Love it when I am told that everything looks normal at the ER and then I open the results when they're added to my online chart and the confirming doctor is like "No half of this is whack actually."
Like, thank you confirming doctor for confirming that your colleague is lying.
"People with X diagnosis can still be smart/empathetic/successful/normal-" WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO BE THOUGH. We shouldn't have to be able to argue that we're smart or successful or empathetic or normal or whatever the fuck to be considered worthy, valuable people. And many people genuinely can't meet those standards. At all. Ever. So either challenge the standards or stop calling yourself a disability/mental health activist. There's nothing progressive about activism which is just about running SOMEONE ELSE over with the bus instead of actually challenging the fact that people are being dehumanized, attacked and excluded AT ALL
Because it is not mentioned by name in the article!:
If any of you develop “violent new food allergies” after having covid — even allergies that present as migraines, malaise, nausea, irritability rather than swelling and itching — you need to get checked for mast cell activation syndrome. It is staggeringly common to develop from long covid and is often treatable.
Nature's Marvels. Text by Lucy Berman. Illustrations by Roy Coombs. 1971.
Very beautiful. Very powerful.
How did you go from a literary snob to “I hope I’m using tenuous right” within the course of this series?
(Red Hood Outlaw 039)
Very simple: he got too many words in his skull and they pop out like from a gumball machine.
Okay, let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, there was a prose translation of the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was wonderfully charming and lyrical and perfect for use in a high school, and so a clever English teacher (as one did in the 70s) made a scan of the book for her students, saved it as a pdf, and printed copies off for her students every year. In true teacher tradition, she shared the file with her colleagues, and so for many years the students of the high school all studied Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the same (very badly scanned) version of this wonderful prose translation.
In time, a new teacher became head of the English Department, and while he agreed that the prose translation was very wonderful he felt that the quality of the scan was much less so. Also in true teacher tradition, he then spent hours typing up the scan into a word processor, with a few typos here and there and a few places where he was genuinely just guessing wildly at what the scan actually said. This completed word document was much cleaner and easier for the students to read, and so of course he shared it with his colleagues, including his very new wide-eyed faculty member who was teaching British Literature for the first time (this was me).
As teachers sometimes do, he moved on for greener (ie, better paying) pastures, leaving behind the word document, but not the original pdf scan. This of course meant that as I was attempting to verify whether a weird word was a typo or a genuine artifact of the original translation, I had no other version to compare it to. Being a good card-holding gen zillenial I of course turned to google, making good use of the super secret plagiarism-checking teacher technique “Quotation Marks”, with an astonishing result:
By which I mean literally one result.
For my purposes, this was precisely what I needed: a very clean and crisp scan that allowed me to make corrections to my typed edition: a happily ever after, amen.
But beware, for deep within my soul a terrible Monster was stirring. Bane of procrastinators everywhere, my Curiosity had found a likely looking rabbit hole. See, this wonderfully clear and crisp scan was lacking in two rather important pieces of identifying information: the title of the book from which the scan was taken, and the name of the translator. The only identifying features were the section title “Precursors” (and no, that is not the title of the book, believe me I looked) and this little leaf-like motif by the page numbers:
(Remember the leaf. This will be important later.)
We shall not dwell at length on the hours of internet research that ensued—how the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon, grading abandoned in shadows half-lit by the the blue glow of the computer screen—how google search after search racked up, until an email warning of “unusual activity on your account” flashed into momentary existence before being consigned immediately and with some prejudice to the digital void—how one third of the way through a “comprehensive but not exhaustive” list of Sir Gawain translators despair crept in until I was left in utter darkness, screen black and eyes staring dully at the wall.
Above all, let us not admit to the fact that such an afternoon occurred not once, not twice, but three times.
Suffice to say, many hours had been spent in fruitless pursuit before a new thought crept in: if this book was so mysterious, so obscure as to defeat the modern search engine, perhaps the answer lay not in the technologies of today, but the wisdom of the past. Fingers trembling, I pulled up the last blast email that had been sent to current and former faculty and staff, and began to compose an email to the timeless and indomitable woman who had taught English to me when I was a student, and who had, after nearly fifty years, retired from teaching just before I returned to my alma mater.
After staring at the email for approximately five or so minutes, I winced, pressed send, and let my plea sail out into the void. I cannot adequately describe for you the instinctive reverence I possess towards this teacher; suffice to say that Ms English was and is a woman of remarkable character, as much a legend as an institution as a woman of flesh and blood whose enduring influence inspired countless students. There is not a student taught by Ms. English who does not have a story to tell about her, and her decline in her last years of teaching and eventual retirement in the face of COVID was the end of an era. She still remembers me, and every couple months one of her contemporaries and dear friends who still works as a guidance counsellor stops me in the hall to tell me that Ms. English says hello and that she is thrilled that I am teaching here—thrilled that I am teaching honors students—thrilled that I am now teaching the AP students. “Tell her I said hello back,” I always say, and smile.
Ms. English is a legend, and one does not expect legends to respond to you immediately. Who knows when a woman of her generation would next think to check her email? Who knows if she would remember?
The day after I sent the email I got this response:
My friends, I was shaken. I was stunned. Imagine asking God a question and he turns to you and says, “Hold on one moment, let me check with my predecessor.”
The idea that even Ms. English had inherited this mysterious translation had never even occurred to me as a possibility, not when Ms. English had been a faculty member since the early days of the school. How wonderful, I thought to myself. What a great thing, that this translation is so obscure and mysterious that it defeats even Ms. English.
A few days later, Ms. English emailed me again:
(I had, in fact searched through both the English office and the Annex—a dark, weirdly shaped concrete storage area containing a great deal of dust and many aging copies of various books—a few days prior. I had no luck, sadly.)
At last, though, I had a title and a description! I returned to my internet search, only to find to my dismay that there was no book that exactly matched the title. I found THE BRITISH TRADITION: POETRY, PROSE, AND DRAMA (which was not black and the table of contents I found did not include Sir Gawain) and THE ENGLISH TRADITION, a super early edition of the Prentice Hall textbooks we use today, which did have a black cover but there were absolutely zero images I could find of the table of contents or the interior and so I had no way of determining if it was the correct book short of laying out an unfortunate amount of cold hard cash for a potential dead end.
So I sighed, and relinquished my dreams of solving the mystery. Perhaps someday 30 years from now, I thought, I’ll be wandering through one of those mysterious bookshops filled with out of print books and I’ll pick up a book and there will be the translation, found out last!
So I sighed, and told the whole story to my colleagues for a laugh. I sent screenshots of Ms. English’s emails to my siblings who were also taught by her. I told the story to my Dad over dinner as my Great Adventure of the Week.
…my friends. I come by my rabbit-hole curiosity honestly, but my Dad is of a different generation of computer literacy and knows a few Deep Secrets that I have never learned. He asked me the title that Ms. English gave me, pulled up some mysterious catalogue site, and within ten minutes found a title card. There are apparently two copies available in libraries worldwide, one in Philadelphia and the other in British Columbia. I said, “sure, Dad,” and went upstairs. He texted me a link. Rolling my eyes, I opened it and looked at the description.
Huh, I thought. Four volumes, just like Ms. English said. I wonder…
Armed with a slightly different title and a publisher, I looked up “The English Tradition: Fiction macmillan” and the first entry is an eBay sale that had picture of the interior and LO AND BEHOLD:
THE LEAF. LOOK AT THE LEAF.
My dad found it! He found the book!!
Except for one teensy tiny problem which is that the cover of the book is uh a very bright green and not at all black like Ms. English said. Alas, it was a case of mistaken identity, because The English Tradition: Poetry does have a black cover, although it is the fiction volume which contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
And so having found the book at last, I have decided to purchase it for the sum of $8, that ever after the origins of this translation may once more be known.
In this year of 2022 this adventure took place, as this post bears witness, the end, amen.
able bodied allies of disabled people when your disability genuinely has no secret upside and makes you useless to a late stage capitalist society
is strange when people say “autism no uwu condition” ie. is no cute childish thing .
but sad thing , is that for many us , especially higher needs higher level and / or those who low mask or no can mask . is IS seen as “childish” by people ,
—
self no can understand much , so obsessively talk think about one or few single thing . self is have plushies and toys to feel comfortable . self is make noise , flap hands , animal noise , many thing . self need routine and tell beforehand or else is shutdown or meltdown . self is love go same same same place . self love repetition . self love same same . self love love ramble , is no can do anything until done with thing start do .
and many us obsessively do only like engage with children shows and such because is only thing understand and make feel comfortable safe . is remember long time self only loved pokemon .
—
all all is seen as “childish” therefore is demonized .
children and “childish” stuff should no be demonized .
so is confuse why people mad that some autistic bad for be “childish” , no understand at all . brain is brain .
^^^ also tired of people deciding autists being childish means we aren't allowed to drink, do drugs, have sex, etc. childish =/= not an adult !!! infantilizing us is not supportive its ableist
we are allowed to be childish AND you should make room to allow us our adulthood !!!
yeah yeah 100% ,
despite how self is look and talk and think
self is Scream to roof top how much we love want kiss women , we love certain violent gore media , we are sexual , many thing
self is feel Not Allowed (and many , they Actually no allowed at all talk about or even Have those words if use aac make by others) talk about these things because way self is talk “ childish” and “that make uncomfy”
many of us still adult . many us still like “adult things”
that why feel so weird when people try infantilize us when we over here shouting how much we love want kiss women .
I think it comes down to the idea that if a person is an adult, they must not like things from childhood anymore, that they have outgrown them, like clothes. If a person still enjoys things associated with childhood, then people say that they must not have grown into the adult things.
It us of course a false dichotomy, and one that to me reads very much as people being unwilling to accept that autistic people (and all disabled people) are fully human, complex individuals.
As an FYI that I probably should have included in the post or tags, Sefaria is a great resource that has commentaries from The Sages™️ as well as modern Jewish thinkers, Rabbis, and theologians. Chabad.org is useful for some things, but it won’t present you with a broader perspective on various passages and issues.
as a huge lover of birds, 90% of the concern against wind turbines being used for energy is literally just pro fossil fuel propaganda. birds ARE at a risk however there is a lot of strategies even as simple as painting one of the blades that reduces a lot of accidental deaths. additionally renewable energy sources will do more in favor of the environment that would positively impact birds (and all of us). one study found over one million bird deaths from wind turbines. while that is a shockingly high number and we should work to drastically shrink it, at least 1.3 billion birds die to outdoor cats on a yearly basis. it was never about caring about birds
there was a study done in 2015 that shows an even greater possible yearly divide than the 2012 one
batman: under the red hood (2010) + letterboxd reviews + (happy birthday jason todd <333)
Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!
Give credit to the 30-year-old who worked on this for free and offers this service for free!
WHAT?!
I study graphic design and my tutor recommended and used this in his classes at art college last year, it’s so good it has SO many features for free, I really recommend it, even if you’re just trying to learn the basics of PS, such a wonderful thing <3
"These scientists keep naming critters after me, but it's always the ones that terrify children," Ford told Conservation International. "I don't understand. I spend my free time cross-stitching. I sing lullabies to my basil plants, so they won't fear the night."
"The snake's got eyes you can drown in, and he spends most of the day sunning himself by a pool of dirty water — we probably would've been friends in the early '60s," he said. "It's a reminder that there's still so much to learn about our wild world - and that humans are one small part of an impossibly vast biosphere,"
(Link to full article below)
(Harrison Ford responds to snake species being named after him - BBC - 08/16/23)
my mom loves to lie and like she always swears she was NEVER homophobic or anything to me as a child “i even have a gay work friend” but a really funny memory resurfaced recently where i asked if i could use birthday money i had to buy a rainbow flag when i was like ??? 7?? because i LOVED rainbows. and she said no that means something Evil and god will hate you . so what did i do. but ask my grandmom for a rainbow sweater for christmas and proceed to only wear that sweater for three years when it got cold because i didnt like the idea that god hated colors and i wanted to challenge him
normal 7 year old with religious trauma: oh no god can hear my thoughts and punish me
me: either you are wrong about god or god is wrong and i will fight him and i will be the one to find out
me at 7: he would not fucking say that
You can never be normal about these men you always gotta say shit like I wanna hold him in my mouth like hes a baby alligator
oh that is ABSOLUTELY entering my vocabulary, thanks anon, good one
getting rid of family vlog channels one state at a time let's gooo
