I suspect this happened to me. Here's what I was trying to read and could not make any sense of it, and I struggled from all different angles: "The Story of the Foul-Mouthed Parrot Andrew Jackson Once Had" (an episode of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep").
Now, I think that's a type of headline that is objectively hard to puzzle out. I encountered another one this morning in the NY Post: "Missouri foster mom accused of trading teen for monkey avoids prison." Something about the sequence "monkey avoids prison" sends your thoughts tripping over the precipice.
But that "Foul-Mouth Parrot" headline was entirely undecipherable to me. I searched for an entry point: What is "Story"? What is "Andrew"? "Foul"? I couldn't even think of how to begin to pronounce those words or how words work together to mean something. This not-knowing lasted for about 15 minutes, and of course, I queried A.I. about it. That was after Meade had consulted a different A.I.
And I believe all A.I.s will tell you the same thing if you put this story into it — not the story of Andrew Jackson's parrot or the story of the foster mom's monkey — the story of a reading human suddenly completely unable to read. And we did what A.I. told us to do. That's why there was no sunrise photo yesterday. Our sleep was massively disrupted. I had to get my head examined.
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৪০টি মন্তব্য:
Geez, that must have been terrifying. Hope everything has worked out to your satisfaction, and it was nothing more than a solid brain fart, which happens to all of us from time to time.
Is there another Althouse Intelligence in Meade's life? Oh, Ann. Of course.
Hope all is well in the Althouse Meade House
Kinda reminds me of:
"See, whatever happens can be said to have happened for the reason you've already reasoned is the reason for whatever happens to have happened. "
Hope everything is okay. We depend on you.
Althouse: I wonder, would that headline have been so confounding if there had been a "that" between "Parrot" and "Andrew"?
Not infrequently, headlines or sentences like that make my mind go in all directions. Often enough, adding a "that" or some such solves the problem, for me.
I know everything will turn out ok. CC, JSM
JAMA Neurology abstract: "Alexia as a transient or paroxysmal neurologic event is a rare clinical finding. John Hughlings Jackson made reference to the paroxysmal occurrence of 'word blindness' as a temporary sequela of neuronal exhaustion at an epileptogenic focus....
It happened to me once, a couple of decades ago at work. I thought I was having a stroke as the words and letters were jumbled on the page. It was terrifying! Hasn't happened again, knock on words.
I'm going to ask Alexa about Alexia now, and bask in the confusion.
I wonder if some significant time, decades ago, spent writing headlines helps me do the deciphering. I dunno.
Did you try diagraming?
Interesting that it would effect reading but not typing. Can you understand what you typed when you go back and read it?
"Isolated Transient Alexia — a migrainous accompaniment"
New masthead?
Take a break?
Stop consuming, and displaying, info online?
Is your head tr y ing to tell you to stupid querying and check in with the natural world? Put down the camera and the comments listen to your body and live?
Meade has an interest in keeping you working, no? He is kinda using y0u so try to put your own needs first... stroke?
Wish you well
Seems analogous to what linguists call a garden-path sentence.
Examples:
"The old man the boat."
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”
“The horse raced past the barn fell."
"The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families."
They’re fun, and don’t indicate brain damage. (But no guarantees.)
Sounds very scary. Sounds like your highly trained super intelligent mind was thrown off balance by poorly composed mediocre sentences.
I don’t know if it’s a similar experience, but sometimes I get thrown off track by the non binary use of “they/them” pronouns in extended sentences. I have to remind myself I’m dealing with idiocy and step back from my expectations of rationality.
Relative pronouns have fallen almost completely out of favor over the past couple of decades. (This is not the only change that has promoted less clarity, IMHO.) I frequently enough trip over headlines and sentences for that reason.
Bring them back, please!
You may have found it already, but there are YouTube videos like the one below that are hours of etymology to put you to sleep, but I found it so interesting that it kept me awake.
"A Solid 3.5 Hours of Useless Information to Fall Asleep To"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiKXQaV6rJw&t=8892s
"Althouse: I wonder, would that headline have been so confounding if there had been a "that" between "Parrot" and "Andrew"?"
I know: Is the parrot's name Andrew? That's the objectively confusing part. And the "had" stranded at the end. And what's the point of "once"? I later learned that Jackson kept that parrot for over half a century, and its dirty-mouth outburst came after Jackson had died, and the parrot was stressed by the unusual crowd that had accumulated at The Hermitage.
But I couldn't even understand the proximity of "Andrew" to "parrot." I think I could not even understand that Andrew was a name or that parrot was an animal.
Never happened to me - but it sounds scary. Hope its just a temporary thing.
My brain can be contrarian. I tried the "Boring..." podcast to which Althouse alluded, but it kept me awake! I just go down rabbit holes and feel compelled to look up things. So I guess it's just another "no one size fits all," with the extension of "and if it does, not all of the time."
Althouse, I really do hope this isn't a harbinger and that it's resolved. I can see how disturbing the experience must have been.
The story of andrew johnson's foul-mouthed parrot. Seems like a clearer and more concise healine.
Mom trades teen for monkey - avoids prison. Also a better way to write it.
"Geez, that must have been terrifying."
Oddly enough, I wasn't anxious at all. I couldn't believe I had to go to the emergency room, but when AIs concurred, I accepted it. Everything got treated like a very high priority, so I understood what that meant, but I still felt that nothing was really wrong and I hoped to get out of there and back home. You might as well worry all the time. Anyone could have a stroke at any moment. What are you going to do, spend your life in fear? Just do what you've got to do when there are precautions to take and don't indulge in anticipatory suffering. If you can't help it, you can't help it, but you're lucky if you don't.
Alternate headline:
Extremely well-trained head examined on wild, untamed continent.
You're a better woman than I, Althouse. I do worry about stuff like that, especially because I'll be living alone.
Congrats on your calm! I'm sure it's much the better way.
P.S. Small OT, I happened to mistype "Althouse" in this comment (left out the "l") and autocorrect fixed it for me! I'm sort of dumbfounded. Are you that famous, or have I just typed that "word," in this context so very many times, including in url lines, over the years?
See what I mean? Another rabbit hole for me.
I have noticed, as I have gotten older, that this type of situation happens to me more often. I'll try to read something and I'll have to back away for a minute to come back and take a second stab at it.
Another thing too, is that writing/language has changed from when I was in college. People express themselves differently, which makes it harder to understand what is being communicated sometimes. (And thus requires multiple readings of a sentence to finally suss it out.) This obviously works both ways, based on the number of times that people have said, "OK, boomer." to me.
An eon ago, I used to use pencil to correct sentences for more clarity in books I read, and sometimes would even rewrite the sentences in the margins. This was way before I spent time as an editor. Maybe it's hardwired to be bugged like this, at least at some point. I hope it doesn't get worse.
Good thing you hadn’t run across Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. CC, JSM
The Buffalo sentence should be in all caps, otherwise it’s too easy to see what’s going on.
My advice for communicating in a multilingual work environment: "Don't write to be understood. Write so that you cannot be misunderstood."
Wouldn't it be a foul-beaked parrot?
"Sounds very scary. Sounds like your highly trained super intelligent mind was thrown off balance by poorly composed mediocre sentences...."
Yes, I am interested in the idea that a sentence could be so badly written that it would annihilate mental functioning... like that mythic joke that causes laughter unto death.
It seems an absurd sentence
"Wouldn't it be a foul-beaked parrot?"
I think "beak" corresponds to "lips." We've all got a mouth — human and bird.
Possibly prodromal symptoms which can precede a migraine? One can have the symptoms even if the pain does not follow.
I’m glad you got checked out and that you’re okay. Take care.
I don't really need to be able to read every sentence that comes along, do I? I figure there's plenty more where that one came from. If it was important, I'll find what it said sooner or later.
Good luck. I hope it's the Zebra you're diagnosing and not a more likely possibility.
If it was the former then I would blame the line break after "Andrew" rather than the sentence itself.
Once you connect "Andrew" with "Jackson" it makes sense.
I imagine follow-up with a neurologist or a related specialist was recommended at the ER.
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