accessibleacademia

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if you like golf i don’t have to listen to you

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i saw a post recently that was really good, it was something like “no one is automatically allowed to touch you, not your partner, not your family, no one” and this has both literal and sexual connotations

one thing i thought was missing from it was the mention of “do not touch disabled people or their aids, whatever they may be” because i’ve seen so many horror stories of this around. it’s really saddening.

i would really love it if people could review how they view disabled people, and in turn how they view their aids.

an example of this is perhaps the most commonly thought of aid when talking of disability: the wheelchair.

what people usually see is person + wheelchair. they see the two things as separate, perhaps without realising it. (both physically and mentally, do not start on “~i don’t see disability~” shh stop please for a moment, stop) which means, sometimes, they feel it is okay to then touch (or even worse, push/move) the wheelchair. 

that is still a part of that person. that is one whole being, not two separate ones. and in this case, you are wholly physically manoeuvring another person.

gonna take a punt here, but i am guessing, the world over, it’s not a typically common thing where you just tackle a random able-bodied person and move them around without their permission, and/or touch random parts of their body (this is more common for very saddening reasons. still not excusable, still a major no). 

so why would you do that with a disabled person? 

this goes for so much more than wheelchairs by the way. service dogs, crutches, hearing aids, any form of mobility aid, any form of aid whatsoever actually - not acceptable to touch without permission. end of. if i may, these things are intrinsic things disabled people depend upon, so don’t be an asshole.

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I’m a Catholic who is morally opposed to abortion.

But I’m against most legislation against abortion.

Because here’s the thing: Abortion is never going to just go away. It’s never going to stop. Passing harsh restrictions limiting access, banning it all together, it’s never going to magically make women stop having abortions. It’s never going to lead to abortion no longer being a thing that happens.

Abortion has been happening since long before this modern age. The practice dates back to at least 1550 BCE Egypt. Hippocrates, the greek physician upon whose practices the Hippocratic Oath is based, provided abortions. Women got abortions in ancient times when the methods were risky at best and life threatening at worst. They got abortions in Colonial America when the practice was shamed and had to be done in secret.  They got abortions before Roe vs. Wade was passed, and they’ll continue to get abortions no matter how many restrictions and bans are put in place.

This is not an issue that can be simplified by putting it in religious and moral terms. It’s not an issue that can be simplified by saying it’s “about life”.

And if your goal is to stop all abortion forever, well… for one thing, you’re looking at the issue all wrong and you’re going to be pushing a boulder the size of the universe up a very steep hill for the rest of time. You’re also ignoring history and statistics if you think that outlawing abortion will make any kind of movement toward that goal.

Illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade were not some kind of rare thing. They were common. Estimates put the number of illegal and self-induced abortions that took place in the 1950s and 1960s between the hundreds of thousands and around one million. And thousands of women died from illegal and self-induced abortions. In 1930 abortion was listed as the cause of death for at least 2700 women. These numbers decreased with the introduction of antibiotics that could fight infections that came from these procedures, but by 1965 illegal abortions still made up 17% of all pregnancy and childbirth related deaths. And those number are almost certainly quite a bit higher in reality as many women who died or became sick as the result of an illegal abortion were not reported as such.

I don’t think a lot people really consider what illegal abortion means. Many just assume that it’s just the same thing that happens in the legal clinics, but it just happens without being protected by law. This is most often not the case. Without legal protections for abortions, doctors who perform the procedure can’t easily get the materials needed to make abortion as safe as possible. And without any kind of oversight to ensure safety that the practice would get were it legal and regulated, the people performing it, whether it’s a well meaning doctor or a person looking to prey on women in desperate situations, are accountable to nobody. There’s nobody making sure they’re safe.

This is already happening. Abortion providers are being shut down at huge rates, leaving some entire states with only one provider, if that. Many women who want an abortion but can’t get one because they’re unable to travel to another state to acquire one (whether it’s because they can’t afford it, they have no transportation, their family situation makes it impossible) aren’t just going to “oh well, I guess I’m going to just have to have it.” Despite popular opinion among anti-abortion advocates, abortion is not an easy choice for most women. It’s not just some easy method of birth control. The rates of abortion throughout history show that, as do many testimonials. If a women wants, or needs an abortion, she’s going to do whatever she can to get it. And if she can’t get one by safe and legal means, there’s a decent chance she’ll get one by any means necessary. Which means either looking to illegal, unregulate, and unsafe providers, or incredibly dangerous self-induced methods.

This is happening now. Further restrictions, more clinics being shutdown, will not somehow magically make it stop.

Before Roe v. Wade, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of women died every year from abortions because they were illegal and therefor unregulated and unsafe. Today,  yearly deaths from abortion rank in the 10s. Not the 10s of thousands. The 10s. And yes, some of that has to do with improved technology and methods. But even in 1976, just a few years after Roe v. Wade, death as a result of abortion had fallen to 1 in 100,000.  (These are all numbers from just the US. Worldwide numbers tend to follow similar trends.)

Banning abortion does not stop abortion. Safe, legal abortion saves lives.

If you care about life, that is not something that should be ignored. And I continue to stress, nor should the fact that banning abortion will not stop abortion. It never has and it never will. Many countries where abortion is illegal actually show slightly higher abortion rates than those where abortion is legal.

That last sentence is the really important part. Not just because it further shows that banning and restricting abortion does not stop or even reduce abortion, but because it demonstrates a far better alternative if you want to reduce abortion.

No, countries where abortion is legal don’t have lower abortion rates because of some weird logic of “if you can have it you don’t want it”. It because usually, legal and accessible abortion goes hand in hand with accessible and affordable contraception and sexual education.

Abortion  isn’t going to magically go away. If you’re opposed to abortion and you’re putting all your efforts toward ending it, you’re fighting a losing battle and ignoring areas that can help abortion rate be reduced. That’s what people who say they they’re for protecting life should be focusing on. Ways to reduce abortion.

Banning abortion isn’t going to do that. Minimizing the number of women who get pregnant who don’t want to be is.  That doesn’t happen by telling women not to have sex. It happens by making sure contraception, all forms of contraception are inexpensive and readily available to all women and men. It happens by making sure men and women get comprehensive sexual education before they start having sex. It happens by making sure men and women know how to effectively use contraception before they start having sex. So yes, that means comprehensive sexual education in middle school and high school (at the very least). It’s important for men and women to be educated in the ways both the male and the female body work, how sex and reproduction work for both genders, and exactly how different forms of birth control prevent pregnancy.

It also happens by more support and funding for programs that provide healthcare for women during and after their pregnancies for women who can’t afford it. It happens by support and funding for programs that help and support financially struggling women and parents who choose to keep their baby. It happens by support and funding for programs that provide healthcare for children in low-income families. It can’t be ignored that one of the motivations for a woman to seek an abortion is often not being able to support it. And unfortunately it’s not uncommon for states with the stricter abortion laws to also have the fewest policies in place for these kinds of programs and this type of support.

Abortion is not the beginning of the equation. It’s the result of complex series of events and circumstances, and often those circumstances are things completely beyond the control of the woman seeking and abortion. The problem isn’t solved by outlawing the result of that equation. You have to change the circumstances that lead to it.

The pro-life movement needs to realize that abortion is not something that can be simplified to a one sentence tagline about caring about or protecting life. Not when criminalized abortion leads to hundreds to thousands more losses of life. Not when criminalized abortion does nothing to stop that loss of life. They need to realize that you don’t solve a problem by trying to stop it at the finale step, that you have to go to the root of the problem and start there. And the root of the problem is not that abortion exists. It’s that our country has startlingly poor sexual education for a developed country. It’s that because of that, people don’t know how to use birth control effectively, they don’t know how reproduction and the reproductive system of the opposite gender, and sometimes their own gender, works. It’s because many types of contraception are not as inexpensive and accessible as they should be thinks to things like the Hobby Lobby ruling.

Look outside of your bubble. Do research. Don’t get all of your information for Christian and “pro-life” sources. Be curious. Be skeptical, but also open minded. Look into your sources and make sure the sites/journals/etc. aren’t exclusively a pro-life OR a pro-choice site/publication/etc. I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a completely unbiased source when it comes to things like this, but make sure you’re looking a the most unbiased choices you can find. Think about what being pro-life actually means beyond the usual taglines.

Banning abortion is not “pro-life”. All of the statistics show that to be a fact. If you’re going to call yourself pro-life, you need to look at options that are actually effective and that don’t lead to even more death.

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/abortion/a/ancientabortion.htm https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/banning-abortion-doesnt-actually-reduce-abortion-rates-at-all

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/women-in-countries-where-abortion-is-illegal-just-as-likely-to-have-one-as-countries-where-it-is-a7025671.html

https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2004/01/public-health-impact-legal-abortion-30-years-later

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-a-grimes/the-bad-old-days-abortion_b_6324610.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/back-alley-abortions_n_5065301.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-burkhart/access-to-contraception-a_b_7595654.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/abortion-womens-health_n_5912648.html

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/issues/repro/reports/a-double-bind.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

[accessibleacademia]

Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.

If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.How to Turn off Word’s AI Access To Your Content

I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”:

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”

[accessibleacademia]

The main argument in favor of the phrase “person with a disability” is that it’s “person first.” Whaaaat? No one has ever told me that I should describe myself as a “person with gayness” or a “person with womanliness.” I’m gay and I’m a woman — no need to qualify that I’m a person too. But I have been told that I’m wrong for calling myself “disabled” rather than a “person with a disability.” Unsurprisingly my response either tends to be about as long as this article or a short string of expletives.

Lisa Egan, “I’m Not A ‘Person With A Disability’: I’m A Disabled Person” (via disabilityhistory)

[accessibleacademia]

God, I can't tell you how much the "there's not enough enrichment in my enclosure" joke has helped my mental health. Because, for some reason I can't comprehend, pretending that I'm a zoo keeper caring for an animal (which is also me) just makes everything easier to comprehend. Like "Your head gets screwey when you're apartment is messy" just doesn't carry as much resonance as "The tiger becomes agitated when its enclosure is cluttered" because then I'll be like, no shit? The tiger? I've gotta keep things nice and clean for the tiger.

[accessibleacademia]

huge carrot recall affecting canada and the united states, including puerto rico, due to shiga toxin-producing e. coli

november 16, 2024

this recall may expand. see below for details.

Grimmway Farms has issued a recall of select organic whole carrots and organic baby carrots that should no longer be in grocery stores but may be in consumers' refrigerators or freezers. These products may have been contaminated with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (E. coli) O121:H19. E. coli O121:H19 is a bacterium that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, elderly people, and those with a weakened immune system. Some infections can cause severe bloody diarrhea conditions, such as a hemolytic uremic syndrome, or the development of high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease, and neurologic problems. Symptoms include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever, nausea, and/or vomiting. The incubation period for E. coli O121:H19 in humans can range from 24 hours to as much as ten days. The average incubation period is 3 to 4 days.

The following recalled products were shipped directly to retail distribution centers nationwide in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada: - Organic whole carrots, which do not have a best-if-used-by date printed on the bag, but were available for purchase at retail stores from August 14 through October 23, 2024, - Organic baby carrots with best-if-used-by-dates ranging from September 11 through November 12, 2024. The recalled carrots should not be available for purchase in stores but may be in consumers' refrigerators or freezers.

(emphasis mine)

affected whole carrot brands and their bag sizes:

365 1Ib, 2lb, 5lb

Bunny Luv 1lb, 2lb, 5lb, 10lb, 25lb

Cal-Organic 1Ib, 2lb, 51b, 6lb, 10lb, 25lb

Compliments 2lb

Full Circle 1lb, 2lb, 5lb

Good & Gather 2lb

GreenWise 1Ib, 25lbs

Marketside 2lb

Nature's Promise 1Ib, 5lb

O-Organics 1lb, 2Ib, 5lb, 10lb

President's Choice 2lb

Simple Truth 1lb, 2lb, 5lb

Trader Joe's 1lb

Wegmans 1lb, 2lb, 5lb

Wholesome Pantry 1lb, 2lb, 5lb

affected baby (cut and peeled) carrot brands and their bag sizes:

365 12oz, 1lb, 2lb

Bunny Luv 1lb, 2lb, 3lb, 5lb

Cal-Organic 12oz, 1lb, 2lb, 2pk/2lbs

Compliments 1lb

Full Circle 1 lb

Good & Gather 12oz, 1lb

GreenWise 1lb

Grimmway Farms 25 lb bag

Kroger 2lb

LIDL 1lb

Marketside 12oz, 1lb, 2lb

Nature's Promise 1lb

O-Organics 12oz, 1lb, 2lb

President's Choice 1Ib, 2lb

Raley's 1lb

Simple Truth 1 Ib, 2lb

Sprouts 1 Ib, 2lb

Trader Joe's 1lb

Wegmans 12oz, 1lb, 2lb

Wholesome Pantry 1lb, 2lb

formatting on tumblr is difficult, please see the FDA outbreak investigation page for the affected ranges of best-by dates for baby carrots, and pictures of the affected carrots.

as of time of posting, the main FDA recall page and the CDC investigation page have an error and do not list Kroger or LIDL baby carrots, while the FDA outbreak investigation page does. I am assuming that this means they are part of the recall and that this error will probably be fixed soon.

the recalled carrots are thought to be associated with an E. coli O121:H19 outbreak. 39 illnesses, 15 hospitalizations, and one death have been linked to this outbreak so far.

as always, these numbers are expected to be lower than the true number of illnesses and deaths, and will likely rise. not everyone seeks medical attention, and even when all testing and reporting procedures go as smoothly as possible, it can take weeks to officially link an illness to an outbreak.

noteworthy from the FDA investigation page:

FDA is working with the firm to determine the source of contamination and whether additional products are affected. This advisory will be updated as information becomes available.

in short, there is a possibility this contamination may affect more than just the recalled carrots. keep up to date with these pages to stay on top of this outbreak.

the recalled carrots are no longer on shelves. but if they are in your fridge or freezer, destroy or discard them and clean anything they may have touched.

do NOT eat these carrots! this strain of e. coli is dangerous and at least one person has died.

if you think you got sick in relation to this outbreak, please seek medical attention, even if just to get your illness officially associated with this outbreak.

[accessibleacademia]

If T makes you gain weight and E and antidepressants do it too, and do does enjoying good food and not being hungry all the time, then perhaps maybe sometimes joy & weight gain come hand in hand and that's good

[accessibleacademia]

What always depresses me about the ableists in gaming communities is that they ALWAYS go "Just don't play the game, go play osmething else" when people argue for including/expanding/reinstating features that make it more accessible, but the SECOND it gets turned around as "If the game isn't challenging enough go play something else" they throw a HUGE fit about "I shouldn't HAVE to, STOP RUINING MY GAME (I NEED TO FEEL SUPERIOR, BUT I WON'T SAY THAT OUT LOUD)"

YEAH. THIS.

THIS.

[accessibleacademia]

let me validate so called "contradictory" queer identities like bi/pan lesbians and gays, girlboys, fagdykes, male lesbians, female gays, afab trans women, amab trans men and so on for you - your idea of a rigid definition of a concept does not supersede, overwrite or erase the lived experiences of quite possibly millions if not billions of other people. lived experience will always matter more than the definition that sits on a piece of paper, a wiki page, or in your mind, because they are real, and not arbitrary. it's a simple concept to demystify. hope that helps.

[accessibleacademia]

girls I know this isn’t at the top of the concerns list but you’re gonna want to stop eating commercially produced meat real soon

[accessibleacademia]

The continuing release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is a major driver of global warming and climate change with increased extreme weather events. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have now presented a method for effectively converting carbon dioxide into ethanol, which is then available as a sustainable raw material for chemical applications. "We can remove the greenhouse gas CO₂ from the environment and reintroduce it into a sustainable carbon cycle," explained Professor Carsten Streb from the JGU Department of Chemistry. His research group has shown how carbon dioxide can be converted to ethanol by means of electrocatalysis.

Continue Reading.

[accessibleacademia]

Really happy to see this at my local library

[accessibleacademia]

Ok feel free to put me in my place but i recently got a retail job and have been meeting all kinds of people and I love it. However sometimes I meet people with disabilities or illnesses and they'll say they aren't feeling well or can't do certain things and I have in the past said "I hope you feel better" or "oh man I'm sorry" and I just saw the post you made about not having privacy or people saying things that are hurtful. Are there certain things I should say instead I don't wanna be a jerk

Hey anon! This is a hard topic because it is hard to know what to say!! Try to avoid any phrases similar to “get well soon”. Instead of that, I’d try “I hope you can get some relief soon” or “I hope you have some betters days”! With people I’m familiar with, I’d rather get a “that’s rough/that sucks” over a “I’m sorry” any day. Thank you for asking!! Never be afraid to ask questions and learn about this stuff.

[accessibleacademia]

Our Ice Pack Chewth Picks have re-stocked!

This is a great pack if you aren't sure what strength of the other chewthpicks to order since it contains one of each!

Ark's Chewth Pick® is a charming chewable "toothpick" tool designed specifically for teenagers and adults as a discreet way to chew.  These toothpicks for chewing are slim and slender, with bumps on one side and ribs on the other side for lots of tactile sensory input. 

FlappyHappy is run by autistics. We are a small Canadian business. Please consider boosting this post for us or telling your friends about us!

[accessibleacademia]

Let's talk about tariffs

One way or another, we're getting more of them soon, so it's a good idea to spread the word regarding how they work. Note, this is a simplified explanation without nuance, but nuance is the sort of thing that you gotta be rich to exploit in this case.

Here's the basics: a tariff is a tax assessed at the point of import, and paid by the importer. Tariffs always make prices go up.

Say a company orders a bunch of stuff that would otherwise cost them $100 each. Adding on their other business expenses, they will sell each for $150, with some but not all of that extra $50 being profit. Let's say at most $20 of it is profit.

Now a 20% tariff is applied, and the company has to pay $120 each. If they want to keep selling them for $150, that will eliminate their profit and might even require selling the things at a loss. So they have to raise the price. Maybe they only raise it to $160 rather than $170, but they gotta make a profit or they get bought out by venture capitalists and gutted.

The original supplier could lower their price too, but again there's only so much they can drop before they're losing money on the deal too.

Why would a supplier even want to do this? Well, let's say that the domestic competition can supply the thing to retailers for $115. The foreign supplier can stay competitive by dropping their cost by a few bucks, so that after the tariff is applied they cost $114, or even $115 but sell it on the grounds of the retailer already having advertised their version. Small, targeted tariffs can coerce foreign suppliers into taking a cut to their profits. But even in this case, no one's going to be buying $150 products on the shelf anymore, it's just that both foreign and domestic versions will be $160-165. The price has gone up a little. Maybe not the full 20% of the tariff, but a noticeable amount.

That was the sort of tariff we mostly have right now, in 2024. We're also ignoring the fact that things are so interconnected that there may not BE a purely domestic version of a particular thing, just companies with completely foreign production versus those who buy all the parts abroad and assemble them domestically. In that case, everyone's getting hit by the tariffs.

However, the "I Love Tariffs" incoming President has threatened things like 100% or higher. This is the sort of tariff you apply when your goal is to protect a domestic company and to hell with the consumers. (Actually banning imports or setting quotas can also do this, but it's harder to enforce. IIRC, Japan has import restrictions on rice so that they don't completely outsource their food supply.)

A 100% tariff means that in the example above, it now costs the importer $200 to pay for each of the things in their order, so even if nothing else changes they'd have to charge $250 each to get the same amount of profit (and a smaller profit MARGIN). Does this mean they'll just go buy the $115 domestic version? Well, they'd like to, but now the domestic version is $160 or $180, because the domestic companies can just crank up their profit margins while staying cheaper than the alternative. Domestic companies are not driven by a desire to serve the public, they're legally required to make as much money as they can (this is a big problem lately, stockholders can sue if they think a company is passing up on profits). Thus, when punitive tariffs raise the price of imports to stupid levels, domestic suppliers (even those who miraculously have their entire supply chain within the country) will run up the price too.

All of this money will come from consumers and go into the pockets of the government. Do you trust the incoming administration to spend this windfall on helping the people hammered by massive spikes in inflation? I sure don't.

[accessibleacademia]