Is it that hard to see? I just don't want to be cool

[sovay]

Here's how my day is going: I left the house to walk to the library and came back with blisters on both heels, because my socks had spontaneously committed suicide in transit. That is even shabbier than my usual aesthetic. I am going to need new socks. Also my heels hurt.

On the other hand, Craig Laurance Gidney is enjoying my "dense opiated prose." Any favorable comparison to Tanith Lee improves my afternoon.

These links are a mix of things.

1. I have just learned from Anu Garg that tosspot words are a particular class of compound noun rather than words that are frequently hungover. I had no idea there was a name for them in English. "What does a scarecrow have in common with a pickpocket?" feels like an outtake from Lewis Carroll.

2. I suppose it is appropriate that I read this article for Tisha B'Av. I certainly consider Netanyahu and his administration a disaster for the Jewish people.

3. I don't know that there's ever a good time to read that the roots of autism as a diagnostic category are intertwined with Nazi eugenics. I keep reminding myself that thinking of myself as a profitless and unconscionable waste of other people's resources and time (on repeat these days) is the same kind of idea and I should stop it.

4. For those unaware of the recent trash fire regarding Worldcon 76, the Daily Dot has a good overview. The con chair has just responded on Facebook and Twitter.

5. I have to say that I'm not sure if Alan Turing chained his mug to the radiator because he loved tea that much; I think he might just have hated people stealing his mug.

Comments

[selkie]

(And our starvation research is from the Warsaw ghetto, and our hypothermia and altitude research is from Dachau, and our research on aspirin poisoning is from... Buna or Gleiwitz or somewhere. Life is a cabaret, old chum.)

IS GOOD REVIEW SO FAR. YES. A BONE. /Tanith Lee


BANANAPANTS, when am I allowed to post a review your book? I can do that! It's not a conflict of interest!

[sovay]

(And our starvation research is from the Warsaw ghetto, and our hypothermia and altitude research is from Dachau, and our research on aspirin poisoning is from... Buna or Gleiwitz or somewhere. Life is a cabaret, old chum.)

I'm not saying I was totally surprised: it's still part of the rhetoric. Just last year there was an NT mother publicly declaring, in her parenting memoir, her intent to sterilize her non-NT kid. Just would have been nicer if, you know, not.

BANANAPANTS, when am I allowed to post a review your book? I can do that! It's not a conflict of interest!

Whenever you feel like! You have an ARC!

(You have an ARC, right?)

P.S. YOU EDITED THE THING.

[gwynnega]

I hate when socks do that.

But yay review!

[sovay]

I hate when socks do that.

I was not expecting it! They were fine when I left the house and they just unraveled!

But yay review!

Thank you!

[muccamukk]

Good to hear about that review. I'm looking forward to your book!

Disappointed in Worldcon San Jose. Hopefully the reissue will be less of a hash. Are you going?

[sovay]

Good to hear about that review. I'm looking forward to your book!

Thank you! Two weeks and a day!

Disappointed in Worldcon San Jose. Hopefully the reissue will be less of a hash. Are you going?

Alas, no; I have no money. I know several people who are or were planning on going, though, and for their sake I hope the con gets its act together and fast.

[dewline]

2. Agreed. Israel deserves far better than Netanyahu and his Likud-allied crew.

4. Now that I know that this has been going on...well, maybe it's a reminder to further work on improving our local convention(s) here in Ottawa. Pre-emptively.

[sovay]

2. Agreed. Israel deserves far better than Netanyahu and his Likud-allied crew.

I don't know how to break coalitions in a country I don't live in. I don't even know how to get our current government out of power. I wish I did. I don't want these people in charge of the world.

4. Now that I know that this has been going on...well, maybe it's a reminder to further work on improving our local convention(s) here in Ottawa. Pre-emptively.

If you have any leverage in your local con scene, yes, do not repeat the mistakes of Worldcon 76. I appreciate that they are redoing the program, but as far as I can tell the trash is still smoldering.

[asakiyume]

I suspect your no. 5 assessment is correct.

I am enjoying your densely opiated prose as well: It is fun reading stories that you published before I knew you.

I like the term "tosspot words," and I like the example "repairman" as a way to clarify what's *not* a tosspot word.

[sovay]

I suspect your no. 5 assessment is correct.

I imagine it as a sort of arms race.

I am enjoying your densely opiated prose as well: It is fun reading stories that you published before I knew you.

Thank you! I am really glad.

I like the term "tosspot words," and I like the example "repairman" as a way to clarify what's *not* a tosspot word.

Yes! I wonder what the name for that kind is.

[rydra_wong]

I recommend https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/books/review/aspergers-children-edith-sheffer.html as a mental palate cleanser.

As an autistic commentator (Michael John Carley) said: Her research is solid. Her intentions are not.

She appears to be opposed to the existence of "autism" as a diagnosis at all (presumably so that she can believe her son doesn't really have it), and to think that arguing that it's somehow "tainted" by Asperger's evident complicity means that, I don't know, anyone who thinks autistic people exist is a Nazi?

As if plenty of other clinicians with no such complicity hadn't described the same groups of children, often independently of each other (as has been documented by Steve Silbermann, in the process of kicking the shit out of Kanner's claims to be the sole discoverer of a sharply-delineated group as opposed to one part of a spectrum). And if we didn't, you know, continue to exist.

Asperger wasn't labelling a group of children previously considered "normal"; he was labelling a group of children previously considered deviant, strange, delinquent, insane, etc.. And that wasn't so we could be exterminated; ironically, it's always been inferred that he was passionate in the defense of the positive qualities and capacity to contribute of children with (what came to be known as) "Asperger's syndrome" because (apparently despite his allegiances) he didn't want us disposed of.

ETA: Anger directed at her, not you; I hope that's clear.

[sovay]

ETA: Anger directed at her, not you; I hope that's clear.

It was not necessarily, so I appreciate the ETA as well as the link. I agree with Mnookin that Sheffer would have done better to start the story with her son's feelings rather than leave them feeling like an ulterior motive, and I agree with you that the effect comes off like a smear campaign rather than the recognition of a complicated piece of history.

Toward this point—

And that wasn't so we could be exterminated; ironically, it's always been inferred that he was passionate in the defense of the positive qualities and capacity to contribute of children with (what came to be known as) "Asperger's syndrome" because (apparently despite his allegiances) he didn't want us disposed of.

After encountering the initial review of Sheffer, I went and read Herwig Czech's "Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and 'race hygiene' in Nazi-era Vienna" (Molecular Autism 2018 9:29) because it's freely available online. He is the Austrian medical historian whose work was mentioned but not reviewed by the New York Review of Books; his article came out a month before Sheffer's book. He devotes more than a few lines to considering that claim and does not find evidence in favor of it.

He is very clear about what Asperger can and cannot be accused of:

"Neither the Spiegelgrund files nor the case records from Asperger's own ward contain evidence that he ever reported one of his patients to the Public Health Office for the purpose of sterilization . . . Unlike with Herta and Elisabeth Schreiber [two cases where the family circumstances and nature of disability make it difficult to interpret Asperger as in any way not knowing that his recommendation for 'permanent placement' at Spiegelgrund would lead to death], in the 14 cases in question, there is no indication that Asperger expected the children he recommended for transferal to Spiegelgrund (explicitly or by suggestion) to be killed there."

But he really does not believe that just because Asperger didn't rush to tip his child patients into the T-4 program means he was engaged in active protection of them:

"The language he employed to diagnose his patients was often remarkably harsh (even in comparison with assessments written by the staff at Vienna's notorious Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' institution), belying the notion that he tried to protect the children under his care by embellishing their diagnoses . . . This argument is problematic for several reasons. First, the idea that Asperger tried to protect autistic children from Nazi race hygiene cannot be easily reconciled with the fact that he dedicated a section of his 1944 paper to the hereditary basis of the condition, insisting that 'any explanation based on exogenous factors is absurd'. While this position anticipated later advances in autism research, the question arises whether under the circumstances it was prudent to put such an emphasis on heredity. Had protecting his autistic patients been his primary goal, he could have taken a more flexible position, one less likely to draw the attention of race hygienists to his patients. Second, his prognoses for the 'autistic psychopaths' were far from universally optimistic . . . the argument that Asperger focused on the better-functioning cases in order to protect all of his patients (presumably, by deflecting attention from the less well-functioning) is questionable given that Asperger by no means withheld from his readers the severe impairments of some of the boys. Third, there is a fundamental flaw in the assumption that highlighting the potential of some of his patients would benefit all of them. The children at the lower end of the spectrum did not benefit from the potential ascribed to those on the higher end, even if they shared the overall diagnosis of 'autistic psychopathy.' Their fate did not depend on the diagnostic label but on the individual assessment of their skills or disabilities. If anything, the utilitarian argument of 'social worth' employed by Asperger (and by many of his colleagues) increased the danger to those children who could not fulfill these expectations. Focusing on the higher functioning children did nothing to lift the boat for all of them; those on the lower end still risked being left to drown."

And he does not—in sharp contrast to Shaffer—feel that this information should make any difference to the continued use of the diagnosis or the term:

"An overall appraisal of Asperger's place in the history of youth psychiatry and Heilpädagogik and as a pioneer of autism research will have to go beyond the focus of this paper, which despite the importance of the Nazi period for understanding Asperger's life and work cannot replace a long due biography. Regarding Asperger's contributions to autism research, there is no evidence to consider them tainted by his problematic role during National Socialism. They are, nevertheless, inseparable from the historical context in which they were first formulated, and which I hope to have shed some new light on. The fate of 'Asperger's syndrome' will probably be determined by considerations other than the problematic historical circumstances of its first description—these should not, in any case, lead to its purge from the medical lexicon. Rather, it should be seen as an opportunity to foster awareness of the concept's troubled origins."

It looks as though Czech was much more interested in determining what Asperger's relationship to the Nazi apparatus actually was, Sheffer in eliding Lorna Wing from the narrative and foregrounding the Nazi horrors. These are different goals, and so I am sorry that Sheffer appears to be receiving so much more attention than Czech.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, yay for a nice review! \o/

NOt-so-yay for a lot of other things, including suicidal socks. Still, I suppose at least they are some of the more easily replaced things in life!

[sovay]

Well, yay for a nice review!

Thank you!

Still, I suppose at least they are some of the more easily replaced things in life!

This is true! Many worse things in our household could have stopped working. (Don't get any ideas, refrigerator.)

[lilysea]

thinking of myself as a profitless and unconscionable waste of other people's resources and time (on repeat these days)

I do not think of you this way! ^_^

I think of you as a
intelligent
compassionate
empathetic
witty
person

who has issues with
insomnia
physical fatigue
mental fatigue
pain

and whose posts I am always happy to see come up on my dashboard! ^_^

[ashlyme]

What Lilysea says. *adds hugs*

[ladymondegreen]

This is essentially what I came here to say too.

Sending you sleep vibes.

[sovay]

and whose posts I am always happy to see come up on my dashboard!

Thank you.

And thank you for saying it as poetry.

*hugs*

[ashlyme]

Well hurray for prose opium. *sotto voce* For God's sake, Lethe, put the book in my hands already.

I like the term "tosspot words" but I'm giggling too because it's an insult over here. I guess Anu Garg knows that.

Belated comment

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, do not use that term around a British person unless you want them to get entirely the wrong idea.

[sovay]

Well hurray for prose opium.

Thank you!

*sotto voce* For God's sake, Lethe, put the book in my hands already.

This is very gratifying to hear and I am very sorry that I cannot make book happen faster.

I like the term "tosspot words" but I'm giggling too because it's an insult over here. I guess Anu Garg knows that.

I just ended up with "Feste's Song" stuck in my head . . .

[davidgillon]

Ouch on the socks/heels front!

Amused by the tosspot thing as tosspot is a fairly common English insult, and looking it up, it turns out it comes from a tosspot word example I'd never realised:
"tosspot
ˈtɒspɒt/
nouninformal
noun: tosspot; plural noun: tosspots; noun: toss-pot; plural noun: toss-pots

a habitual drinker (also used as a general term of abuse).
"anyone who writes to us is a complete tosspot"

I keep reminding myself that thinking of myself as a profitless and unconscionable waste of other people's resources and time (on repeat these days) is the same kind of idea and I should stop it.

Yet to have a moment of interaction with your views I consider a waste of resources or time!

ETA and OMG Worldcon programming is a complete clusterfuck, including the attempt to police what people were going to wear to the Hugo ceremony that's been overshadowed by the programme thing.

[sovay]

Ouch on the socks/heels front!

It seemed unfair!

"anyone who writes to us is a complete tosspot"

That sounds like it fused with "tosser"! I know the word mostly in the Shakespearean sense.

ETA and OMG Worldcon programming is a complete clusterfuck, including the attempt to police what people were going to wear to the Hugo ceremony that's been overshadowed by the programme thing.

I had seen the fashion-policing, which in itself was not cool. muccamukk earlier in comments linked a roundup by Foz Meadows of all the various trash fires that went into the landfill conflagration and there were even more than I'd heard about. I am really, really hoping it turns out all right. rushthatspeaks so far as I know is still going as a nominee and I want them to have the wonderful time they deserve to. I wanted Bogi and Rose to have that experience. It is not fair for the people who have already been hurt to be hit harder.

[rinue]

(1) socks are often less functional than I would hope
(2) at other times they exceed my wildest expectations!
(3) I have taken seriously the "let's get together outside of Readercon" plan, but happen to have had houseguests 100% of the time between then and now. I'm currently entering a few days of "frantically get caught up on things" and then back to loads of houseguests. But I intend to emerge and make tea noises in the back half of August or early September.

[sovay]

I'm currently entering a few days of "frantically get caught up on things" and then back to loads of houseguests. But I intend to emerge and make tea noises in the back half of August or early September.

I support this plan. Make noises loud enough for me to hear!

Darn those socks*

[jesse_the_k]

Have you ever tried "Darn Tough" socks, which come with a 100% guarantee?

Thank you for the introduction to Anu Garg--receiving that daily newsletter will certainly improve my life.

Thanks, also, for hosting such facinating conversations, in this case re: Asperger, ethics, etc.

* oops, I punned.

Re: Darn those socks*

[sovay]

Have you ever tried "Darn Tough" socks, which come with a 100% guarantee?

No, although that's a charming name. Most of my socks these days are Solmate. The pair that shredded were probably about four years old.

Thank you for the introduction to Anu Garg--receiving that daily newsletter will certainly improve my life.

I'm very glad! I have been enjoying this week's theme of tosspot words. No new ones so far, but I still like them being drawn to attention.

Thanks, also, for hosting such facinating conversations, in this case re: Asperger, ethics, etc.

You're welcome! I have good people to talk to.