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its rude to reblog things from people you arent mutuals with fyi. :/

💀 my brother in christopher

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When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

#Ahhh okay #I'll apply this knowledge the very next time I get an eye exam. Wish I'd known this decades ago! #actually autistic #helpful tips

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The man steps to one side and points at something behind him.

You hadn't seen it before, and hadn't expected to see something like that at all. It's an extremely surprising thing.

It is a gwraig annwn.

Now that you know the man has a fairy with him, which would you be more surprised to learn?

Birth

There is a married couple living next door. They're expecting a baby. Of these three options, which would you be most surprised by?

#poll #story #...ish #walrus and fairy #improbable and impossible #take your pick

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People who think the impossible is less surprising than the improbable frighten me. This is me being scared because I was raised by people who thought like this and know exactly how bad this kind of thinking can go.

My parents were faced with similar questions all the time.

"Which would surprise you more: your weird child having a specific form of autism, or your weird child being possessed by a demon?"

They decided the unlikely thing would be more surprising than the impossible thing: I must be demon-possessed, because autism is so unusual. How could that even happen? The other nine kids don't have any autism at all! Autism would be more surprising than demons, so it must be demons.

"Which would surprise you more: your cloistered child's measles being caused by germs, or by your child's sin?"

How would the germs have gotten to me? They could think of hundreds of problems germs would run into, but penalties for sin can get to you wherever you are! Germs would be more surprising. Must've been sin.

And so on.

I'm not being superior, I'm being terrified and trying to communicate clearly despite that.

Don't—for the love of everyone your life impacts—don't be more surprised by improbable things than you are by impossible ones. The impossible ones are more surprising. Please. Be more surprised by the impossible.

Be more surprised by something that shatters humanity's current understanding of reality than by something that stretches credulity a bit.

Don't assume that fairies exist before deciding how surprising they are. Don't assume that demons exist before deciding how surprising they are. Decide how surprised you would be based on what you know to be true about reality now, before opening the door.

Don't assume fairies.

Don't assume demons.

Don't assume sin.

Ask yourself which would be most surprising to you now. What is mostly likely behind the door? Autism (a walrus)? Or demon-possession (a fairy)?

They'd both be pretty surprising! You weren't expecting either! But which is more likely? Which would be less surprising? Would you be more surprised by a psychologist telling you that your child has autism, or by a preacher telling you that your child has an evil spirit? Which would be most surprising—which would you find it hardest to believe?

You can think of a million ways autism couldn't possibly make it into your family. You don't have it. Your spouse doesn't have it. Your other nine kids obviously don't have it. How could only one out of ten be autistic? There are so many problems!

But a demon? An evil spirit?

Well, those can get in anywhere. All you have to do is slip in your faith and give them an opening, and no one has perfect faith.

But wait. Don't open the door yet. Keep that sucker closed and think for a minute. Don't assume there's a demon on the other side. Don't assume there's an autism either! Just think. Which do we know for a fact actually exists?

Which possibility has evidence to support it?

You could still be wrong. Of course you could still be wrong. We're humans—we can always be wrong. But if we look at the evidence, perhaps we can manage to be less wrong than if we ignored it.

Demons aren't, so far as anyone has ever been able to prove, real.

Autism is real.

You should be more surprised by a demon-possessed kid than by an autistic one. You should find autism less surprising.

You should lean towards guessing that your kid is probably autistic… not demon-possessed.

In the same way, you should be more surprised by the idea that your kid upset a god and the god made him sick in retaliation than by the idea that a virus made it past your precautions! You should not lean towards assuming that your kid deserves to be sick! You should not find that idea less surprising than the idea of sneaky germs!

You should find impossible things way more surprising than improbable ones!

Because if you don't…

If you don't… you run the risk of being like my parents. Who mean so well. And do so much harm. Because they think walruses are more surprising than fairies.

Everyone who's like, "why would you pick walrus? Fairies aren't real, dumbass" sounds profoundly boring, and also insufferable.

Like, it's fine if YOUR mind looks at the situation and says "logically, fairies aren't real, so it's impossible for them to knock at my door. Walruses are real, so no matter how unlikely, it's still more likely than Impossible. Therefore, I would find the fairy more surprising." That's a very rational explanation, even if it's not the way most people apparently think about it.

But if you insist that everyone who approaches the question differently must be some kind of childish idiot, then you sound like an unpleasant person.

#ex christian #rationality #improbable things are surprising #IMPOSSIBLE THINGS ARE EVEN MORE SURPRISING #don't be more surprised by autism than by demonic possession #don't be more surprised by a walrus than by a fairy #this kind of thinking is dangerous and can hurt people #it looks so innocent #it's not #it's irrationality #and it will hurt you and everyone around you if you're not careful #Isaiah hates admitting fear #but goddammit #I'm scared.

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That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

Follow @the-future-now

#repair

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Okay, this could really be something!

“This is one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a really long time,” said Shaw. “This is a really finely honed tool. To be able to sit there and say to your patients that you’re offering them something that’s effectively like the Fat Duck at Bray versus McDonald’s – it’s that level of cordon bleu that’s coming to them … The patients are really excited about them.” The vaccine is an individualised neoantigen therapy. It is designed to trigger the immune system so it can fight back against a patient’s specific type of cancer and tumour. Known as mRNA-4157 (V940), the vaccine targets tumour neoantigens, which are expressed by tumours in a particular patient. These are markers on the tumour that can potentially be recognised by the immune system. The jab carries coding for up to 34 neoantigens and activates an anti-tumour immune response based on the unique mutations in a patient’s cancer. To personalise it, a sample of tumour is removed during the patient’s surgery, followed by DNA sequencing and the use of artificial intelligence. The result is a custom-built anti-cancer jab that is specific to the patient’s tumour.

...If your tech vocabulary's up to it, see also the abstract/article in the Lancet.

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image transcript:

Posted by u/Otherwise_Order621 1 year ago My hustle culture friend just died of a heart attack at age 32 4.6k upvotes

Sorry for the wall of text, but I really need to get this off my chest.

I met this guy at uni, and since graduating he had been living the life. He got up at 5am to work out and do all life's admin, then worked 08:30–19:30 every day in finance for £150k/year, and then would spend his evenings working his side hustle business. On weekends he'd do voluntary management work for a charity. He had financial independence, and he was going to retire early. The world was his oyster and he would travel around to every country with a laptop. I'd never left Europe and got very envious of this.

But the sad reality is, he's been a zombie for over a decade now. He never got more than 5 hours sleep. He never ate healthy food. He didn't have a romantic relationship and never found time for friends. And he was always cutting costs to save "for retirement," he'd have cheaper long flights with many changes and dump his bag at a hostel before getting to work on zero sleep. He never got to explore the places he was in, it was always just another office.

I'd only see him once every three months or so, even when he was living in his house 20 mins walk away from me. And whenever I saw him, he'd be too exhausted to do any activities. We'd just go to the pub while he switched off after an hour. His biggest regret was taking up smoking, which he did to network with managers on smoke breaks at a previous job, and then found impossible to quit.

My last conversation with him was about work. I said that I get an extra five days annual leave because I've worked here five years now. He said it's not worth it, I'd be better off switching jobs to get a pay rise and then take unpaid time off to return to my previous salary… I'm going to take those five days to spend with my family and think about any good times I had with my old friend.

I found about his death when the hospital called me. He kept my phone number in his wallet as an emergency contact. I didn't know this until I got that call, I didn't realise I was the closest person he had in this world. To me, he felt like a distant friend who I only got to hang out with a few times a year.

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“If you have time to watch Netflix you have time for a side hustle” my side hustle is relaxing so that my body and brain can heal from by this nose-to-the-grindstone bullshit. I refuse to feel guilty for being a human with the need to relax sometimes. my side hustle is no.

#hustle culture #antiwork #image transcript

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same 😑

#ex christian #same #all of that except the rib thing #indoctrination is powerful #especially when it starts at birth

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Everyone is transitioning and everyone is on hormones.

And I don't mean that like you might say "man, everyone on tumblr is trans!" where you really mean "it seems there are a lot of trans people on tumblr".

Literally. Everyone is on hormones. Some people just get them for free from their bodies, and don't need pills or patches or creams or injections.

And everyone is transitioning: you're aging. Your body isn't frozen in time from the moment you finish puberty. It will change, it is changing.

And that's important perspective to keep, I think, because you own your body. It is yours. You get to decide if it transitions into one thing or another. One of those ways may be "natural" and easier, but it doesn't mean it's the only option.

Because it's too common to imagine this as nothing vs something. Like, you do nothing and your body doesn't change, or you do something (HRT) and it changes your body. And I think that framing is very wrong and contributes to reluctance, both internalized ("do I really want to change my body?") and external ("are you really sure you want to do this to your body?").

Because it's happening either way. Your body is changing. It will keep changing. You can adjust where it's going but you can't stop it, and it will happen even if you do nothing.

You're behind the steering wheel and the car is already in motion. You can decide to turn left or right, but whether you do or don't, the car is still going to go somewhere. That's not optional. And if you don't like where it's headed, you can adjust your course. But you're still going.

Transition is just a part of human life. You're going through it no matter what, and one option for transition being the easy one doesn't mean it's the best or only option, and it doesn't mean another option is fundamentally different or worse or strange.

If you're in your 20s, you are transitioning into your 30s. You can do that with one set of hormones or another. But you have to transition: that's just how your body does.

So don't look at it as taking the big step to Do Something vs Do Nothing. You've got options, and one of them has a free coupon. Decide which option you want, because you have to choose.

#hormones

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My friend explained the spoon theory to our DM and he was like “ohhh so it’s like when you’re out of spell slots and you need to take a long rest to regain them all” and now I keep thinking of myself as being out of spell slots instead of out of spoons

#actually autistic #spoons #spell slots

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Even less should they be okay with a system that understaffs a bakery, then forces the overworked employee to make extra goods SPECIFICALLY to throw them away.

Food scarcity is a construct we need to destroy.

#fuck Hornbacher's #and every other company that does this #And then they had the gall to be angry about the overtime. #the baked goods weren't donated or anything #they went straight to the dumpster #all that food #all that work #all that waste #I gather Hornbacher's gets a pretty tempting tax break on shrinkage—i.e. wasted food. #Infuriating.

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