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We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

people look at wheelchair users and think "well you're sitting down all the time that doesn't take effort" no actually it does. pushing a manual chair takes a lot of fucking effort, especially without a power assist. repetitive stress injuries are a huge problem manual chair users encounter all the time. going up hills and ramps is so deeply fatiguing.

this doesn't just apply to manual chair users btw. power chair usage can also be really exhausting, especially for people with complex seating needs. going over bumps and cracks can trigger many symptoms such as spasticity, pressure sores are common, even just sitting upright can be exhausting for many people.

are we drawing the connection between worker safety and consumer safety & public health yet?

More on the health point:

"US Department of Labor proposes more than $1M fine following worker fatality at New Jersey vegetable processing facility"

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

well no. but we should still be asking 5 year olds why the sky is blue. not just as a precursor to telling them the Right Answer but to encourage them to critically examine the things we take for granted every day. even if they don't know the correct answer immediately, whatever their answer is will tell you a lot about how they view the world. and it gets you as an older person in the practice of asking younger people for information instead of just assuming you have it all and they have none. and then if you ask them a question that you don't know the answer to, and they don't know the answer either, then you get to experience that process of discovery together.

i know i'm probably just reinventing the suzuki method or whatever but god how different would it have been if i'd been taught how to use music theory as building blocks to interpret my own experience, to create my own work. to have that as the central purpose of music education from the beginning, and then add education about historical movements & artists as a way to further inspire new creations. instead of acting like music composition is a right you have to earn.

on the other hand a family friend who is like 10 is encouraged to write his own songs and rlly finds joy in piano. he wrote this rlly lovely song that isnt the most expressive, beautiful thing ever, sure, but it's rlly lovely. and his family encourages it.

But it's stuck with me since the 1990s.

My mom studied English special education in college. And I saw a pair of pictures in one of her textbooks that haunts me to this day.

The text was discussing putting certain preconceptions on kids, and how telling kids they're "doing it wrong" stunts mental and emotional development and imagination. And the pair of images were a pair of drawings by a four-year-old boy. One showed a picture of a parrot with its wings held out like arms. It was an incredibly impressive picture for a four-year-old. It still would have been decently impressive if he'd been eight. I mean, the fact that I could identify it as a parrot should speak volumes.

His teacher told him that's not how you draw birds in flight and showed him the "m" figure that often gets used to indicate far-off birds.

The second photo was a Dr. Seussian tree (he got that there was a brown trunk and green stuff on top) with a bunch of m's.

There was a noticeable difference in quality between the first and second pictures. It was not a positive change. Unable to draw birds as he saw them, he lost interest.

I was seven or eight years old. And it was still so noticeable I, at that age, could see the difference.

It has haunted me ever since. I can't help but wonder if his teacher might have turned him off a path to becoming an artist or ornithologist. He was clearly passionate about birds, to put that much time and effort and detail--imperfect as it was!--into his parrot. And he clearly loved to draw, until he was told he was doing it wrong.

Ask kids what they think! Encourage their curiosity! They are learning! An answer you get right on the first try with no background is just a lucky guess! Let them be wrong! It's a step they have to take before they're right!

if you put potatoes in your medieval european style fantasy world people will by and large not find it jarring and accept it as a normal fantasy trope

if you put, say, black people in your medieval european style fantasy world a whole demographic of people will get very angry and accuse you of breaking their immersion