Joke or accidentally not editing out all the coping in the draft?

Oh cool, thanks for letting me know! I’m so used to going ‘cool, can’t wear it 🥲’ so it’s awesome your fiancé does clip ons too!

Very beautiful! Makes me wish I could keep up with pierced ears instead of having them grow shut.

Is that its parietal eye visible?? Cool pic!

Do you not wash your hands before touching your face or food? Because that’s literally all you need to do.

Oh, I misunderstood, because of the OP I thought we were talking about the US. I still wouldn’t worry about it, you need bodily fluid contact to transfer it. Monkeypox is more contagious and it never took off.

For transfer exclusively to people who spend extended time on very crowded public transit, maybe, but that describes a very tiny portion of Americans.

Hantavirus is not COVID. Every contagious disease isn’t spread through aerosols. Hantavirus needs close, extended contact to transfer, unlike COVID. You’re not going to get hantavirus from walking into a store.

U.S. Guardian is usually better than the UK one. I go to Assigned Media for my trans related news.

This is interesting for sure, but I think tagging this ‘women’ and ‘men’ is a poor choice. Sexual behavior in amphibians many times less intelligent than humans can’t be extrapolated to people’s sexual behavior.

If there were less false positives, people wouldn’t distrust your diagnosis

Did you come to this conclusion by talking to diagnosed people? Because even in the decades where it was massively under diagnosed, I don’t think there’s any time period I could point to and say ‘oh yeah, nobody questions autism diagnoses because they’re so rare!’ It just changes what they say: ‘oh, are you sure? That’s so rare, it’s probably something else!’

I have experienced both sides of this over the decades, and as far as I’m concerned I’d rather cast too wide a net than too small of one, because at least that way more people that need support get it. Being told you’re making it up sucks ass no matter which direction it’s coming from.

You hear people say the same thing about fake service dogs, but they only ever wind up harassing anyone with a service dog because they think it’s their responsibility to be a disability cop.

I also feel that making me self-diagnose with a disorder would be very useful for keeping me small and powerless

That’s a valid way to feel, but for many people on the spectrum it’s the exact opposite. A diagnosis is an answer for why in NT spaces we often feel constantly misunderstood and out of place, and reassurance that we aren’t the only people like ourselves in the world. It’s also an amazing way to connect with others for tips on how to manage symptoms or other issues; if I wasn’t connected to other autistic people I never would have discovered there are tools to reduce my sensory problems, or found the ability to advocate for myself and what I need rather than shutting up and feeling inadequate for needing help.

Perfectly fine statement to make in a vacuum, but in the real world there are massive hurdles and downsides to getting diagnosed. I’ve interacted with more than one psych who has basically said that of those who have sought an adult diagnosis with him, they’re rarely wrong. Any image you have in your mind of hordes of neurotypical people making up that they’re autistic is based on prejudice, not reality.

There’s also not a single way to determine if someone is on the spectrum; a psych can run a test wrong or make wrong judgements, and a person doesn’t need a degree to know they have sensory meltdowns or can’t keep up socially to save their life. The idea that doctors are the only ones with insight into health (ESPECIALLY mental health) is something best left in the first half of the 20th century.

Almost as sad as shuttle bat 2009 😔

Shoutout to Miniminuteman/Milo Rossi, he’s an archaeologist and does a lot of debunking of ancient aliens-esque conspiracy theories, collaborative videos with other archaeologists about their work, and cool educational videos about things I’d never heard of before, like The Great Raft: a unique ecosystem made up of a log-jammed river that existed for ~600 years and supported multiple indigenous societies.

The regime cannot fail, it can only be failed. Those scientists were supposed to do their job of finding evidence for whatever possibly non-metaphorical bug RFK Jr has up his ass on a given day. 🙄

I see and hear about internet rage bait MAGA freaks like this trying to get reactions in public where I live (not WeHo but in LA), and yes as a trans person it’s as nightmarish as it sounds wondering if I’m going to run into them just going to the post office. They come on campus and have doxxed students, too, which is completely tolerated. Super contributes to my mental health knowing there are jackals out there looking to doxx and film me and my friends for content on our worst days.

Ah yes, the king’s water.

Just like real fairies!

If it gives you a yardstick to measure by, they spent quite a while insisting ICE List was actually a honeypot and trying to scare the shit out of anyone that has visited the site. This was after mainstream news was already reporting on it.