The more important a message is, and the more social pressure I’m under to deliver it properly…
…the more likely it is that I will screw it up or not deliver at all because my brain forgets what words are or how to say them.
Being able to speak and being able communicate via speech are extremely different things.
People who hear an autistic person talk love to assume speech means no communication difficulties. That is so far opposite to the truth that it’s beyond a lie.
If you are not autistic and have no speech issues of your own, you cannot understand how this feels.
You can’t grasp that rising sense of panic or the way your vision gets super sharp yet blurry at the same time.
You can’t grasp how your eyes can’t stand to see faces when this panic rises in you, so you look to the side or turn completely away from anybody who talks to you in person(usually to ask “did you make that phone call yet?!”).
You can’t fathom weird pressure you get in your teeth from grimacing or the choking feeling of trying to swallow your spit past the knot in your throat because you’re under pressure and what are words again?
You can’t understand how it feels to be staring blankly at somebody in front of you or at the wall with the phone receiver pressed tight to your ear while questions are being fired faster than you can comprehend or answer them.
You don’t know the frustration and terror of realizing the very important words you need to say have completely fled your mind at a moment when everybody expects an instantaneous response.
You can’t experience the embarrassment and odd relief that happens when you stammer something that has no relevance to the situation or you say “I don’t know” in response to questions you know the answers to.
You can’t understand what it’s like to collapse in a meltdown afterward because you don’t know if you just screwed up something people say is so simple.
You can’t feel the dread of having to wait until tomorrow and face all of that again to find out if you did the thing right or not.
Stop saying I don’t have communication difficulties because I can talk.
it’s so common for “being straight & cis is normal” people to get hung up on what’s most evolutionarily “efficient” like they come at you with “if Men and Women didn’t have sex and continue the species we wouldn’t have made it this far so it doesn’t make sense to be anything but Straight and Cis,” and I really want to ask them when humans have Ever Ever Ever picked the most efficient route. Why did we ever leave the equator then in the first place, to willfully live on tundras and freezing islands where not much grows?
Why did people move to mountains where future generations needed to be born with bigger lungs to breathe right?
Why have humans historically, for tens of thousands of years, cared for the sick and the disabled and the injured even thought that wouldn’t be an “efficient” use of resources? Why did we ever develop a sense of compassion at all?
Why did any human ever leave home to cross an ocean, or a desert, or a jungle, hoping to find a way to live whether they ended up?
We have never followed the rule of “efficiency.” In fact, read any reputable paper on human evolution and success, and you’ll see it argue that our refusal to follow the “efficient” road is what actually made the human species so successful–that our unrivaled adaptability and unprecedented resilience in an ever-changing world is what put us on top for so long.
So if you can’t keep up with “all these new genders and sexualities,” it seems like you’re the inefficient one, the weak link, and you’re going to get picked out and left behind.
Humans consistently make choices that are weird even by our own standards and that’s about the only thing that is consistent about us.
i love in fantasy when its like “king galamir the mighty golden eagle and his most trusted advisor who would never betray him, gruelworm bloodeye the treacherous”
When my sister and I were kids we had this one action figure, who was actually a brutalized batman doll without his cape (the dog chewed half his head, too), who we dubbed ‘Evil Chancellor Traytor’. The idea was that in the fictional society of our toys, ‘chancellor’ just came with the word ‘evil’ in front of it, as a matter of ancient tradition. Like ‘grand’ or ‘high’ or something along those lines.
Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.
The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.
The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler – or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.
But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.
Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:
Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!
Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!
Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!
Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*
Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).
And then we had the Quest For a New King. Somehow or another that ended up being a giant rubber snake called ‘Tyrant King Cobra’.
::closes tab, shuts off computer, and proceeds to have the best day ever just by knowing this exists::
It’s occurred to me recently that our collective idea of “old” and “middle-aged” names seems to be lagging about a generation behind. The OED defines “middle-aged” as “between 45 and 65″; “old” is over 65. However, what people call “old-lady names” tend to be names that very few living people still have, whereas people with “middle-aged names” are more likely to be 65 or over than to be fiftysomething.
It seems that the relative “oldness” of a name isn’t necessarily something that corresponds with the actual ages of people who bear it. Rather, there are certain names that have become linked with certain ages and ossified there, even as the bearers age and die.
There are a few possible explanations for this. One is exposure to older media, in which names like Ethel and Gertrude accurately reflect the 70something demographic instead of the “90something or dead” one. Another is childhood associations: if you knew a 40-year-old Linda 20 years ago, she’s probably still 40 in your mind. A third is our collective inability to understand the passage of time: “what do you mean 1990 was almost 30 years ago?!” A fourth is the Berenst(a)(e)in conspiracy.
Anyway, to test this hypothesis, I asked Tumblr users at large what names they associated with old women and middle-aged women respectively. Data, analysis, and methodology under the cut.
The United States has the largest GDP in the world, larger than the entire EU combined. Even per capita we’re in the top 10, with most of the countries ranked above us being small ones with lots of oil wells. We also have the largest government budget in the world, the largest Gross National Income in the world, and have the most per capita wealth in the world.
We are not a poor country.
We should not, looking at the numbers, be in a state of desperation. We should not be in the kind of disaster triage situation where it’s acceptable to write some people off because we don’t have the resources to help them all. If any country in the world has the money to take care of its people, it should be us.
I routinely see patients who have been taking veterinary antibiotics because they couldn’t afford human medication.
“Budgeting isn’t easy, this country is like a modest household where everyone has to tighten their belt,” people try to tell us. Bullshit. This country is like an ultra-deluxe megamansion with people starving to death in the basement.
I don’t know if this makes me a democratic socialist or a socialist or a communist or whatever, but I’m whatever kind of “ist” you need to be to live in a country where everyone can get medicine that is labeled for human use.
Proposal for a new law: you get a maximum of ten million dollars.
Yep, no one living or doing business in the US is allowed to own more than $10 million in personal assets. Investments, savings, real estate, cars, gold, everything; you hit that cap, and anything over is seized and redistributed as no-strings cash payments to everyone else. You get caught sneakily using a shell corporation or offshore accounts or anything else clever to subvert that limit, it’s a criminal penalty. Greed in the First Degree.
I’ll be merciful here; that’s ten million per individual so your spouse and children can each have their own ten million, it’ll go up with inflation, and I won’t even include your house. (Maximum one house per adult, and only if you actually live in it, so don’t get creative. Farms/ranches can be counted as homes, but only if you live full-time and personally work on them.)
Yeah, this means that certain people would lose literally billions of dollars. But they’d still have ten million! How bad can you feel for them? That’s still enough money that you can livecomfortably without putting in another day of work in your life. It’s very hard to make a case that anyone needs more than that.
I haven’t worked out exactly what the redistribution payments would be, but my extremely-poorly-sketched guess is at least $50K per non-ten-millionaire person when the law first goes into effect. Not enough to be set for life, but it would be a hell of a lifeline for a lot of families. More importantly, there would be a continuing benefit from companies being unable to divert all their profits to upper management and wealthy investors. They’d have nothing to do with that money except reinvest it in workers and facilities.
And I wouldn’t worry about demotivating workers. If an ordinary person is debating whether it’s worth their time to go back to school or apply for a management position or open their own shop, they’re not going to be thinking “Why even bother? All I stand to earn is ten million dollars.” Not if they have any sense of perspective.
Oh, but high achievers will stop working or leave the country once they get their ten million. Good! That’s the point! They’ve earned all the money they need, so they should let someone else have a chance! If they love their job and don’t want to quit, they can still do it for a minimal salary and distribute the rest among their employees. Or they can quit, and we can learn that this whole “only ultra-rare magically gifted people can be successful CEOs, so they deserve to be treated like princes” thing was a wealth-worshipping myth anyway.
We’re in an economic emergency situation right now. 20% of households with children don’t have enough to eat. 500,000 people are homeless. More than a quarter of people struggle to pay their medical bills. Sorry, but it’s a sad fact: Ultra-rich people are a useless luxury that we can’t afford.
I haven’t thought through all the details or economic impacts or long-term consequences of this, but I think by now it’s clear that the people who make the real laws don’t either.
To all the people replying “but rich people will just leave”:
– Well I certainly hope the door doesn’t hit their asses on the way out. They have no irreplaceable talents or knowledge.
– There will be measures in place to prevent them from taking more than $10m with them when they move out.
– The US is a huge market and has a tremendously valuable workforce. My plan might not work for starting a new country on an empty island, but we’ve got shit worth sticking around for. Even if McDonald’s moves out, it will still be worthwhile to sell hamburgers to Americans. Even if Microsoft moves out, America will still have lots of talented software engineers. I don’t think we need billionaires to organize all our bountiful supply and demand into a functional economy.
– Foreign companies won’t be allowed to do any business here if any of their employees/partners/investors has over $10m. This will cut us off from a lot of business, but again, because we are the US and have so much to offer, it will be worthwhile for smaller foreign businesses to trade with us, or possibly even for large ones to retire all the rich guys to come into compliance.
– I’m not entirely serious about this and I’m no economist. I just wanted to entertain the notion of radically interrupting America’s slide into oligarchy, of taking action based on the premise that vast inequality is wrong rather than merely unfortunate. We have to do something about this situation, so fuck it, here’s something.
I like this idea.
It reminds me of an idea I’ve entertained with a similar level of semi-seriousness: requiring all holders of federal-level public office to donate their personal assets (money and real estate) to the government as a condition of taking office. For the duration of their government service, they live in assigned middle-class housing and receive a salary equal to the median income across the entire country. Whatever said income is at the time they leave office, that becomes their pension. They are barred from receiving income from any other source, for life.
It’s tyrannical and wildly impractical, but the benefits speak for themselves. The 1% would be discouraged from holding public office (since they would forfeit their wealth), and lawmakers would have every incentive to set policies that raise the median, instead of funneling everything to the top.
Also like.
Currently people on ssi have an asset limit of 2000$. No I did not miss a 0 or anything. For perspective a wheelchair usually costs at least that by itself and this applies to a bunch of stuff, you literally are banned from saving for emergencies.
So what do you do? You go over the limit and you have to spend it. This would not have any effect on EARNED MONEY, as long as you spend it immediately upon making it. It doesn’t prevent making money, just hoarding it.
So basically this would be encoragement to say, pay your fucking employees instead of sitting on your riches like a fucking dragon as the economy tanks
when exactly did “oppression” come to mean “laws that are specifically and explicitly targeted at you,” and not things like “laws that they will be quick to assure you are not specifically targeted, they just happen to be a massive burden on you in particular,” or “housing discrimination,” “employment discrimination,” or FUCKING VIOLENCE?
kids aren’t starving to death for the most part, everything is a-okay, let’s cancel social progress and have a set-money-on-fire party instead
Well, I mean, as long as kids aren’t literally dying from lack of food.
Nevermind that kids who deal with food insecurity (meaning: they don’t always know when they’re next going to be able to eat, they’re frequently hungry without being able to solve that problem) struggle in school, because hunger is distracting, stress and worry (which are normal when you don’t have enough to eat) are distracting, and also if you’re running low on blood sugar your brain just can’t function at optimum. Nevermind that they frequently also struggle to behave ‘appropriately’, because hunger is frustrating and constant hunger is exhausting, not to mention the aggravation of knowing that it’s unfair that they have to be hungry when their classmates have plenty to eat, when food is getting thrown away in front of them. Nevermind that they’re much more likely to suffer from preventable illnesses, because chronic hunger fucks up one’s immune system and leaves one vulnerable to diseases, nevermind that malnutrition in childhood can permanently stunt people’s growth and development, causing chronic lifelong issues.
None of that matters. They’re not actually dying.
…hey anon? Get bent. You don’t have to have the worst possible problem out of a given category of “problem” in the world in order to have a valid problem that deserves to be addressed.
“i always play piano at my home almost every night and whenever i sit to play, all my cats come around, they hang out with me and they love to sleep around the piano.”
“they are peaceful, i am more at peace thanks to them”
one of his cats is blind. "his happiest moment is at the window. listening to the birds, getting fresh air is our favorite activity. i hang out an hour every day at the window with my angel.“
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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