Anonymous: Hey, I’ve been having this weird symptom that I think is connected to my auditory processing issues, but I’ve never heard of this being a symptom, so I wanted to ask someone who knows more about apd, and you seem like you do. Sometimes, when there’s a loud sound next to my ears that drown out most other noises, I hear things. It’s usually someone talking, but it can be other sounds. It happens mostly when I’m listening to something through earphones, but it happened once when I was standing in front of an air conditioner. The fake sounds go away when the loud sound stops. And no, I’m not hearing something in the background of what I’m listening to. The fake sounds aren’t there when I replay the same part. The frequency that this happens corresponds pretty well with how severe my auditory processing difficulties are. I think this is my brain messing up when trying to process the background noise behind whatever noise is close to my ears. Do you think that makes sense?
Brainhearingjumble: I think I know what you’re talking about! It’s like the brain is going into overdrive and creates noises. In APD, the way the brain processes sounds if affected so I think it makes total sense that it might not only jumble noises that we hear but could randomly activate auditory signals we are not hearing.
“the world has become such a soft safe space where you can’t speak freely” is a good way to reveal you spend a majority of your time on the internet. a customer came in today and told me that the illuminati framed bill cosby and it was my fault and i just had to be like OK sir cash or credit
In my experience, when someone says “you can’t just say what you want these days,” it’s code for saying “I’m a giant asshole and people have been yelling at me for it and you don’t want to talk to me, believe me.”
Yes! Anything by the economist Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, is a good starting place. She came up with a list of “rules” that would make the commons work, and big surprise, it actually just sounds like anarcho-communism.
I also feel like I should sum up some of the response to the “tragedy of the commons” so that people who don’t end up reading more can have a ready response to it.
The “Tragedy of the commons” assumes a profit motive from the beginning. It assumes that, given a common resource, everybody will seek to both produce and take as much as possible for themselves from the common resource in order to maximize profit. It does not even consider production for need as a possibility. A common example of the “tragedy” would be if a group of people were given a common field for cows to graze in, each individual would seek to maximize their own cow herd. This would deplete the grazing field and result in nobody having a field to graze in. This is the “tragedy.”
However, why should people seek to maximize their own cow herd, if they don’t plan on producing for anything beyond need? Does a family need more than two or three cows for milking? What if the community had agreed on a certain number, and there would be local community repercussions if somebody stepped out of line? Ostrom brings up many of these responses and proves that self-governing commons systems work better than either state-sponsored commons or private ownership.
So if you ever hear somebody bring up the “tragedy of the commons” again, you can actually just point out that the whole thing assumes that we are working in a capitalist system, and that people will respond to the commons in a capitalist way. We are trying to dismantle capitalism, so the “tragedy of the commons” can’t possibly apply to what we are attempting to build.
things like this puzzle me just because finding real friends is so damn rare
if i had to exclude cishets from the running in principle, i’d be pretty lonely
i mean a lot of my friends are queer but dude what
this tumblr thing puzzles me more and more with each passing day
Hmm. I remember somewhere reading a bit by someone who had visiting a foreign culture where he didn’t speak the language and hit it off with the only other American there, and they bonded quite strongly over the course of that trip and made plans to meet up back in America, but when they did, he found that they didn’t actually have that much of a connection, and in the foreign country it was simply their unique shared experiences in a sea of foreignness that gave them a sense of closeness.
The linked post seems like it might be the same sort of thing. Friendships tend naturally to continue along at the same level of intensity until there’s a “breakthrough” that drops you down to a deeper friend level, and that can take a long time, but if you’re able to share a close personal experience with someone that the rest of society is unable to relate to – something that maies you feel alienated normally – that can drop you into a very high level of intimacy almost immediately. That can be valuable since it happens when it’s most needed, but it has the drawback alluded to in the story I mentioned: the initial similarity is rarely enough to support a lasting and functional relationship, so when the dust settles you may find yourself on extremely familiar terms with someone you just aren’t that into.
Yeah. That was basically my experience with the kink scene—since those were THE ONLY PEOPLE I COULD TRUST WITH MY HORRIBLE SECRET I trusted them immediately and fully.
I made a lot of real friends, yes!
but I also got way too close to some iffy people way too quickly. And found myself going “what the HELL?” fairly often when the shiny wore off.
That’s why I feel so uneasy when I see kids here going “queer GOOD cishet BAD.” Because the actual fault line for “this person is a true friend” isn’t “this person has similar life experiences to me.” It’s “this person is someone I consistently like and respect.”
That can be someone who shares a lot of traits with you OR someone who shares almost none.
This was also my experience with the kink scene, which was also my first experience with the Queer Scene (as opposed to just queer people, who I’ve been around all my life :P). Insta-connection based on a shared, deep, stigmatized part of How We Worked.
That insta-connection sure made a good bond for abusive people to fall back on. “Oh, she’d never rape anyone, she teaches consent classes, she’s one of us!” She was more involved in the scene so she had more connections, and I was the weird critical outsider (I thought I was an insider) and I had to be a liar because she couldn’t have done what I claimed. Except she did, and I hope she doesn’t do it again, but I have little confidence.
Be careful out there, folks. Someone can have all sorts of things in common with you, someone can “get” you on a truly deep level, someone can volunteer for wonderful causes and write amazing theory, and that someone can still abuse you.
100%. I stayed with an abusive girlfriend because I was a feminist and the other feminists around me kept saying “there is no power dynamic in lesbian relationships like there is in straight ones.”
Which my brainweasels interpreted as “whatever this is, it isn’t a power dynamic. You must deserve this.”
It took me a while to not give a damn what it was and decide it was ok to “fail at being gay.”
All great points above, but also, being queer/gay/lgbt/whatever doesn’t actually necessarily mean you’ll have the same experience being that as other lgbt people around you. That’s what confuses me, personally, when people go on these extended tangents about how great and necessary it is to have friends that are gay/women/your ethnicity/your whatever, etc., just like you, and how you’ll be instant friends bc of that shared experience, bc … it doesn’t really work like that??
so many lgbt people have the experience of being that – that’s completely different from my own. on top of that, there are plenty of lgbt people I just don’t like hanging out with for various reasons. also plenty of women i can’t stand. and plenty of nonbinary people. we may have smth in common, but we still have a bunch more things very much NOT in common.
Van Lathan is doing God’s work because I would have already put my hands on Kanye & proved his black-on-black comments correct.
Thank. You. Van. Lathan.
Growing up and being from the exact same neighborhood in Chicago as Kanye – this really gets to me.
Kanye never comes here. He never comes back home. Sure he may stop here for a concert or something. But he doesn’t see the parents and children marching against violence in the exact same streets he used to walk. He never gives back to the communities affected by violence so that maybe kids won’t have to continuously grow up either living in fear or turning to a life of violence out of desperation. It’s hard for the people to combat these things in their own neighborhoods. Can you imagine someone you grew up with or saw grow up turn to a life of violence and try and convince them otherwise? It’s hard because at the same time you can kind of relate. Growing up never having nor expecting much. Businesses don’t invest in the area. The school system is broken and poorly funded. Police are basically a gang of their own, just with badges.
For him to not even acknowledge the systematic issues that even contribute to these things…
In my most honest and humble opinion, he hasn’t been the same since his mom passed away. She was his anchor. He’s obviously not sought the right kind of help. I know he mentioned he’s his own therapy, but that’s just not good. It’s saddening to see someone you grew up admiring slowly turn mad and lose their way in the spotlight and be eclipsed by their own toxic narcissism. And that’s where I think his liking for Trump comes in. He’s like one of them “I made it out of the hood” stories you hear about.
We DO have Chance The Rapper, tho. He’s not afraid to match his words with his actions. He’s not afraid to speak out against our mayor and our state reps. He donates money to our poorly funded public school system (which is mostly comprised of POC students) all because our politicians can’t seem to agree on a budget, but they can agree on closing several schools around the city and renovating them into lofts for sale/rent. Or building a brand new multi-million dollar police academy. Chance holds free concerts. He gives out free school supplies to children who need them. He sometimes calls for no violence weekends (which actually work). He’s on the streets of the city he’s from. Always doing something to give back or help. And I understand Chance looks up to Kanye. Hell, most of us do here. But it’s become impossible to defend him.
#GrowingUpUgly
When guys in middle school would get dared by their friends to ask you out and see if you say yes as a joke
How about growingupugly and then turning out sort of okay looking but you don’t know for sure because your self esteem is shot and you’re convinced you look awful?
#GrowingUpUgly Being so wholly convinced of your hideousness that as an adult you now literally cannot even imagine that someone would pay you a compliment and mean it; the only conceivable thing that could be happening is that they’re either a) taking the piss like the boys in school used to or b) so repulsed by you that they feel sorry for you and are telling you you’re pretty because they think you need to hear it.
Hurts how true this is though
I don’t know if this helps, but I’d like to say it anyway just in case it does.
None of you were ugly.
The other day I found a class picture from fourth grade and I looked everyone in it, and then I saw the “ugly girl” – the one people constantly harassed, whose desk kids would pretend was contaminated, the one kids would invent complex songs about just to voice their disgust toward her.
And she looked like a normal little girl.
She looked no different than the rest of the class.
She was never ugly. And I know that you may be thinking to yourself “but I WAS ugly” – I just want you to consider for a moment that maybe you weren’t.
Maybe you were tormented by your peers for no reason except that they were experimenting with and learning the rules of callous human cruelty that would define the rest of their lives – and recognizing this, the adults who should have protected you, let it happen. Cruelty and social shaming – the foundations of how human beings police their society is learned and it is practiced.
Since I’ve become an adult, I don’t recall ever seeing an “ugly” kid. Kids are all just strange-looking works in progress that the artist seems to have abandoned intending to finish them later.
I want you to think about our racist and unhealthy “standards of beauty”. Are any of the things that society fixates on as “ugly” truly ugly? No. We take things that are beautiful and we associate them with ugliness and badness and coarseness – to control them – to batter the will of the already oppressed down to the point where they think the abuse they receive is justified.
The children who demeaned you were learning to crush the human spirit to the point where the target internalizes all that hate and keeps hating themselves even when the bullies are no longer there. Those children were learning the sadism that defines our social hierarchy – we live in a culture where success is achieved through exploiting others.
No one deserves to be treated that way. LGBT children shouldn’t grow up ashamed of themselves. Black children shouldn’t grow up thinking white children are inherently prettier.
You were not ugly. You were told you were ugly so that people could have an “excuse” to target you, to ostracize you, to other you, and to abuse you.
An “ugly child” wouldn’t know they were ugly until someone TOLD them they were. They don’t grow up ugly, they grow up emotionally abused.
And still if you feel that you were the exception and you were objectively and unquestionably so ugly as a child that everyone noticed – even if you feel you are still that ugly now…
That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve love. It doesn’t mean you won’t find love, and trust and happiness.
You are worthy of respect. You have worth. You have value.
And if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice your worth – look at the evil and vile things the world does value and count yourself lucky not to be among that number.
There are people who will see your worth. There are people who will look at you and not see “ugliness” – they will see a friend, a mentor, a hero and even, yes, a lover.
If no one else says it today, and even if you can’t say it yourself, I would like to tell you that you are not ugly. That you were not ugly. That you did nothing wrong. That you did not deserve to be treated the way that you have been and that you deserve happiness and love and respect. And you will find it.
I was about to reblog this and add at the end that I thought I was the ugly kid but I looked back at pictures of myself and was like “I was never ugly????” And also kids suck. Thanks for the addition, poster before me.
Caption: “I saw this beautiful man holding a phone with both hands looking at the screen, smiling. I was drawn by his joy & asked for a photo. He agreed, telling me he was talking to his wife back home. I asked if it was a video call. He said “No, but I see her name on the screen”
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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