Month: April 2017

coldalbion:

grace-and-ace:

neddythestylish:

memelordrevan:

rosslynpaladin:

iamthethunder:

s8yrboy:

“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”

We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”

Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.

Or, backing up FURTHER

and lots of people think this very likely,

“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”

The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.

To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science)  indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.

Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.

Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.

I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.

But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.

I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.

“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”

Reblog for disability commentary.

lewisandquark:

The neural network can be trained to write recipes, invent Pokemon, and invent superhero names. But can it learn to tell a joke?

@researchbuzz generously provided me with a list of 200 knock-knock jokes – brief and highly formulaic, they seemed to be the form of joke best-suited for a neural network to reproduce. I figured it would quickly learn the formula, but would never, never manage to tell an actual joke.

It proved me wrong. 

Very early on, the network figured out that question marks were important somehow, as were the words “Knock” and “who” in some mysterious way:

Koo k
ano?
?
Khnck
Knock oae?t
rA  noc?
Knock
Woock
Whecr
lwhot
h o nwoe
hio

In very short order, it learned to begin a knock-knock joke, and almost never got that part wrong again. But the rest of the formula took quite a while to figure out, and the algorithm frequently devolved into playing a game of telephone with itself:

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Iane
Aatar who?
Aaane who?
Aan who?
Anac who?
Iobe who?
Irata who?

Next it figured out the formula, but no actual, you know, words:

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Bool
Hane who?
Scheres are then the there

Then it learned the joke about the cow with no lips which became its Favorite Thing Ever, even if it didn’t know how to properly tell it. The punchline to Every Single Joke was ooo ooooo ooo…

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Alec
Anic who?
Wow co poo the tho tho door to the soout oo ooo oooo ooo oo oo oo oo ooo oo oo oo ooo ooo oooo ooo ooo oo oo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo oo oo ooo ooo ooo ooo oo oo oo ooo ooo ooo ooo…

It made it past this stage, but still had problems that were remarkably similar to two people telling knock-knock jokes over a very bad phone connection, and maybe forgetting who was telling the actual joke:

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Alther
Water who?
Water who who?
Who who?
Arton and out on the moor?

At last it figured out the basic formula and proceeded to make jokes that, while technically correct, didn’t make all that much sense. Many of them were partially plagiarized from jokes in the training dataset.

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Hiwl
Howlowwhowhow

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Ireland
Ireland who?
Ireland you money, butt.

And then.

It produced. An actual joke. I checked, and this one most definitely wasn’t in the dataset. There was one about Alec, but the pun was “Alec-tricity”. There was one about knock-knock jokes themselves, but it was “Irish I knew more knock-knock jokes”. And it didn’t produce this just once, but over and over again. I give you possibly the freakiest thing the neural network has done to date:

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Alec
Alec who?
Alec- Knock Knock jokes.

taptrial2:

completely double spaced version on google docs here – this post is more blocky for the sake of people’s dashboards, but still long so people will be less likely to glaze over it. my apologies if that makes it hard to read

things to look for and avoid in an autistic character

• symptoms only manifesting as “nonverbal and rocking”
• super smart / living calculator
• super dumb / doesn’t understand anything
• all the symptoms you can come up with for them are “awkward” and “has special interest(s)” (please do more research)
• trains, technology, and/or math as special interests
• acting like a child
•

getting treated like a baby
• unreasonably cruel and uncaring about others’ reactions to them being cruel
• if they’re comparable to sheldon from the big bang theory, start over
• animal comparisons
• a lack of feelings
• please no stories about what it’s like to be autistic told by allistics

the right way to write an autistic person

• lots of symptoms, including secondary ones not included on a general diagnosis requirement list (here’s a list i rather like that was made by an autistic person – their blog is also a good resource)
• having a good amount of general knowledge and actually talking about it (i cannot believe that i have to say this)
•

talking about things outside of special interests (again…. come on……….) (special interests are usually the default things our brains go to when theres no stimulation or we want to entertain ourselves – it isn’t literally all we think or talk about ever. if a conversation has no connections to a special interest, reconsider having your autistic character bring it up in a context that is not an introduction.)
•

explicitly expressed to be capable of attraction and romantic feelings – if your character is an adult, add sexual feelings to this point
•

capable of general functioning, just with a disability that makes it more difficult – not a walking disability (….sigh)
• a wide amount of feelings and emotional turmoil (but perhaps only being able to express it in limited ways)
• we’re people
• just people whose brains are wired differently

things to avoid in research for an autistic character

•

autism moms / autism blogs and websites not run by autistic people
•

any affiliation with autism $peaks means you should walk away and never look back
•

a scientist trying to create explanations for what autistic people do without actually asking / not mentioning asking autistic people
• anything about a cure for autism
• a person that “worked with autistic kids” phrased in the same way as “worked with animals”
• talking about autistic people as if they are mysteries, are like animals, or are otherwise othered weirdos instead of people

things to look for in research for an autistic character

•

actual autistic people talking about their experiences and symptoms
• just stick to that and you’re good but it’s hard to find sometimes ngl. just look for the above red flags

things i would personally like to see in an autistic character

• less easy to swallow sadness and more destructive anger. i would love to see a canonically autistic character who was frustrated easily by small things and had trouble communicating why
•

not a story about being autistic, a story that happens to have a character or characters who are autistic – it isn’t pointed out or questioned, they’re right at home with the rest of the cast and not othered (a la symmetra from overwatch)
•

intensive sensory issues / small sounds making large reactions
• clear communications about not liking x sensory thing (for example being touched)
•

poor motor skills / clumsiness and not being laughed at for it
• walking funny (body bent downwards, walking very fast, walking slowly,
big strides, shuffling, stiffness, etc)  – no one treats it as if it’s funny or something totally strange
• a big personality that has a presence so they can’t be cast aside (but feel free to have quiet characters too) – if this was along with being nonverbal they would probably leap to being one of my favorite characters ever
• a fear of asking for clarification on sarcasm or jokes because of past experiences and an arc about the character becoming more comfortable asking questions

>> if any fellow autistic people want to add something, feel free <<

allistics are encouraged to rb this

thebirdhousefiles:

• Autism Speaks doesn’t help any autistic person and only 4% of their funds go to supporting families. Most of it goes to funding scientific research into prenatal testing and a “cure” for autism.

• Autistic people do not want cured in any way. I’ve had a few neurotypicals tell me there should be a cure and that I won’t even get a job or have any of my hopes and dreams achieved because I’m autistic. But I know that isn’t true.

• We’re not all clever in maths (in fact, I can’t do maths for the sake of me) and we’re not ALL into trains, computers, science and so on as our “special interests”. Excuse me, but my special interest’s They Might Be Giants! Haha, what else did you think it was?

• The puzzle piece is a terrible symbol and should never be used. It’s juvenile, and resembles that autism is a “puzzling” condition. It’s only ever puzzling when you’re new to it. It’s never puzzling if you know what it is, and especially if you know enough to want to cure it.

• ALSO: the colour blue literally suggests autism is a “boy’s condition”. Hello, I’m a girl with autism. I’m no different.

• Autistic people have feelings and emotions of all sorts too. Don’t bully us and expect to get away with it. Don’t say we’re all asexual. Don’t say we’re all clinically depressed. Don’t make fun of our meltdowns or whatever else. We all convey emotions in a different way, and that’s important to know.

Autistic and allistic people alike, please feel free to reblog this. It’s that daft time of the year again where everything will go wrong and allistics will wind up with those wrong opinions again.