Month: December 2017

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

infernalfarndamn:

in the style of poetry
to which we are accustomed,
uncapitalized and with line
breaks:

i’m going to stab death in his idiot
skull with an ice pick and leave
him swaying back and forth
pinned to the big-ass tree outside

trying to sound sonorous
despite the whistly sound of wind in
his ventilated spinal cord, which
i forgot to mention,
i ventilated his spinal cord
also with the ice pick

which would paralyze him
were there anything to paralyze,
so the tree thing is my stopgap
for immobilizing him,
as no one expects to be nailed
to a tree

he will say something about needing him
and something about the shadow of
humanity, or the abyss of meaning,
he will squall and sob from his
dense, selfish eye sockets
too good for the flesh he wants us in

and children will be encouraged to
throw baseballs. i will charge admission
to the resting site of that 
crusty tool,

but, like, a buck.

Tags:

#poetry #transhumanism #death tw #joking but also not joking

Therapeutic Compression CRIB or TODDLER Size Bed Sheet for kids with Autism, ADHD and Insomnia

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/507193128/therapeutic-compression-crib-or-toddler}}

thesecondsealwrites:

Holy cow, so y’all. A lot of us have sensory issues. A friend of mine has a toddler who is basically me when it comes to this sorta thing. A lot of OTs recommend weighted blankets but those are 1. expensive to try (I mean WHAT IF THEY DON’T WORK?) 2. HOT. 

Now, I haven’t tried these myself because after decades of trial and error I have found what works for me (and I’m claustrophobic…so these frighten me as much as they fascinate lol), but I will tell you that my friend is RAVING about them on facebook. Her toddler has been sleeping through the night finally without getting under his fitted sheet with all his stuffed animals and blankets) and he is taking actual naps. A weighted blanket didn’t work for them (and they were fortunate to be able to borrow one), but these are much more economical. 

These are listed for Crib and toddler beds, but

They make up to a king size.

That’s right. 40 bucks compared to the hundred plus I see for most weighted blankets (and those aren’t even adult sized). 

Now, we know tumblr doesn’t like to allow linked posts in the search results so if y’all could pass this around that would be great. These sheets have already changed the life of a family I know, I’m sure they’d help others.

Tags:

#interesting #the more you know #autism

Poor Detroit neighborhoods, abandoned by telcos and the FCC, are rolling out homebrew, community mesh broadband

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mostlysignssomeportents:

tumblr_inline_ozkov4c1pq1rkw4x1_540

40% of Detroiters have no internet access. The Detroit Community Technology Project and similar projects across the city are skipping over the telcos altogether and wiring up their own mesh broadband networks, where gigabit connections are transmitted by line-of-site wireless across neighborhoods from the tops of tall buildings; it’s called the Equitable Internet Initiative.

This is possible in part because of the ubiquitous abandoned dark fiber, which runs under the streets of Detroit, as it does across many US cities, unused and dormant. The project relies on “digital stewards” who undergo a 20-week training program that teaches them to pull fiber, configure routers, and install and service microwave antennas, as well as teaching their communities to use the services delivered over the internet.

Each local mesh is designed to wire together a neighborhood on an intranet that would continue to function even in the event of internet outages, providing a resilient hub for organizing responses to extreme weather, natural disasters, and other crises.

https://boingboing.net/2017/11/17/equitable-internet-initiative.html

@justice-turtle

Tags:

#I feel like this is relevant #the resiliency of the Internet #the more you know #there is probably some warning tag I should put on this but I am not sure what #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #(it seemed fitting)

brin-bellway asked: Is “using handedness to introduce children to the concept of privilege” not a standard part of liberal upbringing? Was that just me? (I don’t think they used the word “privilege”, but that was clearly the idea. I think there was some social-model-of-disability stuff involved too.)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

random-thought-depository:

brin-bellway:

moral-autism:

moral-autism:

[no content in this post so that reblogs of this will be second-level reblogs]

I don’t remember it being used in my school.

It’s been long enough that I don’t remember the circumstances, but it was definitely not at school because I didn’t go to school. (I don’t *think* it was a schoolbook.)

It might have been from my parents: my dad’s left-handed, so *some* lesson on handedness would be bound to come up at some point†. Or media. Or maybe Girl Scouts (which is also kind of parents, since my mom led my troop). Or a combination of the above.

(When I dig through my brain, I get strongest associations with Girl Scouts, but that might just be from me *thinking* about previous right-handed-privilege stuff *during* Girl Scouts because of crafts using right-handed scissors.)

—

†And I suppose might not come up much in an all-right-handed family, so that alone would go a fair way towards making it not a Relatable Childhood Experience.

My mental model of a central SJ-enthusiast would not find the idea of handedness as a legitimate axis of privilege obvious, and would react to the idea with at best curiosity and at worst hostility. My mental model of a central generic liberal would also not find the idea obvious. I’m also very probably biased to underestimate the importance of “left hand = devil hand” type attitudes because I live in a liberal area where it doesn’t seem to be a thing. This is the context that informed the wording of my post.

It’s very possible my mental models of a central SJ-enthusiast and a central generic liberal are in error.

Tagging @ranma-official and @moral-autism because they also responded to my post.

I think the idea was, *because* handedness (in this part of space-time) is not a huge Thing to anywhere near the extent of gender or race or such, it’s a good way to ease people into the ideas without [putting them immediately on the defensive]/[making them focus on the trauma of their oppression] (depending on status).

So, I don’t think they’d go so far as to call it *legitimate* per se, but thinking it’s ridiculous to the point that “X implies that handedness is an axis of privilege” constitutes a significant mark against X also rings false to me.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #my childhood #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #mind you my dad also told me the ”I can’t operate on him! That’s my son!” riddle when I was a kid #and I felt *so* embarrassed and like *such* a failure not to have figured out the doctor was his mother #that I still remember it after all this time #(I don’t know what reaction Dad was aiming for or what reaction he thought I was having) #(but subjectively I felt like a disgrace to the name of feminism) #((I don’t recall the wording of my thoughts but that was pretty much the gist of it)) #(I doubt the *acute* pain lasted very long but the experience stuck with me) #tag rambles