Autistic Rantings by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Do you ever have trouble not correcting people when they are wrong with verifiable facts?

My answer? Of course I do! Come on, I’m OCD and on the spectrum. Inaccurate facts drive me nuts. Which is probably why this dang AI trend is driving me crazy. I mean, this has to be AI because how many people are this stupid?

Not long ago I found another instance on Facebook of a writer talking about knitting and showing crocheting! In this case, he was talking about an actress knitting during her breaks on set, then eventually teaching her fellow cast and crew members to knit as well. He had a picture of the cast or crew member doing a specific handicraft while on set.

The problem is the handicraft was crochet, not knitting!

Get these straight folks – knitting takes TWO needles; crochet takes a single HOOK!

And if you can’t tell the difference between a couple of needles or a single hook – you need your eyes, and possibly your head, examined!

But that isn’t the only glaring error I’ve seen on Facebook recently, and repeatedly.

You see, it seems AI thinks any sibling that doesn’t share both parents with you is a stepsibling, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

If you and your sibling have one parent in common, they are a half-sibling to you. It is only when one of your parents married one of their parents, thus making the two of you siblings, that you are stepsiblings.

To put it simply, if you share a biological parent in common, you are half-siblings; if you are only related because of a marriage between one of your parents and one of their parents, you are stepsiblings.

I.E., some shared genetic connection means half, only being related through marriage means step.

I don’t know how much clearer you can get than that, but then I thought the difference between two needles and one hook was an obvious difference between knitting and crochet, but AI or stubborn fools persist in calling them both knitting.

Folks, that’s like saying sewing and embroidery are the same thing!

Which is absurd.

Sewing and quilting are rather closely related, but quilting is, after all, a subset of the sewing craft while embroidery is a whole other art form, even if both use tiny metal needles with these minuscule holes on one end.

It is a whole different skill set.

And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve done all three.

By the way, embroidery is a major category with a whole line of subsets, like cross-stitch, counted cross-stitch, tapestry, and others I can’t think of the name of right now.

And, yes, there is a difference between plain cross-stitch and counted cross-stitch!

Counted is way harder, period.

Another craft that uses needles is beading, but nobody seems to mix that up with everything else, even when you do beading along with most of these crafts, including knitting and crochet!

I have done counted cross-stitch with beading on more than one occasion.

It just baffles me that people can get two totally different crafts confused but can tell the difference between two very similar crafts.

As in, they know the difference between sewing and quilting (similar crafts) but think knitting and crocheting are basically the same thing.

In what universe?

And in what universe are stepsiblings a reference to any sibling who does share both parents with you?

I really need to know that one because Konnie and I happen to have two half-brothers. We share a father but not a mother. They are still our brothers, but they are not our stepbrothers.

We don’t have any step-siblings. Which isn’t to say we haven’t had them. Over the years we did have stepfathers who did have children from a previous relationship. Don’t ask me how many or how often, because they never had their other children in the same home as us. I’m only sure of two of our past stepfathers who had other children. In one case, we once ran into one of his children at the store; in the other, Mother mentioned his other children after his death.

Yeah, no relationship with them, but they did exist.

Now our half-brothers we lived with for a time. We were actually living with Dad when the youngest of the two were born.

And considering I heard from both of them on mine and Konnie’s recent birthday, we clearly have a relationship with them.

Actually, on our recent birthday, I heard from all our living siblings.

I emphasized “living” because that would have been weird to hear from the oldest of our brothers, and only full brother. Weird, and possibly a little scary.

I have five siblings. I heard from four of them.

Anyway, happy writing, everyone!