Autistic masking does not necessarily mean āpretending to be allistic/neurotypical," although youād definitely be forgiven for thinking it does.
Non-autistic researchers have been referring to it as ācamouflagingā for years, framing it as an intentional choice to suppress autistic traits and replace them with allistic ones in order to āblend in.ā Doing an internet search on the term will return several similar results.
But now, Autistic researchers are in the game, and their take is much more nuanced and comprehensive than that. (Funny how that happens, isnāt it?)
Theyāve found that:
- It CAN be intentional but is often subconscious and involuntaryĀ
- It is a protective response to trauma and feeling unsafeĀ
- It is often about suppressing more than just autistic traitsĀ
- It is about identity management and being able to predict how people will treat you, not just āblending inā
Some people will lean into being āthe bad kidā because they know thatās what people expect of them. Some people will even act āmore autisticā because they know thatās what people expect of them. Others still will do things to attract attention in controllable, more āacceptableā ways to avoid attracting attention in unsafe, more stigmatizing ways. Not because they WANT to be that way, but because it lets them predict peopleās responses better, which feels safer.
Also, there are Autistic people who canāt āpassā for non-autistic no matter how hard they try. That doesnāt mean theyāre not masking. They may actually be working hard to suppress A LOT, they just canāt do everything to neuronormative standards.
None of these people will be accused of āblending in,ā yet they are still masking their hearts out. When we assume they are not, we miss all the harm that masking is causing them. But they are suppressing themselves and suffering the consequences of that just as much as any Autistic person whose mask successfully says, āHey, Iām just like you!ā
(For more on this, please see the work of Dr. Amy Pearson and Kieran Rose.)
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Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody elseās industry.
No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone elseās unfinished work into Chat GPT ābecause you just want to know how it ends*ā (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you canāt ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody elseās photo or artwork.
We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, itās also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do itās your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.
Donāt make the mistake of thinking āyour peersā are only the people in your own industry. Writers canāt succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! Youāve just sunk your career.
Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they arenāt the super talented āfuck you I got mineā types. Theyāre the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.
And they especially are not scabs.
*thatās not even how it ends thatās a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.
So I was scrolling and saw this image in an article about the European heat wave,
And was like, uh, are you missing something there, buddy? Like all that red in northern Africa? Because that's a lot of red.
And I was going to give them the benefit of doubt, since I don't know much about the climate in Northern Africa, aside from Morroco and Egypt, which seem like really hot places, so you know, maybe it's normal there?
But nope, that's not the case:
Africa is struggling with heat waves and many countries on the continent lack the resources rich economies have to deal with rising temperat
Some selections from the article:
"The region has been experiencing some of the most intense heat waves in recent years, but in many cases theyāve been under-reported due to misconceptions about Africansā ability to withstand them.
āAfrica is seen as a sunny and hot continent,ā said Amadou Thierno Gaye, a research scientist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. āPeople think we are used to heat, but we are having high temperatures for a longer duration. Nobody is used to this.ā
"The Sahel, for instance, has been heating at a faster pace than the global average despite being hot already. Burkina Faso and Mali, both in West Africaās Sahel, are among countries that are set to become almost uninhabitable by 2080, if the world continues on its current trajectory, a UK university study found. Its people are especially vulnerable due to shrinking resources, such as water, and poor amenities, and a dearth of trees and parks means there are few options for places to cool off."
For disability pride month (and the rest of the year) here's a shout out to
- people who have to take "scary" meds like antipsychotics, tranquilizers, schizo meds, lithium, opioids, and steroids because they're the only things that work
-people taking medicinal drugs that may be illegal in some areas
-people who have to get dangerous procedures and treatments
-people who will literally die without their meds and can't stop taking them
- people whose meds cause undesirable side effects
-people whose meds damage their bodies, but improve general quality of life enough that it's worth it
-people who get told to get off their meds constantly by people other than their doctors (or their doctors didn't want to put them on the med bc they're "too young")
-people who can't take medicine other than ibuprofen or Tylenol due to allergies, interactions, etc.
-people who are addicted to their medicine and don't want to stop taking it
-people who are addicted and want to stop taking their meds
-people still suffering from unforeseen side effects that still affect them even though they got off the meds
Our relationships with our medicines/treatments are complicated and no one body is ever exactly the same. Please be respectful of people's choices and feelings about their meds.
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Iām not wrong though they are EASILY the sluttiest fruits. You donāt see Rosales pulling this shit. I mean yeah apples will breed weird new apples but nothing fucks around like citrus.
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
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A doctor saying "Good news! Your labs look great" is like if you were watching a cop show and the chief walked in like "Great news, everybody! The best news! The killer is still at large and we have no leads."
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate
BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard (under My Filters) to get rid of it!
