked Last Time...

Well, if you pay attention, you can notice starships hiding in plain sight all around you. Here's a few from recent years;

• Alternative Facts
• Sigma Grindset
• The Woke Mind Virus Is Either Defeated Or Nothing Else Matters
• Girlboss
• Basket Of Deplorables
• Are We The Baddies?
• I Am Not A Robot (Click To Confirm)

In this thread I want to know; what starship names have you spotted in the wild?

My doctor ordered me a pack of forms and questionnaires to request an assessment for adult autism. In amongst the medical histories and self assessments, this question stuck out;

it is important to know that not everyone who is referred to our service will have a diagnosis of autism confirmed. In the space below, tell us how you think having an autism diagnosis confirmed, or not, might impact on you and your life

What's going on here? Do you get asked this for other conditions? We're a community that typically struggles to read between the lines, so I could be way off, but this feels grudging to me. It's a question that says - what's the point of us even offering this service, and why are you so special that we should waste our time on you?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/7829540

is hard to think of anyone as symbolic of their nation as Björk. The singer has lived away from Iceland over the years – in London and New York, and is often on tour – but when she’s been away she has always felt, she says, like she is “holding her breath”, both in anticipation of return and in memory of purer air. In recent years, since her relationship with the artist Matthew Barney ended in 2013, she has lived pretty much full-time near Reykjavik, where she has witnessed the great surge in tourism to the island, which has risen from a few hundred thousand annual visitors 20 years ago to almost 2 million now.

You couldn’t quantify exactly what proportion of that interest in volcano and glacier is down to Björk’s own one-woman nation branding, but there is no doubt that her wild and whirling music, with its operatic cutting edges of trance and techno, has done much to establish the unique cool of her native island in the eco-traveller’s mind. It is for this reason that when she adds her trippy voice to any environmental campaign, it has ripples well beyond the north Atlantic.

She has been involved in protest for 30 years, she explained to me, “but always in Iceland, where I know it can actually make a change – which later maybe could be an exemplary case [internationally]. We have,” she says, “the largest untouched natural area in Europe and a lot of us feel like guardians of this, you know, the way that you guys are guardians of whatever… ” she laughs. “Brexit, maybe?”

This is not a simple battle between ecology and local economies in Björk’s view – only a few hundred people are employed in the salmon farming businesses. “It’s like two Norwegian billionaires,” she says, exaggerating a little. “They fucked everything up in Norway. And now they have come to Iceland. People say it’s like the bank crash, a few people getting millions and [nobody else] getting anything.” The problem made headlines in August when thousands of the farmed salmon escaped and swam up all Iceland’s rivers. “We were sending divers with harpoons, trying to capture them,” Björk says, but the task was hopeless and she claims the “mutant fish” spread sea lice among the Atlantic stock. (All of these allegations of disease and mistreatment are disputed by the salmon farming companies. Speaking to the Guardian last month, a spokesman for Arctic Fish, the company responsible for the nets from which farmed salmon escaped, said: “We have systems in place that ensure wild salmon are not put at risk. On top of that, our licences have an expiry date. If we do not behave, we don’t get licences renewed.” There is an ongoing police investigation into whether environmental laws have been breached.)