Not certain what to say...

[Nyades]

I have no diagnosis of anything and rather don't want one.
I'm actually just looking for friends, I always have been, but I've not quite mastered (or been able to frequently/repeatedly endure) the whole social interaction thing. When I talk most people tend to go silent. I'm never sure if I'm being incomprehensible or if they are simply unfamiliar with the subject. I do have some unusual interests for a 35 year old female and absolutely no normal ones so that could be part of the problem. My brother recently told me that growing up he always thought that I was intentionally speaking over other people's heads.

I was kicked out of preschool, aced elementary school in the gifted curriculum, would have been expelled in junior high but my IQ scores were so high they gave me a calculator instead, did get kicked out of high school after six years of failing everything except math and business law (I don't blame them), got a GED, then later dropped out of college because the school didn't offer a degree in anthropology and I'd completed all similar coursework they did offer. Since then I've wandered from job to job, the only ones I excelled at were washing dishes and busing tables. I've often found myself in homeless situations and other inopportune circumstances. (It seems you can't use logic to predict situations where others are involved. But if you can't use logic, I don't know what you can use.) I, fortunately, have two friends who've repeatedly saved me from those situations.

I habitually collect and organize information (I've compiled "books' for myself researching coffee, local histories of select cities, music history and music theory history, common knowledge of pioneers and settlers that have been lost since, the evolution of electrical systems, etc.) but I am happiest when creating new systems of doing things. Just last week I spent 18 hours working out a fun new way to do complex subtractions more easily but presently it's incomplete as I became distracted with another concept namely rate of perception in relation to age and brain portion yet developed or atrophying. Usually, I eventually complete such tasks. I love generating new invention ideas, I have a collection of those too.

I didn't have any friends until I was 18 and fell into a group of "rogue" professors. By rogue, I mean free thinking. They were the first people to actually understand anything I was talking about, my first indication I wasn't babbling insane, and many hours were happily spent discussing concepts I had no business even thinking about given my academic record. Over time they've all drifted away.

I also lack shared interest with most people I meet. I can't stand to watch most tv shows or movies because the dramatic lighting and especially the music tends to make me panic. I have zero ability to pay attention to anything fictional (barring mythology) so I can't relate to the smart people I have met and their world of gaming, comics, and science fiction. Aside from playing instruments, I can't focus on two things at once or multitask. I rely on scripts for interacting with people at work but end up confounded if they deviate from the norm unless they start talking about something such as Fibonnaci numbers or black hole horizon events.

 

[Arashi222]

Well welcome to AC. We're a nice bunch of people. I hope you like your stay here with us. Its ok not to have a diagnosis there are al ot of people here in varying degrees of diagnosis and its fine with us all if you think you fit here with us then jump on in

 

[Geordie]

Welcome to AC, Nyades.

We're both having similar interests. I like local city histories, I don't remember much but I appreciate them. I like some city histories... The most memorable is Detroit, Michigan of the United States. Ruled by three countries in 400 years, shaped by an elaborate radial and grid plan, as well as being influenced by the rise and fall of the auto industry, I think few cities is more fun to examine than Detroit, unless the city itself happens to have a longer history, more elaborate plans and more drastic falls than Detroit. Maybe Athens and Rome count as Detroit, though, but they hadn't fallen as much as Detroit...

I fear Houston might be the next Detroit.

That aside, I hope we can be friends here on AC, you're interesting, Nyades.

Oh yep, I like New Orleans too

 

[Nyades]

Thanks Arashi, though I'm not entirely certain if I fit or not.

Geordie, you make an interesting point. I've never considered Detroit as an interesting city until I read your response and realized you didn't mention motown. Now, New Orleans has always been in my top five, ruled by 3 countries in it's first 85 years and is something of the "old gateway to the Caribbean". I consider New Orleans equaled by St. Augustine, Savannah and Charleston. However, old ghost towns and small forgotten settlements that can be found every 100 miles (an engineer once told me 99) along the steam era railroads can be very interesting too, albeit a bit more difficult to research. Much of that interest for me, though, is the sum of the architectural history, local legends and available social/cultural systems of that era likely to have reached the area.

 

[Geordie]

Geordie, you make an interesting point. I've never considered Detroit as an interesting city until I read your response and realized you didn't mention motown.

Now, New Orleans has always been in my top five, ruled by 3 countries in it's first 85 years and is something of the "old gateway to the Caribbean". I consider New Orleans equaled by St. Augustine, Savannah and Charleston. However, old ghost towns and small forgotten settlements that can be found every 100 miles (an engineer once told me 99) along the steam era railroads can be very interesting too, albeit a bit more difficult to research. Much of that interest for me, though, is the sum of the architectural history, local legends and available social/cultural systems of that era likely to have reached the area.

I did purposely not mention Motown, because I think Detroit has a history far beyond rap, Motown records and even Ford. People tend to focus on the city after the 1967 12th Street Riot. However, I think there must be a reason Detroit is Detroit. It's not just the car, although the car did bring 2 million people within the city limits, the real reason must be the centrality of Detroit in the Great Lakes, between Buffalo and Duluth for Great Lakes transport, north of a Canadian town and south of the iron ores and timber land. It was once the largest city between Montreal and New Orleans. The University of Michigan, now located in a satellite city or a sort of suburb an hour or so away from Detroit (by car), was once located in the city. I think those people who say Detroit is Motown... They may miss some of the point. Detroit is not just Motown. It is the representative centre of the Great Lakes, just as Chicago does as the port of the Great Plains.

Unfortunately, the Great Lakes are affected by the decline of the industry along the Lakes, that's why there's deindustralization. Detroit is much more affected than Chicago. In Chicago, there's Sears/Willis Tower that seems to symbolise the city, but in Detroit, even the Renaissance Center failed to bring buzz to downtown Detroit, because no new businesses seem to come.

I heard New Orleans used to be the busiest port in the Americas until the Civil War. Katrina did not destroy it, I love it that New Orleans emerged the Hurricane stronger. The architecture and culture in New Orleans is much more interesting than those of many other cities. The French Quarter is always a place to feel, 'Wow!'

I love stories of ghost town, though Detroit is already a modern-day ghost city.

 

[Nyades]

However, I think there must be a reason Detroit is Detroit. It's not just the car, although the car did bring 2 million people within the city limits, the real reason must be the centrality of Detroit in the Great Lakes, between Buffalo and Duluth for Great Lakes transport, north of a Canadian town and south of the iron ores and timber land.

I entirely agree that strategic location regarding economic and political efforts determine the vitality and success of a new settlement. I also think that there is often a secondary, often overlooked, reason that a city continues to thrive. In Detroit's case it seems to have been a matter of being considered a "healthy" city. Just a quick quote from "History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan:
A Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present, Volume 1" by Silas Farmer, 1890:

"The general mildness of the climate, the pure breezes from the river and lake, the complete system of drainage, ...the inexhaustible supply of superior water, the abundance and variety of fish, meat, fruits, and vegetables in its markets, the favorable sanitary conditions... the almost entire absence of tenement houses... are all to be taken into account in explaining its fortunate condition as one of the most healthy cities in the world...

Detroit has an advantage over other ordinarily healthy cities in the same latitude, in that these diseases, when they occur, are exceptionally mild in type. The yearly death-rate averages only about twenty for every 1,000 persons. The total number of deaths reported in 1880 was 1.074; in l881, 1,709; in 1882, 2.712; and in 1883, 2,957."

I had also forgotten about the history of the rum runners there.

As for New Orleans, the city has been inundated numerous times and almost always with a curiously similar result. In particular, is the 1849 Suave's Crevasse that flooded the city in a pattern and depth that was eerily mimicked by Katrina. The similarities are chiefly due to the lay of the land, which is probably the reason the uptown area wasn't heavily settled early.

 

[Geordie]

We may continue our discussions here

http://www.aspiescentral.com/obsessions-interests/2659-cities.html#post33072