#the more queue know

[thateclecticbitch]

Advice from an actually autistic person for actually autistic people: Don't settle for people who hang out with you in spite of your flaws. Find people who love you because of your flaws*. Surround yourself with people who don't just tolerate or pity you, but fully embrace who you are. I promise your social life will improve and the relationships you build with other people will be more satisfactory and long lasting.

*addendum below the cut

By "flaws," I mean the autistic traits people shame you for. Things like like difficulty with eye contact. Like your atypical facial expressions and body language and posture. Like your unusual intonation and cadence of speech and echolalia. Like your need for direct communication and tone indicators. Like your need for routine and predictability and preplanned activities. Like your special interests and infodumping. Like your sensory integration difficulties and sensory boundaries and stimming and meltdowns/shutdowns. Like the double empathy problem and hyper empathy and hypo empathy and fluctuating empathy. Like alexthymia and intense emotions and lack of (displays of) emotions. Like energy and spoons. Like, well, autism.

These are needs that should be accommodated and/or develope coping skills for on our own terms. Not problems that need fixing.

I do not mean racism/ mysogyny/ cisheterosexism/ ableism, repeatedly violating other people's boundaries, bullying, or refusing to listen and apologize (for real) and change when you are made aware of/called out for unnacceptable behavior. Autistic people (generally) not being actively malicious or intentionally rude does not make us immune to exhibiting toxic traits or holding predjudiced beliefs. Everyone needs to do anti-racist, anti-cisheterosexist, anti-mysogynist, anti-ableist work. Also I am begging my fellow NT passing autistics to stop throwing alexthemic, non-speaking, and high supports needs autistics under the bus. We arent all that different from each other and they deserve to be included and listened to as well.

[sporefare]

theyre all i draw honestly im sorry

[thateclecticbitch]

Not to be a old books written by crusty white men fan on main, but most classic novels they make you read in school instantly become 10x more interesting when you enterpret them as being gay as fuck.

The Great Gatsby? A fucking snooze fest. That is until you find the Nick Caraway Is Gay Theory online. And then when you dig deeper you find the even more interesting theory that Jay Gatsby is biracial and bisexual. And then you discover yet another theory that Jordan Baker is biracial and sapphic. All of which add layers of depth to the motivations of the characters in an otherwise fairly bland story. BTW these are all serious academic theories (that have been around since the 60s. The SIXTIES!) Based on and validated by textual evidence, and not just the silly whims of horny girls on fanfiction dot come (although there is a bit of a fandom pressence).

And the best part? Now that The Great Gatsby is public domain, people have been legally publishing and selling their gay fanfiction in bookstores. Its like every month there's a new TGG AU being published, and I've bought all of them. I can purchase physical bound copy of one of my favorite fanfictions where Nick and Jay live in a house together and have basically adopted Daisy's daughter, Pam, who is sapphic and has the androgyn insensitivity intersex variation. I read the original, much shorter, version on AO3 years ago, and now it's an actual book. It's called The Pursued And The Pursuing.

So yeah, put some homosexual imagination into your highschool lit class and it might just be tolerable.

[thateclecticbitch]

The reading comprehension isnt just bad on tumblr and twitter. It's bad everywhere.

For many years I've known that over 1/2 of Adults in the USA cannot read a book written above an 8th grade level. I've been trying to figure out why this is. Surely this many people don't have an actual learning disability, do they?

Well two weeks ago I stumbled on this podcast, and then this related article.

The reason so many people don't know how to read, is because we have not actually been teaching them how to read.

Oh, Teachers think they are teaching kids how to read, but in reality it's all a buncha baloney based on a long debunked theory on how children learn how to read. And it's been widespread curriculum in school districts rich and poor for decades.

Needless to say, I am nothing short of absolutely horrified.

Now, I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist. And by conspiracy theorist, I mean I've done extensive study, research, and observation on the increasingly divisive and hostile political climate if the Not So United States Of America (spoiler alert, its been going on for decades, not years). I know about the GQP plan to privatize public education. It is extremely unlikely this was a part of that.

The curriculum was originally meant to only be used with the poorest of readers to help them keep up with their classmates, and it was a massive oversight to apply it accross the board. It happened to have the unfortunate side effect of contributing to extremism and cultish mentality. That isn't to say that educated people cannot become extremists. No one is immune to Authoritarian Thought Control Tactics. But having good reading comprehension and internet literacy skills lowers your likelihood of falling prey to misinformation and brainwashing.

The GQP didn't start this. But they do want to keep it this way. "They don't want an educated populace capable of critical thought, sitting around the kitchen table realizing how badly they're getting fucked!" -George Carlin

Okay. So.... What now?

Now that we know about the problem, we can do something about it. Fortunuately, we know how kids learn to read, which means this is a fixable problem. If you are in or near a school district that uses the "Three Cueing System" as their reading curriculum, go to district board meetings. Make petitions. Sign petitions. Call your local representitives. Fight like hell for effective evidence based reading curriculum based on science. Please. The kids need it.

[astro-feminist]

An Unexpected Rocket Plume over San Francisco

Image Credit & Copyright: Abe Blair (Abe Blair Gallery)

Explanation: What is that unusual light in the sky? A common question, this particular light was not only bright but moving and expanding. It appeared just as the astrophotographer and his friend were photographing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California against a more predictable night sky. They were not alone in seeing this unusual display -- at least hundreds of people in California reported a similar sight. The consensus of experienced sky observers was that the plume resulted from a rocket launch -- an explanation that was soon confirmed as an unpublicized test of a submarine-launched, unarmed, Trident II D5 nuclear missile. Such tests are not uncommon but do not usually occur just after sunset near a major metropolitan area -- when they are particularly noticeable to many people. Were plume images not posted to the Internet and quickly identified, such a sky spectacle might have been understood by some to be associated with more grandiose -- but incorrect -- explanations.

[astro-feminist]

The Witch Head Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff Signorelli

Explanation: Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble .... maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. A frighteningly shaped reflection nebula, this cosmic crone is about 800 light-years away though. Its malevolent visage seems to glare toward nearby bright star Rigel in Orion, just off the right edge of this frame. More formally known asIC 2118, the interstellar cloud of dust and gas is nearly 70 light-years across, its dust grains reflecting Rigel's starlight. In this composite portrait, the nebula's color is caused not only by the star's intense bluish light but because the dust grains scatter blue light more efficiently than red. The same physical process causes Earth's daytime sky to appear blue, although the scatterers in planet Earth's atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen.

[astro-feminist]

NGC 1333: Stellar Nursery in Perseus Image Credit & Copyright: Agrupació Astronòmica d'Eivissa/Ibiza (AAE), Alberto Prats Rodríguez

Explanation: NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud. This striking close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with hints of contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago.

[astro-feminist]

A Partial Solar Eclipse over Texas Image Credit & Copyright: Jimmy Westlake (Colorado Mountain College) & Linda Westlake