Down The Rabbit Hole

ASD, ADHD, Autism, Queerlife and things associated with it

[endangered-justice-seeker]

It’s easier to think of someone as “lazy” than to face the fact that school costs too much, that better jobs are inaccessible, that childcare is unaffordable, that people are forced to work so hard for so little that there’s no way they could have enough energy to attempt schooling or finding better work, and that what we give to people who can’t work is insufficient to the point of being shameful. I could say that calling people lazy is, in itself, lazy, but it’s not just an intellectual shortcut. It’s a defense mechanism.

[bgb16999]

Reblog if your blog is ace/aro friendly...

So that I can follow you. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

One company bought all the retail outlets for glasses, used that to force sales of all the eyewear companies and jacked up prices by as much as 1000%

If you wear glasses, you might have noticed that they’ve been getting steadily more expensive in recent years, no matter which brand you buy and no matter where you shop.

That’s because a giant-but-obscure company called Luxottica bought out Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, then used their dominance over the retail side of glasses to force virtually every eyewear brand to sell to them (Luxxotica owns or licenses Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Tiffany, Valentino, Vogue and Versace); and used that to buy out all the other eyewear retailers of any note (Luxottica owns Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical) and then also bought out insurers like Eyemed Vision Care and Essilor, the leading prescription lens/contact lens manufacturer.

Controlling the labs, insurers,  frame makers, and all the major retail outlets has allowed Luxottica to squeeze suppliers – frames are cheaper than ever to make, thanks to monopsony buying power with Prada-grade designer frames costing $15 to manufacture – while raising prices as much as 1000% relative to pre-acquisition pricing.

It’s even worse for lenses: a pair of prescription lenses that cost $1.50 to make sell for $800 in the USA.

LA Times columnist David Lazarus wrote a column about skyrocketing eyewear prices and was approached by Charles Dahan, who once owned one of the largest frames companies in America, Custom Optical, which supplied 20% of the frames sold at Lenscrafters prior to the Luxottica acquisition. Dahan describes how Luxottica cornered the horizontal and vertical markets for eyewear and pushed out or bought out every other company (Oakley refused to sell or lower prices, so Luxottica boycotted it from its retailers, forcing the company into such a precarious position that it Luxottica was able to buy it for a fraction of its peak book-value just a few years later).

This is a good example of how decades of far-right ideologically driven antitrust malpractice has hurt everyone. After all, glasses aren’t just a fashion item: they’re a necessity for people with poor vision, a prerequisite for driving, walking, cycling, reading, getting an education or doing your job.

Luxottica grew through acquisition, by buying up its competition. This was banned under classic antitrust law, until the Reagan years. This pattern has been repeated in many other domains: beer, whiskey, retail pharmacies, and so on. In every one of those domains, we are getting screwed, as are small businesspeople and the families they serve.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/12/luxottica.html

[trashwizard]

[sharkboxes]

[bowtiefox]

[espritfollet]

This is a map of Asia. North Americans, you may notice this map is not solely comprised of Japan, Korea, China and Thailand. People in the UK, you may notice India is not  a continent. That is, if those of you who generalize entire continents can even pinpoint India on a map. Indians are Asian, gasp! And not all brown skinned people are Indian, also, gasp! There are an alarming amount of people, of all ages, from all backgrounds, who seem to be unable to process this.

I’m ethnically Asian. Since Asia is an extremely large continent, I could be from any number of countries. I am neither from India, China, Korea, Japan or Pakistan, yet not so surprisingly, I am still Asian. 

Yes, there are commonalities across regions, through the conflation of cultures, colonialism, globalization, transnationalism and movement of diasporas. Sometimes these are all the same thing. Rickshaws, rice and curry can be found across the continent. But let’s not overgeneralize. You can also find Buddhists, Catholics, Muslims and Hindus across Asia. Cantonese Speaking Chinese Muslims! English Speaking Indian Jews! 

No, we are not all the same. Orientalism? (Please look up Edward Said for basic concepts) No thank you. 

Geography, people. It’s important. 

[fuckyeahethnicwomen]

This pops up on my dash every so often. I reblog it again, not just because I wrote it, but because nothing has changed since I first posted this.

[dentalgoth]

What’s cool about Iran is that it falls in 3 different regions of Asia so depending on what part of Iran you’re in, you can kind of get culture shocked a bit. The central and western part of the country is West Asia, the north east is Central Asia, and the southeast is in South Asia. 

[numinous-queer]

To the folks wondering about Russia being included, I want to mention that the cultural debates and angst about that has been going on for CENTURIES. While France has been pretty fetishized all the way back from Peter the Great, there is no question that we are not Europe, even with that influence showing really obviously in historical seats of power like St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, the whole country was under control of the Mongols (The Golden Horde) from roughly 1242 to 1480, and that left an enormous Mongolian and Tatar heritage that remains to this day. The ancient Scythians are huge in the cultural imagination as well. And besides… look at the Russians who are outside the standard “Kievan Rus” phenotype (which most folks assume is how all Russians look.) 

Here are three of the 30 distinct ethnic groups in Siberia alone:

Buryat grandfather, photo by Alexander Newby

Evenk children, photo by Evgenia Arbugaeva

Young Yakut couple, photographer unknown

[espritfollet]

boom

[as2kakamlq-deactivated20150103]

AS SOMEONE WITH NORTHERN IRANIAN (AZERBAIJANI)/RUSSIAN/ HAZARA-PERSIAN/ UYGHUR-CHINESE ANCESTRY THIS IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL POST 

[dreamerskeepwriting-deactivated]

And that’s why sometimes you’ll see a person with curly black hair, pale skin, and hazel-green eyes (my grand-father’s sister) who turn out to be Chinese. Mad recessive genes game at play, I swear. Mongols, they really got around. 

[heywriters]

I was looking for this post months ago and it was in my endless likes all along.

[uggly]

[glita]

oh

my

god

[tigerlilyx]

Cat heaven

[microfilaria-deactivated2016103]

THIS IS WHAT I ASPIRE TO HAVE MY HOUSE TO BE.

[entdandy-deactivated20150612]

Future house

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

I want this house so I can have ten thousand cats who can explore ‘til their hearts are content.

[butterflyinthewell]

For parents of autistic kids...

Scenario: Your autistic child wants you next to them all the time, and they flip out if you try to get up or leave the room. You literally have to sit by them in order for them to stay calm. You can’t figure out why they go into meltdowns if you move or try to leave the room and it’s frustrating.

Yep, I understand. I’m autistic and sometimes I struggle with “all the things and people have to be where I want or I will get scared” situations.

It’s about predictability. It’s knowing I will turn my head and see my door is ajar instead of closed or wide open. It’s knowing my shoes are where I put them. It’s knowing my dad will be in his bedroom after dinner and mom will always use the bathroom and flush the toilet before she leaves the house.

Sometimes somebody closes my door or leaves it open. Sometimes I kick my shoes off too hard and they end up under the bed out of sight. Sometimes my dad stays in the living room after dinner. Sometimes mom doesn’t stop in the bathroom if she’s just nipping outside for something real quick.

The environment that has been predictable is suddenly DIfferent. My heart races, I feel all my senses rise up to full alert. I’m ready for a fight or to run for my life.

I can get this when I go to the supermarket with mom if we don’t go up and down the aisles in the “right” direction and I will go into a huge meltdown because seeing the aisles the “wrong” way literally makes my body hurt like an all-over toothache. My mom understands this, so if an aisle is blocked off for cleaning, she’ll tell me to go over to the next one so I’m going the “right” way and she meets me there.

I tell people “only close the door halfway” to stop the door ending up in a position I don’t want. If I can’t find my dad after dinner, I yell for him and he’ll say “out here!” (yes, even if I see him, my brain tries to say he’s in the wrong place and his voice makes his position more “real” to me.) I’ve learned to look under my bed if my shoes are out of sight and I usually find them there. Mom will call out to me “only going out for a sec!” and I know the lack of a toilet flush isn’t Wrong. I still feel unsettled, but it’s not a full on fight / flight response.

In the case of your child getting upset if you move, talk to them. Tell them “I’m going to get up and go in the kitchen to make a phone call to (whoever you’re calling). You can watch if you stay quiet. I’ll come back and sit by you again when I’m done.”

Tell your child what you’re going to do. Lay out the steps if you need to, so they know what’s coming. They may still freak out a bit because they know the what and not the how, but knowing the what can make the how a little less of a surprise.

If the phone rings, somebody pops over unexpectedly or anything happens that you suddenly have to shift activities, talk the child through it. Be honest if you don’t know what is going to happen, but stay with them if you can, or tell them who you will leave them with if you have to leave them with somebody. The child may still freak out big time, but maybe next time the freakout won’t be as bad because they remember what happened last time.

Yes, do this even if they are nonverbal and don’t appear to respond to you. Trust me, they understand what you’re saying. They may even recognize their response is not helping and can’t stop themselves. Giving them a little bit of what to expect can make an OMG SCARY situation feel more like “this really sucks and it’s uncomfortable, but I’ll be okay!”

As an autistic person, that feeling of the future being in dark fog is intimidating. Sometimes shedding some light only reveals more fog, but at least it’s not dark and I know all fog has to pass or dissipate eventually. :)

[anarchist-art]

[ms-mazarin]

Words to replace said, except this actually helps

I got pretty fed up with looking for words to replace said because they weren’t sorted in a way I could easily use/find them for the right time. So I did some myself.

IN RESPONSE TO Acknowledged Answered Protested

INPUT/JOIN CONVERSATION/ASK Added Implored Inquired Insisted Proposed Queried Questioned Recommended Testified

GUILTY/RELUCTANCE/SORRY Admitted Apologized Conceded Confessed Professed

FOR SOMEONE ELSE Advised Criticized Suggested

JUST CHECKING Affirmed Agreed Alleged Confirmed

LOUD Announced Chanted Crowed

LEWD/CUTE/SECRET SPY FEEL Appealed Disclosed Moaned

ANGRY FUCK OFF MATE WANNA FIGHT Argued Barked Challenged Cursed Fumed Growled Hissed Roared Swore

SMARTASS Articulated Asserted Assured Avowed Claimed Commanded Cross-examined Demanded Digressed Directed Foretold Instructed Interrupted Predicted Proclaimed Quoted Theorized

ASSHOLE Bellowed Boasted Bragged

NERVOUS TRAINWRECK Babbled Bawled Mumbled Sputtered Stammered Stuttered

SUAVE MOTHERFUCKER Bargained Divulged Disclosed Exhorted

FIRST OFF Began

LASTLY Concluded Concurred

WEAK PUSY Begged Blurted Complained Cried Faltered Fretted

HAPPY/LOL Cajoled Exclaimed Gushed Jested Joked Laughed

WEIRDLY HAPPY/EXCITED Extolled Jabbered Raved

BRUH, CHILL Cautioned Warned

ACTUALLY, YOU’RE WRONG Chided Contended Corrected Countered Debated Elaborated Objected Ranted Retorted

CHILL SAVAGE Commented Continued Observed Surmised

LISTEN BUDDY Enunciated Explained Elaborated Hinted Implied Lectured Reiterated Recited Reminded Stressed

BRUH I NEED U AND U NEED ME Confided Offered Urged

FINE Consented Decided

TOO EMO FULL OF EMOTIONS Croaked Lamented Pledged Sobbed Sympathized Wailed Whimpered

JUST SAYING Declared Decreed Mentioned Noted Pointed out Postulated Speculated Stated Told Vouched

WASN’T ME Denied Lied

EVIL SMARTASS Dictated Equivocated Ordered Reprimanded Threatened

BORED Droned Sighed

SHHHH IT’S QUIET TIME Echoed Mumbled Murmured Muttered Uttered Whispered

DRAMA QUEEN Exaggerated Panted Pleaded Prayed Preached

OH SHIT Gasped Marveled Screamed Screeched Shouted Shrieked Yelped Yelled

ANNOYED Grumbled Grunted Jeered Quipped Scolded Snapped Snarled Sneered

ANNOYING Nagged

I DON’T REALLY CARE BUT WHATEVER Guessed Ventured

I’M DRUNK OR JUST BEING WEIRDLY EXPRESSIVE FOR A POINT/SARCASM Hooted Howled Yowled

I WONDER Pondered Voiced Wondered

OH, YEAH, WHOOPS Recalled Recited Remembered

SURPRISE BITCH Revealed

IT SEEMS FAKE BUT OKAY/HA ACTUALLY FUNNY BUT I DON’T WANT TO LAUGH OUT LOUD Scoffed Snickered Snorted

BITCHY Tattled Taunted Teased

[writing-reigns-deactivated20200]

reblog to save a writer 

[whispersandwhiskerburn]

Reblog because the titles for each category are comedy gold.

[morethanthediagnosis]

[radatav]

A comic about Seagulls. If you feel like this comic doesn’t accurately represent you, and that you personally don’t act like this, good. That means this comic isn’t about you.

If you DO act like this, and are working on a counter argument about how not all _____ are ______ , well that’s just disappointing. 

[lewmzi]

This is so fucking accurate it HURTS. Read this, please!

[loquaciousliterature]

“He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time, and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her “g”s the same way he did.”

Patreon ✨

Obliviate HP Zine Restocked on Etsy! ✨

[gallicinvasion]

what she says: “Oh I don’t mind; we can eat anywhere. I’m not picky.”

what she means: “For my entire life, I’ve been called bossy/picky/selfish/arrogant/bitchy for voicing my own opinions and making my views known, so now when someone I care about asks me about what I want, my immediate gut reaction is to defer to the other person’s preference. it’s less of a hassle to capitulate to someone else’s desires than to risk having someone verbally berate me for being truthful about what I want.”

[naturallyalix]

SCREAM THIS FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOP

[tallgrassstore]

Working on the Sand Seals has gotten me thinking about the other Breath of the Wild characters I’ve crocheted so far (Revali, Mipha, Sidon and Hestu), and all the ones I could still make!

I think it would be fun to eventually make a Goron (challenging too, due to their body mass), and I have a few other fun ideas for some others I’d like to hopefully make soon, but I want to keep those a surprise~

Are there any specific BoTW characters or creatures you’d like to see made?

Useful links;

Find me on Etsy: http://TheTallGrass.Etsy.com/

Follow me on DeviantArt: http://TallGrassArt.deviantart.com/

Daily updates on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetallgrass/

Support new Amigurumi: https://ko-fi.com/TheTallGrass

[do-you-have-a-flag]

technology related sensory memories from my childhood

sliding the metal cover on floppy disks

the slight resistance of inserting cassette and video tapes

ripping off the strips of holed paper off of dot matrix printer paper 

rolling the wheel on a disposable camera to take another photo

[mm-imagerie]

The heaviness and rubber texture of the roller ball in a computer mouse, and the little ring of lint

Unkinking the curly cord of a telephone while you talked

The -peww sound and slowly fading image of a crt monitor turning off, and then running your finger through the static on the dusty glass

The crunch of opening or closing a plastic Disney vhs cover

The sound effects in kidpix

Extending and collapsing metal antennas and using them as magic wands

[sahdirah]

…God, it is so weird these things aren’t around any more. Cause it’s true, the sensations are so distinct. It’s bizarre to think about missing these tiny relics.

[kiiyudono]

The static from a tv screen moments after you turn it off

The feel of a slinky moving from one hand to the next

The sound and feel of a game cartridge locking into place

[millenniumfae]

Non-Sexual and Non-White Intimacy

Alrighty - I’ve gotten a lot of questions from aces who’re hella confused about sensuality, and I’ve decided to point out something that I debated for a long time against sharing:

With all the ‘gal pal’, ‘bromance’, and ‘white people’ jokes we see, we risk missing on some important details involving sensuality and platonic intimacy. There’s an entire side to the ‘intimacy’ discussion that most of you aren’t aware of, and being unaware isn’t an ok thing; y’all don’t know about the diversity of intimacy because of neo-colonialism, whitewashing, and gentrification. 

Water births being a ‘white hippie’ thing. Two men kissing ‘obviously’ being a case of heternormative washing. And so on. Behind a few of these bromance/gal pal/yt people joke hide not only whiteness, but a rhetoric that erases asexuality/aromanticism. And it’s time to address that. 

Why? Because American views on intimacy erases non-American people of color, and also forces compulsory sexuality upon people in the ace spectrum. Being an ace of color, my patience is tried.

Listen; America is notoriously neurotic when it comes to intimacy. And only periodically throughout the centuries. In so many other places, kissing on the mouth is what friends and family do. My cousins and I were breastfed until past kindergarten, by our mothers, aunts, babysitters, and friends of family. I’ve seen, touched, and hugs many naked friends throughout my life, all ages across. What western culture sexualizes, not everyone agrees with.

Sexual attraction is described as the compulsion to commit sexual acts with a specific object of desire. Romantic attraction much the same, except not explicit. Sensual attraction similar guidelines, and so on. So what happens when one person’s ‘sexual attraction’ is another’s ‘I just want a goddamn cuddle, is that so damn important?’

When we see vintage footage of old-timey Americans who kiss, cuddle, and embrace each other’s bare skin, there is no doubt that many of them are same/multiple-gender-attracted. But a lot of you say so with absolutely no comprehension of the diversity of physical intimacy, and how different it is around the globe.

In so many other countries and cultures, you regularly cuddle, kiss, and touch your friends. When someone pulls out a camera and says, ‘smile!’ you drape your arms lovingly around your mate, and kiss them on the neck. And that photo is uploaded to facebook and all that jazz. 

In modern day America, holding hands is literally second base. Our desire for physical intimacy has been heavily sexualized. And for some people, that’s a huge deficit to their wellbeing and themselves.

As an ace of color, I really don’t appreciate my desires for physical intimacy to be sexualized. I am very much compelled to touch, cuddle, and kiss people. Sometimes it’s romantic in intent, most of the time it’s not. But because of who I am, my actions are very much scrutinized as sexual. Which is very white sexuality and I want none of that in my life.

[blackwoolncrown]

Thank god someone said it. I always want to kiss and touch my friends, I consider sleeping with them totally normal, and lots of manners of casual touch to be normal, but I don’t fucking touch them because….Culture. And then in my long term relationship I have a hard time with intimacy because it’s always attached to an expectation of sex or feels like it is and I get nervous. I’m an intensely cuddly person who literally never cuddles. I don’t know what happened here (I’m lying I know) but our society is SO WEIRD about physical intimacy and we’re all fucked up but like, a lot of the cultures that aren’t mainstream here allot for physical intimacy which in turn has to be treated differently if it can be somewhere it’s judged by the Average American Eye.

[xtrapockets-deactivated20171024]

I think I’ve kind of always known there was something wrong with how we were raised and not something wrong with me specifically, but it doesn’t help that WHERE in the US I grew up is so intensely puritanical. 

I remember when I was about 4 I had a nightmare and my brother invited me to sleep in his bunk with him. When mom came to wake us up for school, she screamed at us about how inappropriate that was, and I remember that was the very last time I was ever cuddly with my brother. That incident caused my sense of intimacy to be warped dramatically. I was always allowed to be cuddly with mom or other little girls who were my friends, but I wasn’t allowed to be the same way with boys who were my friends. To this day intimacy on any level with a woman feels more natural than the same with a man. 

Also, the bath image above from My Neighbor Totoro intensely infuriated my mom. She kept going on about how no grown man should be bathing with daughters and about how creepy it was. She then went on to say that it’s disgusting for any adults to bathe with their children after a certain point. But I don’t understand that logic at all.

Americans are taught that bodies are shameful and that sharing our bodies in any ways other than what’s deemed as acceptable by our culture is the most shameful, sinful thing you can do. This kind of platonic or parental intimacy is so shamed that we’re /forced/ to have an unhealthy relationship with it by the time we leave home. And when intimacy of any kind is demonized like it is, we end up with situations where parts of the human body are sexualized because they are taboo. Even now, women are being constantly shamed for breastfeeding their children, teenage girls are forced to cover up shoulders and collar bones for fear of being distractions to boys…

And for what? All because Americans shame displays of non-sexual intimacy and up-sell sexual intimacy to the point of causing the sexualization of non sexual body parts and so on. It’s so ridiculous, but American culture is just really weird like this.

[auressea]

“Americans shame displays of non-sexual intimacy and up-sell sexual intimacy to the point of causing the sexualization of non sexual body parts and so on.”

^^^THIS^^^

folks in North America and a larger extent ‘White British Colonized’ places- have ‘flattened’ human interaction into touching=sex, nude=sex, affection=sex and to finish it all off Sex=BAD.  This strange hyper-sexualization and parallel rejection of sex has created an entire culture of touch and affection starved people. With all the psychosis and trauma that goes with isolation and rejection. 

It is critically unhealthy. We’re primates. We belong in communities- that groom, cuddle, and show genuine warm affection with one another. 

[ashermajestywishes]

I like this discussion.

[nsfwrandomfandoms]

As both an asexual and aromantic person this kind of thing has been the bane of my existence my entire life

[therabbitholelesstraveled]

American society is so bloody toxic about this. It really really is. It has taken me four years (4!) to finally convince my asexual husband that it’s okay if he wants to touch my boobs for comfort and that I’m not going to suddenly take that as a sign that he’s Miraculously Cured of Being Asexual and Now Wants Sex. It just means Boobs are Awesome and sometimes you just want to touch them. But our culture here is so bloody toxic that he hasn’t wanted to because he’s been afraid that Touching = Sexytimes and he hasn’t wanted to lead me on. And growing up was even worse. I got yelled at -so many times- for not wearing pajama pants with my long t-shirts just to cross the hall (my bedroom was literally across the hall from the bathroom, so like two feet) if I had to go to the bathroom at night because of the -possibility- that my brother -might- wake up at the same time and see me. Or my dad -might- wake up at the same time and see me. And oh no, they might see a flash of teenager girl thigh in the dark at 3 am and have sex thoughts! There’s just so much shame. It’s not really surprising we’re so mentally unhealthy.