My back hurts but I'm being brave about it

[flyora]

Harris do his best as always

[stuckinapril]

Honestly I especially support self-absorption in cases where someone comes from a negative, broken home life and has practically needed to be their own cheerleader to wrench themself out of whatever self-deprecating thought loops their family has contributed to. When all you’re taught is negative self-speak, when you grew up being constantly compared or verbally berated or told you’re not good enough, you literally need to go out of your way to outgrow that thinking. And I do think that starts with turning the lens on yourself, romanticizing your life, constantly affirming to yourself that you are worthy of space and time and whatever your heart desires. You literally have to constantly hype yourself up where no one else has. It’s quite literally necessary.

[c-leadraw]

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

[bloominflowers]

a centaurs appreciation post bc I love these characters and this team with all my heart 💗

[i-prefer-to-mosey]

spinning silver is funny as fuck because the staryk king and miryem arranged their own arranged marriage. like they're both complaining and furious but they came up with that idea themselves

[gremlinshipper]

I haven’t been putting up my half assed reviews of books lately for two reasons

I’m struggling to read at all bc the Ailments have been many

Every book that I DO finish is horrendous and I don’t want to be an asshole about it online because it might be because of the Ailments.

going to start the lies of Locke Lamora bc I hear good things. Pray for me

[uptownthots]

“it isnt something you have to read critically” well 😭

[uptownthots]

this technically is true but I think this also perfectly encapsulates why I am inherently distrustful of like. “”cozy”” “turn your brain off” fiction lmfao. like okay WHO gets to turn their brain off and who has to suffer through bigoted caricatures of themselves while everyone else is having cozy silly no brain time 😐

[celsius451]

For disability pride, think I want to focus on this one thing that been bothering me

Been very frustrated lately by lack of phone call accessibility as someone who lacks speech but needs a lot of resources to stay healthy.

With rise of AI, it's only getting worse and worse.

More places changing their systems to incorporate AI answering machines.

Thing is...

Whenever I hear most people ranting about this change, it's usually about how annoying it is from an abled-person perspective or environmental or ethical impact.

Which are important valid reasons to be upset. I share those sentiments too.

But feel like disability is once again forgotten about within important discussion about change.

AI creates terrible language accessibility issues.

In fact, that's why it so annoying to deal with it.

In the past, if a place didn't have a call center or desk person to answer calls, they use extentions.

That meant you had to press a few numbers to get the right person.

Now with AI, you're expected to have a full conversation with a robot.

Tell them why you're calling, who you need to speak to, verify your info so the humans don't have to later, etc.

These bots can be bad at understanding what able-people are saying, so imagine how they handle these disabled callers:

People who use AAC (speech aids/devices)

People who slur, stutter, have "strange" voice or pronunciation

People with rapid or disorganized speech

People who use poor grammar & who don't speak full words or sentences

People who mix up similar common words

People with "deaf accent"

(i don't know if there is a different preferred term for this. Im sorry if I sound offensive. Please Lmk)

People with non-communicative speech such as vocal tics, echolalia, or babbling

Anyone who uses speech or language in a way that needs a human mind to interpret

Anyone whose voice sounds notably different

Ability to understand what AI is saying can be harder too:

d/Deaf people and other hearing differences

Auditory processing disorder

Receptive language disorder

Developmental disability, especially intellectual and learning disabilities

(AI can't help people who need things explained a certain way. AI unreliable and fails to adapt a lot.)

Anyone who frequently can't make out sounds and/or speech

Anyone who frequently has trouble with meanings in conversation

The problems I often face with AI answering machines (and that I'm sure many other disabled people have faced as well):

AI slightly mishearing me/my device

AI mishearing so badly that it basically makes up a fake conversation

AI not hearing me/my device at all

AI registering tics and stims as answers

AI "explaining" an instruction by repeating the same instruction again word-for-word

AI directing me to the wrong person without trying to confirm what I said

AI sometimes just... hanging up on me right after I speak my first answer...

These are the machines being put in front of

hospitals

doctors offices

mental health centers

pharmacies

transportation and in-home care

health insurance member services

medical supply companies

government resource agencies

non-profit organizations

advocacy groups

justice centers & other legal resources

customer service lines

many other places disabled people often need to access from home

It's another example of some of the most vulnerable being pushed away from the things we need, and we're also being forgotten in these discussions about things that can affect us a lot

Next time someone is ranting about AI job interviewers, please also remember:

the AI pharmacy assistants that make it impossible for someone with a speech disorder to sort out their meds

the AI scheduler that won't allow a D/deaf person to access the right extension of the clinic to set up an appointment

the AI agent that confuses an intellectually disabled person into anger and tears

the AI answerer that hangs up on a mentally ill person seeking help in crisis because they aren't speaking coherently enough

Human beings need to be at the forefront of human resources and issues for disabled people especially. Please remember us. Please fight.

Happy disability pride ♡

[lazer-exe]

I'm gonna say it, I do think that even the laziest person imaginable should have a roof over their head, food in their stomach, and access to healthcare

[lazer-exe]

a lot of people are reblogging this saying that most "lazy" people are actually just disabled or that the concept of laziness itself is a product of our society's obsession with productivity. this is all true, but it is not my point.

even if someone WAS just lazy and simply didn't want to do anything but lie on the couch and watch tv, they should still have these things. it's irrelevant whether some people aren't actually lazy because everyone, including hypothetical lazy people, should have their basic needs met.

if we have the resources to do it, there is no defense of letting people die because they don't want to work, and much less because they can't.

I don't want lazy people to have basic necessities because they "actually" deserve them because they ARE working or CAN'T work. I want lazy people to have basic necessities because they are people, and we shouldn't leave them to die when we have the resources not to.

[systlin]

Getting down on my knees and thanking the humans who invented dishwashers and washing machines.

[ihonestlydontknowwhattocallthis]

InsNe that dishwashers are more efficient and easier than just washing them manually but they also use less water. It’s a win win situation

[systlin]

They ALSO sterilize dishes, due to operating at a far higher temperature than human hands could ever tolerate. It's a win every way.

[systlin]

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

He said the exact same thing, which I did not know before that, so spreading this knowledge.

[plaguedocboi]

So every year, my aquarium does a captive lobster hatchery project (hence all the loblings). The reason we’re doing it is because in the wild, loblings only have a 1 in 25,000 chance of surviving their larval phase. They’re plankton as babies and everything eats them. Additionally, as the Gulf of Maine warms, they are having even lower survival rates because the blooms of copepods they feed on as babies are happening earlier in the year, and they’re missing it.

Obviously, the goal of this experiment is to grow the lobsters until they’re big enough to settle to the seabed and then release them, because they have a much higher likelihood of surviving to adulthood when they’re able to hide. Ideally, captive lobster hatcheries can boost the wild population and keep things stable, so we don’t have a major crash in a decade or two.

The first year we tried this was pretty bad. We had a lot of eggs, but very few babies. It turned out that the CO2 levels in the building spiked as more guests visited throughout the summer, and that settled into the water and threw off the pH and caused a chemical reaction that prevented a lot of the eggs from hatching. I think we ended up releasing three baby lobsters (which is still better than their wild survival rate but not great).

The second year was a little better. We added a de-gasser to the aquarium and got a ton of larval lobsters, but right as they were settling to the bottom we had a disease outbreak that killed most of them. We ended up releasing four babies at the end of the season.

But this year? Oh boy. We have so many lobsters that we had to release the first round early (usually we wait till September or October so guests can see them). We just released a total of FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE baby lobsters, and we still have over a hundred who haven’t settled to the bottom yet. I genuinely don’t even have words to explain how cool this is. OVER FIVE HUNDRED. We just added hundreds of lobsters to the wild population that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Conservation is so fucken sick

[rockabillywife]

You guys would like my posts a lot more if you had my exact life experiences and internal monologue

[drabbles-and-rambles]

I saw a post about Shane and Ilya being sad that they can't thank each other in their acceptance speeches like other can with their spouses and it got me thinking:

Ilya wins his first awards and hes got nobody he really wants to thank after his team and coach cause he he hates his family but he knows his speech is too short so on impulse he goes "And I want to thank Shane Hollander for being slightly worse than me this season". Everyone knows it was going to one of those two, so everyone thinks hes an asshole to say that but whats new so it works for him. But from then on it then becomes a bit for both of them to thank each other in their speeches in a snide way as a reason they won.

Shane winning the Art Ross Trophy (Awarded to the player who leads the league in total points at the end of the regular season). and going "special thanks to Rozanov for missing at least 5 shots this season, he was a huge help"

Ilya winning the Conn Smythe Trophy (Awarded to the most valuable player for his team in the playoffs.) "Just want to give a quick shout out to Hollander for getting knocked out in the second round this season. Must hate to see me up here."

They find a way to mention the other in their speeches every time all the time.

[captainjonnitkessler]

So many political posts I hate boil down to "I don't want to organize and work with people I hate and fight for small, incremental victories, I just want to start a revolution where everyone magically becomes an automaton who acts exactly the way I think they should act"

Like damn man, I want that too. Unfortunately I live in reality though so we're stuck with the first thing.

[splattergutz]

i feel like i’m cursed forever but other than that i’m doing alright

[turnipfritters]

[ellisonwongparty]

the way rr/tierney introduce ilya is so funny to me because when you first see him you're just like jeez this guy is such an asshole why is he like this. and then seconds later it's just like um it's because he has a 1) dead mom 2) who killed herself 3) an abusive dad 4) with alzheimers 5) a brother 6) who verbally abuses him on the phone 7) when ilya refuses to wire him 50 bands all at once 8) all while he spends new years eve all alone in the grossest motel you've ever seen 9) and he's bisexual.

and you're just like. well shit. that will do it i guess.

[headspace-hotel]

I’ve been reading about werewolves on Wikipedia and I just have to say. “Werewolves are warriors that descend into hell to fight demons” kicks unbelievable amounts of ass as a concept