froody:

froody:

There were a lot of freshwater mussels on the 2021 US extinction list. They didn’t leave us with haunting recordings of them calling out for a mate they’d never meet, there were no drawings in vivid color. They were extremely important nevertheless and their loss is frustrating too. That’s why stream ecology and mollusks have always fascinated me. They were silent, stalwart little heroes and entire species were lost to pollution.

Yeah, I am bothered by extinct animals. Even this guy. They can’t all be thylacines.

(via alphynix)

budgiesmuggled-deactivated20210:

colorsofsocialjustice:

budgiesmuggled-deactivated20210:

Shinjuku Boys (1995). Tatsu, a transgender man, jokes with his barber about his changing appearance, and his newly masculine features.

TRANSCRIPT:

BARBER: So you go regularly to the hospital for your hormone injection?
TATSU: [nods]
BARBER: Does it hurt?
TATSU: Not at all.
BARBER: You have more facial hair. It must be the hormones. You’ll get a moustache soon.
TATSU: I’ll look distinguished! They’ve made quite the difference. I never thought I’d change so much. Most customers say I’m like a man.
BARBER: Really?
TATSU: [laughing] They say, “You look like a man. You’re not cute.”
BARBER: [laughs]

END TRANSCRIPT.

I love seeing this, because I’ve looked for many things about trans guys in Japan (in trying to understand how Japan views transgender people on the whole) and other than a few recent things, everything was exclusively about trans women.

@colorsofsocialjustice Hey, I highly recommend checking out this series too:

'Out in Japan' Raises LGBT Awareness With 10,000 Photos

Over the course of five years, a diverse group of photographers have sought to capture the true face of Japan's LGBT community by photograph

HuffPost

あなたの輝く姿が、つぎの誰かの勇気となる。| OUT IN JAPAN

認定NPO法人グッド・エイジング・エールズが主催する「OUT IN JAPAN」は、5年間で1万人のLGBTポートレート撮影を目指すカミングアウト・フォト・プロジェクトです。

outinjapan.com

It’s absolutely massive, utterly beautiful, and deserves more attention.

(via robotgirlbutt)

holleywoodsigns:

jethroq:

(via robotgirlbutt)

headspace-hotel:

fencesandfrogs:

headspace-hotel:

evil-kemis:

megpie71:

krakenartificer:

katiekeysburg:

laylainalaska:

grison-in-space:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i’m researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there’s an awful lot of just, like, “Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else”

I’d have to research this, but I kinda feel that, what with how much the eugenics movement pervaded everything for a huge chunk of recent history, our narrative of how disability was for much of history has gotten a little warped.

I feel like I always heard “yeah they assumed people were possessed by demons Back Then” but actually researching religious history? I’ve found a lot more of people seeing a person showing signs of (what we would call) neurodivergence or mental illness and being like “hm. yea that’s god.”

It’s also definitely like…in the US anyway fundamentalism has absolutely decimated a lot of AWARENESS of what Christianity specifically can look like.

american evangelicalism is based a lot on Belief in your religion as axiomatic Fact and at the same time a very buddy-buddy view of god where Jesus is like, your cool dad. Both of which are not very good for allowing the numinous and divine “mystery” to exist

So I think we assume people throughout history would default to “things I don’t understand are of the devil.” when very often they would instead be “things I don’t understand are of God.”

and they would see someone speak in strange sounds or move his body strangely or respond differently to the world and see something divine in it, and there are instances of this across many religions

@invisibleoctopus There’s this fascinating book about the cultural aspects of how mental illness presents called Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters that is not without its flaws, but that (among other things) discusses how schizophrenic people do significantly better in cultures where there’s a precedent/religious or spiritual explanation for people ‘hearing voices’ and such, because for one thing, they’re not treated as social outcasts for it. Those environments are better equipped to help and accommodate those people on the basis of being able to keep them integrated into a community. At least according to the Ethan Watters guy.

The thing about imagining that autistic children would have been left to die for most of history is just… it’s so lazy. And it betrays a huge failure to understand what autism looks like for autistic people and what daily life looked like in history at the same time. It’s very frustrating.

There’s this weird idea that autistics only develop special interests in this very narrow stereotypical STEM-field domain of life, also, which is total nonsense. Of course religion autistics are a thing. Judaism, too, has a lot of room for autistics: you develop very deep spheres of knowledge, about which you argue constantly, and prayer is sung and you get to move back and forth during it rhythmically.

The other thing that gets me is that it’s not just that there’s historical room to interpret weird behavior as Godly, it’s that autistic people are relatively likely to come up with unusual ideas about people and how people do and should work. If you’re talking about any theological tradition that involves contextual study and argument, you often find a very autistic sort of perspective writing the theology.

Also, just as a general data point: my stepdad, who is in his mid-70s, grew up in a rural farming community, and was never diagnosed with anything, is Obviously Autistic to anyone who knows what autism is.

• He can only tolerate about 2 different fabrics against his skin.
• And can only eat about 5 foods for obvious food texture reasons.
• He hums softly and continually.
• He never looks at people.
• He has a bunch of other people-related sensitivities, like the inability to tolerate a lot of sounds and nearly all perfume smells.
• He has about 3 topics of conversation, which are a) tractors, b) agriculture, and c) Rottweilers.

And you know what? He has had a nice long life of being a Rural Farmer and gets along great with other old farmer dudes who want to talk dogs-tractors-farming with him. 

I mean, it’s generally understood that he is Weird, but also that he knows Really A Fucking Lot About Tractors. Which counts for everything in a rural farming community.

It goes beyond lazy into a type of downright cruelty.   No matter how autistic people did or did not fit into their communities in the past, chances are someone loved them.  When they were little, someone found the clothes they could tolerate and food they would eat and something they could do that matched their interests and abilities.   And people married some of them and had children with them.    Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least were loved.   

We know this because archeology shows over and over again a great level of care and because these traits are still present - they had to get passed on somehow.  And we know it because we too feel love for others, despite them constantly failing to live up to any ideal whatsoever.

Anyone who approaches other people with this attitude is only seeking to perpetuate an excuse to be cruel to them.  It has nothing to do with what happened in the past and everything to do with what they hope they can get away with in the future.  They discount the love that must have existed because it can’t be used against us.

A lot of the “weird things” neurodivergents do would have had really useful and perfectly acceptable outlets in other times: a lot of essential jobs are really “stimmy”, and a person who wants to do them all the time is extremely welcome to them.

• Spinning with a drop spindle? Very much like a fidget spinner
• Weaving? Has elements of rocking, arm flapping, and toe tapping, as well as a lovely soothing audio rhythm.
• Weeding? Delightful for those who enjoy categorization and sorting.

I had a fatigue flare-up a few weeks ago on the day we were scheduled to clean out the garage, and I couldn’t stand up for more than about 10 minutes. And I thought how fortunate I am to live in an era where most jobs don’t involve manual labor. But then I brought my knitting out, so I could keep my spouse company at least, and you know what? Fuck that attitude. Any society in all of history would have been fucking THRILLED to have someone who is willing to never leave the house, is happy to eat only bread, and just wants to make textiles every waking hour of every single day.

Every society, in every era, needs many different things done. If different people like doing different things, this is to the benefit of everyone in the community. This idea that there’s only one “right way” to be a human, and that anyone who doesn’t fit the mold is “broken” and “wrong” is a very recent invention, stemming from hamburger management and Fredrick Taylor “Scientific Management”, NOT an inherent part of human nature.

As someone who is autistic, I look at most of the monastic Rules, and I think “hey, someone was designing communities for us”.  Unvarying structure from day to day, week to week; regular transitions between activities which are well marked; low levels of social interaction; strictly regulated social environments… it’s a wonderful lifestyle for someone who has problems dealing with the whole business of “too many people, too much stimulation”.

Heck, I figure the religious fundamentalism in my mother’s family (they’re Christadelphian) came in via a very canny autistic ancestor, who realised the whole business could be used as a wonderful cover for any strangeness about them.  I mean, when you’re part of a religion which discourages eating at the same table as someone who doesn’t believe the same creed as you (and which also gets picky enough about “same creed” to make that capable of meaning “is not part of the same Christian sect or the same ecclesia”), demands you live strictly by biblical rules and so on… well, it’s a wonderful cover for a person who just doesn’t want to deal with other people, and who has a few quirks of their own they want to cover up.

(I have my suspicions about Jean Calvin, the theologist behind all the various Calvinist sects of Christianity, too.  Mainly because the theology behind Calvinism is beautifully thought out, logically consistent all the way through, solves the problem of “redemption via good works” quite neatly… and turns into ninety different types of hell the moment it gets run through neurotypical brains).

I am no expert, but as an historian by hobby I don’t think we quite realize how very different our modern concepts of everyday life and of work are from the pre-industrial revolution times and how utterly anti-neurodivergency our lifestyle is nowadays.

Chances are most autistic people would have barely registered as a bit weird.

Like with fabric sensitivity. It’s a noticeable symptom today when we are expected to have a decently big wardrobe and follow fashion trends. It wouldn’t have really registered as an issue when you used to own one or two outfits.

Same with food sensivity. The huge choice of foods available today make sensitivities stand out as problematic. Eating the same few things over and over was just everyday life for peasants.

Neurodivergency and mental illness are still defined in relation to society and society is an ever evolving beast. The kind of behaviors we consider 'ill’ and 'aberrant’ very much depend on what behaviors are considered 'proper’ and 'desirable’.

Don’t forget that today’s schizophrenics are yesterday’s saints and before that oracles and prophets.

Anybody who knows about fabrics want to weigh in?

I have a hunch that home-made clothes would be less hostile to the senses than most clothes bought nowadays. For one thing, they don’t have tags in them.

But with like, a home-made sock, you wouldn’t have such awful bunchy seams at the toes, would you?

Not necessarily! While hand sewn tights make me wince (although admittedly, modern tights aren’t necessarily better), modern hand knit socks are closed without a seam, at least the way I do it. Alternatively, you can just…start at the toe and work up. (I believe they do that in a way that doesn’t leave a seam, although I’ve never tried.)

I’m not a dress historian by any means, so I don’t know what the history of this is, however I do know that hand knit socks are wonderfully seamless.

no seams?

(via matriarchyuzi)

tiktoksthataregood-ish:

amygdalan-arm:

genuinely terrifying how adhd will have you be fully aware of the responsibilities you’re neglecting and yet its like you’re being piloted by a super chill hedonistic demon who can’t hear you/doesnt care

Wow…yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like. damn…

(via transfetishistsdiechallenge)

catnippackets:

as much as it’s fun to see two characters with a close platonic bond and be like “omg they act like siblings!!” or “what a sweet parent/child dynamic!!” it is also nice to remember that friendship is also perfect as it is and you don’t need to feel like it cheapens the bond between people if they’re just friends. friends aren’t “just” anything they’re great just as they are

(via transfetishistsdiechallenge)

dovewithscales:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

headspace-hotel:

just remembered my Sudden Insight earlier about the “autism epidemic”

people generally say it’s because “detection and diagnosis have gotten better!” but also consider: the world has just gotten more hostile and disabling to autistics

I’m just saying that I think the amount of stimuli the average kid has to process in one day has gone way up since, like, the 80’s

On that note I was homeschooled, partly because my parents wanted to be able to accommodate me properly, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how when i was 14 the psychiatrist that diagnosed me said i was “very high functioning,” and 7 years later i have found that my disability affects so many areas of my life, that I need accommodations to thrive and fulfill my basic needs, and that I have some very different needs than most other people. Also that I’m way more faceblind than I thought I was.

I’ve never really done the “normal” school experience thing and I think so much about how torturously stressful to me it would have been for absolutely no reason.

Like, it astonishes me that kids spend like 8+ hours a day around hundreds of other people and survive. If I can’t be completely alone for long periods I will absolutely fall apart. If I had to spend so much time in an environment where I couldn’t get under a blanket, be alone, change clothes, get up and go for a walk, or do anything at all to self-regulate, I would be a very, very different person.

like sure i’m ‘high functioning’ but how much of that is a quality of me and how much do I owe to the privileges I had in life? not everyone can homeschool their kids! not very many in fact! and someone otherwise identical to me that didn’t have the same privileges probably would have ended up 'more disabled’ and very traumatized

But going back to how things have changed in the past 30-40 years. Isn’t everything faster and louder? Aren’t there more TV’s in rooms? Don’t we have much less time that is our own? Don’t kids spend so much more time doing Stuff than just doing whatever they want by themselves? Don’t we have to spend more time in “public” places, and aren’t those places increasingly hostile?

So many of the “signs” and disabling qualities associated with autism are the result trauma. The only reason people don’t realize that is because there essentially aren’t any autistic people who aren’t traumatized because society’s response to someone needing accommodations is to abuse them.

(via transfetishistsdiechallenge)

jimtheviking:

swanpaw:

planet-in-a-trenchcoat:

analog-machine:

majortomwaits:

majortomwaits:

majortomwaits:

majortomwaits:

Neil Young is so hot for this, everyone should remove their music from spotify and everyone should stop paying for it, return to your roots, remember the days of limetorrents

IT IS STARTING

IT CONTINUES

What exactly is going on here?

Spotify pays its artists pennies but because most people use Spotify or a similar music streaming service, most artists put up with it so people actually listen to their music. As far as I understand it, the only money they really make is off merch and concerts rather than people actually playing their music. Which is, of course, unfair. Hence these artists’ protest.

neil young actually pulled his music from spotify bc they platform joe rogan’s vaccine misinformation, not because of streaming revenue. he threatened spotify that if they didn’t deplatform joe rogan that he would pull his music, and they let him pull his music instead.

Neil and Joni are both polio survivors. Neil can’t really feel his left hand, because of the whole “they had to remover vertebrae from his spine due to the polio” thing, and both of them are extremely pro-vaccine and medical science because of that. Rogan’s anti-vax stance was explicitly what caused Neil to walk, and Joni followed suit.

(via transroboteeveegirl)

marisatomay:

huge congratulations to drugs for continuing to win the war on drugs

(via definitely-ellie)

rannulfr:

strangelingincarnate:

iamtrashofthetrashiestorder:

beggars-opera:

raevenlywrites:

random-nerd-queer:

stevviefox:

heart-sprout:

orionsbelts:

orionsbelts:

orionsbelts:

all video games should have a “I’m shit at video games but I’m curious about the story and I don’t want to watch a let’s play” mode

I am

I made this post because I am disabled and no matter how much I practice there are some games I will never be able to play because I physically cannot move my fingers the way you have to and the responses to this post from other disabled people, people who grew up unable to play video games, and people who just aren’t very good at them has been extremely enthusiastically positive, while people who apparently can’t conceive of the idea that some people will never be good at gaming condescendingly comment, tag or send me asks telling me to try easy mode or to get good despite the fact that the feature I’m describing already exists in some games and mods. if you’re part of the latter group, consider that some of us can not ever be good at video games and we still deserve to be able to participate and have fun

Ok, real talk, if you play PC games I use a program called Wemod that has settings for almost every game ever and you can change them to suit your needs

Unlimited health? one hit kill? unlimited items?

They can’t mod multiplayer games, but every genre of game imaginable is on Wemod so I use it for everything from stardew valley, subnautica, hades, farming sim and more!

It mods the games to your level of ease without needing to mess with any files or get deep into webpages for mods yourself

It is a life changer

FYI ⬆️⬆️⬆️

Only passing along as the only games I play are on my phone.

Get an older sibling and have them play the game and you watch

One, this is older siblings who watch younger siblings play erasure, two that’s not the point. People deserve to enjoy the experience of playing a game for themselves. Watching someone play is fun. Playing yourself is a different kind of fun.

There are so many reasons why someone wouldn’t want to be challenged by a game, and it’s ridiculous that people can’t fathom someone requiring a different gameplay than themselves. 

Back in the dark ages when I was a kid and we got our first computer, my dad noticed that I was sad because I wanted to play computer games like him, so he would let me play his games in god mode. Should a five year old have been playing Ultimate Doom? Absolutely not. Did I enjoy the shit out of it, particularly the part where I couldn’t die and could just wander around aimlessly machine gunning demons to death with no real goal in mind? Hell yes.

Also, no one should have to explain the reason they want to play the game in god mode.

That is absolutely none of your business, if someone wants to play the game with max items, weapons, armor, money etc., whatever reason they’re playing that way for. YOU, the anon on the internet have no business knowing or shitting on how they play. It’s THEIR game, and THEIR gameplay experience. and I hope OP was able to play their game the way they wanted to without being stymied by the games mechanics.

Oh shit, I have something for this!

Can I Play That?

Can I Play That provides accessibility focused game reviews and news. For Disabled Gamers, By Disabled Gamers.

Can I Play That?

Can I Play That? is a fantastic resource for fellow disabled folks who want to play video games, as well as non-disabled video game devs who want to make their games more accessible. I highly recommend checking it out!

As a souls junky… I’ve been in the thick of it long enough to say this…

The spirit of “git gud” is not about the game putting limits on you. It’s about trying to surpass your own limits, through the game.

If casual is your difficult, and you beat it on casual. Then you got gud. End of story.

If your game doesn’t allow everyone to press against their limits, then it’s the game that needs to git gud.

(via puchisekai-moved)

thatspookyagent:

litchifairy:

white ppl who like but don’t rb anti racist edu posts made by ppl affected by racism .. i see you and you’re a coward

you may as well tattoo ‘i don’t want to be publicly associated with anti racist brown people’ on your forehead

*white ppl can (and should) rb but no additions in tags/replies/rbs*

Taking an opportunity to remind white people who run fandom blogs that I see y'all when you selectively reblog things from me and others that aren’t race related and covertly ONLY like race related content I make along with other people but never reblog it. Y'all are utterly infuriating. White neurodivergent people. White mentally ill folks. White women. White queers. All y'all. I see it. Don’t think I don’t. I see y'all’s silence and unwillingness to get involved. I’m damn near this close to blocking y'all cause I’m so tired of it.

Y'all will literally sit here and make posts about how your disabled identity is very important to you as well as your queer one and the marginalized communities that you’re in, in a totally WHITE perspective, but when it comes to signal boosting disabled voices of color, y'all stay silent. When it comes to boosting queer voices of color, y'all stay silent. When it comes to boosting non white people in general, y'all are silent.

As if scared to take that next step and acknowledge your whiteness and the privilege that comes with it as well as how you being white comes from before your marginalization. It might not in YOUR eyes but in reality, the world and systems within it, see you as white FIRST. If you make a mistake, allow room for people to correct you, and tell you right from wrong. Stop thinking that being called or perceived as racist is a death threat. If you make a mistake, own up to it. Your white silence in general is racist and y'all are (for a lack of better words) commiting racist microaggressions already with your selective reblogging and silence.

So if you’re not willing to acknowledge your whiteness on any level, but instead distance yourself from it, and do everything in your power to convince others that you can’t possibly be bigoted. All I have to say is unfollow me and do not interact with me cause I have zero patience for folks like y'all. I don’t care about y'all “ruining your accounts aesthetic” or “making your followers mad”. Hell your followers are mostly likely racist to and would rather stay ignorant as well. Y'all post about shit that effects you and lose bigoted followers over it but won’t help out POC and lose racist followers over it. Very telling.

(via puchisekai-moved)

homoslovenc:

katherinebarlow:

phantom-tail:

mortuarybees:

l2g:

jarchivistsims:

sometimes i think about gay people who lived centuries ago who thought they were all alone who imagined a world where they could live openly as themselves who met in secret spoke in code defied everything and everyone just to exist and i’m like..i gotta sit down. whew i gotta sit down

this is why this sappho fragment hits me so hard

If this little book should see the light after its 100 years of entombment, I would like its readers to know that the author was a lover of her own sex and devoted the best years of her life in striving for the political equality and social and moral elevation of women.

“The Great Geysers of California” by Laura De Force Gordon, 1879, unearthed from a 100-year-old time capsule in San Francisco, 1979.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”

Gordon Bowsher to Gilbert Bradley, 1940s

reading these fragments always makes me cry

(via solitarelee)

zetablarian:

humblegrub:

The Sphex Wasp Citation

aka always dig into your sources, there might be some interesting drama 🔍👀

Oh boy, oh boy, I wish I had an avenue for sharing this with my undergraduates. This is some GOOD information literacy shit.

(via a-book-of-creatures)