Technicalculations

[technicalculations]

Favorite Stim Tools

Note: None of these are affiliate links, I just like them. I tried to rank/score these but it made me stressed out. I’d argue that pros/cons are more useful anyway. Common themes: metal/magnets, textures (spikey, soft).

Stimara Stimagz:

Pros: Stimara people, if you’re reading this, I love you. I take these everywhere. I have 12 little sticks, in three colors. They’re really satisfying magnets, portable, fit in your pocket easily for discrete fidgeting, easy to keep clean. Having multiple colors makes it fun to make patterns when you’re using them.

Cons: I recently recorded something and brought these with me to the recording room - not a good idea. The click is satisfying, but not quiet, so I ended up switching them out for something quieter. But it looks like the company’s already working on a quieter version!

Metal Mobius Ball:

Pros: My mom got this for me a few years ago. It’s quiet, portable, small enough for a pocket-fidgeter, easy to keep clean, and a good weight in your hand. Depending on the color you have, it can look pretty “professional,” too. I’ve gotten a few compliments on it over the years.

Cons: I think because I got the “full” version, sometimes the metal circles briefly catch on each other. So the fidgeting experience itself could be smoother, but in general this is a very solid fidget.

Speks Magnets:

Pros: These are my go-to tools for a meeting. I keep them at my desk and use them in almost every meeting. Quiet, professional-looking, easy to clean, easy to use one-handed. Lots of ways to use them. They’re a great meeting tool.

Cons: Technically portable, but honestly keep these in a safe place. Trust me, you don’t want to end up at the emergency vet because you can’t find them and your dog (or child) is throwing up.

Acupressure ring:

Pros: These are especially great if your particular flavor of neurodivergence involves hair-pulling or skin-picking. The sensation is similar enough to have solved this problem for me, after years of trying to kick the habit. Easy to clean, small and portable, great pocket fidget too. Can be placed on a pen/stylus quickly if you need to take notes. I keep these in a little bag with my wallet and use them at stressful things like doctor’s appointments or PT, they help keep me present and listening.

Cons: On more than one occasion, I have flung these across the room. If your fidgeting technique involves stretching this ring at all, hold onto it tightly!

Marble Maze:

Pros: Long ago, I taught myself the basics of sewing on my mom’s old machine and made a bunch of these with scrap fabric. They’re simple to make, can be as large or small as you’d like, and can be customized in tons of other ways. I found flannel to be one of the best fabrics for this - not too stretchy but still soft, comes in tons of fun patterns. Marble mazes are very quiet, portable, pocket-able. Not easily breakable. And cleaning them is relatively straightforward (throw in the machine with your clothes, or use soap and water to hand wash.)

Cons: Fabric, so will just take longer to sanitize than something that’s metal or plastic.

Tangle:

Pros: I like the texture of this tangle a lot. It was my #1 tool for a while. It’s not quite small enough for a pocket fidget, though you can play around with size by removing links. Good for keeping one hand busy while the other does something else.

Cons: If your dogs are like mine, they’ll think this is a toy and chew it. The good thing is, you can just remove the links of the tangle that are chewed up. You’re left with a fully functional, though slightly smaller, tangle. It could be easier to clean, and it’s not very discrete.

Sensy Band:

Pros: The texture of this orange bracelet is perfect for me. When curled up, it’s quite small and light, so pretty portable, and the material is easy to clean. I rarely wear it; instead I transport it curled, and then hold it straight and run the tips of my fingers up and down the sides to fidget with it.

Cons: bright orange, so looks childish, and too large for much discrete fidgeting.

Hope this list is helpful for somebody ¯_(ツ)_/¯ (shrug emoji). I see lots of people blogging about the kinds of hardware or software or other things they use, so this is my take on those lists. My favorites do change over time, so I may update this if it changes. Like a /now page, but for fidgets. Also, I would love to see other people’s lists of favorite fidgets and why - so please do this too if you want!

[technicalculations]

Energy

I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been…tired. And that’s what I’d like to write about.

Under the systems we have now: time, energy, health - these are all the most important things for survival. We need these things to make money, we need money to survive. If you know me in “real life” (read: synchronous life) then you know the Harriet Beecher Stowe quote I love to recite: “A woman’s health is her capital.” This is true now more than ever.

But I’m here to talk about energy. (Energy and health are obviously interconnected, as most things are with other things in this world, which makes writing about any one thing in isolation from anything else pretty difficult for my pattern-loving brain!)

Energy Budgeting

Our chronic illness and disability friends may describe their daily energy as spoons. I find the term spoons to be confusing for many nondisabled people, so I usually describe it for myself as an energy budget. Budgeting feels more accurate anyway. When I wake up, I have a set amount of energy for the day. Sometimes a mid-day nap might help boost that a bit, but not by much. And if i’m not careful, overdoing it one day can have a lasting impact on my budget for the next few days, weeks, or even months.

With full days of work, I usually run out of energy by the end of the day. My “speech spoons” are some of the first to go. Sometimes I refer to this as being “out of mouthwords.” More on this later.

Energy is something you have, that is then taken from you when you carry out a task. You use it to do something. It’s something your technology and devices have, that is taken from them (or via the electricity outlet in your wall) when you ask them to do something for you. It’s something many disabled people need - in the form of electricity for a ventilator, for instance - that becomes inaccessible during a climate-change-induced storm that wipes out power, that then threatens the life of disabled people who rely on these technologies to support their lives. Energy is needed to heat our homes so we don’t die of cold in a snowstorm.

We have energy in our bodies and energy in our walls. Energy in all its forms is everywhere. Energy poverty threatens lives on numerous levels. Energy - in all its forms - is political.

Energy Poverty

It takes energy to do any task. It takes energy for your body to fight an infection, like covid, the flu, or RSV. Energy is also often permanently taken from you if you develop long covid or MECFS after said infection. If this happens, you have less energy overall, and the energy you do still have is used up more quickly. Even a small task, like wrapping one too many presents before Christmas, can set your recovery back very far.

Many chronically ill folks, especially folks with MECFS, long covid, or other energy-limiting illness, live in a constant state of energy poverty. This has huge impacts on our lives. Suddenly you can’t work, you can’t help out around the house, you can’t make money, you lose your home, your job, your life. All because of energy.

It’s suspected that some of the folks with long covid or MECFS have something wrong with their mitochondria. To be fair, there are a number of theories about what exactly is going on behind the scenes to produce what we call long covid, and I suspect the final answer is that multiple pathophysiologies (reasons) are at play. But the mitochondria theory makes a lot of sense. If “the powerhouse of the cell” - the thing providing energy to you at a cellular level - is broken…this would inevitably result in the many downstream effects we see - the hundreds of symptoms ranging from mild discomfort to a complete inability to absorb what you eat or drink. If your cells can’t get energy, they can’t do their jobs.

The Impossible “Energy Calculus”

Maybe energy ebbs and flows, as many disability symptoms tend to do. Energy ebbs and flows for nondisabled folks, too. That’s normal. But the reality is that even at the peak of our energy waves, we are still underwater.

Many of us are using our last slivers of energy to participate in activism and advocacy from our beds. We are forced to do an impossible Energy Calculus when we have things that need to get done, or places we need to go: How much energy will it cost to get there? Is it bright out? Is it cold? Will there be a lot of people and noise? Will I need to communicate my needs in a particularly polite and articulate way to accomplish what I need to do? What’s the chance I overdo it? Can I afford to take that chance? What do my next few days look like if I crash?

And thinking through all these potential factors? That also costs energy.

Expensive Speech

This also connects with something I learned recently called expensive speech. I knew that there were different ways to have trouble with verbal speech, ranging from being completely nonspeaking to having some access to speech (insufficient, unreliable, or intermittent speech). Expensive speech was a new one for me, though. Basically, producing speech is a super complex motor task for your brain. It requires coordinating approximately 100 orofacial, laryngeal, pharyngeal, and respiratory muscles! Needless to say, it takes a lot of energy for your brain to coordinate all that! When your body’s battery isn’t charging well to begin with, using that much energy to communicate verbally can be too much to ask. Speech can be expensive for lots of different reasons that I won’t get into right now for fear of making this post too long to hold anyone’s attention. We’ve already talked about energy-limiting illness being one. Another big one: apraxia or dyspraxia from various types of neurodivergence. And really, any chronic illness or disability that makes muscle coordination difficult or causes fatigue probably makes speech expensive sometimes.

I don’t have a good conclusion to this post other than that there are lots of ways to use energy, and lots of ways to lose energy. Save your energy for the important things, and use it well.

[cripple-woe]

I made up a way to explain fatigue!

[oneshortdamnfuse]

I am once again explaining that in order for walkable cities and public transit to work for disabled people, there also need to be more public bathrooms available in and around those areas. Not just places to sit down or rest. Bathrooms. We need accessible, clean bathrooms. With sharps bins. With multiple wheelchair accessible stalls. With an area to set down supplies needed to maintain one’s body. Even if it’s not being used to get rid of bodily waste, bathrooms are one of the few spaces disabled people have to maintain some sort of privacy when they’re in the middle of a flare up or they need to take medication or what have you. Designing a public space? Include bathrooms.

[wizrdfckr]

was really mad that the couches in the lobby at my work got removed :( then I remembered that most days I open there's someone sleeping on them, meaning someone reported that to housekeeping and their "solution" was to remove the couches entirely?? I was pissed about it, then noticed this sign today

the removal of comfort in public spaces to 'deter' homeless people impacts everyone

[sparklefartstheunicorn]

Source video

Please reblog and share.

[identitty-dickruption]

my utopia has disability in it. my utopia includes free healthcare and no-questions welfare and state-funded carers. my utopia includes building requirements that centre disabled bodies — ramps and lifts and dimmer switches and braille signs. my utopia has disability in it. because without disability, it’s not much of a utopia at all

[identitty-dickruption]

we have to give ourselves permission to imagine disabled futures. we’ve been told, either implicitly or explicitly that we shouldn’t exist, so it becomes hard to imagine a perfect world populated with people like us. but loving ourselves and our communities is about being able to imagine a future that has us in it. there is a perfect world where people are happily disabled. and that’s what I’m fighting for — the chance that we can slowly take steps towards that world. imagine disabled futures

[summerstormsandnoodles]

I would go so far as to say you CANNOT build a utopia without putting accessibility front and centre because then it is not a utopia for children and the elderly either - groups that make up a very large majority of the population along with us disabled people and that very much have specific access needs. A utopia that caters only to the ableds automatically excludes everyone who isn't a "productive adult"

[technicalculations]

Slow-Cooker Brain

Many neurodivergent people are said to have slower processing speeds. When you take in way more information than the average person at rest…yeah, it might take you longer to process it all. After hearing a lovely coworker use similar wording, I’ve been referring to this kind of processing speed “slow-cooker brain.” I like it because when you use a slow-cooker (like a crock pot), the things you cook are usually really great! It just might take a little longer to simmer. Soak up the juices and whatnot.

By intake of information, I mean sensory input, but also things like social input. Any stimulus, really. Basically, our brains don’t just want to passively take in information- they also want to use that information to update their mental models. It’s a natural neurological need: for our brains to adapt to their changing environment. This is called our brain’s completion tendency. Unfulfilled completion tendencies are stressful; like the item that sits on your to-do list for days or weeks or months, but at a more visceral level. I suspect this is a big contributor to higher allostatic load in general among neurodivergent folks. (Pervasive ableism also being a big factor toward this.) When you’re always hitting bottlenecks, when there are always too many stimuli to process, you’re bound to end up with a lot of things unprocessed.

Side note, taking in more information at rest + slow processing speed + fast world = processing bottlenecks. This is meltdowns and shutdowns. It’s everyone else having printers in their brains and you have some little guys handwriting everything onto scrolls. Those guys will get overwhelmed with work a lot more quickly than a printer.

[vampcraft-deactivated20231205]

i think as adults it’s our responsibility to be nice to kids and treat them with the respect we wish we got at that age and im not kidding or exaggerating in the least

[neuer-fruehling]

[anddreadful]

look. look. you have to honor what you want and what you feel you need, even if it’s cringey. you have to. if you don’t, if you ignore your weird animal desires and your petty hungers because you feel shame about them, or because they’re not practical, or they’re not what you “should” want, you starve your soul. and one day, you’ll meet people who don’t starve their souls, who give themselves the things you denied yourself and are happier than you for it, and it will hollow you out further with resentment and rage.

the good news is that it’s never too late to start. you can always ask yourself what you want, and maybe if what you want lives at the heart of your disdain. do you know what it feels like to have a well fed soul? would you like to?

[nekoning]

does anyone have tips on how to write alt text for art? i want to start adding to my new and old work but i don't rly know how to do it or what is relevant to describe, best way to do it etc.

[bl0w-m3]

[doradotcom]

you cant employ me in a way that matters

[neurodivergenttales]

I don't know why I'm surprised that I deal with chronic depersonalisation and dissociation as an adult when I have spent literally my whole life observing myself during every social interaction, trying to police my facial expressions and manufacture everything I say in order to try and meet neurotypical standards

Every time I am in an interaction I feel outside myself, trying to analyse how the other person is viewing me and monitoring whether I am appearing 'weird' or 'off' to them

[hollowboobtheory]

not enough people understand that disability benefits are basically what it would look like if you turned "if you're too sick for school you're too sick for video games" into an official public policy

[subversivegrrl]

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced a proposed rule that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.

Comments period ends November 13th - this is the first proposed revision to §504 of the Rehabilitation Act since 1977.

The proposed rule includes things like*

Forbid making healthcare decisions based on disability stereotypes

Protect parents with disabilities in the foster care system, so families can stay together

Prohibit the child welfare system from placing kids with disabilities in restrictive settings

Prohibit organ transplant discrimination on the basis of disability

Establishes standards for accessible diagnostic equipment

Prohibits the use of value of life assessments in making treatment decisions

Hospitals can’t send you to a nursing home as a matter of course

Prohibits discriminatory crisis standards of care

[kermitlesbian]

fuck i can’t believe i wasted my entire life being moved by art and beauty and the indomitable human spirit ugh i should’ve been making money through internet scams