My Gender Is Goth

weird that we treat autism and ADHD as intrinsically linked due to high rates of comorbidity but no one talks that way about autism and schizophrenia or autism and OCD or autism and bipolar disorder etc etc even though those are also often comorbid. gee I wonder why

Reblogging this every time I see someone on my post about how autism and ADHD aren’t the only neurodivergent experiences say that we need an umbrella term for autism and ADHD specifically, as if they have everything in common with each other and nothing with any other types of neurodivergence

You know what? Happy Disability Month to those who were disabled by accident. Cars, skis, ice, sand, rocks, horses, just plain bad luck. Broken bones and backs that never heal. Shoulders that can't lift or move right. Wrists that don't turn. Hands that can't grasp. Brains that don't work right anymore. Legs that don't move anymore and eyes that won't recover.

The shame, the blame, the frustration, the wishful thinking that tears you apart. The beauty of small victories and simple kindness. The community you build. Reshaping a life with no warning. Mourning for the person you once were. Joyfully embracing the person you now are. Happy Disability Month to you too (even if you aren't ready to use that word yet)

the bravest person in the world

im obsessed with her

it should be illegal to tow a car as punishment and i’m not even kidding

you park in the wrong spot somewhere. maybe at a friend’s apartment complex, or at a store when you’re actually walking somewhere else, or whatever. they could ticket you—still charge you a fine for parking where you’re not supposed to. but instead, in a far more crippling way than a fine (which is already hard enough for low income people), they call a third party and steal your car. so you have lost your means of transportation, which you will only learn the next time you need your car, because they don’t have any need or care to notify you.

so first, you have to figure out which towing company they used. which you can only do if the place that decided your car was in the wrong spot is still open, or if you can get someone on the phone.

assuming you figure out which company towed your car, which one time took me over an hour on its own because the number on the signs warning about towing in the parking lot was a dead number, you then have to figure out how to get there. without a car. god help you if you don’t have someone in your support network to pick you up or public transportation, because most of the time it’s at least a mile away.

you find a way to get there, you call them to see if your car is even really there, and they tell you they won’t give your car back until you pay them. how much? well, it’s not regulated, so they can pretty much say whatever number they goddamn feel like. i recently got towed by a company infamous in my college town and they charged me a whopping $180–half of my paycheck for two weeks during the school year. when the same company towed my brother last year, and we both have the same sized cars, they charged him $300. they don’t have to justify the charge, they don’t have any itemized receipt, because what are you going to do? not pay it? you have to get to work and you’re already short on time because you had to walk to the goddamn towing place or have someone come get you to bring you there or spend an hour on the phone with different people trying to figure out where the fuck your car was in the first place.

it’s extortionate. it’s absolutely insane that they can, without exaggeration, steal someone’s car and hold it for ransom under the assumption that you will pay anything to get it back, because of the extent to which our society is dependent on cars.

This Google Drive AI scraping bullshit actually makes me want to cry. My entire life is packed into Google Drive. All of my writing over the years, all of my academic documents, everything.

I’m just so overwhelmed with all the shit I’m going to have to move. I’m lucky to have Scrivener, but online data storage has been super important as I’ve had so many shitty computers, and the only reason I haven’t lost work is because Google Drive has been my backup storage unit.

My partner has recommended gitlab to move my files to - it seems useful, and I can try and explain more about what it is and how it works when I get more familiar with it. I’m unsure if it’s a text editor, or can work that way. He was explaining something about the version history that I don’t quite understand right now but might later. I’m just super overwhelmed and frustrated that this is the dystopia we live in right now.

I’m so sad to see so many panicked posts about google docs when the original inflammatory post has been debunked and retracted.

Google is ONLY talking about publicly available data. Stuff that is in your drive DOES NOT COUNT as publicly available. 

There are SO MANY companies that use drive and docs for proprietary information who would have MANY lawsuits to bring if it was discovered private drives were being scraped.

Now, I’m not saying NOT to swap writing programs because google docs is pretty pants as an actual word processor, and also, never ever have all your stuff only in one place, but I don’t want anyone to freak out that their writing isn’t safe.

happy disability pride month to anyone having a really bad flare-up rn btw. take care of yourself

noodle! For Alanox

hey writers if you want to make a metaphor for racism, please maybe remember that racism is literally based on nothing. Africans weren’t enslaved en masse because the Robo-Musa threatened to destroy the world, they were enslaved because it was economically rewarding and politically convenient. If at any point your allegory for racism includes “so <oppressed group> did this major catastrophe and” then you have not only missed the point but you are literally reinforcing the ideas that racism have let racism self-perpetuate (that e.g. black people are naturally dangerous and violent and must be contained or begrudgingly accepted by the Nice White People)

i swear the internet needs to rethink the moral framework of devious porn from the ground up because imagine your cousin got charged for possessing cp & then after looking into it you found out its fucking sonic yiff. imagine they got charged for beastiality and then you found out they just drew a saucy vaporeon. like maybe you have an argument for why that's still wrong but the words "pedo" and "zoo" are just used indiscriminately by very online furries for situations where it simply paints the wrong picture.

I believe that making something out to be worse than it really is still counts as misrepresentation that should be corrected, even if you have an argument prepared for why it's "still bad" that doesn't retroactively make it the same as the image everyone has in their heads when you use those words.

If you make me log back in to your website to track the shipping of my order rather than just giving me the tracking number: I hate your business immensely.

THIS IS BIG BIG BIG!  YES!

NO MORE FED USE OF PRIVATE PRISONS!

President Biden signed the executive order January 27, 2021.  This is the first time I’ve even heard of this.  Here are a couple of links with more info:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/biden-s-order-terminates-federal-private-prison-contracts-here-s-n1255776

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bop-finalizes-moving-inmates-private-prisons/story?id=94281403

Biden gets a lot of flack for being a generic neo liberal rather than a cool leftist, and trust me I’m 100% on board with criticizing Biden, but it occurred to me that, at least by my standards, he’s the best president I’ve lived under. Clinton was just “What if Reaganomics but with a saxophone”, Obama did pass the ACA, but he also cut it to bits to appease the republicans who didn’t vote for it anyway, and he constantly bombed middle-eastern civilians. I’m not even gonna bother mentioning any of the republicans since I don’t need to convince my intended audience that they’re bad.

Biden, while he’s obviously had some major bad decisions (breaking the rail strike, failing to defend trans rights), has done more actual good than I think anyone else I’ve lived under. He’s nearly completely ended drone strikes, he’s addressing the debt crisis (everyone knows about the $10k, but very few I’ve seen know about the changes he’s made to how federal student loans work that make them far less of a burden/deathtrap), and now there’s the above, which I’m just learning about.

Never let perfect be the enemy of good, and while Biden is very far from being a perfect president, I’m pretty comfortable calling him a good one.

#Biden is not a cool leftist President#but he’s been genuinely more effective at passing progressive policies than literally any democratic president in my lifetime#I think this is partially circumstantial bc we live in an era of truly insane partisanship#very few elected politicians these days genuinely voting or making policy choices according to their strict moral compasses#I don’t give a fuck anymore I don’t want a wildly charismatic dem president who appeases the right in the name of unity#and wastes their chances at creating lasting legislative change during their time in power#I just want dems in power to do useful shit and Biden has done useful shit#that’s why I’m gonna vote for him again!

For all the people who insist they never trust politicians, they are sure adamant about waiting until the stars align and political Jesus comes down from the clouds to save us. If you actually didn’t like or trust politicians you would accept that the great majority of the time we are going to have to work with mediocrity.

Biden is boring and uninspiring for sure, but he is significantly less offensive than the vast majority of other options and he is someone we can influence. We want someone we can influence and push towards our positions. Biden has shown that if he isn’t an ally, he at least can be persuaded or pushed into doing what we, the left, want. There are few candidates we can actually say that about.

The point is not that he’s perfect. The point is that he’s very clearly shown that he cares about using his political mandate to make things better. The point is that he cares about accountability. The point is that he cares about what historians will say about him in the future. The point is, these are good qualities in a leader. The kind of qualities that we can work with.

With regards to the rail strike, he continued working with the railways after the strike and just recently got them to give the workers their sick leave. https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid

“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.”

I disagree with a lot of Bidens decisions, but he has been monumentally better than every other democratic president we have ever had. I do believe he should cement his legacy with something akin to a national jobs and infrastructure program, but he really has done exceptional work in the midst of a pandemic and the growth of christofascism.

if you don’t feel comfortable calling yourself a faggot you’re not the right kind of person to cover am*rican idiot and that’s that

I spent the weekend at an awesome indie film fest and had a great experience…………except that I needed recovery time from how bad the event chairs hurt my body. REALLY wish more thin people gave a shit about this.

this shit's easy

I was gonna make a joke about how Victor has some fucking nerve calling them “friends” after what he pulled but honestly, given how Victor treats literally everyone else in his life, yeah no they are absolutely friends by Victor Frankenstein standards

I think the bicycle helmet discourse really just reinforces the idea that people believe that accidents only happen to the stupid and careless, and that people who get hurt somehow deserve it. And since nobody wants to believe themselves to be stupid, or thinks they could be careless or distracted, it's not necessary to take precautions.

And then they take safety advice as an insult because telling someone to be safe is seen as an accusation of being stupid and irresponsible, and not just a value neutral acknowledgement of statistical inevitably. We see it with masks, and seatbelts, and now bicycle helmets because everyone wants to believe they're too clever to get hurt, and too lucky to get hurt badly, until suddenly you're not and you have to resign, in shame, to being one of the people you previously saw as annoying nags, assuming you're even still alive.

i think some of y'all really need to learn is that you are only entitled to safety, not to feelings of safety. you need to recognize that your feelings are fallible, shaped by your cultural upbringing and intrinsic biases, and that they are not always reflective of reality.

for example, imagine you've been raised in a society that violently stigmatizes drug use, mental illness and homelessness. you're walking down the street, and you see someone who is disheveled, talking to themselves or yelling, pacing, maybe even smoking or injecting drugs. you feel unsafe, even though this person poses no threat to you. you call the police, even though no harm has been done and a reasonable assessment of the situation can tell you that no harm will be done. the police come and arrest that person, and although your right to safety was never violated, you've now put someone else in harm's way. you've traded their right to physical safety for your own perception of safety, and that is morally indefensible. that cannot be explained away by saying that you deserve to be safe in public, because you were never unsafe in the first place.

Housing is a privilege.

“Fewer than 5 percent of units have the features needed to accommodate a person with moderate mobility difficulties. The percentage of wheelchair-accessible units is even smaller; less than 1 percent of all units are equipped with features that would allow a wheelchair user to live independently.”

Marriage is a privilege.

“The [SSI] monthly maximum Federal amounts for 2023 are $914 for an eligible individual, $1,371 for an eligible individual with an eligible spouse.”

Minimum wage is a privilege.

“Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act authorizes employers, after receiving a certificate from the Wage and Hour Division, to pay special minimum wages — wages less than the Federal minimum wage — to workers who have disabilities for the work being performed.”

We still need to fight for accessibility and equity for all disabled people.

Despite the ADA, equity is still out of reach.

you guys. separating a video description from a video transcription is incredibly counterproductive for people who need both AND ["and" in caps] for people who only need one of the two

the audio part of a video and the visual part of a video arent separate, theyre part of the same cohesive story. as someone who needs transcriptions but not descriptions, it is incredibly more helpful if a transcription tells me what's going on in the video visually as each sound appears, because otherwise there's no context. since transcriptions are for videos without CC, i can't watch the video and read the transcription at the same time, especially if it's long

similarly, a person who needs a description but not transcriptions won't be able to watch the video and read the description at the same time, especially if they are using a screenreader and/or it is long. also, if there are way less visual cues than audio cues, it will be hard to tell when which part takes place

and i hope i don't have to explain why it's bad for people who need both

this also goes for doing video descriptions that only describe the visual cues but not the audio of a video with CC, or transcriptions without a description (which i see a lot. some people seem to think only images need visual descriptions and completely forget about videos. visually impaired people don't gain the ability to see when it's a video, guys). please for the love of god just provide both as one single thing

ETA: i know people do this with the best of intentions and i don't mean to be aggressive, although i am slightly frustrated. this is just a PSA so you can make your accessible audiovisual content better for those who need it

On that note where are all my cyborgs at this wonderful Disabilty Pride Month? I'm talking about those of us with brain shunts, with insulin pumps, with prosthetics that need charging, bionic eyes, implants that control seizures, pace makers, anything that makes Luddite philosophers and eugenicists and those who scream about the natural order of things AFRAID when they realize these kinds of things aren't in some futuristic sci-fi transhumanist horror story that's a metaphor for "natural" human resilience but something that is happening RIGHT NOW to REAL LIVING PEOPLE and we are alive and THRIVING by this wonderful technology yet constantly afraid of this technology we're dependent on no longer being supported by the for-profit companies that make it or the technology being damaged or medical or tech infrastructure going down in the supposed revolution because not even the leftists think about us.

Anyway, here's on for us! 🤖

[Image Description: a close-up photo of a pale neck with a tiny, mostly healed pale pink neck incision scar. Being held up near the scar is a medical alert necklace pendant of a classic, boxy robot with a red star with the Rod of Asclepius on it. End I.D.]

that post about how its impossible to satirize masculinity without thousands of men earnestly idenitifying with it isn't wrong but ive also seen enough women cheer on the most rancid shit as long as its got a veneer of femininity to it so idk i think it might just be a human thing