People who don’t have autism: you can’t self diagnose yourself with autism no matter how much research you do! You have to take 3947493 tests and pay thousands of dollars before you can call yourself autistic!!
People who have autism: yeah you’re autistic. We’re diagnosing you.
Like, I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but it’s kind of bleakly entertaining how over the course of my life my skill set as an online researcher has gone from being:
Hugely valuable in the late 1990s and early 2000s because the discoverability of information in public-facing databases was fucking terrible and nobody knew how to organise anything; to
Effectively useless throughout the 2010s because search engines enormously and rapidly improved and computer literacy was at an all-time high; and
Back to being hugely valuable once again because SEO bullshit and the proliferation of AI-generated content have degraded online discoverability back to pre-2000 levels and computer literacy is in accelerating decline due to mobile devices deliberately obfuscating basic functionality so that app vendors can sell it back to you with embedded advertising.
It’s always interesting when my posts about technical writing end up doing numbers on librarian Tumblr. I guess we have something in common!
NOT TO MENTION the fact that the prohibition against direct images in Islam was actually the reason for the development of the incredible advances in higher mathematics of the Islamic Golden Age because they were required to create these structures. The Islamic World basically took the ban on images as a “hold my beer” thing and created an entire artistic culture based on mathematics and architecture where art and science fed into and glorified each other, 700 years before the Italian Renaissance.
In conclusion
i will say that islamic art drove me nuts as a kid because i did not have the math knowledge or capability to create such geometric patterns. it may have been the art of my people but by gOD it was difficult and unnecessarily difficult. however my pride in islamic art is neverending. it was frowned upon to be vain in the house, so artists would deck out the places of worship - but places of worship couldn’t be too garishly decorated, or it might detract from worship! the compromise? calm blues and greens, intricate details hidden into the complex patterns. carefully mapped out and planned patterns that were beyond complex and straight into deliberately confusing and practically impossible to replicate. not only that, but verses from the Quran were hidden along the walls, asking god for blessings and care.
muslim art is stunning and i’ll fight the bitch that says otherwise.
Also something underappreciated about the Islamic art is that not only is it geometrically incredible, but the geometry and structure of it has a purpose. In the niches and ceilings, the cascading ornamentation is used for acoustic purposes. In many of the mosques, they are so well laid out and designed that a single person standing on a specific spot can speak/sing/pray and be heard in every single part of the building.
I feel like this should be considered under the same heading as “fascists don’t like abstract art.”
Like, that’s a whole thing. If you look at the art favored by dictators and fascists, it’s almost entirely portraits and landscapes. (Nice, serene, pastoral landscapes, though. None of that war-torn realism stuff.) Rarely still-lifes, unless there’s also a person in the picture. It’s literally common enough to be considered a phenomenon. And while Islamic art isn’t abstract in the sense we usually use the word, it certainly does not include portraits or serene pastoral landscapes.
Just, you know. Considering who said this. Something to consider.
