???

What if I actually... used my blog? {27 - she / they}

[boychic-deactivated20230922]

(11/21)

This week I had to leave my job as a pre-school teacher because my work isn't safe, I'm exposed to biohazards regularly and haven't recovered much from a breakthrough infection as I've been putting in 40-50 hour weeks with very few bathroom breaks. We try to live very lean, I wasn't in great health before and this is worse, and my options for uninsured medical care are limited and far away. I'm miserably sick right now, my account is overdrawn from trying to keep up with living costs and doctors visits and medication. My partner started a new job yesterday but needs to Uber to work. We're trying to keep her from getting sick because she can't miss one day in her first month without being terminated.

cshap + vnmo - brokekash

pypal - strangenoun (at) gmail

As always, my traffic is notably suppressed and my posts burn out after a couple donations so boosting really helps.

[boychic-deactivated20230922]

No longer overdrawn, officially got my last check from the job. We're still trying to get healthcare coverage, and my gf's phone is officially busted as is our tire. We're gonna be stranded at home until the tire gets fixed proper, don't put yourself out helping us but surprises like this really strain our resources and we still have rent to pay.

[boychic-deactivated20230922]

Put some elbow grease into putting the spare on, only to have it pop too when I was driving it to get a new tire put on. I'm frustrated but safe waiting for a tire service to come help. I can cover it but we have less income to work with now, and the same cost of living as ever.

[bibutch]

SSI Restoration Act of 2021

i have never made a post like this before but i haven’t seen anyone here talk about it yet so i want to at least provide some links because this is extremely important for disabled people with or without benefits in the USA.

link to this tiktok

she doesn’t name the bill in the video but in the comments it’s clarified that the act referred to is the SSI Restoration Act of 2021.

“The Supplementary Security Income (SSI) Restoration Act of 2021 has been introduced in both the House and the Senate. The bill would improve the lives of millions of SSI beneficiaries around the country, including over 2 million older adults who are living below the federal poverty level due to inadequate benefit levels, and often lose or are denied benefits due to outdated eligibility rules.” (link) - summary from Justice In Aging, an organization dedicated to fighting senior poverty

“This bill restores a program that plays a key role in the security of millions of Americans. Specifically, it modernizes and improves SSI by streamlining and simplifying the claiming process, expanding the resources and income limits, and eliminating punitive reductions in benefits.” (link) - summary from the SSI Restoration Act Section by Section, linked on Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva’s website, in the social security tab

below is taken from the issue brief on justiceinaging.org regarding what the bill entails

• The SSI benefit rate will be increased to at least 100% of the Federal Poverty Level, adjusted annually, so that no one receiving SSI will be left to live below the poverty line.

• Couples will receive their full SSI benefit, totaling twice the individual rate, rather than a reduced marriage penalty rate.

• Low-income seniors and people with disabilities who can’t work enough to meet all their basic needs will be able to save up to $10,000 and couples will be able to save up to $20,000 for emergencies such as car repairs, new roofs, and other unexpected expenses, without losing benefits.

• Individuals will be able to receive up to $128 monthly from other sources, such as Social Security benefits or pension payments, without a corresponding loss in benefits.

• Individuals who are able to work will be able to earn up to $416 a month without being penalized.

• Individuals who live in households with others, including family members, will no longer be penalized with lower benefits through the in-kind support and maintenance provision.

• Individuals who transfer assets (even small amounts of money to a family member) will no longer suffer harsh penalties.

• Eliminate installment payment requirements and extend the time to spend down resources so that SSI recipients who have been waiting for months or years to obtain their benefits can receive the full overdue amount.

• Exclude retirement accounts from countable resources to allow people with disabilities to build up their savings for retirement and use those resources to pay for expenses in later life.

• State and local earned income tax credits and child tax credits will be excluded from income calculations in the same manner as general tax payments.”

here is a link to the official bill

here is the issue brief from justiceinaging.org on the SSI Restoration Act of 2021 which explains what would change about SSI in more detail, and has the list provided above

here is the FAQ (also justiceinaging.org)

here is a carrd made by myelasticheart on tiktok, which also details the bill, AND includes a script for calling representatives, as well as links for finding said representatives

please reblog

[i-homeostasis]

dude seeing these Mega high quality images of the surface of mars that we now have has me fucked up. Like. Mars is a place. mars is a real actual place where one could hypothetically stand. It is a physical place in the universe. ITS JUST OUT THERE LOOKING LIKE UH IDK A REGULAR OLD DESERT WITH LOTS OF ROCKS BUT ITS A WHOLE OTHER PLANET? 

[i-homeostasis]

LIKE THIS JUST LOOKS LIKE IT COULD BE A PERSON’S BACKYARD. LIKE YEA A LITTLE DUSTY MAYBE THERE WAS A SANDSTORM BUT THAT’S COOL I’M JUST GONNA WALK DOWN TO THE STORE P S Y C H YOU’RE ON MARS BICH!

[schro-dingus-deactivated2023030]

i hate to be rude and intrude on this post but we have decent pictures of the surface Venus too! 

[jumpingjacktrash]

#venus has a low render distance

[thecraftychemist]

See also below Saturn’s moon, Titan. Mars has a blue horizon at sunset so it looks even more Earth-like in this image:

Source

Also: Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

[ultraviolet-divergence]

So it’s not quite snowing on Churyumov–Gerasimenko, unfortunately; the white specks are artifacts of cosmic rays impinging on the CCDs in the camera, as well as a rotating starfield in the background (since the comet is spinning). A few specks could be dust. But, holy shit, that’s the surface of a comet. That’s a spot you could in theory cling to for dear life sit down on. The Cliffs of Comet 76p are a place. 

If that isn’t the neatest shit I don’t know what is.

[dorkery]

[thesaltofcarthage]

I FUCKING LOVE THIS

PHOTOS OF ACTUAL OTHER GODDAMN PLANETS

[ewaneneollav]

Finally listened to all music! My favorite song was an untitled file called “ssssddsdrt66677888.ogg” that I found on a flash drive that I found in a landfill in Tunisia

[fuchinobe]

In case anyone is actually into this there are 3 volumes of these:

[en-seta]

Ok so at first I was like “oh haha funny meme” then I was actually impressed by this cellphone music thing??

I looked it up and just listening to the first volume I am blown away like transcended a new level of music creators/Saharan culture blown away guys pLEASe listen to this itissogood

[demonfox38]

[Bandcamp link here!]

[findingfeather]

Humans are REALLY INTO MAKING AND SHARING MUSIC, guys.

[kawuli]

If you like this you might also like

Awesome Tapes from Africa

which is, well, what it says on the tin. Some stuff is free to download, some stuff is available to purchase, some stuff is both.

Just on the first page, we have:

Arthur — Vuvuzela  Dance Remixes Vol. 3 — S’Bamu [South Africa]

Nahawa Doumbia — La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol 1  [Mali]

Asnakech Worku — Asnakech (featuring Hailu Mergia) [Ethiopia]

Khalifa Gueye — Ruba [Senegal]

The site started as just a guy digitizing music from cassette tapes that you couldn’t find anywhere outside street markets in various African cities, and now it’s an actual record label that works with African musicians… and also a guy digitizing tapes.

It’s amazing cultural anthropology as well as great music.

[vilihemmingsvn]

DEATHLOOP (Arkane Studios)

[oliviarampaige]

“The call of the void”

[fernsandmoss]

One of the Locomotive Spring Groups; Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin; Richard Lake; 1969

[wild-west-wind]

Hot springs with opaque red water like that are generally loaded with suspended oxidized sulfur, iron oxide, and colloidal silica. They’re hot, but not generally boiling, and have pH in the 1-3 range (pretty to very acidic). There are/have been some small ones in the Norris area, but the biggest are called the Tomato Soup Springs. They’re dangerous and illegal to visit because there are no trails out to them and they are extremely hot and acidic and if someone fell in one they would neither be rescued nor recovered.

Here are some pictures that show the large size and opaque water of MNN032 (Brick Pool) and MNN020 (informally Cream of Tomato Soup Pool)

And again, seriously never go to these! I warned you!

[odinsblog]

“I realized that I am super annoyed, and have been for a long time, with this idea that Bill Gates is some kind of ‘decent human being’ for so-called, ‘giving away’ his fortune. Because that is not what this man does, and a good human being is not what this man is. Bill Gates is a fucking monster. And so I just want to kind of explain why I have so many negative feelings towards Bill Gates.

With everything that’s going on right now with the vaccines, and the fact that most of the world can’t get them, can be traced directly back to that one man. Because back in 2020 when this all started, the world was cooperating. And I think we all remember this. The world was cooperating to study the virus. And scientists all over the world were sharing their findings to discover how the virus works, and they were developing methods for treatment and they were also developing these vaccines at an incredible speed. And they were doing this together in the spring of 2020.

And so by the end of the spring of 2020, the World Health Organization had created a global knowledge base, so that the vaccination effort could be a team effort instead of a competitive race. And their global knowledge base was called C-TAP (COVID-19 Technology Access Pool). And that’s when Bill Gates stepped in, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. What they did is, they created a separate process for managing the world’s COVID response. They called it the ACT-Accelerator (Access to COVID-19 Tools), which is a public-private partnership that included patent protections, so that the companies that figured out the tasks, treatments and vaccines, would be able to keep their discoveries to themselves, prevent other companies from copying them, and profit on vaccines as they sell them around the world. That was the goal of the ACT-Accelerator. It was a competition to the team building approach. So instead of cooperation, Gates sets up this separate thing for corporate competition, with the winners being rewarded with monopoly powers over our vaccines.

And so instead of the technology being figured out and distributed around the world, Gates’ brainchild organization instead created something called COVAX, which buys vaccines from the companies with the monopoly powers over the vaccines. And then they pass out some vaccines to poor countries around the world like a fucking cherry. But even the stated goal of COVAX has always been a weak one. They never intended to distribute more than enough vaccines to vaccinate any more than 20 percent of the populations of low and middle income countries. And they have totally failed to do even that. The vast majority of the vaccines would have to be fought for in the private market by the governments. And at the beginning of April 2021, 130 countries, home to over 2.5 billion people, hadn’t given out a single dose of a vaccine to anyone in their countries.

So, as a human race, I know that here in the United States all of us are able to get the vaccine. Like, great for us, right? But we are not the only humans here that are dealing with the virus. And as humans, we don’t have enough supply because only a handful of companies can [afford to] make the damn things. And Bill Gates is personally responsible for stopping other companies from having access to vaccine instruction manuals. Because that’s what they need. In fact, when the director at Oxford—which is where the science behind the AstraZeneca vaccine was figured out—when Oxford wanted to publish the instruction manual for their vaccine to the public domain for the world to use, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation used their power to pressure Oxford to instead sign an exclusive contract with AstraZeneca, which now has monopoly rights to that vaccine.

Bill Gates and those who are like him are designing global policy on vaccines, so that the private market decides who gets them. And that’s even when the institutions like the World Health Organization, that are generally on board as the administrators of the global economic system based on privatization of everything—even when those institutions are saying, “This is a global pandemic, and this is a time when we as humans should be making an exception to these rules, we should be sharing the technology to end this pandemic instead of putting patents and profits first.”—even when those institutions are saying that, Bill Gates has enough power as one man, to stop the world from doing it. This economic system has created oligarchs that are so rich and so powerful they can shape the fate of the entire world. And the way that that’s possible? Well, Bill Gates, as the founder of Microsoft, he fought politically to protect monopoly patents. This is something he has been a zealot about for the entire time he’s been in the public eye. He used his own patent protections over computer knowledge to become super rich when Microsoft had monopoly powers over their technologies. And then Bill Gates used his wealth to legally bribe politicians with campaign contributions, who then passed laws that created and continually expanded an economic system that funnels the world’s wealth to the richest people on earth. An economic system that funnels the world’s wealth TO HIM. He had so much damn money, thanks to this system, he got to like $150 billion dollars or so. He started a foundation that would spend his money on the things that HE wanted to spend it on. Billions of dollars. And people think that the sun shines out of his ass for this. Like, he’s some kind of noble human being, giving away his savings. But that’s not what this is. When you’re giving out money by the tens of billions, that’s government—just privatized. That’s society altering money. And the way Gates does it? He’s not funding food banks around the world. He’s chosen to use his billions to shape global health policy in a way that protects PATENTS. This insane economic system lets one dude control $150 billion dollars, and has created a situation where so much of our global health research is funded through him, that any organization or individual in the field that dares to challenge the Gates Foundation on drug monopolies will find themselves iced out of funding. And so everybody’s falling in line.

Right now he’s basically using his fortune to act as a volunteer lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, and he’s been doing this since 1999. He’s using his personal billions—wealth beyond what many governments have—to protect the profits of multinational drug companies, while being branded a hero for donating some drugs to poor countries, to charity wash the entire racket: “Oh he’s giving away all his money! He’s giving away 95 percent of his wealth” … at $150 billion dollars, if he gives away 95 percent of it, he’s still keeping over $7 billion dollars for himself. This guy is a selfish mother fucker. It’s NOT charity. It’s not charity what he’s doing. He’s shaping global policy. He’s governing on his own. His fortune, via the Gates Foundation, stopped the world from sharing information about AIDS treatments two decades ago. And now he’s pulling the same shit with the COVID technologies.

Now this dynamic is being challenged in the World Trade Organization—as it should be—where more than 100 countries, more than half the world is trying to force companies like Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna, to give them the instructions so that they can make their own vaccines and get this pandemic over with. And Moderna is a perfect example of the privatization of government funded science. Because the mRNA technology that is central to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines? That’s been in development since 2016. It’s not new, even though we’re acting like this was invented in the last year. It’s not. They’ve been working on it for years. But it’s an invention of the National Institute of Health, which is otherwise known as OUR GOVERNMENT. So allowing obscene prices and profits for pharmaceutical companies, that did not lead to the research and development that created that amazing technology. It was our tax money that did it. It was our government that did it. We should all be patting ourselves on the back for that because we are the ones who funded it. It wasn’t Moderna, and it wasn’t Pfizer. It was us. The government scientists were working on a vaccine with Moderna for a different Coronavirus, MERS, when they got the information about the COVID virus. And so they were able to quickly tweak the technology they were already working on for 5 years. They gave the instructions for those tweaks to Moderna, and then Moderna did the work of cooking the recipe. But the mRNA technology? THAT’S OURS.

And on top of that, I’ve read every COVID related law, from start to finish. Every word. And starting in early March, 2020, our congress poured billions and billions of our tax money into vaccines. We paid for the raw materials, the clinical trials, we paid for all the renovations needed at the Moderna facilities to make all this happen. Moderna didn’t take on the risk. We taxpayers did. But when the Trump administration signed the contracts with Moderna to be the chefs of the vaccines, they didn’t require Moderna to share the recipes. And so they aren’t sharing. And the Biden administration so far, has sided with the Trump administration and the drug companies, and is refusing to support the effort to lift the patent protections on the vaccines that WE paid to invent. The Biden administration has all the leverage and legal authority it needs to tell these greedy companies, Moderna in particular, to share what we gave them for the good of the world. But instead, the Biden administration is dancing around the edges, choosing instead to donate doses, like a bunch of AstraZeneca ones that we just had stored in some closet somewhere. “Oh we’re donating those! Aren’t we great?” They want to funnel billions of our tax dollars to COVAX, that Gates inspired organization that buys vaccines from the monopoly drug companies, and passes them out to the poor. It’s all charity. But the problem is the monopolies. The problem is requiring the entire world to get the vaccine from these handful of chosen companies, and the ones that can’t afford it have to depend on … charity.

And that’s bullshit.”

-Jennifer Briney

[smilecapsules-deactivated202106]

open a new window somewhere in the world. 

[korean-disaster]

i love this because it’s such a simple concept but it answers things i didn’t even know how to ask

[hedgehog-moss]

Looking out of people’s windows is such a peaceful way of travelling… I got a snowfall in Argentina, a nice sea view in Ukraine, a clothes line in the fog in Bangalore. Antonella from Tavernaro, I like your wooden bird.

[oldbutchdanielmolloy]

one of my favorite things about will is how he uses really common phrases but in the same lofty, highbrow way everyone else says their obscure and academic metaphors. like name something funnier than the anger and darkness contained in the way he says “even steven.” you can’t

[tikkety-tok]

This is what Rasputin would've wanted.

[teaboot]

I feel like I'm being seduced like one of those fancy rainforest birds

[fruitpilled]

is it working

[teaboot]

Yes

[magnuspool]

[deathbutwithfuzzyanimals]

I can’t tell if this is gender envy or vibe envy but I envy this man

[punkconcert]

John Mulaney, a true ADHD icon

[somewhat-honest-abe]

I love how he gave this bit at an autism benefit because it is also a heavy Autism Mood™

[gh0sthoodie]

This is the most relatable thing I’ve ever seen.

[vulpeculavolans]

TRANSCRIPT:

JOHN MULANEY: I normally don’t notice people. I zone out constantly. Have you ever zoned out for a few minutes? I’ve been zoned out since 2014.

AUDEINCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I just - all day long, I wander into traffic walking like Charlie Chaplin, listening to a podcast while thinking about a different podcast. 

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I can zone out anywhere - I was at the doctor’s office, he was reading me the results of a blood test, it was important I listened, and I zoned out! I was like, “nah, I’m gonna stare at the wall and think my thoughts”.

AUDIENCE MEMBER WHOOPS

MULANEY: I was like, “huh. None of the Beatles had moustaches… but then one day, all of them had moustaches.”

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: “That’s weird, I can’t think of a time a group has done that”. Some people in my life don’t want me to zone out as much - they want me to focus, and they want me to be in the moment, and they want me to do this by meditating. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried meditating, but I’ve been trying it. This is how you meditate, okay? You sit on the floor with your back perfectly straight, which I hate more than ISIS -

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I don’t like sitting up straight! Alright?! It’s never gonna happen! If meditating was sitting hunched over on the toilet with your elbow on your knee while kind of looking at your phone, I’d be the Dalai Lama.  

AUDIENCE LAUGHS/APPLAUDS

MULANEY: I don’t like sitting up straight. So you sit up straight, and you breathe, and this helps you stay in the moment. Don’t bother! The moment is mediocre at best!

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: I mean, it’s fine. Let’s all try right now - let’s all be in the moment, in silence, right now. [A HALF-SECOND PAUSE] Sucked, right? Not fun at all! 

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: That was boring! You gotta zone out! You have an imagination! You have a movie theatre in your brain that plays fake arguments that you win.

AUDIENCE LAUGHS/APPLAUDS

MULANEY: Have you ever just been sitting there thinking about something for twenty, twenty-five minutes, and all of a sudden you’re like “oh my god, I’m driving!” and you remember? You’re like -

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: “I’m going seventy-five miles an hour! I have been for a while! I could’ve changed so many lives!” Sometimes, my wife - I have this wife - she’ll be like, “are you watching the road?” and I’m always like, “I am looking through the windshield.”

AUDIENCE LAUGHS

MULANEY: “And I’m not gonna hit anyone, but no. I’m thinking about the Beatles.”

[whatsitnot]

Hey @vulpeculavolans added a transcript to this AND THAT IS SO AWESOME THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[worstseawitch]

“I’m gonna stare at the wall and think my thoughts.” Is my true ADHD/Autism experience lmaoooo

[sistertaxon]

i dont know how im supposed to interpret the fact that when pandora opened the box all of the monsters were released unto humanity except for hope, which stayed behind, but every time i think about it i go crazy

[sistertaxon]

is it saying that the biggest monster would be if hope had left us? is it saying that hope was never unleashed on the world? is it saying that hope is actually a monster? is it saying that hope will always be with us? i dont know but all of them make me lose it

[absynthe--minded]

things I wish autism research actually tried to figure out:

why caffeine works for some of us, but not all, and even then it often depends on the way you take it and the dosage

how come all of us have gastrointestinal problems?

addendum to the above: what exactly are our gastrointestinal problems? are we genetically more likely to have autism be comorbid with gluten sensitivity/colitis/IBS/lactose intolerance/whatever else or is it something completely different? is it psychosomatic? the fuck

okay but how does being sensory-seeking work. and what does stimming do to your brain. what neurological function are we facilitating with flapping hands and rocking back and forth and spinning? wouldn’t it be great if we had a serious long-term study of the brain on stimming?

are you more likely to be autistic and LGBT?

what are things we do better than neurotypicals?

but no it’s always “how do we train the animals to be something they’re not” or “but what made you this way??” or “Time To Find A Cure”

[adventures-in-asexuality]

why do we all have sleep disorders

what’s up with the joint problems

and the faceblindness

what are the communication patterns here? how come I can meet one autistic person and immediately grok how they communicate, and be confused by another, but all neurotypicals are confusing? what’s going on with that?

how much of what we currently recognise as ‘autistic symptoms’ are actually ptsd symptoms? or autistic ptsd symptoms?

[sapphire-rosa]

ALL. OF. THIS.

[acemindbreaker]

OK, so I decided to check out which of these had been researched and what they found.

Caffeine - not much, but this study looks interesting. It suggests that if you’re not a regular caffeine consumer, caffeine might temporarily make you act less autistic.

Oh, hey, this study has a potential answer to both caffeine response and sleep problems! There’s apparently an enzyme that affects both caffeine and melatonin metabolism.

GI issues - this study didn’t find a link. The rate of GI issues was 9% for both autistic and NT children. The most common GI issues for both groups were food intolerance, usually lactose intolerance.

This study found a much higher prevalence of GI issues in autistic kids (17%), although they didn’t compare them with NTs. They also suggest that there may be a link between regression and GI issues, and confirm yet again that the MMR vaccine has nothing to do with autism. The most common GI issue they found was constipation, followed by diarrhea and food allergies.

This study compared GI issues between autistic kids and NT siblings. They found that 83% of the autistic sample and 28% of their siblings had at least one possibly-GI-related symptom. They also give data on specific GI symptoms, such as gaseousness (54% of autistics and 19% of siblings), abdominal discomfort (44% of autistics and 9% of siblings), and so forth. They found 20% of autistics and 2% of siblings had three or more poops per day, 32% of autistics and 2% of siblings had consistently watery poops, and 23% of autistics and none of their siblings had large changes in consistency. Also, apparently parents felt that 49% of the autistics and none of the siblings had particularly foul-smelling poops. And another for the sleep question - this study found 51% of autistics and 7% of siblings had sleep problems, with sleep problems being more common in autistic kids with GI issues.

Stimming and Sensory-Seeking - I couldn’t find much. This study I found is interesting, but it’s about more OCD-like compulsions, not actually stimming.

Oh, here’s something. A big detailed review of neurophysiological findings of sensory processing in autism.

LGBT - I’ve written up stuff about this elsewhere, but in short, autistic people, especially AFAB autistics, are definitely more likely to be asexual, bisexual, kinky and trans. Some relevant studies here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and there’s plenty more to be found.

Autistic Strengths - Well, Laurent Mottron and his team, including autistic rights advocate Michelle Dawson, have done a lot of research on what they term ‘enhanced perceptual functioning’, which they theorize explains the Block Design peak sometimes seen in autistic people. (Block Design is one of the subtests of the Weschler’s IQ test, and autistic people often show a relative strength on this test relative to other subtests on this test.) In general, I highly recommend looking at their research. It really shows what can happen when an autistic person gets involved in autism research.

This study by a different research team finds that children gifted in realistic still-life drawing have higher rates of repetitive behavior typical of autism (though none of their sample were actually autistic), and show similar visuospatial profiles to autistic kids.

This study finds that perfect pitch is associated with autistic traits. On the AQ, musicians with perfect pitch scored higher on the imagination and attention-switching subscales than musicians without perfect pitch and non-musicians. This study found a subset of autistic kids have extremely good pitch perception, with no relationship to musical training.

People in STEM fields are more likely to be autistic or have autistic relatives, especially mathematicians. (Which probably comes as no surprise to anyone who’s spent time in the math department of any university.) This study also finds that autistic kids tend to be better at math.

Sleep - as a couple studies above mentioned, sleep issues in autism could be related to melatonin metabolism or GI issues. This study found that 53% of autistic kids, 46% of kids with intellectual disabilities and 32% of NT kids have sleep problems. Autistic kids are both slower to fall asleep and more likely to wake up early than NT kids.

This study found a correlation between autistic traits and sleep problems in autistic kids. Repetitive behavior is related with being slower to get to sleep and not getting as many hours of sleep per night; communication problems are related to being slower to get to sleep, not getting as much sleep, and parasomnias (night terrors, restless leg syndrome, etc); and social differences are related to being slower to get to sleep, not getting as much sleep, waking up at night, parasomnias and breathing problems while sleeping.

This study found a strong correlation between sleep problems and sensory hypersensitivity among autistic kids. And this study found that autistic and/or intellectually disabled kids showed strong correlations between poor sleep, anxiety and behavior problems.

And this study found that 67.9% of autistic kids have sleep problems, and parents of kids with sleep problems were under more stress. Boys and younger children had more sleep problems.

Joint problems - This study found that people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that causes joint hypermobility, were more likely to be autistic. (And also to have mood disorders and attempt suicide.)

This study suggests that people with joint hypermobility have larger amygdala and various other brain structural differences, which was correlated with anxiety and higher sensitivity to internal body sensations. And this study found that 31.5% of people with ADHD and 13.9% of NTs have benign joint hypermobility syndrome.

Faceblindness - This study confirms that prosopagnosia (faceblindness) is more common among autistic people, with 67% having some degree of facial recognition difficulties.

This study reviews three theories about why autistic people have prosopagnosia, and concludes that the most likely of the three theories is the idea that avoiding eye contact impairs face recognition.

This study found that autistic people are slower to notice faces in scenes, and pay less attention to faces.

The last two questions I’m not really sure where to start.

[porcupine-girl]

On the communication question, this recent study found that when people were told a story and asked to tell it to another person, and another, etc, basically in a game of telephone, the chains made up of all-autistic and all-NT people performed similarly, but the chains that alternated autistic/NT performed worse than either of them, indicating that autistic people communicate with each other just as well as NT people communicate with each other, but both sides are bad at communicating with the other. The people in homogeneous chains also felt they had better rapport with the people before and after them in the chain than the people in the heterogeneous chains.

This small qualitative study by one of the same lead authors (Catherine Crompton, you might want to keep an eye on her) talked to a small group of autistic adults about their social interactions and found that they are more comfortable around other autistic people and feel that other autistic people understand them more easily than NT people, whereas when they spend time with NT people they feel they have to conform to NT standards.

[homestuck-scribbles]

A little Homestuck PSA

As 4/13 is right around the corner I just wanted to remind everyone about the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. As Viz and the death of Flash have been slowly killing the intended Homestuck experience there is still a way to see it how it was meant.

This offline program allows for all the flash to be seen and mini games to be played as intended and helps protect from spoilers. If you are going to start reading Homestuck or are planning to trick some unsuspecting friend into reading please consider using this program!

And - I love new livebloggers! Let me know who you love to watch make this journey.

https://bambosh.github.io/unofficial-homestuck-collection/

THE UNOFFICIAL HOMESTUCK COLLECTION

An offline browser built from the ground up to archive Homestuck and its related works.

[leescoresbies]

the past is a shadow -  some bluegrass & country tunes for the inhabitants of harlan county

in harlan, shit it ain’t behind you.

dig down another layer, turn up some horror.

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[profcolsymorgan]

God’s Own Country (2017), dir. Francis Lee / The Half of It (2020), dir. Alice Wu / Benjamin (2018), dir. Simon Amstell / Ilya Kaminsky, “While the Child Sleeps Sonya Undresses”