Records Of My Neurosis

Now this is a big condition to be tackling, with a vast amount of names, misconceptions, and misdiagnoses. Functional Neurological Disorder, or FND, presents different symptoms. It is the second most common reason for outpatient neurology visits, after headaches. Single presentation FND is the most common, meaning you have one Functional Symptom. Multi presentation FND is when you have more than two Functional Symptoms. FND may present as seizures, paralysis, dystonia, gait issues, aphasia, stutter, tics, hallucinations, sight loss, hearing difficulty, pain, and more.

The history of Functional Neurological Disorder is not bright; being labeled under psychiatric titles like Conversion Disorder, or Hysteria. This disorder is thought to be part of the cause behind The Dancing Plague of 1518, which could be a whole post by itself (I’m totally writing about that oh my goodness!)!

Neurology is the study of the nervous system, the study of how the brain and body communicate with each other. In many neurological disorders you can see evidence on MRIs, CT scans, or EEGs. FND can be seen on FMRIs, a Functional MRI, which shows where blood flow is going to the brain. This means there is no structural damage or electrical activities causing the symptoms. Rather than the malfunction being in the brain or body, there is a miscommunication in the nervous system. The brain may send a signal for the leg to move, and the body may receive that signal as pain, tremors, or not at all! It’s like a kinked hose, the faucet is working, and the bucket is structurally sound, but somewhere along the line, the water is getting interrupted or disarrayed.

Many neurological movement disorders worsen with stress, and disappear or lessen in sleep. Providers that say that FND is purely a stress disorder are basing their medical opinion on outdated terminology and information. FND is a disorder of the nervous system, which also manages stress. Going back to the kinked hose analogy, lets remember that most disorders and disabilities have both genetic and environmental factors, and say that some hoses are very thin, weak, or pliable, prior to ever experiencing a stressor. For a normal, strong hose, a stressor may dampen the water pressure a bit, or stop the flow for a moment. But with a hose predisposed to bending or leaking? A stressor could cause the hose to spray erratically, or stop flowing at all.

We had it confirmed last year that Tumblr is in sustainment mode. That means, in tech world terms, that they aren't trying to grow massively or make fancy new updates or features for the hell of it. They're trying to make enough money to justify keeping the lights on so the entire service isn't shut down like Vine.

In the last month this site has been flooded with love, adoration, and support for the AO3 volunteers working around the clock to keep that site stable and functioning during outages and major updates, fending off bots, updating crucial infrastructure, adding minor new feature changes, search improvements, all of the things that Tumblr has been doing too, with what we hear now is only half a dozen or so paid employees.

But AO3 hosts text pages only. HD gifsets, a dozen sideblogs, uploading videos directly to your blog even if it takes forever to process? Those server costs have to be insane. And with AI those costs are skyrocketing and only about to get worse.

I have seen a dozen posts float around yelling that if you pay for Tumblr you're a sucker. Very rarely have I seen an equivalent for those posts like the ones that defend AO3 donation campaigns. So here goes mine.

I like paying for Tumblr premium.

The main reason is that I don't have to see ads, and I do everything I can in my life to avoid seeing ads. The second reason is I want this site to not crumble into the aether with no warning.

I rarely ever use the monthly free Blaze feature, but I really appreciate that I can when I need to, on my own posts across any sideblog, or someone else's post I want to highlight.

I definitely use this hellsite enough to want to support it for $0.19 a day.

I know people are upset that the cost raised, and that not everyone can afford the annual discount, but $70 instead of $7 a month is a whole two months off, which isn't just a good deal, but also say to me that Tumblr is prioritizing longer term funds over month-to-month.

The fact the cost raised means that the program was moderately successful, but that they are still struggling to keep the lights on.

My suggestion to Staff is to read your loyal, vocal, and dedicated audience. If you are in maintenance mode, we understand, and we will support you.

To @tumblr Management, as a simple and cheap monetization model based on other sites, I would sincerely suggest there is proof Tumblr users would respond well to a transparency campaign modeled after non-profit entities like AO3 & Wikipedia, with rough estimates of server costs and staff salaries, and an ability to pay/donate more flexibly than a monthly subscription.

Note: There are all kinds of ways to set something like this up, maybe rewards like a system for prioritization on bug fixes and new feature implementation like free users having five votes, premium users ten, and either having the ability to buy more, all filling the collective annual/quarterly budget. While Tumblr is not a non-profit, a sustainment SaaS could work well in the Kickstarter stretch-goal model right now.

So because we're going to be cranky in the coming days, because there's not great communication on what the long term roadmap is yet, and we're all stressed and anxious about one safe-ish spot we have in the world getting threatened, because this shit happens when there's only half a dozen people left to run a site that's fifteen years of chaos on every level and we forget while we're in our little bubbles, let me say it now:

how about this: when i was 9 and my stepdad beat me until i passed out and i told my friends at school, my teacher over heard and i was interviewed by cps. they also went to my house when i was at school. when i got home, my step father was waiting on the couch, and told me who visited him that day. he told me if i ever snitched again he would beat me to within an inch of my life.

how about this: my mother locked me out of the house when i was 14 and when i cried so loud the neighbors called the cops, the cop told me i should have been respectful of my mother who was trying to sleep.

how about this. the demon you know is less scary than the demon you don’t.

children in abused households are raised to fear the idea of being taken away. children in abusive households see that help makes things worse.

The aftermath of chapter 25.