Please stop using disabilities you don't have as comparisons.

I saw a video trying to explain that autistic people don't make eye contact because it can be painful for them (good, this is true) and telling them to "just do it anyway" is ridiculous, saying "you wouldn't tell a wheelchair user to "just walk, its better for you" so don't tell autistic people to just make eye contact".

But people do. They do all the time. It's well documented that doctors will withhold their ok for patients to get a wheelchair (which is needed unless you're paying out of pocket, because insurance and most public disability services like the NDIS need proof from a doctor). I've known people who can hardly walk and are having to fight because the doctor still insists it better for them to walk, even if it's painful and sevearly limiting their quality of life.

Then in the comments, someone pointed out that people do say that to wheelchair users (good, this is true) but then continued on by saying "unless you just don't have legs" which is just as bad as the origonal.

I had to fight to get my first wheelchair as a double leg amputee, and every wheelchair since then I've had to justify not wanting the "better option" (prosthetics) to the government so they'll approve me for the funding. Doctors and even strangers too, all want to know why I'm not walking, why I'm not using prosthetics all the time. When I go on trips with my family I'm told to "just walk" so they don't have to pack my wheelchair. at my own graduation from university I was chastised by the organisers for not bringing my prosthetics (because wearing them was exceptionally painful back then and i hadnt worn them in nearly 3 months. I had asked before if this would be ok. they knew) because the venue was accessible but not the part of the venue the graduates were in. On the topic of university they also put my class in the only non-wheelchair accessible room and held meetings i was expected to take part in, in the non-accessible lunch room. When I complained, I was told to just use my legs for a few minutes so I could get into my classes. Being an amputee with no legs didn't shield me from these experiences either, it often made it worse.

I have all 3 of the disabilities mentioned (autistic, wheelchair user, amputee). If you don't have the disability you're using for a comparison, don't use it. Please

Shut up m'dudes, it's a national holiday

Happy Birthday Kermit :D

I LOVE U

people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good

it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”

people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.

And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.

Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.

Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.

This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.

My friend sometimes brings her six-year-old to our DnD sessions and my husband (the DM) lets her roll for all enemy attacks and sometimes he will show her a few figures and let her secretly pick what creature we meet next. Who needs encounter tables when you have a first-grader around

She cheers when the monster is winning.

DM: *places an ugly, slavering, repugnant, spine-tingling creature on the battle map*

Child who can barely see over the table: ᵗʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵐᵉ :)

remember when you were 10 and you would hang out with your friends in order to Look At The Computer together like you went to their house and experienced the information superhighway together. and then leave

How fucking old are you people?

normal amount

You see, there used to be a time (not all that long ago) when being offline was the default. And going online was the rare and wonderful thing that we (briefly) enjoyed.

It even came with happy modem noises.

They weren't happy noises.

They were polite and reasonable noises! The sound of protocol being followed! Negotiation and compromise!

The box would scream

in retrospect we should maybe have taken the unholy screams as a warning

Do you ever have a problem where you just don’t know how to reply to an argument, not because you don’t know the answer, but you just don’t know where to begin? Like, the foundation of knowledge you’d need to impart to this person before you could even begin to drag them out of their sinkhole of ignorance would cost thousands of dollars if it were coming from a university?

That’s what this is for

@thebibliosphere is this the mental, and occasionally physical, reaction to people trying to impart upon you the knowledge of a magical cure/treatment? Especially any that involve essential oils?

At this point, if they bring up essential oils, I just go straight for the matches.

Sounds Wild and Broken, David George Haskell

Given that we’ve also discovered the paintings themselves, if scored with straight lines, would appear to move when illuminated by flickering fire light, I assume we’re all thinking ‘paleolithic cinema’?

this is your gentle reminder to stop fighting against your adhd and instead structure your life around it

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

its not stupid if it works! our brains literally have a chemical deficiency. you are allowed to accommodate yourself. go forth and stop making your life more difficult than it has to be because "this shouldn't be this hard". it is hard, so make it easier.

I accidentally keep doing the chapstick advice because I always "lose" chapstick in a pocket somewhere and buying a new one, only to find it months later

The Right Wing has no principles. They have rules for others and none for themselves.

These same Right Wingers compared the murderous Jan 6 insurrection mobs to 'normal tourist visits'.

Their opinions mean zero.

Got pulled over because he "saw someone flash their lights at me" and it made him "think something was going on". After he ran my paperwork and did multiple full walk-arounds of my car, he decided everything was in order and I was free to go. I just wanted to get home from work.

Living in MD got pulled over when I pulled into my landlady's [100%, rich, suburban] community and questioned what my purpose was there. "I live here" was not an acceptable answer and I ended up needing to call my landlady to talk to the officer and convince them that I really did live there, in her basement inlaw apartment, courtesy of her granddaughter. When he finally let me go he told me he "actually" pulled me over because he "thought [my] headlights were out" but on "second glance" they were just fine. Dunno how you can mistake headlights being on or off.

And I know I've told the story of when one of my elderly white neighbors called the police on me for training my dog in a public use field and how even the cop that showed up thought the call was stupid and racist.

My dad got pulled over when I was still in a carseat because they thought it was "suspicious" that a grown man would have such a young child with him on a school day. He was driving me back to school from a doctor's appointment. They made him get our of the car, lean against it, and searched both him and the car because they "smelled something" while he did his best to keep me calm and tell me that it was going to be okay. I was too young to understand what happened at the time. I just remember he was furious the entire ride back to school, and he was still mad when I got off the bus that afternoon.

It really is just Like This, being black in this country.

I started a new remote job last week, and I'm the only genderqueer person at the company (and the first person who uses neo pronouns that anyone on my team has ever met, apparently).

So far:

I am so stoked that people are actually trying. 💜🤍💚

It's important to remember this kind of stuff, especially with the world the way it is now. When i started my current job and i told HR about my name and pronouns, she called me to ask which locker room i wanted to be in and told me where all the neutral bathrooms are (which is all of them except the locker rooms).

I've had to come out to my team a couple times because of new hires and whatnot but every time it has gone well. People aren't perfect but they try and they correct themselves. I usually just get nods of understanding and a couple of times people have asked me questions to understand better.

When one of my employees misgendered me despite me directly correcting her and I documented it, the site director texted me at MIDNIGHT to apologize and assure me that he and HR would handle it. The operations manager sent me a similar email the next morning.

We aren't alone. People care. People understand us and are on our side.

i was starting a new job, and before i went in for my first training in the afternoon, i talked to my mom on the phone. she was very excited because a nonbinary person who used they/them had just starting coming to her kungfu classes. "i got their pronouns like a pro because of you, so i got to surprise them with this 60 year old lady being super smooth with their pronouns."

later at my onboarding, a younger coworker surprised me by asking for my pronouns (i hadn't yet considered whether i wanted to be out at work) and i automatically replied they/them. my new boss, standing next to me, went "oh excellent! my youngest is nonbinary, i got this."

not only is people making the effort for you special and beautiful, you're also making life easier for those who come after, in a beautiful pay-it-forward loop-de-loop of pronoun teaching

Shit's gonna hit the fan in the american plains today

"Possibly The Worst storm of 2024"

If you live in Oklahoma, Kansas, Southern Nebraska or eastern Missouri, you Need to be aware of the weather. Have multiple ways to receive severe weather alerts, and have a tornado action plan.

Damn, I can't even find anything on the news app I've been using for weather apps. This is the worst tornado season for Kansas I've seen since the 90s. Multiple EF 3-4 this year in Kansas alone.

An area of high risk, 5/5 has been issued for central Oklahoma and south central Kansas. If you live in these areas, you NEED to have a tornado safety plan, take action now to prepare that. Secure outdoor property, and keep vehicles in a garage if possible. It is Critically important to keep aware of current conditions!!!

The zones I mentioned earlier are still at a moderate or enhanced risk of severe weather, including high winds, tornadoes, and hail.

For sources, I got you!!!

The national weather service at weather.gov will have a hazardous weather outlook for your specific area. Simply search for your city or zip code, and at the top of the page there will be a link that reads "hazardous weather outlook."

I use the national weather service's prediction center to assess the threats:

These charts will show you the areas most likely to receive severe weather threats. Anything that is rated at enhanced, moderate, or high is reasonably likely to have a tornado threat. I will say, however, that this information is mostly the first place to start. It shows you the general areas at risk for the day.

Here's my new favorite source for information:

Max Velocity on YouTube. He goes through the prediction center's graphics in excellent detail. He is as intense as the situation calls for.

This is his most recent forecast for May 6 extreme weather. He diligently goes through the threats for each area.

Another thing that I do during severe weather days, is keep a radar app open. It can be on your phone, or keeping an accuweather/weather channel/whoever radar map open. Check it regularly.

If you're interested in learning more about reading & interpreting radar for yourself, this video is an excellent guide.

Please tell your friends and family to stay alert to the weather and have a plan for the severe weather expected today.

The threat could begin in the early afternoon, and will remain present through the evening and into the night.

@mamoru @rai-knightshade here we go again

sturdy shoes! helmet also! FOUR INCH HAIL!!!

States where Republicans imposed total abortion bans:

AL, AR, ID, IN, KY, LA, MS, MO, ND, OK, SD, TN, TX, WV

In every one of these states, adults can legally marry minors.

Leaving statutory rape legal, while outlawing a young girl's right to bodily autonomy was a choice.

I mean given the fact that the number of pedophiles and general rapists in the Republican party numbers over one thousand I have to assume that one of the reasons they're so against abortion is that they're worried about losing access to a steady stream of new victims

DO NOT RECREATE THIS PHOTO!!!! this dinner has been plated on a corelle dish from the 70s which contains upwards of 18,000 ppm of lead which is way above healthy levels. Eating skyrim is fine though you mfs eat credit cards anyways.

because of this post i'm finding out that corelle said ANY DISH MADE BEFORE 2005 should be DECORATIVE. This is the best infographic I could find that shows you some of the more popular patterns in case someone viewing this isn't familiar with the brand.

i swear to god i'm just going to get one of those lead testing kits i'm so tired of seeing a cute plate and then finding out it's got toxic levels of cadmium, lead, and is somehow also destructively radioactive.

... this is not a day I wanted to find out that many of my plates probably contain dangerous levels of these chemicals

I love learning that my grandparents' plates were full of lead. It's great. 🤦

You can get cheap lead swab kits on ebay

thumbwind.com/2022/07/26/vintage-corelle-dishes-2

Throwing a toddler tantrum and handing the country back to a senile, deranged, fascist, revenge-riddled, theocratic Trump HELPS. NOBODY.

louder for the morons in the back who are still whining about both parties being the same

Not voting for the left because they're not Left Enough also does not make the party go more left. It makes them go more right. Because that's where the votes are.

Reblogging because for the love of Christ, I wish the “I’m not going to vote for Biden because he’s not pure/ far left/ whatever enough for me” crowd would remember what, EXACTLY, it would mean for there to be a second Trump presidency.

Assuming that any checks currently in place would stop someone who’s mindset is “I’m perfect and DESERVE to be president” from turning our country into the closest approximation of Russia he can get, is not only naive, it’s dangerously, determinedly ignorant.

I said this in 2016 and I said it in 2020 and I'll say it again:

If you don't like the fact that the leftmost candidate of the two major parties isn't left enough, the solution is neither to refuse to vote, nor to "send a message" by voting third party. Both result in an advantage to the rightmost candidate.

The solution is, vote for the guy that's not quite good enough, and then lean on him hard.

Biden has moved farther to the left than any president since Roosevelt. Yes. He's gotten more of our agenda done than Clinton or Obama. And there's many things he's tried to do that the right wingers in Congress or in the Supreme Court have stopped him from doing. He's also moved farther to the left than any president I know of when you look at his whole career; at one point he was Liberal Lite, "moderate", pro-corporation, etc... and it seems he learned from it. He changed. So we're dealing with a guy who is capable of moving left, has done so, and could be asked to go farther.

The other candidate literally wants to become a dictator, eliminate freedom of the press, and spend our tax dollars persecuting his "enemies."

Do I like the fact that Biden is supporting Israel militarily when they have caused such an enormous and horrible death toll in Gaza? No. But we have treaties with Israel and we can't easily break them. Meanwhile we have actually seen him call Netanyahu out. Including saying basically "You keep this up and no one will be your friend", implying that he is threatening to withdraw support. Trump, meanwhile, is cheerfully Islamophobic and would happily murder every single Palestinian. You care about Palestine, there is only one legitimate choice. I'm sorry, I know you want to believe there are multiple moral options you can take, but there is really only one. In the US's winner-take-all first-past-the-post no ranked choice system, the guy who gets 51% of the vote and the guy who gets 90% of the vote are exactly the same.

Look, we can win this. The right's abortion bans are wildly unpopular; many people will be voting to try to restore the right to control our own bodies. Republican support skews older, but in four years millennials didn't magically reach a point of comfortable status quo where they're likely to start voting Republican; instead Republicans have doubled down on the crazy. Anti-maskers and ant-vaxxers, who are likely Republicans, are much more likely to have died of COVID than the reality-based community on the left, since Biden won by 7 million votes 4 years ago.

But Trump will do everything in his power to cheat. We can't just win by 51%. We have to trounce him and as many Republicans at the ballot box as we can, because they have lost the plot. Even the best ones refuse to do anything to stop the spread of this evil-for-its-own-sake movement that wants queers, Jews, and Muslims dead, POC subservient, and women of all races securely under the thumb of men. We have to stop this movement by sending a message to politicians, "these are not winning ideologies. Embrace these ideologies because of the fanatic fringe, and you will lose." Most of them aren't true believers; they're pandering. The only way to stop the Republicans being pointlessly destructive is to make so many of them lose, the rest realize, shit, the grownups are back, we better start acting like politicians and not demagogues again.

And one of the best ways to do that is to make sure Biden wins by such a large margin even Trump can't cheat his way to victory. Because he's ready. He's promised, there will be violence if he loses. (There will also be violence if he wins, but it will be state violence against us. If he loses, there will be rioting white thugs in red states, but the federal government will still have both the power and the will to try to stop that.) He's going to pull every dirty trick in the book to win. The only way to stop him is to win overwhelmingly. Then we get four more years of relative safety, where if Clarence Thomas dies or gets arrested we get a young liberal judge in his place, and in that time, we can push the Democratic party farther to the left, because they'll know why they won. They'll know who voted for them, and why, and they'll move in that direction because they want to keep winning.

You cannot save Gaza by making sure Biden loses. That is actually the worst possible thing that could happen, in terms of anything any American could do. Netanyahu wants Trump to win because Trump will back him up no matter what he does to the Palestinians.

Voting is not about proving how moral you are and selecting the perfect candidate. Voting is about getting the best possible candidate out of what is usually a lackluster selection. But this time, the choice is, an old guy who's not as charismatic and shiny as we'd like and hasn't done as much as we want, vs, literally, a wanna be dictator with an agenda that's pure evil.

It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.

#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’

I absolutely think it is

I read Jingo for the first time when I was 13.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

Terry was a comedic genius

#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)

god DAMMIT

When I was informed that “Vetinari” is a pun on “Medici”. That pun was so painful I couldn’t even see it.

...are you FUCKING KIDDING ME.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

get out here Terry I just wanna talk

Twurp’s Peerage made me throw a book (gently) at a wall.

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

The Book of Silly and Annoying People, based on the real thing with a pun on the name thrown in for good measure.

OMG I FUCKING *KNEW* VETINARI WAS A JOKE ON FUCKONG SOMETHING I JUST COULDNT GRASP IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS A REFERENCE TO WIND SOMEHOW

I am not a talented punster so I was today old when I realised about Vetinari.

guys it's fucking close to water

Latinclass ca. 9th grade: the text we had to translate contained the words trans means "on the other side of" or in german it can be translated to "über/ hinüber". Also silvas; silvanis means "the forest" or in german "der Wald".

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

My latin teacher gave me a very weird look as I suddenly facepalmed myself and groaned quietly.

The Venturi and Selachii feud is what killed me when I got it.

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

... fucking HELL Terry.

My favorite is that in the first part of the 20th century, a "wet moustache" was an awkward person who might rain on your parade. One might, if so desired, also describe this as being a moist lip wig.