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.

Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.

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.

Huge thanks Helen for including both myself and ICARS in the Autistic Realms Starter Pack 2. It’s an honour to be listed alongside so many brilliant, neurodiversity-affirming voices and organisations. Please check it out, follow, and share: go.bsky.app/6ftC1uS

Something interesting that came up while researching a talk I'm doing on disability and disaster prep, schools are required to include some degree of emergency prep for any student with an IEP (to support them in various drills, etc.) This might serve as actually a really good way to begin planning.

A big part of my work on autistic community comes from observing the furry community.

I'm at a talk on disaster preparedness and disability, and thus far *nothing* has been said about supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities during disaster situations. This is something I'm seeing across the board- There's no plan for people with behavioral concerns.

AI could never in a million years give us something as good as Minmo

Something I've been doing lately is hanging out in 'the autistic underground' as I've started coining it- Online nerdy spaces that attract autistics in niche discord servers, subreddits, forums, etc- and just lurking. It's fascinating hanging in those spaces, then looking at what academia's doing.

Heads up, apparently ICE has been spotted outside #Tacomapride. Be careful.

At Tacoma Pride, and getting a lot of compliments on my shirt. Including a lot of "Same!" The venn diagram intersects heavily.

Hey, so I am semi-retired from disability advocacy, but in light of what happened today, I want to talk about what it actually means to support disabled people. Lots of people thought that, until today, when you become disabled, there is a safety net waiting. That has never been true.

The feeling I'm carrying around today reminds me of how I felt 9/11, in this horrified state, knowing that something bad had happened, but the ripples from it would kill countless more and fuck up our country terribly. But big difference is that a bunch of our elected politicians voted for this.

Needed this reminder today.

Yes this is the whole ballgame here. The screaming about "tax cuts for the rich" makes it sound like any other spending bill to the normies and the GOP want that to be the headline! It's just white noise now. This bill is about trading Medicaid for the secret police and camps.

Poll: If a mental health org is offering tickets to an event in exchange for volunteering, but a volunteer requires disability accommodations (shortened hours working, etc), and the agency says the volunteer can work but will not recieve tickets, is that respectful to the disability community?

Also repost far and wide, I am curious as to what the disability community thinks about this.

Poll: If a mental health org is offering tickets to an event in exchange for volunteering, but a volunteer requires disability accommodations (shortened hours working, etc), and the agency says the volunteer can work but will not recieve tickets, is that respectful to the disability community?

New shirt

Cats playing RPGs is my favorite cat pic subgenre

Recently got an ask on finding autism inclusive D&D groups, so I wrote a guide on how to build them, as there is a significant need: rollforkindness.com/building-an-...

I still can't get past the idea that people in America are now supposed to accept that this is a valid form of law enforcement and just assume it's fine when random dudes in groups with face-coverings, no ID, no warrant, & no uniform grab people off the street and force them into unmarked vehicles

I was just thinking about some of the observations I had with ABA providers working with autistic kids, and metaphor that often came to mind was this- It was like someone trying to get a salsa dancer to waltz. The salsa dancer wants to dance their way, but the waltz dancer is enforcing their style.

Oh look, RTO has always been about looking for an excuse to fire disabled people. finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-...