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Every month is autism month for me!

[ID: A comic titled "April is Autism Acceptance Month!"

The narrator, a light skinned person with brown hair, says "You might see some places "lighting it up blue" or sharing puzzle piece imagery this month, but a lot of autistic people prefer to avoid that due to its association with Autism Speaks." Within the speech bubble is a blue puzzle piece with a red cross next to it. The narrator continues, "Autism Speaks sees autism as a disease that needs to be cured and eradicated, which it isn't. So to avoid that, we generally prefer RED instead!" The words "red instead" are shown on the narrator's shirt.

The narrator continues, "or the golden infinity symbol: (it's gold because au is the symbol for gold in the periodic table." There are illustrations of a gold infinity symbol and the periodic table symbol for gold, made to say "autism", next to the text.

Text continues "Not every autistic person celebrates autism acceptance month which is fine! It's optional :)

At the bottom, the narrator wears a red shirt with the gold infinity symbol on it and says "whether you celebrate or not, I hope you have a lovely month." End ID]

Thank you @teatual for the description!

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Reminder that Auti$m $peak$ is an anti-autistic hate group that has zero autistic people on its board, and which focuses on the "burden" we present, and that the puzzle piece and "light it up blue" campaing are from them.

If you're looking for colors or symbols to show acceptance and support for us, please use the ones we, the autistic community, have chosen: Gold (because the chemical symbol of gold is Au), and the infinity symbol.

Thank you.

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in recognition of World Down Syndrome Day on March 21

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is google insane or did it forget about the legal right to ablocking lol. are they trying to challenge the EU? bc they're not going to win that one. europe doesnt think this shit is cute

ive been flicking settings and programs on and off and updating drivers and shit trying to get youtube to load faster but it's being artificially throttled by google bc im using firefox

like. did they forget what antitrust suits are

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Guys I'm really asking you to take a breath before you reblog something.

I keep seeing posts that are sourced purely from images with no link back to the source. Images are trivially easy to fake - are you sure it's not propaganda?

I keep seeing posts that come from sources that aren't journalistic organizations. We've just gone through a whole blow-up about James Somerton and how easy it is as a "creator" or "blogger" to, to put this kindly, be cavalier with sourcing/verifying information. Please take a moment to verify the facts with some sort of ethical reporting organization before you rebagel it.

There are a lot of stories that don't get picked up by news organizations, or if they do, details don't get reported. And so it's really easy to just assume that's why you haven't heard about a specific thing. But that's a really easy loophole for bad actors to spread outright misinformation or something seasoned with the truth.

There's a lot of bad shit happening right now, and it's only going to get worse as the world destabilizes under climate catastrophe. When so much is already being asked of all of us, it's one more thing to do - but it's also a form of harm reduction.

Please think about it.

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happy normal fuckin day to everyone who doesnt celebrate christmas or rly any holidays today n tomorrow. hope you have an average day. hope its chill like any other

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One thing I noticed talking about Linux and free software is that a lot of people seem afraid of learning things about technology. I constantly read things like "I hate windows, but switching to linux would mean learning a new OS, and you have to be some super-smart programmer-hacker to do that." Or even: "Switching to firefox would mean switching browsers and I don't know how"

And that is precisely the attitude tech companies like Microsoft and Apple try to instill in their users in order to control them. They create these simple and “friendly” user interfaces for their products, but these hide information. From their OS being pre-installed to their settings apps, they keep people from learning things about how their computer works, and letting the companies make the decisions for their users.

I think people are underestimating themselves and overestimating how hard it is to learn new things are. It is like Windows/Macos have taught them some kind of technological learned helplessness. Not knowing how computers work and being afraid to learn how is how companies like Microsoft controls you, and justifies that control.

For example, people hate the forced and automatic system updates on Windows. And Microsoft justifies it as necessary because some people don’t know that their computer needs security updates and therefore don’t update, so they have to force the updates on them. That’s definitely true, and Microsoft’s tech support people is definitely very aware of that but it is a operating system that presumes that the user is incompetent and therefore shouldn’t control their own computer. And of course Microsoft abuses that power to force privacy-invading features on their users. Windows updates are also badly designed in comparison, no Linux distro I’ve used required the update program to hijack the entire computer, preventing the user from doing other things, but Windows does.

This is the dark side of “user-friendly” design. By requiring zero knowledge and zero responsibility for the user, they also take control away from the user. User-friendly graphical user interfaces (GUI) can also hide the inner workings of a system in comparison to the command line, which enables more precise control of your computer and give you more knowledge about what it is doing.

Even GUIs are not all made equal in regards to this, as the comparison between the Windows Control panel and their newer Settings app demonstrates. As I complained about before, Windows have hidden away the powerful, but complex Control Panel in favor of the slicker-looking but simplified and less powerful Settings app for over a decade now.

Of course this is a sliding scale, and there is a sensible middle-ground between using the command line for everything and user-friendly design masking taking control away from the end user.

There are Linux distros like Linux Mint and MX Linux who have created their own GUI apps for tasks that would otherwise use the command line, without taking control away from the user. This is mainly because they are open source non-profit community-driven distros, instead of being proprietary OSes made by profit-driven megacorps.

Still, giving that control to the user presumes some knowledge and responsibility on part of the user. To return to the update example, by default both Mint and MX will search and notify you of available updates, but you will have to take the decision to download and install them. Automatic updates are available in both cases, but it’s opt-in, you have to enable that option yourself. And that approach presumes that you know that you should update your system to plug security holes, something not all people do. It gives you control because it presumes you have knowledge and can take responsibility for those decisions.

All this also applies to the underlying fact that practically all pre-built computers nowadays have an operating system pre-installed. Few people install an OS themselves nowadays, instead they use whatever came with the computer. It’s usually either Windows or MacOS for desktops/laptops, and Android/IOS for smartphones (which are also a type of computer).

Now all this is very convenient and user-friendly, since it means you don’t have to learn how to install your own operating system. The OEM takes care of that for you. But again, this is a convenience that takes choice away from you. If you don’t learn how to install your own OS, you are stuck with whatever that is on the computer you bought. It’s probably precisely this step that scares people away from Linux, few people have installed even Windows, and installing your own OS seems impossibly scary. But again, learning is the only way to take back control. If you learn how to install an OS off an USB stick, you now have choices in what OS to use. (Sidenote: the hard part IMO is not the actual install process, but fiddling with the BIOS so it will actually boot from the distro on the USB stick. This old comic strip illustrates this very well).

That’s how life is in general, not just computers. Having control over your life means making decisions based on your own judgment. And to make sensible, rational decisions, you have to learn things, acquire knowledge.

The only other alternative is letting others take those decisions for you. You don’t have to learn anything, but you have no control. And in the tech world, that means big corporations like Microsoft, Google and Apple will make those decisions, and they are motivated by their own profits, not your well-being.

Computers have only become more and more capable and more important in our lives, and that can enable wonderful things. But it also means more power to the tech companies, more power over our lives. And the only way to resist that is to learn about computers, to enable us to make our own decisions about how we use technology.

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in b4 95% of all websites in june 2024 announce that "for security" they will only work with browsers that use manifest v3

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Firefox v120!

New copy link without site tracking feature: removes the tracking at the end of urls usually that end with "?=[long ass string of numbers or info on your browser or how you clikced the link]" previously an optional feature of ublock origin to remove it as you go to sites, but now you can also copy links as well

New "Tell websites not to sell or share my data" option in privacy settings. Websites have no obligation to do this, except under GDPR which is most sites. adds a bit to your fingerprintability, however if everyone turns this on it will work better for everyone.

Firefox is rolling-out Cookie Banner Blocker by default in private windows for users in Germany during the coming weeks. Firefox will now auto-refuse cookies and dismiss annoying cookie banners for supported sites.

you can set "cookiebanners.service.mode" to 2 to automatically refuse cookies and have them stop asking you about it. While it's also an optional feature of ublock origin, this might work better

Firefox has enabled URL Tracking Protection by default in private windows for all users in Germany. Firefox will remove non-essential URL query parameters that are often used to track users across the web.

Not sure how to turn this on in settings (this is also an optional ublock feature, these don't hurt to stack) but once again removes the tracking at the end of urls telling you how the link was shared and how you got there

Firefox cares about your privacy and is making the internet a safer place from corporations. Do your part and download it today

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Have you considered a voluntary subscription for the site as a whole? It's the last social media site standing for me, I wouldn't mind paying per year for it.

Yes! We launched the Supporter badge which is 29.99/yr or 2.99/mo. You can also subscribe to ad-free which is a similar price. Subscribing, and encouraging as many people to also subscribe is the best way to support Tumblr. If you do it on the web we pay less to Apple/Google. Out of the 11.5M monthly active users of Tumblr, only about 27k have subscribed, or about 0.2%. If that were 10 or 20% we could run the site forever.

#honestly debating buying ad free now that I have a job

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“That’s right…. my son’s paediatrician says that my autistic way of parenting supports my son too well for him to be traumatised enough for a diagnosis, so we should let school traumatise him and come back later…

…Which brings me to thinking about how we identify autism in the children who are now being raised by autistic parents in a respectful and supportive way. The children who have experienced acceptance of their autistic neurology from birth and who have never been exposed to harmful therapies.

Autistic children raised by accepting parents, often autistic themselves.”

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PSA: Google and Autism Speaks are collaborating to create a genomic database on autism.

Yes, you read that right.

On the eve of Autism Acceptance Month, Google, the most widely used search engine, is teaming up with Autism Speaks to collect and send data to researchers in order to essentially “eliminate” autism. I don’t think I can understate how eugenicist this is. It is genocide by definition.

It is imperative that we speak up about this. Every autistic person (including myself) know that Autism Speaks is a hate group in all but name.

There’s not much to say about this except it is VERY wrong.

Nothing about us without us. Listen to autistic people.

(autistic people, feel free to add. allistics are encouraged to reblog but don’t be clowns)

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This is why it is so important to be critical and double check everything you generate using image generators and text-based AI.

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Wizards of the Coast has unfortunately realized their target demographic is millennial trans women and they’re intent on bleeding us dry

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"Autism and most mental health disorders present differently in Black women…Because autism is looked at through such a White and male lens, people don’t recognize similar behaviors with traditionally feminine or Black interests."

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This is why it is so important to be critical and double check everything you generate using image generators and text-based AI.