Meta gaming (n): the love of the game

*clears throat* it’s not vaccines it’s not Tylenol it’s not circumcisions it’s not bubble butt it’s not circumcisions it’s not Tylenol it’s not vaccines & it’s not a fucking problem Autistic people oppose cure, condemn it as eugenic rhetoric & that should be the end of the conversation the end!

Do we think jobs will be more likely to hire me if I dye my hair half green and half blond again?

Time is liminal and so are my thoughts in my brain: Just wrote the date as next year (12/26/26). In my defense, the last two days have felt like three years.

"Kids these days can't stand not being on their phones" —boomer and gen x types who feel entitled to be entertained 24/7 and look at their phones the second you stop paying attention to them and tune out the entire world to do it

YES. Every time we are expected to say “AI has SOME good uses”, even though the kind currently discussed (the slop producing kind) is not the same thing as the “good at spotting statistical anomalies” kind, and that disingenuous bullshit is to try to make people shut up about the slop engines!

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Guess I'll post this again

"Mild" autism does not exist: "No one I know lives the life I live outside of work in order to cope with the demands of the job, and yet it seems that, surrounded by health professionals, not one of them knows what autism looks like outside of Rain Man." autistwriter.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/b...

Also on "well isn't *spell checking* AI???" smug arguments: Every spell checker on every software I use to write has gotten worse and stupid as more and more ML features have been added. It literally cannot do better than a simple strict check for words not in a dictionary.

You cannot "have" neurodivergence. One person alone cannot be neurodiverse. Neurodivergent is not a synonym or more polite way of saying autistic. Every person in the world has a neurotype, a way that their brain works. Add many neurotypes together and you have a diversity of them. Neurodiversity.

Today's rant from your favorite grad student: "Exclude" and "disclude" (or "uninclude") need to be two different words. There are two ways somebody can be not included: passively, by not being invited into the group, and actively, by being kicked out. We need a word for each.

This checks out to me. There's a certain kind of person who, when you honestly (and seemingly fairly) evaluate your own ability at something, they will tell you to stop being so negative about yourself for acknowledging you have room to grow EVEN IF you said you're good, too. It pisses me off.

I wish Greg Landsman a very "may your hot coffee be cold and your cold coffee be hot"

The PhD experience

Lifesaving research: gutted. Vaccines: restricted. Science: ignored. Enough is enough. RFK Jr. must be removed from office.

I'm getting over a cold, where is my government-mandated overnight sex change?

W o k e f o n t

The fact of the matter is that while I do not believe "the Internet" deserves to be capitalized in the sense that it provides agency to software through proper naming, I refuse to lowercase it because I think it makes me look cooler not to. You will NEVER see me writing "Web site," however.

Your life is shitty because of Ronald Reagan and your parents. Not trans people. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

This holiday season, In case you were not aware; tulips, lillies, cyclamen, holly, mistletoe and poinsettia are toxic to cats and dogs; lilies and cyclamen are especially deadly for cats. Please be advised, I do not want anyone to lose a beloved pet just because they werent warned!

And what autistic adults are receiving a formal diagnosis without first self-diagnosing? It's not like we go to the doctor and they notice traits and refer us for a neuropsych eval. The only difference between me with my official dx and a self-dx autistic is that I found an assessor and had money.

🎶 Well, you’re in your little room / and you’re working on something good / But if it’s really good / you’re gonna need a bigger room 🎶

If there is an accommodation so desirable that a problematic number of people are “faking” disability (doubt!!) to access it, that shows it’s an accommodation that could have wide social benefit is implemented in abundance. This is often the case with accommodations generally.

There is a very specific dysphoria I experience as trans masc person almost exclusively read as a cis woman that happens when bands at live shows ask "where are all the ladies" and then play my fav song of theirs. I like the heavy shit I swear!! It's just the one ballad (and the other ballad and)

TDWP is eternal

Historian of eugenics here. I don't normally like to retweet bad arguments, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of eugenics, I think it's important to point out. I don't have time to debunk all of the ways this is inaccurate, but I'll highlight a few things and then recommend some books🧵

The fear of someone's life being made moderately easier by accident has prevented us from making a lot of peoples lives livable on purpose.

The 5 best artists whose shows I've been to (yes this is a slightly different prompt): Trivium Gojira KoRn Beartooth Foxy Shazam and honorable mention to the 🐐 Jack White who is hard to rank against otherwise mostly metal artists

If I can be interviewed by a whole ass team of people, why can't I assemble a team of people on my side answering questions and talking about how great I am???

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas (or really New Years) is a weird liminal space where other people give up the ruse of pretending like linear, objective time exists. Did you remember to take you meds today? Drink water? Unclench your muscles and stretch if possible?

If I were designing a language from scratch, every verb would be regular and take on a one syllable (or equivalent) ending for each tense and mood that stack: -present (snow) -progressive (snowing) -past (snowed) -progressive past (snoweding) -imperfect progressive past (snowinged)

👀 Would anybody read it if I provided feedback on this paper as though I were going to grade it? Or would that just be a vanity project for me?

Foxy. Fucking. Shazam. 💜📦🪄⭐💜

An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.

Any member of the House is welcome to file one of ours immediately. Article of Impeachment for Tyranny: citizensimpeachment.com/impeachmenta... Article of Impeachment for Treason: citizensimpeachment.com/article-of-i...

stop using AI to illustrate how bad it is stop using AI to illustrate how bad it is stop using AI to illustrate how bad it is stop using AI to illustrate how bad it is

This. Political reporters as a group (honorable exceptions, etc.) know nothing about science—how it's done and especially, how to read such results. They are thus patsies for RFK Jr. & anti-vax grifters more generally. Used to treating quotes as facts, they become conduits for unexamined bullshit.

Do I think Satan has some good ideas? Yes. But do I “worship” him? Yes

WOW! Autism Society of America, The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, the Autism Science Foundation, the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network and Autism Speaks put out a statement denouncing the CDC changing its website on vaccines autisticadvocacy.org/2025/11/lead...

The President of the United States should not be president of the United States.

A real Congress would impeach.

I think my biggest problem with the "vaccines cause autism" bullshit is that, even assuming they did (they don't, actually), neurodiversity is...good? "Oh no, instead of polio and measles, people are cool and have new and different ways of thinking about things" is, uh, a really weird flex

happy pride month!

It’s not vaccines It’s not Tylenol It’s not circumcisions It’s not Tylenol It’s not vaccines & it’s also not a fucking problem to be eradicated! Autism is a natural way of being We don’t need a cure The only “cure” is love Unconditional Accommodation Acceptance Autism is not a problem to solve

"Look at this weird shit that the weird shit people made, that I'm now spraying all over your timeline, it's weird shit, right?" This is not as engaging to your followers as you think it is, neither will it make you feel better.

The second I become a middle aged person who answers the phone while I'm watching TV and scream into the phone so that *I* can hear the person I'm talking to better instead of turning the already loud TV down, please publicly shame me until I realize the error of my ways

Today's hot take: Getting a Bachelor's in 3 years is a bad idea, and getting a BA+MA in 5 is even worse. Learning takes time and your degree should, too!