It took me more than 30 years to figure mine out — This week on Twitter, #Neurodivergent was trending for me, which isn’t a big surprise, as I’ve spent many years of my life writing on that subject and have a wide circle of acquaintances with personal interest in it. It is one of those hashtags that makes you hesitate, wondering whether…

With cameos by Vladimir Lenin and Sigmund Freud, and bleak endings under the dark shadow of the Nazi regime. — [Content warning for description of suicide and mentions of euthanasia and the Holocaust.] If you’ve ever had an electroencephalogram, or EEG, you’ve undergone a common technique with roots tracing back almost 200 years to 19th-century Europe. …

A story with a few facts and many fabrications is a lie that’s difficult to dismantle. — A friend told me the other day of hearing a rumor about themselves that consisted of a set of facts linked by a series of untruths. Whoever spread the rumor filled in the blanks between the facts with information plucked from their own brains. …

But preventing abortion access might. — A common spurious argument from anti-abortion die-hards is that terminating a pregnancy risks terminating some potential future genius. The usual implication is that a future Darwin or Einstein might be represented in the embryo or fetus in progress. …

Successful parenting means that some day, we have to turn risk prevention over to the children. — [Listen to me read this piece and tell the rest of the story on my Substack podcast.] Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans. It’s a lesson that life may best teach those of us who take on parenting roles. So it’s a source of persistent…

No one should be forced to sustain these harms — Look at any digital or print publication that focuses on pregnancy, and you’ll see closeups of taut bellies enshrouded in gauzy white, or a newborn infant snuggled sweetly in a downy blanket. Sites created to be informative about the ages and stages of pregnancy maintain a sterile, bright soft pastel…

Every time I try to take a break for just a little while, bad things happen, big and small. — I haven’t had an actual vacation in 20 years. As a freelance journalist, I’ve spent many a family “vacation” at the border of a nervous breakdown, trying to juggle shitty mountain cabin wifi and the exigencies of my profession. …

20-year study in Japan finds no positive effect of education on cognition as we age. — “Altogether, our findings highlight that aging is not kinder with the more educated.” So write the authors of a new study examining whether education level has a role in mitigating the cognitive declines we all experience with aging. The amount of cognitive ability we can devote to education certainly is…

Human beings go to great lengths to exit mental discomfort — On April 23, 1842, a certain Mr. S., gentleman farmer aged 50, visited the local medical man with complaints of a “great mental anxiety” for a few weeks because of an increased burden of business duties. Although the record is not specific, the breaking point came when Mr. S. witnessed…