For a neurotypical, able-bodied, middle-class person living in, say, Australia, daily life might look something like:

Okay, a new day. If I get the gym now, I don’t have to feel guilty about the wine tonight. Did I move the laundry to the dryer? Yes. Hopefully today won’t bring any unexpected expenses (a car service, a school excursion fee) or annoying admin (a broken dishwasher). […] Right, I’m at work. Parked in the ‘B’ level—must remember that, otherwise I’ll be wandering around like an idiot at 5:10. Do I go to the kitchen or the cafe downstairs? If I go to the kitchen, I have to talk to Dave about his weekend hiking trip. I don’t have the bandwidth for Dave yet. Downstairs it is. $5.50 for a flat white is a crime, but it’s a ‘sanity tax.’ I’ll tap the phone, don’t look at the balance.

(An admission: I wrote that monologue with the help of an AI chatbot, because I literally could not imagine what a neurotypical person thinks about all day!)

This form of daily life has its rewards (a glass of wine, a successful work meeting), its challenges (avoiding unexpected expenses), and its currency (dollars, time, guilt).

As an autistic woman, I feel like I am facing a totally different landscape. There are also unique challenges and currencies due to mental illness (for me, depression and anxiety).

For me, a typical day might look more like:

Okay, a new day. I have football training on Wednesday, so I only have to survive until then. I’ll do 45 minutes on the exercise bike to settle my nerves and pre-emptively minimize the risk of a depressive episode. Did I move the laundry to the dryer? I’ll check the spreadsheet — yes. Hopefully today won’t bring any serious mental triggers or unplanned social interactions. […] Right, I’m at my desk. My mental batteries are at 80% but I’m still a little bit tense from a big work meeting yesterday, so I’ll begin with some data entry to build small wins before I turn to the most essential work on my to-do list.

This form of daily life has its rewards (engagement in a special interest like football), its challenges (avoiding unplanned mental triggers), and its currency (mental battery, social energy, risk of depressive episode).

It’s interesting to me that these are totally different mental landscapes. To an outward observer, they might look similar, but the internal arithmetic is totally different. I also want to emphasize that a different landscape is not better or worse; that would be elitist and misguided. Rather, neurodivergent minds (and mentally ill minds) simply navigate a landscape of rewards, challenges, and currency that is foreign to neurotypical (and mentally healthy) minds.

Of course, this will not be a new idea to disabled people, who are often accustomed to thinking about the physical environment in terms of stair-free pathways and sufficiently wide doors, and who are sometimes accustomed to thinking about their daily life in terms of the timing of medication. This concept is explored for dysautonomia, mitochondrial disease and chronic fatigue syndrome in The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey; for Parkinson’s disease in Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox; and for spinal injury, as well as disability in general, in the masterpiece Accompanying Disability: Caretaking, Family, and Faith by Topher Endress.

Related posts:

• You can socialise without having to socialise
• The Increasing Difficulty of Communication
• How many people actually work 9 to 5?

• “We live in a world where almost everything is worthless and a very few things are exceptionally valuable.”
• “Anyone can talk about the importance of focusing on the things that matter most, and many people do, but to see people who dare to live it is rare.”
• “[A]sk yourself, ‘Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution towards my goal?’”

The more I develop the skill of essentialism, the more rewarding and engaging my life becomes. I make significant improvements towards my most cherished life goals — improving laws to prevent animals from being tortured and killed; spending time with my loved ones; providing the best possible life for my two rescue dogs, Shiloh and Max.

There is a sneaky catch. If you dedicate yourself to just a few core life goals, whatever those goals might be for you, then this necessarily means that you aren’t dedicating yourself to being recognized for those goals. My goal is to prevent animals from being tortured and killed, not to be perceived by others as doing so. I’m working towards results, not social status. So far, my biggest wins — resulting in genuinely less suffering for animals in several countries — have been totally uncelebrated. My name has not been attached to those wins.

This is easier said than done! The human brain, trained by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution during which group membership was an essential ingredient for survival, is great at making you care about social status.

So, the essentialist approach — which, I emphasize, has enabled me to get significantly more value and joy out of life — comes with a special sort of loneliness or unseenness.

Brandon D. Crowe, in his book Every Day Matters: A Biblical Approach to Productivity, expresses this beautifully in a phrase that, to me, encapsulates a core truth of Christianity: “Sometimes failure in the eyes of the world is success in the eyes of God.”

Suppose a factory fire results in 10 tonnes of industrial chemicals entering a nearby river. Broadly speaking, we can imagine three outcomes:

1. Permanent damage. The chemicals overwhelm the river ecosystem, which becomes permanently wrecked. Even after the chemicals disperse into the environment and drop to a concentration of zero, the river ecosystem ceases to function.
2. Resistance. The chemicals cause no detectable change in the ecosystem.
3. Resilience. The chemicals temporarily overwhelm the river ecosystem. However, the ecosystem’s functions gradually process the chemical input (say, via bacteria that decompose the industrial chemical into less toxic components). The river ecosystem soon returns to a functional, healthy state, which might be a bit different to its original state.

The second and third outcomes result, eventually, in the same end state: the ecosystem ends up basically as it was. But the pathways to get there are very different. In the second outcome (resistance), perhaps the chemical concentration or volume simply isn’t enough to overwhelm the ecosystem’s natural processes. In the third outcome (resilience), the system does become overwhelmed, but it eventually deals with the disturbance and returns to normal.

Connell and Ghedini (2015) distinguish between resistance and resilience as follows:

• Resistance: the capacity of a system to absorb the effects of disturbance without changing.
• Resilience: the capacity of a system to reorganise and return to a prior state after a disturbance.

My favorite Buddhist text is the Simile of the Saw (Majjhima Nikāya 21). This text focuses on how to respond when other people in life do things to hurt you. In this text, the Buddha addresses his community of mendicants (monks) as follows:

Suppose a person was to come along carrying a spade and basket and say, ‘I shall make this great earth be without earth!’ And they’d dig all over, scatter all over, spit all over, and urinate all over, saying, ‘Be without earth! Be without earth!’

What do you think, mendicants? Could that person make this great earth be without earth?

No, sir. Why is that? Because this great earth is deep and limitless. It’s not easy to make it be without earth. That person will eventually get weary and frustrated.

[…] Suppose a person was to come along carrying a blazing grass torch, and say, ‘I shall burn and scorch the river Ganges with this blazing grass torch.’

What do you think, mendicants? Could that person burn and scorch the river Ganges with a blazing grass torch?

No, sir. Why is that? Because the river Ganges is deep and limitless. It’s not easy to burn and scorch it with a blazing grass torch. That person will eventually get weary and frustrated.

Source: SuttaCentral

To me, the Buddha is speaking about resistance — he is teaching his monastic followers to become sufficiently large and expansive, with an open heart and a loving mind, such that they cannot be easily hurt by others.

Resistance also underpins my experience developing many of the common skills from cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In CBT, you can learn how to address harmful thoughts or beliefs by diffusion (letting them go) or by challenging those thoughts and beliefs with evidence. In both cases, the mind absorbs the disturbance without changing very much.

But resistance, while invaluable, only gets you so far. Try telling somebody in the dark depths of despair to simply let go of their thoughts. Trust me when I say it doesn’t work.

In those cases, what is needed is not resistance — it is resilience. If we are experiencing intense despair or distress, we need a way to climb out of that dark hole. We need a way to reorganize the system after the disturbance. I’m speaking from my own experience here.

There is no one cure for depression. There are lots of little cures. As expressed by Dr Alex Korb: “After many years of research, I’ve come to understand that there is no one big solution to depression, but there are many small ones.”

I have been developing the skill of resilience — once a disturbance overwhelms by resistance skills, and I fall into that dark pit, to reorganize my mind and gradually return to a healthy function. For me, the many small solutions seem to involve exercise, eating well, engaging with passion projects, spending time with my loved ones, taking my medication and my hormones, getting fresh air, and sticking to core priorities. Taking that first step, when all I want to do is remain curled up in a ball under the blanket, is really, really hard. But the first step leads to the second step, and gradually the steps accumulate into my mind reorganizing itself and recovering from the disturbance.

I need both resistance and resilience. I am working to develop both skillsets. Even if I can improve my resistance by 5% and my resilience by 5%, then I am likely to encounter fewer disturbances and to recover from those disturbances a bit sooner. Those small gains, accumulated over my lifetime, will mean a significant improvement in my quality of life.

Here’s the beautiful part. Even if a system is resilient, it does not need to return to its original state. A resilient ecosystem, once it has recovered from a disturbance, does not necessarily look the same as it did before — there might be new plant species taking the place of old ones. In my own life, the biggest disturbances seem to be followed by the greatest periods of personal growth. By no means does that personal growth outweigh the disturbance; the pain of extreme depression is intense, and I would not wish that pain on my worst enemy. But once I take those first few steps — I eat a simple meal, I spend a few minutes on the exercise bike, I make plans to see a beloved friend — then it is a silver lining to know that I might grow into something stronger.

Recommended reading:

• The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time by Alex Korb, PhD
• The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step-by-step Program by William J. Knaus, EdD
• We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption by Kaira Jewel Lingo

My coach’s views definitely resonate with my own experiences with goalkeeping. Last season, I found myself thinking that correct positioning is nine-tenths of the law. If you’re in the right position when an opponent sends a shot towards the goal, you’re much more likely to make a save, even if all you do is stand there and reflexively catch the ball.

My friends and family are impressed by the progress that my two rescue dogs, Max and Shiloh, have made in their mental health. Both dogs came to me traumatized and anxious, and now they’re beautiful, loving members of our family who steal the bed and provide us with plenty of attitude. Significant gains indeed. But most of those gains have been made by small, incremental efforts that accumulate over time: systematically experimenting with anti-anxiety medications, setting an alarm each Friday to arrange their medication trays for the coming week to ensure they receive the correct doses, making small home improvements to reduce the number of triggers that the dogs experience each day, and preparing a truly endless number of peanut butter mats to provide the dogs with enrichment. Boring as hell, but one of my greatest accomplishments in life.

At any task worth doing, 90% is going to be boring. By “boring”, I don’t mean mind-numbing — it is my experience that being competent at executing a meaningful task is one of life’s great joys. By “boring”, I mean unsexy to the outside observer. We might celebrate a scientist for their Nobel Prize or for their life-saving innovation, but nobody wants to watch that scientist sitting at their desk and persevering through endless hours of trials. We might enjoy watching a world-class athlete’s performance, but nobody wants to watch that athlete’s thousands of hours of deliberate training to incrementally improve their skills.

And this is empowering news. Nobody can wake up today and develop life-saving medication or become a world-class athlete. But if we know what aspirations are deeply important to our souls, then we can systematically persevere with that boring 90%.

Recommended reading:

• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
• Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg McKeown

Evolving tattoo technologies

The technology used to produce tattoos is far from static, with tools and methods evolving over time and across space. Every tattoo culture, from Māori tā moko to today’s professional studios in urban cities, uses a different set of practices or techniques.

If you walk into a professional studio in New York or London or Sydney, you’ll usually receive a tattoo from an artist using an electric machine. Electric tattoo machines fall into one of two main types: coil and rotary. From Wikipedia:

• “Coil tattoo machines function by passing current through two coils which alternate electromagnetic forces to move the tattoo needle up and down rapidly.”
• “Rotary tattoo machines function by using the rotational motion of an electric motor to move a needle/bundle of tattoo needles up and down rapidly.”

Coil machines were the foundation of the modern tattoo industry throughout most of the 20th century. Rotary machines have been widely adopted over the past few decades. From memory, I’m pretty sure that all of my tattoos were produced with rotary machines. Recently, rotary machines have been adapted into a pen shape for better ergonomics, and these pen guns are often fully wireless with an internal power source. Tattoo artists often call pen guns “dildo guns”, either as a humorous term or a perjorative term, which I think is great.

Many tattoo artists, particularly the older artists who are still active today, have expressed an anxiety that with the widespread adoption of rotary machines, coil machines will become permanently a thing of the past. Coil machines make a signature “buzz” noise, which permeated the soundscape of tattoo studios throughout much of the 20th century, and there is a fear or sadness that this intangible link to tattooing’s past will be lost or forgotten by the modern tattoo community.

Electric machines co-exist along with many non-electric technologies. Many artists build a significant client base and Instagram following for their hand-poke tattoos. Of course, everyone had to tattoo by hand before the recent invention of electric tattoo machines in 1891.

The sound of tattoo

I downloaded sound recordings of 3 types of electric tattoo technology: rotary machine, coil machine, pen coil machine (dildo gun). I also obtained sound recordings from two particular hand tattoo practices: Philippines hand tapping (mambabatok) and Japanese hand-poke (tebori).

Below are the spectrogram of these 5 tattoo technologies.

Looking at the coil machine, you can clearly see the loud, high-frequency buzzing sound. The sound of the rotary machine is lower in both frequency and amplitude — this visual comparison encapsulates the loss of the classic coil machine sound. The high-end pen gun is even quieter and deeper still.

The Philippines hand tapping shows bright, low-frequency clunks corresponding to the artist Whang-od tapping the tattoo needle with wood. There is a similar, but quieter, series of taps for the Japanese tebori hand-poking.

You can listen to these particular sounds on Youtube:

• This sound in a few years time will be unrecognizable, the buzzing sound of an coil tattoo machine
• Jackhammer Rotary Tattoo Machine Demo
• Ambition Mars-U 2.2-4.2mm Adjustable Stroke Wireless Tattoo Machine #ambition #tattoomachine #artist
• The Whang Od tattoo experience. Getting a mambabatok, from the world’s oldest tattoo artist 107yrs
• ASMR Tebori Tattoo by horimasa #asmr

But there are some subtle benefits. In a world where anything can be obtained for the right price — well, anything can be obtained for the right price.

Recently, I adopted a turtle. I knew nothing about turtle care and had to very quickly educate myself about general turtle care and the specific biology of that turtle species. I figured out that I needed to purchase the following items, as soon as possible: an $800 water filter; a UV light tube; a heat lamp; and a water heater. And on a Sunday, no less!

Of course, obtaining those four items caused me immense discomfort. Basically, I placed a click-and-collect order with the local aquarium shop, open 7 days until 6 pm. At the aquarium shop, there were hundreds of live fish in tanks on display. The commodification of animals, indeed.

But at what other point in history can you easily obtain, with zero notice, those four items needed to help a sick reptile? I think that’s a pretty bright silver lining.

There’s another silver lining specific to autistic people. Many essential services, including healthcare, shelter, and food, are placed behind arbitrary pay walls that prevent many people from accessing these needs. But if you do happen to be born into the right circumstances such that you can afford these needs, then the world is much less confusing.

At many points in history (and in many places today), social interactions have been governed by complex networks of social rules. The English words “guest” and “host” (and even “ghost”) sound similar because they originally described a single guest-host relationship that structured social interactions around 6,000 years ago in what is now eastern Ukraine.

Social rules? Structured social interactions? For me, as an autistic person, this sounds like a nightmare.

But many of these complex rule have been replaced by a much simpler rule: if you pay $X, you get Y service. One need not consider social obligations, or reciprocal arrangements, or bartering, or inconveniencing others.

There is an A4 laminated piece of paper at my local chemist. It lists all of the additional services that the pharmacists offer: blood pressure check, $5. Certifying a document copy, $10. Administering an injection, $20. As an autistic person, all I have to do is literally read the written list of requirements in order to obtain various services.

• Body size in E. m. macquarii differed markedly between populations. Femalesranged in maximum sizes (carapace length) of 180 mm in the Macleay River to over 300 mm in the Murray River. E. m. macquarii was sexually dimorphic across allpopulations with females larger than males in all cases.
• Nesting season began as early as mid-September in the Brisbane River andas late as December in the Hunter River, and continued until early January. Populationsin the Hunter and Murray Rivers are likely to produce only one clutch per season while populations from the Macleay and Nepean Rivers can produce two, and on someoccasions, three clutches annually. The majority of females would appear to reproduceevery year.
• Research fromNorth American studies have demonstrated that many species of freshwater turtlesdisplay large variation in life history attributes across their range
• Even within a population, life history traits can vary due to fluctuations inenvironmental condition
• E. macquarii is unable to migrate between waterbodies, as it is largely restricted to permanent waters (Chessman 1978, 1984, 1998). Therefore, populations of Em. macquarii are reproductively isolated […] as a result, Em. macquarii is genetically and morphologically more variable […]
• Turtles in the genus Emydura are the best studied species of freshwater turtle in Australia
• Emydura macquarii is a short-necked species of turtle with a carapace that islight brown to black in colour. Body size is highly variable, with reported maximumsizes for females ranging from 180 mm in the Macleay-Hastings rivers (Cann, 1998) toover 320 mm in the Murray River (Chessman, 1978). Similarly, body shape is alsovariable, both within and amongst populations.
• Adult males are easily distinguished from adult females by their longer, thicker tail. Em. macquarii prefersdeep permanent still waterbodies such as rivers and its backwaters (swamps andlagoons) where they are generally the pre-dominant turtle species (Chessman, 1988).The high rate of evaporative water loss under desiccating conditions prevents Em.macquarii from migrating overland (Chessman, 1984), thereby restricting them topermanent waterholes.
• Emydura macquarii is omnivorous consuming a wide range of food types suchas filamentous algae, periphyton, aquatic macrophytes and invertebrates, terrestrial insects and carrion (Georges, 1982b; Chessman, 1986). Juveniles tend to be more carnivorous than adults (Georges, 1982b).
• Age determination: “Growth ring data was only used for juveniles and young adults, as rings became intermittent and undetectable in older individuals” scute annuli (costal scutes)
• [Figure 3.5 shows age-length relationship from age 0 (~25 mm) until age 7 years (~200 mm)]

Bower et al 2016, Salinity tolerances of two Australian freshwater turtles, Chelodina expansa and Emydura macquarii (Testudinata: Chelidae), link

• The results of our study demonstrated that C. expansa andE. macquarii have adaptive behavioural and physiologicalmechanisms reported previously only from euryhaline estuar-ine turtles living with periods of elevated, hypertonic envir-onmental salinity (Dunson, 1986), despite the species studied here being widely distributed through the largest freshwatercatchment in Australia. This suggests that there has been along history of evolutionary adaptation to the fluctuatingsalinities of the Murray–Darling system in these species […]
• our study indicated a high adaptive fitness of the species to acutesalinity events, from which physiological recovery appears tobe rapid. Those adaptations evident in the species that weinvestigated include a behavioural reduction in food intake, which would reduce the ingestion of salt, which is rapidly reversed on return to freshwater. […] the increase in plasma electrolytes (especially sodium and chloride) and nitrogenous osmolytes (urea and uric acid) […] The behavioural reduction in food intake may be associated with a reduced metabolic rate, because digestive activity is reduced, and is probably associated with a reduction, if not cessation, inexcretion (a water-conserving mechanism) […]
• The freshwater treatment tur-tles were kept in tap water with a salinity of 0%o for theduration of the experiment. Animals in the brackish treat-ment were acclimated by placement into water of 5, 7, 10 and 13%o progressively every 2 days, followed by 15%o untilfor 50 days

Chessman 1986, Diet of the Murray turtle, Emydura-Macquarii (Gray)(Testudines, Chelidae), link

• […] this species is an opportunistic omnivore. In order of decreasing importance the main food types were filamentous algae, vertebrate (mainly fish) carrion, detritus, periphyton (including sponges), mobile aquatic invertebrates, aquatic macrophytes and terrestrial invertebrates. There was a degree of dietary shift with turtle size, small specimens containing moredetritus and periphyton and less filamentous algae, macrophytes and carrion than bigger ones.

Chessman 1987, Atmospheric and aquatic basking of the Australian freshwater turtle Emydura macquarii (Gray)(Testudines: Chelidae), link

• Frequency of atmospheric basking was significantly positively correlated with operative environmental temperature (Te).
• Operative environmental temperatures(Te) associated with atmospheric baskingwere estimated from the equation Te = 0.017R + 1.18Ta - 2.88 log V - 11.2 derived by Crawfordet al. (1983) for Pseudemys scripta, which is similar to E. macquarii in gross morphology. In this equa-tion, R is total radiationin watts per square meter, Ta is air temperature (C), and V is wind velocity in meters per second.
• Overall, atmospheric basking was seen over the following ranges of environ-mental conditions: wind velocity 0-3 m/s, water surface temperature 10.1-31.8 C, air temperature 14.6-43.0 C, estimated Te 11.0-53.3 C, estimated solar radiation 200-1400 W/m2. It was observed only between 0800 and 1900 h

Chessman 1988, Habitat Preferences of Fresh-Water Turtles in the Murray Valley, Victoria and New-South-Wales, link

• E. macquarii was the species most often caught in the river itself and riverbackwaters
• Relative abundance of E. macquarii was significantly positively correlated with water body depth, transparency, persistence during dry conditions and flow speed, and negatively correlated with remoteness from the river.
• it is clear that E. macquarii avoids shallow water bodies, because no specimenwas taken from a water body less than 2 m deep
• E. macquarii [occupied] a middle layer [within water bodies] comprising logs and other debris

Chessman 2020, Effects of temperature and exercise on metabolism of three species of Australian freshwater turtles: implications for responses to climate change, link

• Oxygen consumption of Chelodina expansa, C. longicollis and Emydura macquarii (Pleurodira: Chelidae) was measured at rest and during induced exercise at 8, 13, 18, 22, 26, 30 and 34°C.
• In C. expansa and E. macquarii, active and aerobic scope increased over the full temperature range assessed but in C. longicollis these variables reached a plateau above 22°C.

Chessman 2020, Behavioural thermoregulation by Australian freshwater turtles: interspecific differences and implications for responses to climate change, link

• I compared various forms of basking in nature, and responses to aquatic and aerial photothermal gradients in the laboratory, among three species of Australian chelid turtles: Chelodina expansa, C. longicollis and Emydura macquarii.
• [Fig. 1 and 2 show that for E. macquarii, air temperature varies between ~15 and ~37 °C; water surface temperature between 10 and ~32 °C; and water bottom temperature between ~20 and ~25 °C.]
• C. expansa, C. longicollis and E. macquarii all appeared to consistently avoid raising body temperatures above ~34°C

Singh 2018, Ecology of the Macquarie turtle (Emydura macquarii macquarii) downstream of a large hypolimnetic-releasing impoundment in Australia’s southern Murray-Darling Basin, link

• The probability of E. m. macquarii activity was significantly related to mean daily water temperature (P < 0.0001) (Table 4.1). Probability of activity increased with mean daily water temperaturein both habitats, but at water temperatures greater than 19°C, turtles were more likely to beactive in Yellowbelly Creek than Horseshoe Lagoon (Figure 4.2). In Yellowbelly Creek, watertemperatures of 16°C or less were associated with a very low probability of activity.Throughout the 10 days of radiotracking in Horseshoe Lagoon, water temperatures rangedfrom a minimum of 17.5°C in spring to a maximum of 30.5°C in summer. In contrast, watertemperatures in Yellowbelly Creek ranged from 14.5°C in spring to 22.5°C in summer.
• [Figures 4.2 and 4.3 shows that water temperature ranged between 15 and 30 °C, with activity increasing linearly with temperature.]
• In summer, water temperatures of around 18°C to 22°C in Yellowbelly Creek still likelyconstituted a thermally challenging environment for E. m. macquarii. Spencer et al (1998) found that consumption rates and rates of food passage in E. m. macquarii were significantlyenhanced at water temperatures of 30°C compared to 20°C. Chessman (1988a) found thatcapture rates of E. m. macqaurii in baited traps were highest at water temperatures of between 25°C and 30°C, indicating that this is an optimal temperature range for feeding activity.

Santori et al 2021, Hatchling short-necked turtles (Emydura macquarii) select aquatic vegetation habitats, but not after one month in captivity, link

• Laboratory experiment: Both plants (F1,105 = 10,295, p < 0.001) and turbidity(F1,105 = 11.73, p < 0.001) significantly affected theamount of time (represented by the proportion ofphotographs) that each turtle spent on the left side ofthe tank (Supplementary Table S2). When plants wereavailable (always on the left side of the aquarium),turtles spent significantly more time on the left sideamong the plants (Fig. 1).
• Hatchling E. macquarii prefer aquatic vegetationover bare habitat in both the laboratory and the field.

Pahuja & Marayan 2021, Evaluating the Stressors Impacting Rescued Reptilian Wildlife, link

• In this study we identified 4 degrees of stressor categories (preliminary, primary, secondary and tertiary) in rescued reptiles admitted at the Adelaide Koalaand Wildlife Hospital, South Australia. (!)

Spencer 2002, Growth patterns of two widely distributed freshwater turtles and a comparison of common methods used to estimate age, link

• Age determination: [Table 2 shows the sex-specific parameters of the von Bertalanffy age-length relationship, which is illustrated in Fig. 2 and 3]
• [Table 1 shows an estimated relationship (conditioned on empirical catch-and-release data) from age 1 (plastron length = 68.3 mm) to 10 years (PL = 189 mm)]
• [Fig. 1 shows that this species stops growing at around 225 mm, after which the growth rate = 0]

Victoria State Government, Emydura macquarii: Murray River Turtle, link

• The generation length of the Murray River Turtle is inferred to be 25 to 30 years. Age of first breeding for females is around 9-11 years (Spencer 2002) and longevity is approximately 40-50 years.

Over time, I have made a lot of progress, and this illness is now far more manageable than it was during my adolescence and early adulthood.

One of the most valuable tools that I’ve encountered is a book: The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Anxiety by William J. Knaus (link). The profoundly positive impact that this book — used in conjunction with long-term therapy, medication, and lifestyle adjustments — has had on my life cannot be overstated.

One of the gems of wisdom contained in this book is as follows. When you notice yourself magnifying negative pieces of information: “magnify every bit of information that suggests the opposite conclusion. Then ask yourself, What lies in between these magnified extremes?”

I find this really powerful because this doesn’t directly challenge the anxious thoughts — but more importantly, this isn’t simply positive thinking. Rather, the process is:

1. Think about the worst case scenario, and collect the evidence supporting that negative extreme.
2. Think about the best case scenario, and collect the evidence supporting that positive extreme.
3. Ask yourself what lies between those two extremes.

In my experience, this method works. And it works for one reason: life is ordinary. It is very rare that you experience a catastrophe — I might face a genuine catastrophe once every few years. But it’s also very rare that you experience unbelievably good luck — I might experience such a positive outcome once every few years. In the mean time, life is just mundane and even a bit boring.

Most life experiences aren’t fantastic and aren’t terrible; they’re the boring meat that makes up 95% of life. Over time, when I have noticed myself catastrophising and applied the above cognitive tool, I have noticed exactly that — almost everything turns out… unexciting. The friend doesn’t descend into red-hot hatred for you, and the friend doesn’t fall over with praise for you — the friend is busy and enjoys your company when they can. The family finances aren’t so bad that you’re going to lose you’re house, and they’re not so good that you can afford a vacation to Europe — you have a little bit of money that you can spend wisely.

And mundane is great! For that wonderfully mundane 95% of life, your life is what you make of it.

• “Before I’d actually even spent money on alcohol, there was a take-out food. I inevitably lost a coat or a purse about every three months, no idea where they went. And that’s time consuming. […] The average listener to this, you know they might start thinking about drinking around about four o’clock at work if not earlier. They’re thinking ahead to what’s going to happen when they leave work. And so there’s a couple of hours there. Then you’ve got the time that you spend actually drinking when you get home. So that’s probably about another four hours. And then depending on whether or not you’re drinking has an impact on you the following morning. That might be another couple more hours before you’re back functioning again. So right there you’ve got four, six, eight hours of your life spent thinking about drinking and the impact of drinking on you.”
• “So for me, I had horrific hangovers, like horrific. Which meant the next day I would be in bed all day. So if it was a Friday night, all Saturday would be in bed. The only thing that would get me going was hair of the dog. Because I’d have to go out on Saturday night. Sometimes I didn’t, because I’d got into such a bad state Sundays, or in bed all day Mondays, fifty-fifty. Could be in bed for a lot of the day, or if I managed to get to work or college, Monday and Tuesday were very unproductive. Drinking took up time. Preparing to drink took up time. But recovering from it took up a lot of hours of my life.”

Hore 1982, Alcohol and Work, link

• “An early study in the United States of America by Stevenson found that three per cent of the male workforce in a steel mill missed time through drinking. The average work time lost by the workers was 22 days per year.”
• “A United Kingdom study of males attending an alcoholic treatment unit found that half of the sample had lost time off work intheir early thirties.”
• “In a study of several alcoholism informationcentres, 98 per cent of the workforce admitted they had lost time from workdue to their drinking, the amount of time off being staggering i.e. 86 days per year on average.”
• “A Swedish study examined 868 patients attending 17 alcohol clinics in western Sweden and recorded the months they had worked outside hospital institutions during a particular year. The patient population were divided into three age groups 20 to 49, 50 to 59 and 60 onwards. 20 to 49 age group worked on average for only 50per cent of the year, whilst the older age group worked for only 25 per cent of the year. A low productivity performance was reported by 40 per cent of patients of the 20 to 49 age group and by 70 per cent in the top age group.”

Heng Jiang et al 2017, Measuring Time Spent Caring For Drinkers and Their Dependents, link

• “To quantify the extent of time spent by family and friends caring for drinkers and their dependents”
• “Data are from a nationwide Alcohol’s Harm to Others Survey of 2649 Australians, in which 778 respondents reported they were harmed by a known drinker.”
• “After carers were identified, the respondents were asked to estimate the amount of time spent on this in the past 12 months; the majority of carers (N = 358, 73%) did so.”
• “Respondents who reported they were harmed by a drinker they knew had spent on average 32 h caring for this drinker and their dependents in the past 12 months.”
• Table 2 categories include these time costs: caring for drinker, caring for children and other dependents, taxiing the drinker somewhere, and cleaning up after the drinking.

Konnopka & König 2007, Direct and Indirect Costs Attributable to Alcohol Consumption in Germany, link

• “This study estimated the direct and indirect costs of alcohol-attributable morbidity and mortality in Germany for 2002 at […] approximately 23.5 million days of temporary inability to work”
• [And note that Germany had a population of 82 million people at the time, and around 44% of the global population drinks, indicating that those 23.5 million days lost covered ~36 million Germans in 2002.]

• The first post offered some brief notes on insect abundance in artificial turf sports pitches (as opposed to grass pitches).
• The second post made some rough calculations to estimate the number of insect killed by driving.
• The third post applies those calculations to a specific decision in my life: choosing which of two soccer clubs I should play at for the 2026 season.

Content warning: This post describes animal suffering.

In the previous posts in this series, I have offered some scientific evidence and reasoning to explore whether two activities — driving and stepping on grass — kill large numbers of insects. My rough calculations (see the third post), which estimated the number of insects killed by driving and stepping on grass in my own life, resulted in estimates in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of insects.

I think it’s worth pausing here, because that is quite a strong claim. A very routine activity — driving to soccer and having a kickaround with my teammates — is potentially costing millions of lives.

Is that really true?

If my estimates are approximately correct, and these activities are indeed costing millions of lives, then that is big news. If you assign even a fairly low moral weight to the lives of an insect — perhaps in the ballpark of ~1% of the value of a human, as some of my colleagues have tentatively accepted based on [Rethink Priorities’ research] — then this every day activity represents an ongoing moral catastrophe.

Is this everyday, mundane activity really a moral catastrophe? Is having a kickaround in the park really as bad as mass murder?

I think it’s worth exercising caution. Sometimes, when you cry wolf, there is no wolf.

History has plenty of examples of people who thought there was a moral catastrophe when there actually wasn’t. Fundamentalists often delude themselves into thinking that there is something really, really bad happening, when actually there is not. Examples include the decline of a particular religion or set of religious practices; demographic change/immigration; women being granted the right to have abortions; and other social groups receiving increased rights. People have killed others, and continue to kill others, to stop these perceived moral catastrophes. Clearly, this level of fundamentalism involves delusion, not an actual moral catastrophe.

For sure, there actually are ongoing moral catastrophes that most of society don’t know or don’t care about — just visit any slaughterhouse. Eating a bacon and egg sandwich, another everyday, routine activity, really is as bad as murder. Sometimes, when you cry wolf, there actually is a wolf. An unrecognized moral catastrophe also makes for a great plot in the Dr Seuss book Horton Hears a Who!.

But in the case of the bacon and egg sandwich, it’s easy to find the dead bodies. You can track down and visit the slaughterhouse where piglets are killed to produce that bacon, and you can go and see hens actually forced to endure being cramped into tiny cages non-stop for over a year to produce those eggs. Most professional philosophers believe that factory farming is wrong (see endnote 1 here).

What about with insects? In my third post in this series, I gave some published scientific evidence that supports the hypothesis that walking on grass kills insects. But this evidence isn’t conclusive. Nobody has published a study where they systematically look for all the bodies of insects killed by stepping on grass and conclusively rule out all alternative hypotheses (e.g., other causes of death).

What if we applied common sense to this question? If you asked the general public whether they thought having a kickaround in the park is good or bad, most would tell you something like “Sure, it’s good fun” or “Yeah, great way to exercise and make friends”. Some particularly well-informed people might even say something like “While casual sport has many physical, emotional, and social benefits, many disadvantaged socio-economic groups face systemic barriers to participation and to use of green spaces, so it’s important to remove those barriers”. Nobody would tell you “Absolutely do NOT do that, you’ll kill millions of insects! Are you insane?!”.

The general public are wrong about plenty of things. Common sense is definitely not an absolute measure of empirical truth or moral wisdom.

So, we are in a position where we have hypothesized the existence of a moral catastrophe, based on circumstantial but inconclusive evidence, and basically nobody else would agree that this is a moral catastrophe. It is worth being very careful with the strength of claims we can make — there might actually be a moral catastrophe, but it is also possible that I’m deluded and that the common sense view is the correct one.

How can we tell the difference? We need to find conclusive evidence. In the case of factory farming, you can go to a slaughterhouse and see the dead bodies. Likewise, is there a way to obtain evidence about the numbers of insects killed by walking on grass/driving? We would need to demonstrate two things, in a way that is convincing to skeptics:

1. That there are thousands or millions of insects crawling around in the grass / flying around traffic.
2. That walking on the grass / driving kills thousands or millions of these insects. In other words, once you’re done walking around on the grass or driving to the shops and back, you should be able to point to those thousands or millions of dead bodies.

If we can demonstrate those two things, then we may be justified in believing that walking on grass or driving constitutes a moral catastrophe. Until we have demonstrated those two things, it is worth exercising caution due to the risk of falling into delusion.