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I didn’t want to do this, but I’m in an abusive situation and I need money.

My mother is abusive, and last night we got in a fight. She checked my phone and saw that I document her abuse, so she’s decided that I either pay $200 a month or lose my phone, which is my connection to the outside world and many things I love, as well as a way to avoid sensory overload and to stim. I need this device, obviously, because of that and so I can keep documenting her abuse, but I can’t even come up with $5 a month and I use dozens of survey sites. I’m opening up commissions soon so I can have a little more, but for the moment I need donations. My email is nerdgirl1090@gmail.com if you want to send me money through paypal, but even if you can only signal boost that would be appreciated. Send me your url with the money too if you can, I’ll write it down and draw you something for your kindness.

(I also feel it relevant to say that if and hopefully when I have spare money from these phone payments, I’ll use it for things like stim toys or a binder. I just feel you’d be more comfortable donating knowing everything your money might do.)

Posted on 2/13/17. 

Charging you for documenting proof of what she’s doing. That is just twisted.

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Having your special interest change doesn’t mean you aren’t autistic.

Not always being overwhelmed by sensory stuff doesn’t mean you aren’t autistic.

Being able to speak in front of a crowd doesn’t mean you aren’t autistic.

Not having to stim every moment of every day doesn’t mean you aren’t autistic.

Being able to read social cues doesn’t mean you aren’t autistic.

Liking to be touched doesn’t mean you aren’t autistic.

Everyone is different. Autistic traits change and shift and aren’t static. Autism can manifest in as many ways as there are autistic people.

This doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you if you can’t read social cues, or you can’t deal with being touched; just know that you don’t have to second-guess yourself just because you don’t match a textbook.

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alternative depression tips for when you read the ‘depression tips’ post and laugh hollowly, bc only in your fondest dreams could you manage to do any of those things

  • dry shampoo and face wipes are your friend. if you can brush your teeth you’ll feel maybe 2% less disgusting. wash your hands.
  • smelling nice is gr9, rubbing moisturiser in is Exhausting. perfume, scented candles and linen sprays are way quicker.
  • try to change your clothes at least every other day. wear sweats or pjs as often as you physically can.
  • you don’t need to put on underwear if you’re not leaving the house (that goes double for bras and binders)
  • drink any water that hasn’t been sitting out on your desk for a week. dust doesn’t taste good. stay hydrated. I fill one of those 2 litre bottles in the morning and keep it with me so I don’t have to get up and walk to the sink.
  • re: cleaning, try and keep one room vaguely clean. if everywhere else is a shit hole that’s fine, but you can go sit in your one tidy space and chill for a bit. it’s fine if that’s the bathroom or just the corner of your bedroom where there’s no crap on the floor. find a tiny space that isn’t horrifying and sit in it.
  • music helps.
  • eat a thing. +5 points if it has a fresh fruit or vegetable in it. take out is acceptable if it comes with veggies.
  • if your creativity curled up and died a long time ago try and find something that at least reminds you what it was like to feel inspired. watch a film, look at some art (probably not your own), read a thing. if that makes you feel worse, just?? don’t think about it??
  • grounding yourself is actually really helpful. open the window and breathe for 2 minutes. lay down on the floor and feel your whole body (unless you don’t want to in which case: lay down and don’t feel anything except the floor) 
  • human interaction is Good. text a family member you don’t hate if you have one. message a friend. reply to someone’s personal post with ‘SAME’. make your own personal post asking the void for validation. stare out the window at people and remind yourself that life exists outside of the black space inside your head. whatever works.
  • pets are amazing, agreed. watch some funny animal vines if you don’t have one.
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“Stop sending expired food”….”fried chicken 64.99” 

IQALUIT, Nunavut — A head of cabbage for $20. Fifteen bucks for a small bag of apples.

A case of ginger ale: $82.

Fed up and frustrated by sky-high food prices and concerned over widespread hunger in their communities, thousands of Inuit have spent weeks posting pictures and price tags from their local grocery stores to a Facebook site called Feed My Family.

Holy hell.

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popca

WHAT IN THE FUCK? This shit is not okay.

ughhslfkajsdlf gross gross gross

64.99?????

Reblogging for the extra articles. 

Also… I might show up to this protest and support them. 

Pay attention to this stuff, please, followers who haven’t heard about this!  This kind of thing is completely erased in news media.

This is really fucking important.

This is why I don’t respect anyone who blindly supports the anti-sealing protestors. Because for a lot of people, it’s the only affordable option.

It’s not just Iqaluit. In Nain, Labrador this problem has been going on for ages and nobody does anything about it. $47 for a ham and $17 for a block of cheese. In Rigolet, Labrador, a loaf of bread costs $7. Here’s another picture of an Iqaluit food price changing before your very eyes.

The NNCP is starving people, reducing their food choices, and keeping people on EI poor. This is so, so wrong.

How can we help? I joined the group and checked out the website, but I didn’t see anything that can be actively done (other than raising awareness, which, of course, is great).

Excellent question! If you read through the group (which is here, for anyone who missed it), there are people talking about some ways to help.

  • Look at the latest news on the Feeding My Family website to see what the priorities are and how you might be able to help.
  • If you’re Canadian, call your local MP and ask to discuss this issue and express your concern.
  • Look up ways to support putting pressure onto airlines to charge fair rates (a $1000 plane ticket should be from one coast to the other, not a few hundred miles).
  • Research and learn what you can about food sustainability. For a start, how about learning square foot/metre (French intensive) gardening or container gardening and starting to practice it yourself? Share these techniques with friends and family. Get good at it so you can teach them to others who have poor food security in your own area.
  • For the love of God, stop signing “anti-sealing”/”anti-hunting” petitions and supporting Greenpeace’s actions without understanding the complicated, nuanced situation in the North.
  • Watch the FB group, because people there mention direct donations and ways to help the organizations actually on the ground there.
  • For example, one person is starting up a donation project/fundraiser.
  • Look at what organizations like FoodShare are doing and support them.

There is so much to be done. Sharing news articles and stories, lists of resources, donation and fundraising pages, and knowledge about food security is critical, but there’s a lot more work of all sorts.

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If a non-autistic ableist person ever tells you that you can’t talk about autism just because you “don’t have it bad enough”, or because they “know someone who has it worse”, just remember by that logic, they shouldn’t be allowed to talk about autism at all

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Everyone on here seems to love Danny Phantom, and like yeah it was a good show, but why do I never see anyone talking about My Life as a Teenage Robot? That show was amazing!

You know, Yoh Yoshinari actually wanted to do an anime reboot of it once. Unfortunately it didn’t happen, but it would have been AMAZING if it had happened. His fan animations are so cool. I mean just look at them.

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A knight in shining armor outsmarts the dragon and climbs to the highest tower, only the princess locked away at the top of the tower is… a lesbian.

“Oh thank god,” Thomas says, laying his helmet down. “Because I kept thinking on the climb up here that this was going to be a really awkward first meeting, and its stupid to expect you to fall in love with me just because I saved you.”

Lucinda gives him a surprised look. “You’re rather weird. Usually I get guys that demand I fall in love with them because they ‘saved’ me. Which by the way, you didn’t actually do.” She jabs a thumb towards the direction of the dragon. “She’s trained. I tell her to keep assholes away from me, but if I tell her to let you in, she won’t do anything to you.”

“Oh.” Well now he feels a bit better. “But um, the whole lesbian thing? I uh… god this is going to sound weird, but would you consider dating my sister if I brought her to you?”

Lucinda blinks, opens her mouth, and then shuts it. She finally settles on, “Is your sister cute?”

“Um, I don’t know? I mean to me she is, because she’s my sister. But um.”

“Describe her.”

“Red hair, freckles, five foot… two, I think? Likes to make dresses and pretty headdresses out of flowers, her favorite activity is scrapbooking. She’s nineteen and looking for a nice girl to settle down with.”

Lucinda admits, she sounds tempting. “Fine, I’ll meet her. But why are you acting as the go-between for your sister’s love life, exactly?”

Thomas grimaces. “Dad wants to marry her off, and she’s… kind of a lesbian too. Except dad thinks if he throws her at the right dick, she’ll suddenly want that, so… yeah.”

Lucinda cackles.  “Oh my god, you climbed a tower to wingman for your sister?”

“Um, yes?”

She stands, brushes her dress off. “I like you. Show me this cute little sister of yours. We’ll take the dragon - let’s see what that old man of yours thinks when a stolen princess shows up riding a dragon wanting to marry his daughter.”

“I think he’ll have a heart attack.”

“Even better. Now let’s move. Pudding, come!”

“You named your dragon Pudding?”

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nezclaw

“He named himself Pudding.”

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Aspergers/autism is seeing a needle, and then a minute later possibly noticing the haystack.

This is so accurate it almost hurts.

I don’t understand this

it means you pick up on weird extremely esoteric little details about things while completely overlooking what seems most obvious to everybody else 

like. someone asks a silly question and you think and give it a really serious comprehensive answer, while everyone else realizes it was a joke. or you have to do this really repetitive mind-numbing task, and you’re halfway done before someone walks by and tells you you’re doing it “wrong” and theres actually a much simpler/more common way to do it, which didnt even occur to you but seems self-explanatory to allistic ppl. that type of thing 

Autistic brains analyse bottom-up, while other people their brains analyse top-down.

In one of the books about autism that I have, their is a picture that illustrates this perfectly. It’s an illustration of a forest with the trees vaguely drawn but all the little details like a mouse and mushrooms are drawn in great detail. The explanation next to the illustration was the following; When a person with ASD walks into a forest, his/her brain starts to collect information to create a context just all the other kinds of brains do, but the autistic brain starts at the bottom. First it sees the mushrooms, then some leafs, a bird flying by, the bushes, … Meanwhile the not-autistic brain in the same situation will notice the large group of trees first. The non-autistic brain will think “Ah a big group of trees, this is probably a forest”, and then goes on searching for details that confirms this and adds more information. At the same time, the autistic brain still doesn’t know it is in a forest, however, it does know it is somewhere where there are mushrooms and wild animals. The brain will continue to look for details until it finally reaches the point it notices the trees and other obvious signs you are in a forest. 

TL;DR/ An autistic brain uses details to create a big picture of a situation. A non-autistic brain will use the general context to create the big picture.

This difference in processing information has some consequences, like @marxism-sjwism already mentioned.

Other occurring ‘problems’ are f.e.: doing tasks slower, getting tired easily*, becoming overstimulated when there is too much information, headaches, intolerant of bright colors/loud sounds/touch/smells/taste**, having difficulties doing a certain task because the details weren’t explained to you, getting stressed out because a detail changed in a situation***,…

*Because an autistic brain processes a lot more information than any other brain, it also demands a lot of energy from its body. Sadly, the human body can’t provide the energy this kind of brain needs. As a result, most, if not every, person with ASD gets tired quickly and needs hours, or even days, of relaxation to reload its batteries. Especially after big events like going to a party f.e. (I myself need a lot of sleep).

**Because the autistic brain gets its information from details, it has hardly any filters. When a non-autistic person is at a party and talking to someone, his/her brain wil cancel out other inputs so it can focus on the conversation. An autistic-brain doesn’t do this, or if it does, it isn’t doing a good job.  When a person with ASD is at the same party, talking to the same person as the the person without ASD, he/she will have difficulties understanding the conversation and keeping focused, because the brain isn’t canceling out all the other information. The conversation a nearby group of people is having will be equally as loud as the conversation he/she is participating in. This also means that a person with ASD can get easily distracted. F.e.: I was talking with someone, when suddenly I could hear two people talking in the room next door. It was a muffled noise and I could not understand what they were saying, but it was enough to distract me and render me unable to keep focused on my own conversation, resulting in me forgetting what I was saying mid sentence over and over again. Anyway, worst case scenario, if there is to much information for the autistic-brain to handle, it will become overstimulated, and this overstimulation often results in a fight-or-flight reaction. This behavior is often illustrated in mainstream media by an autistic child who suddenly becomes unmanageable, crying, kicking, screaming, … often at public places like a supermarket. Not every person with ASD will throw a tantrum when becoming overstimulated, some shut down, some start crying (like I do), some get angry, … It’s important to understand that this person is not being an asshole because he/she wants too, or that the child is not badly raised. These people their brains have triggered a natural instinct and their is nothing they can do about that except obey it. Best thing to do is to remove them from the situation to another less stimulating environment where they can calm down.

***Last but not least, there is another important consequence of having a brain that gets its information from details: it doesn’t recognize a same situation when a detail is changed. This causes difficulties in many different kinds of situations and it can occur in many different ways. A person with ASD will find it difficult to drive a different (brand of) car than he/she is used too, because, even though it’s a car and all cars operate the same, small details like a different dashboard layout can be confusing and stressful. A more extreme example is when the barman in a pub you frequent always wears a red shirt, but one day he wears a blue one. The change in color is enough for the autistic brain to think this is a completely different and new situation and thus it operate as if this is a new situation. This is why people with ASD can be insecure in situations that should be no big deal. Or why people with ASD seem to forget how to do a certain task, or lose their shit while any other person quickly adapts, all because something is different. Or also why they keep asking for explanation on how to do a certain task even though they have been doing it for months.

All these things are mostly downsides of having an autistic brain but it also has its benefits. People with ASD notice details much easier and faster which can come in handy when doing certain jobs. They also make different connections and come to new ideas that others never would’ve thought of. 

The work they do is often more correctly because they pay attention to details, include details, or want to make sure it is 100% the way it should be because their brain only takes peace with that. Consequently, a lot of people on the spectrum also have a high sense of justice and are good detectives, insurance agents, police(wo)men, lawyers, mystery shoppers, …

A brain like this makes these people also excellent at IT, gaming, art, music, programming, math, bookkeeping, science, sorting, systematization,… 

Sadly, people on the spectrum are often still seen as a problem instead as and added value. Like Temple Grandin often says; The world needs to realize it needs different kinds of brains to work together to reach greater heights. 

…wow. this explains sooooo much. thanks for the addition

Jumping in: Temple Grandin once described the thought processes of someone with an ASD, and it fits in with this and is SUPER COOL.

Imagine you ask two people to draw a dog. One does not have an ASD, and one has an ASD.  The person without ASD thinks about the word “dog” and draws a very generalized dog. The brain complies the symbols that make up “dog”, out of all the dogs they’ve ever seen, and you get floppy ears, waggy tail, four legs, long body, a doggo snoot, etc. 

The person WITH an ASD thinks about the word dog and draws a specific dog. Their brains go through basically a visual file folder that holds an accurate picture of EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL DOG THEY HAVE EVER SEEN. From there, they decide on WHICH dog means “dog” to them at that moment, and draw it. That dog is a specific dog, with a name, who existed. 

IDK man, but that is cool as shit to me

another thing with ASD is the fact, if you fall on the scale, you will notice stuff so much quicker and easier than other people and can often become confused and frustrated when it takes others so long to notice the same details. i have to constantly remind myself that just because i can figure out this minute little plot idea from a single line, or understand a concept from the tiny clue the lecturer gives, doesn’t mean everyone else can. a lot of the time, i think, ASD individuals come across as ‘know it alls’ or ‘show offs’ because we can’t help but point these things out to people in a “oh this is da-da-da :D” and people get offended or angry because they feel stupid compared to us. it’s not the case, it’s literally just our brains work differently than most, but it’s a thing that you need to remind yourself of when dealing with other people. like, sharing information and explaining things is good and brilliant and i am absolute fan of that, but there’s a sadly fine line that we ASD individuals tend to cross that puts us in the category of ‘showing off’ to people and we get bullied as a result of that fact.