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3:12pm August 3, 2015

Note:  Please leave the image description and the following text while reblogging, so that people who use screenreaders (mostly but not limited to blind people) can read this post.

[Image description: A ridiculously large Swiss Army knife with more parts than anyone could possibly know what to do with, taken from a screenshot of an Amazon.com page.  The price given is “$1,371.94 and FREE shipping!”.  Several reviews are posted, which I will write below this description.]

5 STARS: Surprising Results

I tried to file my nails, but in the process I accidentally fixed a small engine that was near by.  Which was nice.

3 STARS: Found this…

…stuck into a stone while on vacation.  I’m impressed with it, generally.  Unfortunately, it turns out that removing it made me the new king of Switzerland, which is a lot of responsibility.

3 STARS: Ooops

I forgot the knife in the front pocket of my Swiss Army shorts and when my wife washed them it completely disassembled our washing machine.

1 STAR: Disappointing

This would be a great product but was dismayed to find it has no banana slicer- that’s a deal breaker.  Returning today.

5 STARS: Bad Tooth Pick Placement

It’s a great knife, it’s just that the tooth pick is in the center of the knife so when you use it, it looks like your playing some kinda f’ed up harmonica.

3 STARS: Changed my life

Received this knife as a gift for my 18th birthday.  Wish I’d known what it was because as soon as I touched it, I grew a mustache and became a Navy Seal.  Mom fainted and my dad laughed and handed me a beer.  I was born a girl.

Minus 2 stars because my breasts were really nice.

3 STARS: It doesn’t have a TOWEL!

But it doesn’t have a TOWEL!  It does, however, come equipped with a Babel fish for those long Vogon flights.

5 STARS: Very versatile

I haven’t been able to use ours yet.  Once my wife found out about the rechargable rabbit attachment in the knife, I haven’t seen either one in a week. 

3:02pm August 3, 2015

#FreeSharisa Joy Kochmeister

k-pagination:

Since Tumblr likes Short Posts I made it short. 

#FreeSharisa

Sharisa Kochmeister is in an undisclosed “host home,” separated from her family and communication supports. Jefferson County, CO took an autistic advocate who types to communicate, based on shaky allegations, and refuses to let anyone she knows near her.

They did not just take her and put her somewhere else. They took her keyboards and what she uses to communicate. The hospital decided she had nothing to say, without trying to understand. They have violated her right to free speech by taking her communication devices; they institutionalized her involuntarily.

Please see this post here to see what you can do, including links to commissioners’ social media and the county’s social media:

http://iamthethunder.tumblr.com/post/125550180210/autism-wars-where-is-sharisa-joy-kochmeister-the

Further posts:

http://autismwomensnetwork.org/sharisa-joy-kochmeister-give-her-back-the-right-to-communcate/

1:18pm August 3, 2015

odditiesoflife:

Adorable Photos of Dogs Caught in Mid-Bath

Some look confused, others startled, but all of these incredibly cute dogs look just plain adorable. Wet Dogs is a series of portraits of dogs caught mid-bath. Bath time for dogs can be a vulnerable and messy experience as the expressions on their faces clearly communicate. These pooches are being photographed seconds before they shake the water off their fur. 

Photographer Sophie Gamand’s Wet Dog series reveals another layer of the human-animal bond — one with shampoo mohawks and wet fur. The photographer wanted to capture the complex relationship between humans and their pets. Their is a lot of codependence between the two and Gamand wants others to see dogs for what they are: more than just animals, they are life companions.

source 1, 2

1:15pm August 3, 2015
neurodiversitysci: animal-factbook: In order to calm down hyperactive puppies, many owners use classical music. When played over headphones, dogs react immediately and begin to settle down. Not sure if this is research supported but if it is, I wonder if classical music would also calm hyperactive people? I used to play the violin for my chickens when they were babies, and they’d fall asleep every time.

neurodiversitysci:

animal-factbook:

In order to calm down hyperactive puppies, many owners use classical music. When played over headphones, dogs react immediately and begin to settle down.

Not sure if this is research supported but if it is, I wonder if classical music would also calm hyperactive people?

I used to play the violin for my chickens when they were babies, and they’d fall asleep every time.

1:13pm August 3, 2015

Well that was weird.

I introduced a staff person to Dead Like Me, and she told me to watch Wristcutters: A Love Story. 

So I did.

And midway through the movie, it reminded me of this dream I’d had.  And then I predicted something that happened at the very end of the movie (she wouldn’t tell me whether I was right or not, but I was).

And even further in, I recognized more and more of it from this dream.

And now I’m certain that I must have watched it while delirious or something and it encoded itself into my brain as a dream, because everything I remember seems to mean I’ve seen it before, but I don’t remember it as a movie, I remember it as if I was in it.

And when I was delirious, I’d often get sucked into the things I read or watched, and feel as if I was inside them.  Last time I was hospitalized, during one of the worst periods of my delirium I was reading a bunch of ebooks by Donna Williams, and suddenly I was there in those events and I was actually Donna and it got very, very strange. 

She was only the first of a long string of real people that my brain decided were actually me – there was even a point where I was my own mother, and my own grandmother, and my own child (I don’t have children).  The weirdest of the lot was when my brain decided I was Julian of Norwich.  Although as a friend pointed out, Julian and I at least had in common that we’d had seemingly genuine spiritual experiences while otherwise delirious.

Delirium is weird.

10:11am August 3, 2015

fogwithwheels:

ifihavethespoons:

here is what i don’t understand:

if an average healthy person is in a lot of pain and this pain is temporary but excruciating, their doctors, ER or otherwise, will give them strong medication, usually narcotics, whose strength will match the pain felt.

but when someone with chronic pain experiences pain above and beyond their normal everyday pain and this extra pain is temporary and excruciating, their doctors will give them weak medication, rarely narcotics, that the patient takes on a regular basis for less excruciating circumstances.

now if the chronic pain patient asks the doctors for something stronger, the doctors discourage them.  they say things like ‘it’s dangerous to get used to narcotics.’ or ‘you can’t rely on narcotics for chronic pain.’

we chronic pain patients are forced to deal with more pain than the average healthy person everyday.  but why does that disqualify me from receiving adequate treatment when my pain level goes above my extremely high tolerance?

the doctors need to respect us.  we have more experience dealing with our pain than they do.

the only time in my life I went to the ER for pain related reasons, they told me I was in too much pain for pain meds

I got a short lecture on the dangers of addiction, and was then discharged after being told I needed tests they weren’t going to do

I’ve been really lucky – my doctor is so well-known as an amazing doctor around these parts, that I’ve had them reading his name on my chart completely turn around the course of emergency room visits.  Like once I went in there with really bad neck pain and inability to move my head in certain ways.  They treated me like a drug seeker until they heard his name.  Then they called him out of bed, got his opinion on what was going on, gave me IV pain meds, and started trying to rule out any emergency-related reasons for the neck problem, which turned out to be (as far as anyone could tell) a complication of hypermobility.  I now receive injections in my neck every three months that keep the pain at bay.

But I know a lot of people aren’t so lucky.  (And while my doctor’s name convinced them I was not a drug seeker, my doctor’s name is unfortunately not a universal “get them to take everything seriously” card, it’s just a “sie’s clearly not here for drugs, or he’d have warned us” card.)

10:07am August 3, 2015
becomingdeaf: This is why access to qualified medical interpreters and health education for deaf people is so important.  Check out DeafHealth.org for more ASL-friendly information.  They also have a search feature for Deaf-friendly doctors in your area. 

becomingdeaf:

This is why access to qualified medical interpreters and health education for deaf people is so important.  Check out DeafHealth.org for more ASL-friendly information.  They also have a search feature for Deaf-friendly doctors in your area. 

10:06am August 3, 2015

hckleinman:

staff You are recommending that I follow a nazi blog I blocked last night. Your site promotes anti-semitism to Jews. Your site shoves Nazi Swastikas in the faces of Jews. It’s bad enough that the Nazi blogs seem to be sprouting up like weeds on a site that claims to have an anti-hate policy, but to actively promote them to people who have taken the steps of blocking these blogs is beyond the pale. Clean this place up. It’s turning into Stormfront.

I encourage everyone who sees this post, Jewish or otherwise, to reblog it. Tumblr has been ignoring the growth of Nazism on this site for too long. It needs to end.

10:06am August 3, 2015

tallestkin:

reblog this post and put in the tags what color you think vermillion is. don’t look it up!

9:57am August 3, 2015

Please help.

fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton:

I’m a mentally ill, disabled person living on my own. Right now I’m applying for SSI, and it will be months before I get my evaluation. In the meantime, I can’t afford my basic living expenses without help.

If you can, please donate to desertlily777@hotmail.com on Paypal. This is my friend’s Paypal, so please leave a note saying that this is ‘for Skeleton.’*

Signal boosts would be greatly appreciated, too. Thank you.

*It was formerly ‘for lichgem’ before I changed my URL.

9:24am August 3, 2015
bittersnurr: fierceawakening: lizardtitties: funereal-disease: thathopeyetlives: multiheaded1793: overrates: kevinbolk: Everybody* Is Beautiful*Some exclusions apply this is so gross bc the artist uses women w/ disabilities and different body types/appearances as props so that he can complain abt men being excluded from body positive movements. like the focus of the picture is the stereotypical fedora/neck beard guy being pushed out of the frame. I doubt he really cares about the fact that some body positive feminists exclude fat/disabled/dark skinned/not classically pretty women, he just cares that men are excluded. lmao Can any of my SJ-ish followers explain how you ever get into a mindset like this?I’m not being facetious: what even *is* the complaint here?? Purity of intent aside, should the artist have only drawn the men as excluded if he only ~really cares about~ them? Wouldn’t that have been even worse to the SJ worldview? (ps, this kind of complaint surely validates the artists’ choice of focus? many kinds of people are excluded from body positivity, and it’s pointless to compare who suffers more for it… but this kind of exclusion is actively celebrated rather than shamefully left unvoiced. SJ really crystallized this trope.) Ouch. There are actually more women and/or woman-ish looking people than men and men-ish looking people in the above cartoon. (and OP probably has a convoluted reason why that is actually worse.) (I count 4 men, 5 women.) I dunno. I do not like body positivity, such as the popular form is, very much. This is a shame, because body positivity is a pretty important thing!And yet…. I really don’t like the “everybody’s pretty, even ugly people” thing – it tends to go into this kinda weird fetishization of any kind of attributes that might be considered flaws, and it kind of ignores 1. people who are interested in something other (like people STFUing about their traits and 2. trying to command what people find beautiful or ugly is pretty futile. It seems like the “ideal” body positive culture darling is someone who is ugly to high modern ~CONVENTIONAL~ standards, but perfect in all the human-universal and maybe common Western standards. (and of course this same person is also the hate-target for certain misogynists, the “pink-haired feminist b*ch I don’t like the “everybody’s pretty” thing, either. It goes out of its way to reinforce the importance of beauty. How about “not everybody’s pretty, and THAT’S OKAY, because that is not the end-all”? Plus there’s always a sort of… i guess moral imperative is the word I’m looking for? Anyway, a moral imperative to LOVE certain things and NEVER want to change them. It’s an offshoot of the whole “if you shave your legs you’re doing it for the patriarchy and you have internalized misogyny” thing. If you want to lose weight, you’re presumed to be too weak to stand up to “society”, or it’s taken as evidence that you secretly hate fat people. Same thing goes for not wanting stretch marks or opting for plastic surgery. Hell, even fat people who don’t wanna post selfies in a crop top are Bad.It’s very similar to how SJ types see gay or trans people who want to pass, or just sort of do by virtue of genetics, or general fashion sense or whatever. You’re seen as some sort of traitor to the cause if you don’t dye your hair various colors and deliberately dress in an out-there sort of style. YES! And the funny thing about that style is that it’s the uniform of a particular group. you know what I find hilarious about this post “why are men included”where does it say they are?like, where does it say the dmab looking people in this picture are men? It doesn’t. While a couple of them might be there is nothing that says these aren’t transwomen.Like when I saw “4 men” I had to scroll up again and count and one of the “men” I had assumed was a transwomen. But no, everyone assumes they are (probably cis even thought chubby bearded person on the left looks a lot like a lot of transmen, non binary people can look like whatever because there is no actual way to present that consistently) men.No. We are going to assume gender based on presentation, assume everyone in this picture is cis, and get mad because apparently cismen don’t deserve any body positivity even though I’ve known a lot of guys with serious self esteem problems, usually from being not muscular enough or being short which guys are harassed for a lot. While chubby/skinny/short guys do get way more rep then women who aren’t conventionally attractive, a lot of the time they are characters who is the butt of a lot of appearance related jokes (like seriously how many fat jokes do homer simpson style characters get?)So yes. Men need support too. Because usually these self esteem issues hit as kids and children are only privileged over other children, and bullies exist. Sometimes the bullies are adults. How many parents or otherwise adults of authority positions tease kids? I used to get harassed by teachers over the way I dressed as a kid. I got harassed by kids my own age over everything about my appearance until i ceased to be a kid. At the same time I got told I was conventionally attractive but that doesn’t matter if you are getting called ugly at the same time. I (imo, I like being chubby better then underweight) look better then a did as a kid. But I still don’t have a mirror in my room bigger then a tiny hand mirror for yanking stray eyebrow hairs. I don’t want to look at myself, I had a panic attack over needing my license photo redone recently because I hate how I look. EVERYONENEEDS BODY POSITIVITYand while I agree “everyone is beautiful” is just going to feel like a lie to a lot of people rendering it useless, something like “everyone has good features” and “you are worth looking at” are important. While I get the objections to “everyone is beautiful”, I really don’t understand the standards people use to object to “everyone is beautiful” on “factual” grounds.  As in, when you say “not everyone is beautiful,” how on earth do you decide which people are beautiful and which aren’t?  Because from where I sit, that’s incredibly subjective.  My definition of physical beauty is very different from the standard definition, not because I want it to be, but because it just is, and because of that I strenuously object to any worldview that says that you can just tell somehow who is beautiful and who isn’t, and that “it’s okay not to be beautiful” – well of course it is, but saying that still makes it sound like there’s some group of people who are always “not beautiful”, and given the wide range of standards different people have for who counts as beautiful, I can say pretty definitively that there isn’t a person alive who isn’t beautiful by some standards at least.  Whether it matters is another story, but “Not everyone is beautiful” seems to almost have to assume that “beautiful” is actually a trait that you can define in some objective way.  And it’s not.  Everyone is beautiful by some standard or another.  (Everyone is probably also ugly by some standard or another, come to that.)  I don’t even always see beautiful and ugly as contradictory, because both are so subjective that everyone can be seen as both, although some people are certainly always seen by our societies at large as more attractive than others.  I just don’t see any reason to allow that to define who counts as beautiful and who doesn’t.  Nor do I see acknowledging that everyone is (or can be, at least) beautiful, as somehow saying that beauty is super-important, or more important than some other thing, or anything else like that.  Nor does it mean that it’s bad to be ugly.  (I think I’m both ugly and beautiful and I’m fine with both of those things.  But maybe I’m weird.)

bittersnurr:

fierceawakening:

lizardtitties:

funereal-disease:

thathopeyetlives:

multiheaded1793:

overrates:

kevinbolk:

Everybody* Is Beautiful


*Some exclusions apply

this is so gross bc the artist uses women w/ disabilities and different body types/appearances as props so that he can complain abt men being excluded from body positive movements. like the focus of the picture is the stereotypical fedora/neck beard guy being pushed out of the frame. I doubt he really cares about the fact that some body positive feminists exclude fat/disabled/dark skinned/not classically pretty women, he just cares that men are excluded. lmao

Can any of my SJ-ish followers explain how you ever get into a mindset like this?

I’m not being facetious: what even *is* the complaint here?? Purity of intent aside, should the artist have only drawn the men as excluded if he only ~really cares about~ them? Wouldn’t that have been even worse to the SJ worldview?

(ps, this kind of complaint surely validates the artists’ choice of focus? many kinds of people are excluded from body positivity, and it’s pointless to compare who suffers more for it… but this kind of exclusion is actively celebrated rather than shamefully left unvoiced. SJ really crystallized this trope.)

Ouch. 


There are actually more women and/or woman-ish looking people than men and men-ish looking people in the above cartoon. (and OP probably has a convoluted reason why that is actually worse.) 

(I count 4 men, 5 women.) 


I dunno. I do not like body positivity, such as the popular form is, very much. This is a shame, because body positivity is a pretty important thing!

And yet…. 


I really don’t like the “everybody’s pretty, even ugly people” thing – it tends to go into this kinda weird fetishization of any kind of attributes that might be considered flaws, and it kind of ignores 1. people who are interested in something other (like people STFUing about their traits and 2. trying to command what people find beautiful or ugly is pretty futile. 

It seems like the “ideal” body positive culture darling is someone who is ugly to high modern ~CONVENTIONAL~ standards, but perfect in all the human-universal and maybe common Western standards. 

(and of course this same person is also the hate-target for certain misogynists, the “pink-haired feminist b*ch

I don’t like the “everybody’s pretty” thing, either. It goes out of its way to reinforce the importance of beauty. How about “not everybody’s pretty, and THAT’S OKAY, because that is not the end-all”?

Plus there’s always a sort of… i guess moral imperative is the word I’m looking for? Anyway, a moral imperative to LOVE certain things and NEVER want to change them. It’s an offshoot of the whole “if you shave your legs you’re doing it for the patriarchy and you have internalized misogyny” thing. If you want to lose weight, you’re presumed to be too weak to stand up to “society”, or it’s taken as evidence that you secretly hate fat people. Same thing goes for not wanting stretch marks or opting for plastic surgery. Hell, even fat people who don’t wanna post selfies in a crop top are Bad.

It’s very similar to how SJ types see gay or trans people who want to pass, or just sort of do by virtue of genetics, or general fashion sense or whatever. You’re seen as some sort of traitor to the cause if you don’t dye your hair various colors and deliberately dress in an out-there sort of style.

YES! 

And the funny thing about that style is that it’s the uniform of a particular group.

you know what I find hilarious about this post

“why are men included”

where does it say they are?

like, where does it say the dmab looking people in this picture are men? It doesn’t. While a couple of them might be there is nothing that says these aren’t transwomen.

Like when I saw “4 men” I had to scroll up again and count and one of the “men” I had assumed was a transwomen.

But no, everyone assumes they are (probably cis even thought chubby bearded person on the left looks a lot like a lot of transmen, non binary people can look like whatever because there is no actual way to present that consistently) men.

No. We are going to assume gender based on presentation, assume everyone in this picture is cis, and get mad because apparently cismen don’t deserve any body positivity even though I’ve known a lot of guys with serious self esteem problems, usually from being not muscular enough or being short which guys are harassed for a lot.

While chubby/skinny/short guys do get way more rep then women who aren’t conventionally attractive, a lot of the time they are characters who is the butt of a lot of appearance related jokes (like seriously how many fat jokes do homer simpson style characters get?)

So yes. Men need support too. Because usually these self esteem issues hit as kids and children are only privileged over other children, and bullies exist. Sometimes the bullies are adults. How many parents or otherwise adults of authority positions tease kids?

I used to get harassed by teachers over the way I dressed as a kid. I got harassed by kids my own age over everything about my appearance until i ceased to be a kid. At the same time I got told I was conventionally attractive but that doesn’t matter if you are getting called ugly at the same time. I (imo, I like being chubby better then underweight) look better then a did as a kid. But I still don’t have a mirror in my room bigger then a tiny hand mirror for yanking stray eyebrow hairs. I don’t want to look at myself, I had a panic attack over needing my license photo redone recently because I hate how I look.

EVERYONE

NEEDS

BODY POSITIVITY

and while I agree “everyone is beautiful” is just going to feel like a lie to a lot of people rendering it useless, something like “everyone has good features” and “you are worth looking at” are important.

While I get the objections to “everyone is beautiful”, I really don’t understand the standards people use to object to “everyone is beautiful” on “factual” grounds.  As in, when you say “not everyone is beautiful,” how on earth do you decide which people are beautiful and which aren’t?  Because from where I sit, that’s incredibly subjective.  My definition of physical beauty is very different from the standard definition, not because I want it to be, but because it just is, and because of that I strenuously object to any worldview that says that you can just tell somehow who is beautiful and who isn’t, and that “it’s okay not to be beautiful” – well of course it is, but saying that still makes it sound like there’s some group of people who are always “not beautiful”, and given the wide range of standards different people have for who counts as beautiful, I can say pretty definitively that there isn’t a person alive who isn’t beautiful by some standards at least.  Whether it matters is another story, but “Not everyone is beautiful” seems to almost have to assume that “beautiful” is actually a trait that you can define in some objective way.  And it’s not.  Everyone is beautiful by some standard or another.  (Everyone is probably also ugly by some standard or another, come to that.)  I don’t even always see beautiful and ugly as contradictory, because both are so subjective that everyone can be seen as both, although some people are certainly always seen by our societies at large as more attractive than others.  I just don’t see any reason to allow that to define who counts as beautiful and who doesn’t. 

Nor do I see acknowledging that everyone is (or can be, at least) beautiful, as somehow saying that beauty is super-important, or more important than some other thing, or anything else like that.  Nor does it mean that it’s bad to be ugly.  (I think I’m both ugly and beautiful and I’m fine with both of those things.  But maybe I’m weird.)

10:32pm August 2, 2015

joygucci:

Those who tell black people to “forgive and forget” forget to acknowledge that you can’t forgive someone who isn’t sorry

Well you can.  But you shouldn’t have to.  And it definitely makes it much harder (and potentially less desirable in general).

10:31pm August 2, 2015

We are people

realsocialskills:

When I see a picture of someone who looks like me, it’s usually illustrating a tragic or demeaning story.

Sometimes it’s a picture of a child, illustrating a story about how difficult life is for parents of autistic children. Or a story about how the child’s favorite thing got turned into therapy. With depressing bullying statistics.

Sometimes it’s a picture of an adult, illustrating a story about how difficult life is for parents of autistic children once their kids reach adulthood. Or a bleak story about unemployment statistics. Sometimes it’s a story about a special business or sheltered workshop for autistics that the parent is proud to say their child is involved with. With depressing unemployment statistics.

Sometimes it’s a story about how an autistic person has a special talent. Maybe they’re an artist. The story is always about how mysterious and beautifully tragic it is that autism sometimes gives people special abilities along with significant impairments. The story will not take them seriously as an artist. It will be a human interest story about autism, and no art experts will be quoted — but the headline will probably say “autism does not define him.”

This gets corrosive. It can make the world seem bleak and hopeless. It can be hard to remember that this isn’t an accurate way to describe us. That we are, in fact, more than that.

In real life, we’re people, and we do things. We do things besides be miserable or be inspiring. We have thoughts and attributes that are not convenient to the tragic plots of newspaper articles. We’re people. We do real things. And we matter.

I am not a tragic story; I am not an illustration. I am a real person. And so are you.

As someone autistic who’s been in the news multiple times I can say this is 100% true.  Even with the best media people I dealt with, they generally had their own ideas about who I was and what mattered about me and what didn’t, and what story to tell about me.