I've been building trainings on social media safety and neurodivergence lately, and for a long time it felt like I was a dog chasing cars- the tech, platforms, and problems were moving so fast. But in my research of successful interventions, the #1 skill around online safety was communication.

At the UW Autism Gala, love this event!

Welp, we have a new IACC (Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee), the US government’s advisory panel for autism issues. It is entirely planted with worst case pseudosciencers who will “Fight Against Autism”—and ignore autistic rights and needs. Just awful news. www.hhs.gov/press-room/h...

I recently had a chat with some of the people who were doing the 'Compassion' as the eighth dimension of ABA work. I argued that what was being described was neurotypical compassion, and autistics experienced and expressed compassion differently. No autistics had been consulted on this research.

A lot of the debate around screentime and kids is paper thin analyses and alarmist nonsense. It's important to look at *what* kids are doing, and *why.* Taking things away robs kids of an opportunity to teach moderation and self agency. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...

If you are at Orcacon and wanna talk shop about applied RPGs, hmu, ill be around today and tomorrow, and doing a talk on accessibility and RPGs on Saturday

Going to be at a panel on disability, accessibility and tabletop gaming at Orcacon this weekend, Sunday at noon! I'll be speaking about the D&D #autism groups I've been running for 12 years, and how to create an inclusive table culture that normalizes neurodivergence. Find me if you wanna talk shop!

Aspiring Youth sign ups are open for Winter! If you know families in King County who are looking for ND social groups for their kids ages 8-26, we still have openings. One I'm excited about piloting is DM Academy, which is both a D&D group AND a leadership course. aspiringyouth.net/social-skill...

Lotta people talking about how much 2026 is gonna suck. I'm not hearing much on what they're planning on doing to try to make it suck less. Commit to reasonable action, find out ways to help locally, and bring others into the fold. It is gonna suck, how much it's gonna suck is up to all of us.

As part of my role, I'm building an autism resource guide, and it's surreal seeing a lot of my stuff (as well as my advocacy friend's stuff) come up in places I wasn't expecting to see it in. Feels like I've made it.

"Oh yeah we'll release the Epstein files!" The released files:

Presenting at a Pierce County Council special study session as co-chair of the Pierce County Accessible Community Advisory Committee.

My good pal @rollforkindness.bsky.social showed me this beautiful essay.

Something I've been looking at a lot recently is screentime use and neurodivergence, and how to build agency around how they engage with screens to be beneficial. A big problem is that the online ecosystem has grown more toxic and harmful. Interesting study here- publications.aap.org/pediatrics/a...

For #worldkindness day I should probably plug rollforkindness.com, my site on how to use tabletop gaming to teach not just social skills, but the skill of kindness.

A while back one of the students in my D&D autism group called me 'The most reasonable adult' she knew, and it was sad. That means that in that student's life, there were a LOT of unreasonable adults. And I've seen it, autistics are CONSTANTLY dealing with adults who are arbitrarily unreasonable.

I wonder if there's been any studies looking at autistic kids who love to line up and organize their toys, and autistic adults who love playing solitaire. Just putting things in very nice, orderly stacks is fun.

"Autism and disability aren’t insults. They’re realities. They’re languages of access, of shared experience, of boundaries learned the hard way. ... Because every time we distance ourselves from disability, we reinforce the very structure that made distance necessary in the first place.

Supporting youth mental health services at the Rise with Ryther luncheon. Glad to be doing good with this org.

Tacoma No Kings

“This is absolutely a violation of federal law.” For @motherjones.com, I reported about how reduction-in-forces in the Office of Special Education Programs will lead to disabled kids' needs not being met, as funding may not be distributed. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

And... I've been hired on as Aspiring Youth's Advocacy and Outreach specialist. Very excited to be doing a lot more TTRPG, gaming, and autism work, as this is absolutely my passion.

In 2010, Gordon Freeman came by our PAX Portal 2 booth to help us understand anti-mass. 15 years later, I ran into him again and this time he found his hazmat suit.

I was just laid off due to funding reasons. I was working my dream job at a disability advocacy nonprofit, doing youth advocacy and education. Mr Rogers said, look for the helpers. This administration hurts the helpers.

When I wrote “We’re Not Broken," I barely mentioned Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonsense and mentioned Trump’s past references because I figured it was in the rearview. I was far too naive. Trump's presidency will be the undoing of #Neurodiversity. My latest @msnbc.com www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Check on your autistic friends, we're not ok. The president just trashed all the work the autism community has been doing for acceptance of our uniqueness as genetic (which is well established) and blamed autism on maternal Tylenol use. We've been reduced to another thing to blame moms for.

This disability and criminal justice symposium has somehow turned into an advertisement for copilot, send help

A trend I see in a lot of disability advocacy studies and symposiums is a strong recognition of a need to include more Intellectual/Developmental Disability based accommodation but the ADA doesn't adequately meet those needs. But nobody has any ideas around how to improve I/DD accommodation.

Attending the Washington State Disability Justice Symposium

Anytime I talk to medical researchers, I come away thinking "We're so close to something cool." So many nerds slave away in the dark trying to eradicate disease and nobody will know their names. And it might be completely wiped out.

A few years ago, I published a framework for teaching autistic social advocacy skills, and it got a bit of traction. The goal was teaching alternative social skills that focus on self advocacy and peer accommodation. I just saw a non-autistic offering a paid training with a VERY similar framework.

Just got word that almost a million in funding got cut from WA state nonprofits and disability orgs. This is devastating and will effectively kill these critical services. What is especially sickening is that some of the funding will be given to other states for their programs. This is punishment.

I'm attending a county wide disaster simulation tabletop for disability-based emergency response (ironically it's all on a big screen) and it's interesting how 90% of the issues are transportation related. When planning for a disaster, make sure you focus on transportation backup plans.

Sup PAX

A while back, I was in a LP oneshot, and the organizer made a PC for me who was using the combat wheelchair. I am not a wheelchair user, and while I wasn't able to articulate it at the time, it bothered me a bit because I didn't feel like I could accurately or correctly portray that disability.

I just went on Threads, and what I saw was not quality social media- bad takes that sounded like they were bots talking to each other. FB is nothing but a slop machine and Instagram is an absolute nightmare. If Meta were to introduce these platforms 10 years ago, they'd be laughed off the internet.

As someone who's worked in social services most of my life, it always annoys me when people talk about how much they want to protect children... But dont want to volunteer at youth shelters, work in youth services, or become a foster parent. It never occurs to them.

Recently thought about something that happened a while back- I was on a telehealth FB group, and someone posted screenshots of an autistic guy blowing up on her contact form because she didn't respond in the 24 hour window. The guy was in crisis, and this therapist was ridiculing him on a FB group.

Over the past 25 years, TTRPG spaces have grown more inclusive. If you look at the makeup of gaming spaces 25 years ago vs today, the difference is clear, even if there's still a lot of work to do. What we can not afford to do is move backwards. We need to continue making them even more accepting.

Something that flew under my radar: @joshkovensky.bsky.social reports how the NIH is reviving a project vacuum up information from phone providers, wearable device companies, health insurers, medical records keepers, and government agencies to study autism. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/hhs-has...

One way I like to describe #autism to folks is it being on a different types of frequency, like AM/FM. There's a whole spectrum of being with each, but they're definitely unique ways of existing- that are distinct from one another, but at the same time, able to get on the same frequency more easily.

It makes me genuinely sad that the two societal pathways for 'autistic excellence' appear to either being a savant or high levels of masking. There's tons of autistics out there, doing really great things for their community and the world, but they're often overlooked because they can't mask well.

There was a thread in one of the #autistic online spaces I follow on autistic joy, and it was really interesting. There were the usuals- Things about sensory experiences, being unique, etc- But what struck me was how many were about loving autistic cognition. Autistics love to think about things.

Today I authored a letter about Trump's homelessness EO to our local county council as part of my position as vice chair in our county Accessible communities advisory committee, and it was approved. From what I'm hearing, many local jurisdictions are looking for ammo to fight this EO. Write them.

Saw a post more saying that autistic infodumping was a trauma response to being ignored, etc. That's BS. Not every aspect of #autism needs to be a trauma response. Not everything about autism needs to hurt. And convincing people that their autistic traits are trauma responses is real bad.

This is incredibly bad, and will ramp up into reinstitutionalization, but likely worse. There's existing community based orgs that are chronically underfunded that can provide help, but of course they've been getting their funding cut since the 80s, so.

Washington is facing a massive budget shortfall, which has happened at the worst possible time. I hear the same story from disability service orgs- they have limited funding for this year, next year is bleak. Combine that with the federal cuts and it paints a very dire picture. Here's how to help.🧵

Something that has been really gnawing on me lately, is how conferences that claim to want to be inclusive cost exorbitant amounts. So much in the #autism world is prohibitively expensive, and thus self advocates dont get a voice, and this is how ABA continues to dominate the conversation. Just bad.