very interesting bug on my screen door rn. bigger than she looks in the image, maybe an inch and a half long? what is her name

You might think that I'm joking when I say that we need cyborg rights to be codified into law, but I honestly think that, given the pace of development of medical implants and the rights issues raised by having proprietary technologies becoming part of a human body, I think that this is absolutely essential for bodily autonomy, disability rights, and human rights more generally. This has already become an issue, and it will only become a larger issue moving forwards.

No but seriously we need cyborg rights, in case you don't know how many people count as cyborgs here are some examples;

There are even edge cases revolving around how much electricity and integration into the body are necessary to make someone a cyborg.

The list could go on but I think I made my point that cyborgs are a lot more than just people with robot arms, they are the disabled deserving of the rights to the technology their lives literally depend on.

This is needed.

Earlier this year, a woman was forcibly deprived of a brain implant that was treating her epilepsy because the company that made the implant went bankrupt. Here's a link to one of several articles about it:

This story happened back in the 2010s according to the first article but is still relevant. Also if my cochlears were repossessed by the company for some asinine reason I would literally stop being able to do 80% of the things I do and my future would be ruined. Cyborg rights are necessary and should have been codified decades ago

This was in 2020, and the patients weren't even informed of it - one day their eyes just stopped working because the company that made them went out of business.

Every person need to be taught disability history

Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.

Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”

Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.

Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.

Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.

Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”

Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.

Teach about us.

Oh! Oh! I got one! Meet Edward V. Roberts-

Ed Roberts was one of the founding minds behind the Independent Living movement. Roberts was born in 1939, and contracted polio at age 14, two years before the vaccine that ended the polio epidemic came out (vaccinate your kids). Polio left Roberts almost completely paralyzed, with only the use of two fingers and a few toes. At night, he had to sleep in an iron lung, and he would often rest there during the day as well. Other times of the day, he breathed by using his face and neck muscles to force air in and out of his lungs.

Despite this being the fifties, Roberts' mother insisted that her son continue schooling. Her support helped him face his fear of being stared at and ridiculed at school, going from thinking of himself as a "hopeless cripple" to seeing himself as a "star." When his high school tried to deny him his diploma because he had never completed driver's ed, Roberts and his mother fought the school and won.

This marked the beginning of his career as an activist.

Roberts had to fight the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for support to attend college, because his counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever work or live independently. Roberts did go to school, however, first attending the College of San Marino. He was then accepted to UC Berkeley, but when the school learned that he was disabled, they tried to backtrack. "We've tried cripples before, and it didn't work," one dean famously said. The school tried to argue the dorms couldn't accommodate his iron lung, so Roberts was instead housed in an empty wing of the school's Cowell Hospital.

Roberts' admittance paved the way for other disabled students who were also housed in the new Cowell Dorm. The group called themselves "The Rolling Quads," and together they fought and advocated for better disability support, more ramps and accessible architecture like curb cut outs, founded the first formally recognized student-led disability services program in the country, and even managed to successfully oust a rehabilitation counselor who had threatened two of the Quads with expulsion for their protests.

After graduation from his master's, he served a number of other roles- he taught political science at a number of different colleges over the years, served on the board for the Center for Independent Living, confounded the World Institute on Disability with Judith E. Heumann and Joan Leon, and continued to advocate for better disability services and infrastructure at his alma mater of UC Berkeley.

Roberts also took part in and helped organize sit ins to force the federal government to enforce section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability. The sit-in occupied the offices of the Carter Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco and lasted 28 days. The protestors were supported by local gay rights organizations and the Black Panthers. Roberts and other activists spoke, and their arguments were so compelling that members of the department of health joined the sit in. Reagan was forced to acknowledge and implement the policies and rules that section 504 required. This national recognition helped to pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

Roberts died of cardiac arrest in 1995 at the age of 54, leaving behind a proud legacy of advocacy and activism. Not bad for a "hopeless cripple" whose rehab counselor thought he was too disabled to ever work.

If you ever, and I mean EVER think that you fucked something up royally, remember that the organizers of the 1904 Olympic marathon:

- Had zero stations for water on the 26 mile (42 km) course

- Accidentally gave North American competitor Tom Hicks a cocktail made of egg whites, brandy, and actual fucking rat poison

- Had a guy come into the race late wearing a beret and cutoff slacks, sneak into an apple orchard during the race because no food had been given to him for 40 hours, eat rotten apples, projectile vomit onto the track, fall asleep for hours, and finish in fourth place OVERALL because most of the other runners collapsed of exhaustion or injuries

- Conducted the race on a dusty road, which caused so much dust to be kicked into the air that an American runner somehow inhaled enough to tear his STOMACH LINING open

- Accidentally released feral dogs onto the track

- Fucked the other competitors up SO BADLY that Tom Hicks—the guy who ate RAT POISON and was HALLUCINATING the entire run—came in first place

Julia de Ruvo

hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate

BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard (under My Filters) to get rid of it!

reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3

i’m at such a ?? time of my life i’m just ???????????????????????? like ????????

requested by anonymous:

RATING: RELIABLE

The above is from this article from The Guardian.  The images are from MYA Network. The caption on their website reads:

Source: ‘When a sperm and egg get together, the body creates tissue in order to support the developing pregnancy.  Here are photos of that tissue from 5-9 week pregnancies.  This is called the gestational sac, and it’s like the “house” for the pregnancy. Inside this sac there are cells that have the potential to become a fetus but there is no visible embryo at this stage. We rinsed off the blood and menstrual lining (decidua) for these photographs.’

The published images sparked a lot of debate, leading to the story being picked up by other news outlets. For example:

Source: ‘Last week, the Guardian published images of pregnancy tissue after abortions in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The small size and appearance of the tissue were shocking to many. We have all absorbed, knowingly and unknowingly, the pervasive anti-abortion narrative that a pregnancy resembles a tiny baby starting in the earliest weeks. Though an early embryo can be seen under the magnification of ultrasound, it can take months for it to be perceptible to the naked eye.’

Source: ‘People have responded in disbelief, citing the (magnified) images they’ve seen on ultrasounds. […] ”Think of the illustrations on pregnancy and medical websites. The Mayo Clinic, one of the preeminent medical organizations in the country, shows week-by-week illustrations of embryonic and fetal development without any context of scale, like the rulers in the MYA photos.’

As stated in the article, whilst people talk about a ‘heartbeat’ at 6 weeks, there is no heart developed at this stage - only a group of cells that will become part of the heart.

Source: ‘But what exactly do we mean when we talk about a “fetal heartbeat” at six weeks of pregnancy? Although some people might picture a heart-shaped organ beating inside a fetus, this is not the case. Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.’

It should also be noted that the images show an embryo, not a fetus, until the 9th week.

Source: ‘In human pregnancies, a baby-to-be isn’t considered a fetus until the 9th week after conception, or week 11 after your last menstrual period (LMP).’

The co-founders of the MYA Network responded in a New York Times article.

Source: ‘Many people, even those who support abortion rights, did not believe the photos were accurate. Some insisted we had deliberately removed the embryos before taking the photos. The images weren’t consistent with those often seen in embryological textbooks, magnified on ultrasounds or used in anti-abortion propaganda; these enlarged images are not what you see with the naked eye after an abortion. A Stanford gynecologic pathologist has validated our photos, but many people could not believe the pictures were presented unaltered.

I’ve never seen pictures like this.

BRO?

Reblog if you're self indulgent and perverted lmao

fellas is it perverted to think happy thoughts

this reminds me of that one tweet i keep seeing on instagram (proceeded to be unable to find it on google) that goes “your friends only like you because they enjoy spending time with you and you make each other feel good” that i think is supposed to be read in the tone of someone trying to speak aggressively to you so it comes off as ironic

argh..... (not like in a pirate way though like in a “saying something how it’s spelled” kind of way)

i know that i’ll get the things that i want with patience, time, and some TLC n elbow grease rubbed in on the side, but god the tension is killing me.

i don’t know how much longer i can do this, and yet at the same time i know there’s no exit in sight. as they said, “the party train ain’t stopping any time soon”. and i’m on this train to the last fucking stop. not even – the last atom of that last fucking stop. ain’t a doubt about it in my mind anymore (at least, not one those close to me advise me to listen to).

i want answers so bad, but every attempt at getting them just leads to more questions and hesitance.

i just need to let things play out more instead of shitting myself every second i think

(proceeds to find the silliest fruitiest tidbit of information that makes all my anxieties and fears go away the next day)

Why Didn't you Stop Me?— A Tumblestar and Tweetsong PMV

Elizabethstar has lost her last life. Charlesclaw will head to the Moonpool to receive his new name and nine lives at dawn.

"I shouldn't have abandoned [tumblr]clan when things got bad. I can never forgive myself for doing such a thing especially after I've sworn to defend this clan even if it costed my life. but now I know that [tumblr]clan is my true place and home. punish me however you see fit, I just wish for a chance to prove my loyalty once and for all"

Eastern euros stay winning

@redwolftrash what you want is this:

These machines above are built to attack and kill people. They are only marketed as „robot dogs“ because humans like dogs. They are not.

1) me fantasizing about a dog-like robot that wouldn’t be able to suffer from my living situation due to being unable to get sick from the air full of dust and mouse shit particulates or be injured from tripping and falling + also being able to help me retrieve items in a house that’s hard for me to navigate was clearly not meant to be taken as “i want a robot dog that kills people so i can kill people” but ok sure assume that i guess

2) that dog in the GIF can’t do shit. i don’t want something to pet that’ll glow and make barking noises at me i want something that can help me live in the hellhole that is my house without being damaged by it like i’ve been in recent years.

Sorry, I should have used tone indicators too

I was not offended or sarcastic, I was genuinely worried.

I did not assume you would want to kill people, I just wanted to point out these machines are built to kill people, and using them for other things still would profit the corporation building them.

I‘ll leave you be

apologies for the passive aggressivity. i’ve had really bad experiences with people misunderstanding me and then claiming horrific (as in like “why would anyone ever want genuinely believe/say that” horrific, not exaggeration horrific) strawman arguments on twitter and reddit so i have my guard up.

i’m not a big tech guy -- quite the opposite, can’t learn most basic tech things even being taught in a discord call with someone -- but i think reprogramming these things and turning technology that these corporations build to oppress us would absolutely benefit us in the long run.

not just as new aids for disabled people (i have brain fog from a concussion, what’s most likely brain damage from multiple mental illnesses, and the worsening of that from getting covid + dissociation issues that mean that living by myself would be incredibly dangerous for me because i get so zoned out if i’m not checked on that i easily forget to eat or drink, so having something automated like a robot that checked on me would help me with working towards living without my parents) but also for retaining community defense in a world where the police is increasingly militarized + funded + used as a weapon of oppression against (mostly) defenseless, innocent people.

idk. i would probably never be able to afford any kind of robot, but if i ever did it would be like that trans eye laser (lazer? never remember how to spell it) comic if it saw a bluey (my family, especially my uncles, were victimized by police in the 1980s via racial profiling due to the war on drugs)

Glad we cleared up the misunderstandings! Thank you!

The thought of the robot dogs being a force of good is appealing.

Also look at this cool assistive robot named Annie:

oooh robot.....

i would be worried about the chassis + wheel form of transportation as i have a supermarket nearby where we have a little supermarket robot guy (probably to prevent shoplifting but i can tell you now he doesn’t work for shit) with googly eyes and he has to change directions every 5 seconds because he’s just so large and the aisles are so small that it’s very hard for him to navigate. he sees with 2 motion detecting cameras (? i think), but as you’d imagine in a supermarket with narrow aisles there’s constant motion from shopping carts and people walking.

this is him it took me forever to find this photo because this period of my life was very repressed for...a lot of reasons...so i misremembered the month and year i took this for like 10 minutes straight lol (help why do my eye bags make me look like one of those crusty white dogs with the allergies)

this is also without factoring in that i live in a hoarding situation where the ability to walk is very constrained bc we have a narrow pathway around the house that makes it hard for one person to walk around without tripping on something or knocking something over as is (my mom and i can’t walk next to each other in the house narrow) (i constantly knock over this ironing board my mom has perched on the edge of a plastic contained in the space that connects the dining room, living room, right side bathroom, aunt’s former room, and my bedroom because it’s so narrow) so i can imagine it’d be a lot harder for a robot to move things back in place or get itself up if it fell over :(

Hmmm a flying robot with arms might be more useful then! 🤔

Don‘t know if those exist / how the battery life is

That poor shop robot 🤖

A restaurant in my town has a kitty server robot that glides around bringing drinks to guests.

It constantly has to change directions too because restaurant patrons are getting in its way. 😅

wouldn’t a flying robot technically be a drone, or would that not count since these are robots that control themselves and iirc there aren’t drones that fully control themselves yet (i.e. they’re remotely controlled)?

drones are cool but from what i’ve seen the speed on them is real fast so i’d be worried about smashing it into the walls or ceiling all day (like that drone from garten of banban that can never seem to just go where the person wants it to)

the supermarket robots are in my state (new york, though the second one was a news station in new york reporting on a specific robot in connecticut) and states nearby like pennsylvania, and are all apparently named marty! i remembered it was an M name, but i assumed it was marvin or martin before looking it up. one escaped the supermarket once.

they’re meant to detect spilled products, debris, and water, presumably to keep people from tripping and falling...but this doesn’t always work well, and they’ve been known to throw shit fits over bottle caps, leaves that have fallen from plant produce (the mashable article i read that i’m paraphrasing info from that reported on this specified a cilantro leaf), or sometimes just. nothing at all. i never saw the marty i took selfies with in march last year find a spill or debris though

the kitty server robot. oh my god. i just know that little critter has given so many smiles. i’m assuming it has to be at least somewhat waterproof if an accident happened and someone bumped into it

Kitty robot brought SO MANY smiles to people and so many coos!! They have a very cute voice too that says “your drink has arrived!” Or “please put your empty glasses on my shelves”

Omg be free Marty! Live your dream! 😂

Awesome, I love it! (Genuine)

Pretty sure you are right about the drones. They need to be so fast because they are basically tiny helicopter, and their rotors need to move fast to stay airborne. Battery life is a problem because they need to be so light. Which probably means they can’t carry heavy stuff either.

You know what, thinking about this maybe one could rig a system of rails to your ceiling, and a robot arm could hang from that, going to different rooms and assisting. Maybe a robot monkey even, with multiple limbs.

oh i LOVE that they gave them a voice! marty has an automated voice that plays when he senses debris/spilled liquid but it’s a very automated news anchor type voice so it gets old quickly.

on the “how robot could make living in hoarding situation much better” idea...the mcdonald’s at flushing avenue right next to the myrtle avenue station in brooklyn has a conveyor (? i can’t remember if it has conveyors or of it’s several clasps attached to wires that run back and forth) system they use to ferry takeout bags to the employees at the takeout area! i was able to find several photos of the system coming out of the kitchen area, across the dining area, and towards the takeout area...but i SWEAR i vividly remember seeing the glass containers for the system in the kitchen as a kid, and i have a specific memory of seeing bags being moved through the glass and metal the system is in when my uncle and i went to order there once as a kid.

photos:

i do have to admit i like the idea of a robot monkey a bit more...though maybe not with the quick temper that monkeys tend to have. people online really hate monkeys for some reason, but i don’t get it. they’re fairly harmless if left alone and observed from a distance (though humans seem to have a real hard time accepting that second criteria).