Catsidhe

On Nemesis, the ABC post-mortem of the recent Liberal governments.

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 12:48:58 GMT

It struck me watching the first episode that there was something to be read from who was appearing on the show, and who wasn't.

Abbott didn't participate, and my impression is because Abbott is a righteous man. He still doesn't think he did anything wrong, he still thinks he was wronged by everyone, he still sees himself as the rightful Prime Minister in exile. Malvolio in budgie smugglers.

Peta Credlin wasn't in it partially because she's concentrating on her far-right media career, and partially because, just like with her position of power in the Abbott government, she had no place being there.

All the other Liberals who were in it, save three, were there because they were fucking furious, and not without cause. Don't get me wrong, they're almost all reprehensible, and they're complaining in many cases that it wasn't that they had a problem with the policies, but in the way they were sold. Like with the first budget: it wasn't that it was an act of malevolent societal violence, it was that it was presented too much too soon: people wouldn't have revolted as hard against it if it was trickled in slowly. It wasn't that their policies were objectively harmful, it was the bad marketing.

So, sure, they're rightfully angry, but they're still all horrible, harmful, toxic people. Screw them. Let them all suffer in their jocks.

The other three are Eric Abetz, who still thinks Abbott was a brilliant Prime Minister, brought low by the pettifoggery of small men fighting amongst each other to bring a great man down. (Which just makes me wonder what Tony really has over Abetz.) Abetz is impressive in how he stands above his peers as an absolutely abhorrent excuse for an empathic human being.

Then there was Morrison, who was there to smirk. He's the arsonist touching himself while looking at photos of the ashes. He's there to lie about everything, to aggrandise himself, and to stroke his own ego. If you look carefully, you can see signs of his hand moving rhythmically just out of frame. Morrison was lying the whole time, beginning to end, and he knew it. The lying was the point. The lying was the game, and the game was everything. I really think Morrison is a clinical psychopath: he really honestly doesn't see other people as people. They're just tokens in a game, only of value insofar as they're of use to him.

And the last is John Howard. Who has nothing to do with any of this, even though it's his studied efficient diligent malevolence that set it all up to happen, and he was there because he was invited. He's just pathetically grateful that someone still seems to care what he thinks. Howard did one good thing in all his time in parliament, and that was the gun ban. For everything else, he can go join Thatcher and Reagan in hell.

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Autistics Speaking Day 2022

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 05:29:59 GMT

It is the second of November as I write this, because of course it is. So... I apologise for not leaving myself time to make this shorter.

Or to the point, whatever that point is. (Edit: I've figure out what the point is, and removed a half-dozen side tracks. For future reference, they included

How closely do ADHD and Autism overlap? How many of the understood common symptoms of one are actually symptoms of the other? Can a symptom be common, but show up in different ways depending? Can one have both versions? Oh wow, I'm almost writing that essay just in the asking of the questions.
What does "Neurodiverse" mean anyway, and who is included within it?
Are there Neurodivergent conditions which aren't inherently disabling? (I'm thinking especially of Synesthesia.)
What does "Disability" even mean?

So. Anyway. Incipit:

Who speaks for us?

In the beginning there was Autism.

Then Asperger's Syndrome was discovered, and it was technically a different thing.

And that's the first complication, because that division created a barrier between autists.

We now know that one of the characteristics of Autism is linguistic differences in early childhood. Kanner's Autism was where productive linguistic development was slow, regressed, or was non-evident. Asperger's was where it was advanced or normal but weird. Echolalia and non-verbality are not typically developing, but then, neither is a five-year-old who not only knows what a "palaeontologist" is, but how to spell it. (Was that just me?) But that difference wasn't seen as a "how, precisely, was your language affected in childhood", it became "are you a highly verbal probably gifted 'high functioning' Aspie or an nonverbal probably intellectually disabled 'autist'?". And that divide didn't help. It still doesn't. Not least because it's an artificial division.

There are still people who proudly, angrily, identify as "Aspies", not least because they don't want to be tarred with the stigma of being associated with the sort of people that groups like Autism Speaks tells everyone that autists are. On one level, I can't blame them. They're desperately holding on to something which makes them "special" rather than "disabled".

It didn't help when new research showed that Hans Asperger might have gone along with aspects of Aktion T4. For those of us for whom the term "Aspergers" meant something, it was being told, all over again, that our very identity was bad and wrong and we weren't going to be allowed to have it. Here is this thing which gave your struggles in life a name, which gave you something to hang on to to be proud of in who you are, only now we've done some checking and we're not just taking it away from you, we're poisoning it and all its associations forever. "Didn't you know, kid? Your ~~Mom's a psycho~~ Condition is named after a child-murdering card-carrying Nazi."

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but you go and try to sell a bouquet of a dozen long-stem Goebbels' Stinkblossoms on Valentine's Day.

But that's by the by. "Asperger's Syndrome" is, for several disparate reasons, now deprecated. And that leaves one arching term for the whole spectrum.

There are terms to try and cleave distinctions into the subtle blendings, but they have their own problems. "High" and "Low Functioning" are high on that list. The consensus among Autists is that the way they describe things, they oversimplify to the point of uselessness. The "Highest" functioning autist is, by virtue of diagnosis with autism which is, remember, defined as something which causes disabling difficulties in daily life, going to be simply unable to do what may seem like simple things. And the "Lowest" functioning autist, who may struggle with self-harm and a complete inability to vocalise, might still have gifts and wisdom and insight, even if it's locked within them until the right technology or trigger is found to reveal it.

And yet, there is a quantifiable difference between someone who is odd but can mask their autism in public most of the time, and someone who can't feed themselves. It's just that we need a better term for it. Maybe "Higher" or "Lower Daily Care Needs". It's not an absolute term, and it's an average. Someone with "Lower Daily Care Needs" still needs help with things.

Doesn't roll off the tongue as neatly as "High Functioning", though. Even less than "Aspie" vs "Autist".

Tell you what does seem to roll off the tongue really, really easily, though: "Not like my child." That never seems to get old.

There seems to be a particular sort of Autism Parent who has heard of the Spectrum, but only sees it in black and white. There are, in their world, two types of autists: those who are "like their child", and those who are not.

They've mostly stopped explicitly stating that autists who are not like their child aren't actually really autistic. But sometimes the implicit statement is very, very loud.

Look, at one level, they have a point: those who have more need of support and less ability to care for their own needs do need some way of being described. And it's a human and linguistic thing that people want something short and snappy to do so.

The trouble is that the people who are loudest about this who aren't themselves on the spectrum seem to be doing so with the implicit goal of dividing autists into those who need and deserve help, and those who basically don't. Those who can speak for themselves, and those who need their parents to speak for them and how dare you other sort of "autist" pretend to have any insights or concerns.

And I'm alarmed by how many of these Autism Parents have power, whether because they're, say, politicians, or the head of an Autism Science Foundation who just happened to be a former board member of Autism Speaks who only left because that organisation became a bit to antivaxxer for her to stomach (well done, have a cookie), and is on tape describing, in front of her autistic child, how she sometimes felt like driving her car off a bridge with her child in it.

The thing is, I think we need terms for that. I mean, how could we, as autists, have a problem with Autism Parents? Our parents are autism parents. Some of us are autism parents. Some autism parents are autistic parents.

But there's some who aren't that. They're crusaders for exclusion and shutting down who they see as "the wrong sort" of "autists". By which, typically, they mean any autist who is able to speak for themselves, and especially who sees that very ability as a gift and a duty to use on the behalf of those who can't.

I guess where I'm going with this is: an open reply to Alison Singer. I sympathise with your problems and your difficulties with your autistic child. I really do. I also sympathise with her difficulties. And what I would like is to be able to know what she thinks, and to improve her life, and your life.

And, yes, there needs to be some sort of agreed way of describing the severity of affect of autism: there needs to be some way of describing succinctly that one person needs more support than another.

But.

Needs aren't static. I might be giving a public talk in the afternoon, and be unable to decide what to have for dinner in the evening. (Not "ambivalent" or "indecisive", but "paralysed".) I might write code that will be, unknowingly, relied upon by thousands of people, and also unable to remember which bills I haven't paid yet. My functioning is uneven, and when I've run out of spoons, all bets are off. And I might not even know what my own support needs even are.

And, quite frankly, when it comes to deciding who is valid in being allowed to speak or not, I do not trust you or your ilk to make that decision. Not least because you've clearly made your decision, and the answer is that it's you the parents, not us the verbal autists. Or, if you're charitable, that you want "profound autism" as a binary thing, where every autist can be divided into "profoundly" autistic or, as far as you're clearly concerned, "not" autistic.

I don't trust you, Alison Singer. The organisation you made your name in, Autism Speaks, is a self-serving behemoth which does, as far as I can see, almost exactly nothing for autists. Its purpose isn't anything to do with helping Autists. It was created and is maintained for you, Allison.

I don't trust you, Alison Singer. I remember Autism Every Day. You have been complicit in making autists who find your material first, hate themselves. What you have said, the organisation you have lead, has made autistic people see themselves as broken, as monsters. You have done harm to autistic people.

When autistic people are upset at terms like "patient" and "intervention", it's because people like you refuse to accept anything less than ABA, a theory which was designed by a person who literally said that autistic children aren't people, merely person-shaped. It's people like you who are responsible for the Judge Rotenberg Center still existing; a place where disabled children are tortured with strap-on Tasers for crimes like "saying 'no'," and "flinching because they fear getting an electric shock."

I want autists with high care needs to have a voice. I want the families of autists to have their voice. And I'd quite like also to be allowed to have a voice.

But here we get into the Tolerance Paradox: Despite what you say, I don't want to silence you because you are the parent of an autist. What I have a problem with is your evident decades-long campaign to shut down my voice and the voices of people like me.

Wow. I got angrier than I thought I would. Time to press "post", I guess.

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On a model of escalating propaganda

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 11:59:20 GMT

I'm not a student of political science, and I don't care how often Academia.com thinks that references to David Cameron are actually to me. (Also, there's a marine biologist who shares my name, go figure.)

So I don't know if I'm going over well-tilled ground with this.

It's just that as we're all watching the last few years on Twitter, mostly out of the US, and the last few weeks out of Russia, then we've seen lots and lots and lots of propaganda, and I've been noticing patterns. And other people have been reacting with various levels of "Lolwhut? that doesn't even make sense! Are they on drugs or are they really that dumb?"

Don't get me wrong, some of the people making those tweets may be that dumb. But still, that's not to say they're not serving a very specific purpose: they're not random stupidity, they're very deliberate and targeted stupidity.

So let's try and categorise the levels of propaganda as we're seeing it in the world around us.

Stage 0 Propaganda: It's not propaganda. It's just advertising.

AKA: It's true.

You're not being told anything that is false or misleading. There's going to be spin, but it's not actively lying. Everything that's said is verifiable and most reasonable people would agree that it's accurate. This isn't quite the same as a plain information campaign, but they often are forced to do double duty, and there's usually at least some overlap between the informative and the aggrandising.

Stage 1 Propaganda: You are meant to believe it.

AKA: It's plausible.

If you dig into it, or you know something about the subject, then you might see that it is wrong, or even a flat out lie. But if it's done properly then there's always some wriggle room for them to say that were mistaken in good faith, or that you've misinterpreted it, or that they misinterpreted it, or it's true according to some set of stupid assumptions or under some abstruse technicalities. But it's still a bald-faced lie, and when they say it's not a lie, that's another lie.

e.g., Mitch McConnell stating "We are negotiating in good faith", or "This anti-Abortion bill is about protecting life", or "This religious freedom bill has nothing to do with entrenching Christian supremacy".
Australian examples: "These grants for railway carparks are not porkbarrelling." "There is no leadership challenge being planned and the Prime Minister has my full support." "This religious freedom bill has nothing to do with entrenching Christian supremacy"

Stage 2 Propaganda: You are not meant to understand it.

AKA: It's bewildering.
AKA: You can't tell what's true or not, or what "true" even is any more.

It doesn't make any sense, and it's not meant to make sense. It's word salad, intended to make you doubt your own ability to tell what is true or false, or what "truth" or "falsehood" mean, or even how language works in the face of statements like:

"You millennial leftists who never lived one day under nuclear threat can now reflect upon your woke sky. You made quite a non-binary fuss to save the world from intercontinental ballistic tweets."

You can't fact check it because it's like catching smoke with tongs. It consists entirely of dogwhistling and boo-words and gibbering squamous madness.

eg.: Trump's twitter feed, when he still had one. Or Q. Or pretty much the entirety of the GOP at this point.
Australian examples: Clive Palmer, Craig Kelly, and the One Australia Party. Or Pauline's One Nation Party. Or Bob Katter. Or Barnaby Joyce on his more deliberately obtuse days. (Barnaby is not nearly so stupid as he pretends to be.)

Stage 3 Propaganda: You are not meant to believe it.

AKA: It's a joke, but nobody is laughing.
AKA: It doesn't matter what's true or not.

It's clips from a video game in 2011, in a tweet labelled "Our troops' glorious victory yesterday". It's declarations of victory released the day before the battle. It's statements that "Historically, Marseilles has always been an integral part of the territory of Ecuador."

There are two levels of message: the surface level is so obviously and clearly stupid and wrong that it's not fooling anyone (well... except see stage 4), but that's not the core message. The core message is in that the surface message is so transparently and ridiculously unconvincing, and the Core message is "you'll pretend you believe this if you know what's good for you, because you know we're watching, and we know where you live." It's a loyalty test. If it was convincing, it wouldn't be much of a test to make people act like they believe it, would it?

e.g., Russia or China, from outside those countries. Within those countries as well, but very quietly, in private, with the windows closed and the doors locked and among only people you trust, and discretely.

Stage 4 Propaganda: You are meant to believe it.

AKA: There are five lights.
AKA: "He loved Big Brother."

When people have been soaking in stage 3 propaganda for long enough, it has effects. Like brainwashing in a cult or an abusive prison "school": repeat a lie often enough, and people will believe it, even if only because they haven't got the physical or mental or spiritual resources left to hold on to the hard, lonely truth in the face of the relentless, incessant barrage of lies. And there are places where it's not enough to act like you believe the transparent lies. They demand that you actually believe it. And they can make you believe it. They've had practice. And they're motivated.

And if they don't have to make you believe stupid things, all so much the better. In that case it's working exactly like Nigerian Prince emails: that it's obviously a fraud is the point: that weeds out all the people with any critical thinking skills, and anyone left who falls for it can be milked for everything. And will be.

eg., North Korea. Increasingly, Russia or China if you're inside those countries.

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It's a Dream Life

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 19:53:59 GMT

Have you ever had that dream?
You know the one:
You have a job to do, but you're not quite sure what it is.
Or how to do it.
Or why it's important.
Or what to do it with.
Or where.
But you know it's important.
And everyone's angry.
And it's your fault it hasn't been done.

Have you ever had that dream?
You know the one:
Someone's telling you something really important.
But you can't hear them.
And when you can, you can't understand the language.
And when you can, you can't hold on to the meaning.
And when you can, you forget it right away.
And you remember much later that there was something important.
But it's too late.

Other people say they dream of flying.
I dream of dreaming of swooping and gliding.
Other people say they dream of talking to important people.
They dream of being there with them:
Treated as important,
Their opinions listened to,
Their anger valid and relevant,
Their ideas acted upon by others.

Have you ever had that dream?
You know the one.
Everyone's angry with you, but you don't know why.
Nobody will tell you what you said.
Nobody will tell you what you did.
Nobody will tell you what rule you broke.
Nobody will tell you what you should have done.
Nobody will accept your apology for ... something really bad, apparently.
It's all your fault and you have no idea why.

It's a Dream Life.

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Scaena Psittaci Mortui.

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 07:51:30 GMT

Pralinus: Ave. Querelam submittere volo.
Venditor: (non respondet)
P: Ave, puella?
V: Quid significas 'puella'?
P: ... Me paenitet. Grippa habeo. Querelam submittere volo!
V: Claudimus pro prandio—
P: non sollicitare de illo, puer mi. Queri volo de hic psittacum, quid emi non demihoram abhinc, ex hoc vero apotheca.
V: Ah, ita est. Caeruleus Norvegicus. Quid... quid mali est ei?
P: Dicam quid mali est, o puer mi. Is est mortuus, iste est quid mali.
V: Minime, minime, is est quietus.
P: Vide, amice, Scio psittacum mortuum quando video, et specto unum nunc.
V: Minime, minime, non mortuus est, quiescit! Avis magnificus, nonne? Plumae pulchrae!
P: Plumae non sunt importantes. Is est ex toto mortuus.
V: Miniminiminime, Quiescit!
P: Bene, si quiescit, eum excitam. (Clamans) Ave, domine Psittace! Habeo bonum recens banana tibi!
V: (caveam pulsat) Ecce! Movit!
P: Minime, tu caveam movit!
V: Numquam!
P: Vero!
V: Numquam feci aliquid!
P: (Clamans et pulsans caveam) AVE PSITTACE! Excita! Hic est signum tuum excitandi! (iactat psittacum in aera, et in terram cadere videt) Hic est ille quid appello psittacus mortuus.
V: Minime, stupefactus est.
P: Stupefactus?
V: Ita est, eum stupefecisti simulatque is excitaverat. Caerulei Norvegici stupefacitis facile
P: Ecce amice, ego hoc satis habebat. Ille psittacus est certus mortuus, et cum emit non demihoram abhinc, dixeratis mihi quod eius totalis indigentiam motus fuit ob esse fessus et decrepitus post clamoris longis.
V: Fortasse languet pro fjordis.
P: "Languet pro fjordis"? Quod genus loquendi est? Ecce: Cur ceciderit planus in dorsus simulatque obtinuit eum in domum meum?
V: Caeruleus Norvegicus mavult dormiens in dorsus. Avis magnificus, nonne? Plumae pulchrae!
P: Ecce, libertati tuli examinandi ille psittacus quand obtinuit eum in domum meum, invenique sola causa sederat in pertica sua in primo erat quod fuerat confixus ibi.
V: Bene, certus confixus erat ibi. Nisi confixissem illum avem, se moveret ad craticulam, sinuet cum rostro suo et... vum.
P: Vum? Amice, ille psittacus non vumat si posuistis quattuor millionem volti per eum. Obivit, Hercle!
V: Minime, languet!
P: Non languet, leto! Hic psittacus non est plus! Cesserat esse. Expiravit et ivit occurrere factorem suum. Est dur! Si non confixisses in perticam, obmoliatur primulas. Processus metabolicae sibi nunc sunt historia. Ex vimine depositus est. In sepulchrum inhabitat; ex scaenam exivit et iungit choro invisibili. HIC EST OLIM PSITTACUS.
(pausa)
V: Bene. Rectus est mihi reponere.

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The Coward's Palace.

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 06:14:52 GMT

You know, cowards who go anonymously onto social media, and vilify people, and harass them, and bully them, and engage in defamatory statements, they need to be responsible for what they're saying. I mean, I can't come out here, and you can't come here, and start doing things like that, we all know who each of us are, we're responsible for the things that we say and that we do.

... We all know that it's Parliament that's the appropriate venue for that; where you can go and say whatever you like about anyone, without consequence or repercussion, and nothing you say can be used against you, even as a defence of truth if anyone goes on social media and hurts your feelings by accurately reporting things you said and you sue them for defamation.

I fixed your statement for you there, Scotty.

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Australian Government messaging on Covid Vaccines

Mon, 24 May 2021 07:30:16 GMT

Everyone is going to get vaccinated! We have dates!
OK, we might miss some dates. But that's Italy's fault! They were mean and didn't let us have some of the vaccines we told you we bought, but never told you the manufacturers didn't have any hope of delivering in the timelines we told you.
We're definitely going to miss the initial dates.
We're not going to miss any more dates, because we're not setting any more dates, so we can't blow any more deadlines, because there aren't any more deadlines.
There's no problem with the AZ vaccine.
There might be a problem with the AZ vaccine, but don't worry.
We've bought metric bucketloads of Pfizer for unrelated reasons, but AZ is safe.
Nobody under the age of 50 is allowed to have AZ. You guys should wait for Pfizer. But for everyone else, AZ is safe. Totally safe.
Pay no attention to the people who had that reaction. Everything's under control. We're distributing the vaccine to GPs, because it's all about small business.
No, 50 doses per week for a GPs office is a perfectly adequate number. The states shouldn't even bother opening mass vaccination centers.
We'll be vaccinated by October. Or the end of the year. Or 2023. There is no contradiction.
Yeah, sure, people should probably be going to the mass vaccination centers which were totally our idea.
No, we haven't got enough Pfizer yet.
Why aren't you lining up for AZ?
I mean, if you want to wait for Pfizer, you can.
But you should take AZ now.
Except you: you can't have AZ. You have to wait for Pfizer. AZ is dangerous.
Seriously, why aren't people lining up around the block for AZ?
I blame the media.

I don't blame anyone who doesn't feel safe taking AZ. That said, I would totally take AZ right now it that were an option, which I am being yelled at by the government is 1) not an option, and at the same time 2) I should be ashamed for not taking the AZ vaccine they're telling me I'm not allowed to have.

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Is that standard procedure?

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 01:40:11 GMT

Normally, one waits until after the election to concede defeat.

Still, I'll take that over the alternative.

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Extravertsplaining.

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 10:55:47 GMT

I've been sitting on this in a tab for a few days, trying to get my head around how angry it makes me: To get ahead as an introvert, act like an extravert. It’s not as hard as you think.

It's as patronising and supercilious as you'd guess from the title.

Have you tried... not being ~~autistic~~ an introvert?

I'm not really exaggerating, there.

"Nor is it as hard as you may think. Research shows introverts overestimate the unpleasantness and underestimate the “hedonic benefits” of acting extraverted. One study even suggests introverts feel more authentic when acting extraverted."

So... Being introverted is dumb and wrong and you'd feel so much better if you just pretended to be extraverted, because being extraverted is just better. Introverts think there's a downside to pretending to be extraverted, but what would they know?

Which, frankly, sounds like exactly the sort of bullshit that big loud cheerful extraverts have been yelling at introverts for, well, forever. "CHEER UP AND TALK TO PEOPLE AND YOU'LL FEEL BETTER! GO TO A PARTY! IT ALWAYS MAKES ME FEEL BETTER!"

Then I looked at another open tab, and realised that someone else had already made a better counterpoint. It is:
Mitchell, P., Sheppard, E. and Cassidy, S. (2021), Autism and the double empathy problem: Implications for development and mental health. Br J Dev Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12350

Abstract
This article proposes a link between autistic people being misperceived by the neurotypical majority and their being at risk of poor mental health and well‐being. We present a transactional account of development in which the misperceptions (and consequent behaviour) of the neurotypical majority influences the perceptions and behaviour of autistic people such that they become increasingly separate and indeed isolated from mainstream society. This jeopardizes their mental health and prevents autistic people from developing to full potential. The situation is not only problematical for the development of autistic people but is also to the detriment of wider society, in so far as autistic people are effectively prevented from contributing fully. This account assumes that some (not necessarily all) autistic people yearn to be included, to be productive and to be useful. It thus directly opposes accounts that view autism as an extreme case of diminished social motivation.

I think it's worthwhile to quote and add emphasis to this paragraph from the Background:

A further aim is to explore the developmental consequences of this barrier for each group (autistic and neurotypical). Autistic people, who are in the minority, might respond by trying to hide or camouflage their autism‐specific style of social interaction and attempt to emulate the social interaction style of the neurotypical majority (Hull et al, 2019). This strategy could enable a degree of access to neurotypical social experiences and indeed a degree of acceptability therein, but at psychological cost owing to the effort that has to be exerted (Hull et al, 2017), coupled with the stress associated with the risk of being ‘found out’ (Cage & Troxell‐Whitman, 2019). Worryingly, research is identifying a strong association between camouflaging autistic traits, with poor mental health, well‐being, and high rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviours in autistic people (Cassidy et al., 2018; Cassidy et al, 2019). We urgently need to further understand the risks to mental health arising from the stress associated with this camouflaging behaviour, coupled with the sense of isolation, and consequent feelings of loneliness. Our aim is to explore whether such experiences could lead the individual to feel not valued and unwanted, perhaps leading to a fatal outcome if the individual feels they are a burden on society and that the world would be better off without them, with suicide perceived as the only available option.

But no, please, continue to explain to me how all my problems would be solved if I just used all my available resources to desperately pretend to be something I'm not in the hope it will make other people like me better.

No autist has ever thought of that.

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A random thought

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 22:50:00 GMT

Covid19 is to the concept of mass gatherings and casual trips to shopping centers as AIDS was to the concept of orgies and casual sex.

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Why is this still a thing.

Thu, 26 Nov 2020 11:09:29 GMT

If the lock is on the outside of the door, it's not a "retreat", it's a cell.

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Newscorp delenda est.

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:56:05 GMT

Murdoch media at Dan's Presser today: "What's the point of a road map if you don't follow the road map?" (very loud subtext: "you said we'd open all the businesses on this date and it's this date and you're not opening the businesses, why are you Stalin?".)

The thing is, oh twerp from the Herald-Sun, that's not how road maps work. It's not "drive west until midnight on the 27th and then turn right, and lets just assume we were travelling at the correct speed that whole time and ignore those traffic jams": you keep driving until you get to the correct intersection, even if you should have been there hours ago. We are in lockdown until we are in the correct place to do so, even if the predictions made on when that would happen turned out to have been optimistic.

Remind me never to go driving with you, especially through Richmond. If you drive a car like you're demanding the state be driven, we would have ended up roof-down at the bottom of the Yarra months ago.

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How dare you suggest I be treated by the standards I set?

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 23:11:30 GMT

Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care, an executive summary:

Boomers are now terrified that their children will treat them like they treated their parents.

(I know, I know, Not All Boomers. I know my parents went above and beyond for my grandparents, on both sides. But, like when the Boomers complained about GenX, or when the Boomers complain about Millennials, or when Boomers complain about Children These Days, it's not about individuals.)

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An open letter

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 11:54:14 GMT

Dear Entire Advertising Industry,

I know it's been going on forever, but I just saw it again, and thought I had to say something.

When you advertise painkillers and cold and flu drugs, you really don't have a lot of range, do you?

It's just that if you're going to advertise cold and flue drugs, marketing them as being suitable to mask over your symptoms while you go to work still sick and still contagious might not be the best possible message to be sending: right now, for the last seven or eight months, and for the foreseeable future.

I mean, I know advertising is replete with sociopathy as an industry and as a concept, but you could at least try to hide it a bit.

Not a lot of love,

Me.

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Mon, 13 Jul 2020 03:14:54 GMT

Miss S answers the phone.

"Yes? Hello? I... OK. Um. I'll put you on to my father."

"Hello?" I say.

"Yes hello sir," says a heavily accented Indian woman. "I am Irene and I am calling from the NBN."

"Oh. OK," I say, thinking Oh no you're not. "What is wrong with the NBN?"

"Well, I am not calling you about the NBN, but about the internet, sir, because, you see, we have been detecting errors from your computer for several weeks now about the internet. You see, there are dangerous files which are being downloaded from the internet to your computer without your permission."

"Oh dear," I reply. "That sounds horrible."

"Yes, so you are listed as a basic computer user, and I will be needing you to be in front of your computer right now, is that possible?"

"Yes, of course."

"Are you in front of your computer now?"

"Yes."

"I will need you to follow my instructions, OK?"

"Certainly. I'm sitting at my computer, which has a VPN to my work at the University of Melbourne where I'm a Unix System Administrator. I've got a Bash terminal open... which port did you say those files were coming in on?"

"... oh. ...Um. OK. Um. Goodb—" »click«

And I laughed so hard I think I broke something.

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Tue, 24 Mar 2020 11:37:58 GMT

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.”

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Happy Friday the 13th.

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 05:35:58 GMT

To stave off all-consuming anxiety, autists require a larger than normal amount of routine and predictability to be able to function.

Covid19 increasingly, and globally, means that there is no routine, and nothing can be predicted.

If you've got people in the spectrum in your life, they will be needing something routine to hold on to right about now, and for the forseeable future.

And on a lot of these traits, autists are just like most people except more sensitive, so if you're not on the spectrum, you may also need something routine and predictable to center yourself on before long.

Just saying.

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I am not a doctor.

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 04:42:31 GMT

But here are my thoughts on Covid-19, because "thought" seems to be a vanishing rare thing on that topic:

Q: Is it really that dangerous?
A: We don't know yet. It's likely that its total mortality rate is going to end up lower than you might expect, because many, most, maybe even almost all cases are mild to unnoticeable. If you've got a mild sniffle, or no symptoms at all (as has also been reported), then you're not going to go report to the ED unless you're already there or you're really cautious. The mortality rate looks high, at the moment, because the people being reported are the ones who are really sick, and they are more likely to die. But they're being reported because they're really sick, so that skews the population you're measuring. But this is still early days, and we haven't had time to collect and analyse the data. But we will eventually have a pretty good idea what's going on, because
Q: Is it going to be endemic?
A: It already is endemic. Covid-19 is already out in the world, and it's not going to go away. It's got a long, symptom-free, contagious incubation period, so by the time it was noticed, it was already outside China and spreading. It's now thoroughly endemic in China, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, and the USA.
Q: Why hasn't it spread so quickly into the US?
A: It almost certainly is already endemic in the US, and has been for a long time (as this sort of thing goes). It's just that the US doesn't have a Health System, it has fifty-mumble of them (fifty states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, plus the Federal system.
Except... even those aren't systems, so much as weakened bureaucracies trying to keep health insurance companies and their associated service delivery locations (also known as "hospitals") under some sort of co-ordination, with no noticeable success.
And the Federal system is under the control of a demented sociopath, who is more concerned that the numbers make him look good than that the situation is actually under control, and that he has flunkies fighting for his approval than that there is anyone actually competent in control of anything. Do not expect any useful, or even correct, information out of the White House. The sorts of people who will be getting information out there in the US system will be doing so at Li Wenliang levels of personal risk.
Q: If it's already out there, then aren't the quarantines and travel restrictions just a waste of time then?
A: Yes and no. Yes, in that it's coming anyway. In fact, it's already here. If there's been travel somewhere, they should expect to have been exposed. No, it's not a waste of time, because that's what the authorities are buying: time. Time to build up information, time to determine treatment regimes, time to get emergency measures in place, time to spread out the initial wave of cases, so they don't all turn up at the ED at once.
Q: So I should be worried?
A: Yes, but probably not as much as you think you should. It's looking to be worse than the usual flu, but probably not 1919 worse. And if you're relatively young, then you might not even notice it. But the older you are, the worse it seems to be, so you probably should be worried for your elderly parents or grandparents, and for god sake don't go to a retirement village or nursing home if you've got a sniffle.
Q: Do I need to ~~hoard~~ gather supplies?
A: No.
Q: So why can't I get toilet paper or hand sanitiser?
A: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." (— Agent K, Men in Black)

This is not medical advice. See your doctor if pain persists. Do not exceed recommended dose.

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Sky 4 - Fantasia

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 00:22:24 GMT

Hey, motg, here is that piece I was talking about last night.

I knew Sky had done a version of it, I was just wrong about which album it was on.

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Goodbye 2019. Don't let the door hit your arse.

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 11:10:52 GMT

I've recently had my forty-sixth birthday, and it affected me more than I thought it would. I came to the realisation that I'm no longer getting older, now I'm just getting old.

Normally I'd say goodbye to the year with the wish "may next year be better than last."

At first, that was optimism.

Then it was hope.

Now, it just seems to be begging for trouble, with the incoming year hearing it and responding "... hold my beer."

Let's all just wish for a new year without any fucking Nazis in it. For a change.

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A box of one's own

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 21:11:20 GMT

The difference between a prison and a refuge is on which side of the door is the lock.

I wrote about this four years ago, and it's still relevant: Quiet Rooms: Illinois schools lead the nation in imprisoning very young, disabled children in isolation chambers (BoingBoing)

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Thu, 07 Nov 2019 03:30:29 GMT

So I was sick at home yesterday, and after the girls got home from school I decided that it was quiet. Too quiet. And having picked up Peter Gabriel's Car album recently, I decided to play that at them.

And during track one I said to the girls, "It's not every day you hear a prog rock song about St Vitas' Dance."

"Oh!" exclaims the eldest, "The German Dancing Plague! Did they ever figure out what caused that?"

I kvelled.

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Autistics Speaking Day 2019

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 11:02:56 GMT

(Self-)Advocacy is hard, because it doesn't feel, most of the time, like a disability.

That needs unpacking.

The advocacy work I'm trying to do has a lot of overlap with advocacy for wider disability inclusion and accessibility. If I'm successful, it's not just for the neurodiverse, it's for the vision impaired, the mobility impaired, the hearing impaired, everyone. It requires making common cause with them, and at least at the start, advocating on their collective behalf (because somebody has to, and if anyone else is, no-one seems to know about it). But I don't feel like I belong in the same category as they do.

Because what is "disability"? It seems that every attempt at defining it comes out different, and the only commonality is that it's like "obscenity": you know it when you see it.

At the core, it's a condition which results in a more or less permanent impairment in function. But that carries its own definitional problems. A family with achondroplasic dwarfism, in their own specially designed environment, might not notice any particular issue. Until they step outside into a world designed for "normal" people. Or, as the terminology is preferred, "typical" people, because we're talking about mathematical norms over populations. So the first battle is to define your population. If you had a modern environment designed for Maasai, and a !Kung family moved in, would they count as disabled because of their physical difficulties? Or vice versa?

Let's take it further: Dwarfism isn't just caused by achondroplasia, and there are so many possible causes, including just because, that the definition for dwarfism as regards being a disability is being 4'10" or less as a fully grown adult. But it's possible for treatments of conditions like achondroplasia mean that growth can be given a kick along. It's entirely possible to be a 5'5" dwarf. Are they still disabled?

Then there's where the line is drawn regarding severity: someone with a C5 spinal cord break is quadriplegic, and everyone would agree that they're disabled. Someone with an L4 break is paraplegic and also definitely disabled. Someone with a below the knee amputation is definitely disabled, even if, like Adam Hills, you wouldn't usually even know unless they told you. I just discovered that I have a slight congenital deformity of the talus bone in my ankle, which results in a twist in the foot, which results in chronic tendonitis and achilles tendon pain, and I've just got orthotics to address. Does that count as a disability?

Then there's where the line is drawn regarding permanence. The flu is clearly not a disability, no matter how much medical care you might need to live until it passes. The paralysis which results from polio clearly is a disability, as is the results of post-polio syndrome decades after any recovery. A broken leg is an injury, not a disability. The results of many broken bones can add up to a disability, such as for someone with osteogenesis imperfecta.

Where am I going with this? Executive summary: the concept of "disability" isn't that easy to define.

And I don't feel disabled. Usually.

How I am is how I've always been. In the normal course of events I am just how I am.

Normally.

And then a tradesman comes out for an emergency visit, and it turns out I have absolutely no idea how to even ask how to pay him, or how much. Or when the conversations around my corner of the open plan office all talking over the top of each other penetrates even the music playing through noise cancelling headphones and I have to grit my teeth and fight the urge to stand up and scream at them to shut up.

But still, I have been diagnosed as on the Autism Spectrum. And the fact of that diagnosis means that, by definition, my symptoms add up to clinically significant impairments. I am, by definition, disabled. But putting myself into the same company as someone who uses a wheelchair or is blind, feels like a form of fraud.

And that's the same wedge that some Autism parents use to divide "high functioning" and "low functioning" autists. "You're not disabled, not like my child. You'll never understand what it's like for my child. Don't you dare to try to speak for my child."

Never mind that if you child can't tell you what it's like from their point of view, maybe people like me can. Never mind that there is no dividing line between "high" and "low" functioning, and that it's a grossly oversimplistic binary division of a complex and continually varying context dependent spread of capabilities and deficits. How about you let me advocate for me, and for people like me. How about you stop cutting my legs out from under me by shouting out my own private doubts, as if I hadn't been obsessing over them to an extent which practically of itself proves them false, as if I hadn't thought of any of them, as if the answer was as simply and easily expressed as the question.

Advocacy is by its definition the act of asking for help. Help for yourself and for others. (And that latter part means that there's more than my own wellbeing at stake if I stop.) And part of the very definition of the condition I'm asking for help with is that I don't know how to ask for help. Certainly not from the people I need to convince to provide it.

Christ, I can't even get some of them to answer my emails.

But I'm sure as hell not going to stop. Because, as I keep reminding myself, I'm doing this because I can, so that the next poor bastard doesn't have to.

It's just that I don't feel like I belong in the group for whom I'm doing it.

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