I can never vet mine to balance, I can’t line up my phones centre of gravity because the wall is always in the way.

Yeah, seems like an exciting way to kill myself. Better than my current life plans so why not? No one said I had to survive in the past, just visit.

Accessibility.

We will never get rid of the analogue clocks from our school, we’re an adult education and alternative model highschool qualifications centre.

We primarily teach adults with no to low English, adults and teens with disabilities, and adults and teens refered via corrections services.

There is a significant level of illiteracy within numeracy, and for some of our students, it’s not a failing of the education system, it’s just a fact of life given their specific circumstances (eg, acquired brain injuries are common among our students)

Some students can learn to tell time on an analogue clock even if they didn’t know before.

But even my students who will never in their life be able to fully and independently remember and recall their numbers can tell the time with an analogue clock.

I tell my students “we will take lunch at 12pm, so if you look at the clock and the arms look like this /imitates a clock/ we will go to lunch”

And now I avoid 40 questions of “when’s lunch?” because you don’t need to tell time to see time with an analogue clock, they can physically watch the hands move, getting closer to the shape they recognise as lunch time.

And my other students can just read the time, from the clock, and not feel infantalised by having a disability friendly task clock like they’ve done at other centres I work at - they’ve had a digital clock for students who can tell time, and a task clock as the accessible clock. But a well designed face on an analogue clock can do both.

I myself have time blindness due to a neurological/CRD issue, so analogue clocks, and analogue timers are an accessibility tool for me as well, as the teacher.

When I was 8, my 4 year old brother, 40 year old father, and 35 year old uncle whom I lived with all went to get screened for autism after my brother’s pre-school recommended it.

3/4 of us walked out with autism diagnoses.

I was given the official psychiatric assessment that I had “learned and developed autistic traits and mannerisms due to growing up in a household with no neurotypical influence” and the advice was that I would grow out of it once I made enough “normal” friends at school.

My brother started occupational therapy and other programs, and at each one, the practitioner would recommend to my dad that I join too to “help her brother feel safe and comfortable” and I would litteraly participate in the Autism therapy programs with my autistic brother.

Over my years at school, I picked up official diagnoses for dyscalculia and dyspraxia and that explained a few of the struggles I was having. The autism OT I was already doing covered support for my learning disabilities so nothing except the paperwork changed.

And sure enough, I made neurotypical friends at school, and a lot of the autistic-like traits I exhibited as a kid were no longer apparent in my behaviour.

I had a lot of mental health issues as a teenager and young adult. But what millennial isn’t depressed and anxious? I was growing up with 3 autistic men as a teenage girl, I rationalised that my dysfunctional emotional state was justified by my life circumstances. I was a dramatic teen.

Hearing and visual impairment, and other physical health issues with muscle tone, and struggles to heal due to poor proprioception that got worse in my 30s somehow lead to a re-assesment for autism as an adult.

Big fucking suprise. I’m autistic. Always have been.

Sometimes health professionals don’t get the full picture. They’re human.

My presentation is drastically different from my male family members, and I was parentified by my fathers autism from a young age - I remember being as young as 10 and my dad saw my ability to blend and socialise, he’d send me into stores or get me to make phone calls for him if he was having anxiety over it. This was not something that was discussed at the time of my first assessment.

My special interest was, and still is, anthropology. I maintain that loving the study of humanity and human culture means I’ve been able to intellectualise my way through social situations that neurotypicals feel their way through on instinct. I suspect I’ve done this from a young age, and that this further muddied the waters for that psychiatrist who assessed me when I was 12.

If I’d gotten reassessed in my later teens, or early 20s, I’m certain the result of the assessment would have been different then to, even with the same psychiatrist. You get 4 hours with a perfect stranger,just on some random day, and they’re supposed to make an assessment on your entire life?

We trusted their assessment, which is why I fumbled through life for 20+ years under the assumption I could learn my way out of feeling autistic.

Trust your healthcare professionals, but remember that they’re human, and second opinions are important, especially if you’re struggling with the treatment plan, or lack thereof, from the first doctor.

I completely agree with that perspective.

Personally I would add to this that for individuals who are unable to mask, and who’s struggle to mask is so to speak, “visible” to others, while they are still subjected to all of the ableiem that comes with being neurodivergent, it’s almost like their inability to mask becomes a punchline for neurotypicals. I think some NTs use the joke as a way of trying to relieve the pressure to mask thinking they’re being accommodating, while still addressing the disabled elephant in the room. The end result is that the person’s lack of masking capacity is mistakenly correlated to their entire set of abilities - people assume they’re incapable of everything. It’s pretty dehumanising and infantalizing, and puts so many limitations on the opportunities available for folk who can’t mask.

And on the other side of that coin, people who have the ability to mask really well are expected to do it flawlessly 24/7, and failing to do so isn’t a sign that having ADHD can be disabling, no, for people who can mask, not masking 24/7 is apparently a moral failing. Which is not the kind of social expectation you want on someone who’s condition predisposes them to anxiety inducing perfectionism, and leads to this expectation also being internalised.

Which occurs for both types of people - internalising the expectations. if society treats you as useless, you start to feel useless, until you fall into a pit. if society expects you to always be performing at 110%, you begin to feel like a failure if you output anything less than 109% until you burn out and fall in the same pit.

(because I don’t think neurotypical people realise that masking is operating at >100%, it’s an additional request on our mind and body, it’s an additional labour, it’s not sustainable long term. There really is the misconception that we can choose to turn it on and off at no personal cost to us.)

No but you do say “I’m diabetic” which uses diabetes as sort of identity within the sentence structure.

Similarly “I’m a cancer survivor” and “I’m a cancer patient” are ways someone with cancer could structure a sentence to give weight to the way cancer and the experiences of cancer fundamentally change this person’s personality and identity.

While “I am ADHD” isn’t perfect, it’s a very new use of language to try and create an identity form, and it will continue to evolve and sound more natural.

Personally I still find myself saying “I’m autistic and I have ADHD” in most situations, but if I know I won’t have to explain the term too much, I do prefer “I’m AuDHD”, because it’s an identity first phrase, and it feels as natural as “I’m autistic” or “I’m diabetic”.

But the difference grammatically between “I’m autistic” and “I’m ADHD” is minimal, yet I agree one sounds fine and the other just sounds stupid. And other than exposure, I can’t place my finger on why.

That’s alright, there will only be a handful of gen alpha even eligible to vote in a 2029 election, since they were born 2010-not even born yet

I’m pretty sure this is the actual etymology of news.

People asking each other “what new things?” becomes “what news”, as well as usage like “that information is new to me” becoming “that is news to me”

The way alot, aswell and noone are combining is expected given how many other words we don’t bat an eye at went the same way. “another” is the perfect example, it’s just “an other” combined.

It’s sort of the reverse of what happened to words like apron and newt.

The division and bracketing of phrases changes over time.

“An apron” is the modern usage of the word “napron”, and a newt was originally called an eute. The grammatical need for “a” and/or “an” resulted in the root word being rebracketed and changed.

orientated

Is this common in American English? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word oriented double handled like that. Irregardless, it slew me

It’s so baffling because this is really one of the only things he has an issue with. Other than my passport, he doesn’t talk or act like he has any major issues with the government as a process.

I will say, I’m not too worried that his anti-gov opinions will result in great levels of harm. My country had had a conservative party in power for some time now. I also hate the current government. My dad marches at the fortnightly pro-palestine rally in our city, and he attends antifa and pro queer events with me and my mum. Last year he phoned me to get information about the socialist party because after years of voting for the labour/workers party he’s going harder left. He values my political opinion. He’s socially progressive (despite having the wrong vocabulary to express his opinions, nothing funnier than an old bloke saying “what is everyone’s problem with fags reading books to kids!? It’s so wholesome”)

And I would say he’s masking some of deep rooted misogyny or something and just wants to prevent his female kid from accessing basic government services.

But he’s got no issues with women and non men having passports, and in every other aspect of my life he is supportive and wants me to succeed…he also wants me to travel, he keeps saying he’ll pay for my holiday, but I tell him I don’t need money, just his birth certificate, and he continues to say “no you don’t need that, you just need your birth certificate”

I’ve taken him to the passport office with me and had the admin worker tell him to how face he needs to give me his birth certificate, and he told her “no, that’s unnecessary” and then he walked out and waited for me in the car.

It all started in the last 5 years, in 2019. In my 20s, he had no issues whatsoever with anything I did, I wasn’t in a financial position to travel so I never looked into getting a passport till I was almost 30, and suddenly dad didn’t want the government in his business but only in the context of me requiring to prove that he’s my parent.

It’s not even like I can write him off as senile.

This is very true, though I don’t really care how the family gets destroyed, I don’t want to have a destroyed family at this point in my life right now because I need their support in other ways, so if I can avoid pulling the pin on a series of events I know my father will choose to react poorly to, I want to save myself that stress.

I know my mental health could not handle a family break down right now.

That would be breaking and entering, and theft, and I also can’t be certain he even has a copy at his house, I also need to get it witnessed and notorised for my application, which is harder to do stealthily with my disabilities.

I do not want to break the law in order to get a passport of the country I’m a citizen of.

My mother and he are long divorced.

I’m trying to figure out what we’re noticing at all.

Can I not see the problem because I’m too British?

My dad and my brother both have passports and travel regularly.

I can’t get a passport because my dad refuses to give me legal access to his birth certificate to prove that one of my parents was a citizen when I was born.

Why? Because according to the him, the government shouldn’t need that information from our family, so he refuses on principal.

I can’t get a passport without that document.

I can try and take my dad to small claims court, but I don’t have the money for that, my relationship with my dad is civil and functional aside from this one issue, and getting lawyers involved will destroy the family, all I want is a passport.

He needs a psychiatrist, not a lawyer. Because he makes no sense.

There isn’t really enough advice or support out there for children of whack job idiots.

Yes and no, if you scambait hard enough your number can eventually be added to a blacklist for larger scam organisations that bought your data for use in multiple scam attempts.

In my experience that has really cut down on the calls.

In 2020 the department of human services accidentally posted my personal phone number on a list of support services for people experiencing housing or food insecurity. This number was then circulated by every major news source in my state. I couldn’t change my number at the time because I had no legal ID (still don’t… Can’t figure out how to get ID without ID, but I have a new number now at least) at first I didn’t really notice the ratio of spam calls to genuine calls for the wrong number (ie, people calling my number because they needed housing/food) . I just remember getting 40+ calls a day at many stages.

But as the actual number for the food relief service was circulated, I eventually stopped getting genuine calls and I was getting 3-5 scam calls every single day.

After a year of scam baiting, I was getting 2 a week.

Now, I’ll do something online that requires sharing my current number, within a few hours I get a scam call because my data has been sold, but I bait the heck out of that first call and I usually don’t receive any further calls which suggest my number was blacklisted by a larger scam organisation, and I won’t be hassled until my data is sold again as a new item.

It’s hard to avoid getting your number on scam lists when the largest health insurance company, and the second largest telecommunications company in my country both had major data breaches where millions of customers identifying information was accessed and sold to scammers…

Okay, you do you.

Buy physical media from independent production companies. Pirate whatever Disney, Netflix and Amazon are cranking out.

Australian Magpies aren’t corvids, they’re butcherbirds, unrelated to the European magpie.

They’re cute, but they’re definitely dicks.

In Australia we call this “skimpflation” because they aren’t shrinking the final product, they’re skimping on ingredients to lower production costs.

It’s the bane of my existence because brands I know and love will change their ingredients without warning and without changing anything on the packaging (sometimes not even changing the ingredients list! If the ingredients list has always just said “starch” they don’t have to change anything going from arrowroot starch to cheaper potato starch)

I have allergies and I’ve bought two boxes of the same product at the same time, and had an allergic reaction to one, but not the other.

I used to always blame it on my housemates not washing the cooking utensils properly, but I now use separate cooking equipment and I clean down the kitchen before I start and cook at odd times so I’m the only one using the kitchen.

I’ve started emailing companies after my allergic reactions to determine if they have changed an ingredient, and 90% of the time they confirm they have changed the ingredients. Usually they put some PR spin on it about the new ingredient being more allergy friendly or sustainable (they don’t clarify “environmentally” so I assume they mean “financially sustainable for the profits of our company”)