aroaceotaku

[aroaceotaku]

When I studied abroad, I thought my host family just had difficulty pronouncing my name. They didn’t try very hard before deciding that they’d just call me Brahim and be done with it.

This kept happening no matter where I went in Morocco. Even fluent English speakers decided to give me alternative names, and I just shrugged it off as the consequence of one of the syllables being very unusual in Arabic.

That is, until one day I was talking to a shopkeeper in the souk and he asked me my name. I gave him my English one, and explained that I also answer to Brahim (and Daud, and… more than I can remember). He laughed hysterically and looked shocked, calling his friend over from the back of the shop.

“Tell him your name,” he said excitedly. I did so.

The other man’s face cycled through several expressions very quickly—surprise, anger, suspicion, and then exasperation when he realized his friend had set me up.

They very kindly explained to me that my name spoken with a Moroccan accent sounds very much like an Arabic profanity, and that I should definitely introduce myself as Brahim or give an alternative English name when meeting new people, because shaking hands with strangers and saying “Hello, I’m Fuck Your Mother’s Religion” is not a greeting that will win me many friends.

So. Brahim it was.

[aroaceotaku]

Dr. Phil is a nasty, ableist person spreading the worst sort of messages on a platform that reaches millions. In his most recent episode featuring a disabled man and his girlfriend, he justified this man feeling like a burden and disrespected an entire group of people with implications that they would never have a successful relationship due to needing care taking. What relationship between any individuals doesn’t have care taking at some point?

Disabled people requiring more care does not make them invalid or unworthy of romantic love.

[aroaceotaku]

One company bought all the retail outlets for glasses, used that to force sales of all the eyewear companies and jacked up prices by as much as 1000%

If you wear glasses, you might have noticed that they’ve been getting steadily more expensive in recent years, no matter which brand you buy and no matter where you shop.

That’s because a giant-but-obscure company called Luxottica bought out Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, then used their dominance over the retail side of glasses to force virtually every eyewear brand to sell to them (Luxxotica owns or licenses Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Tiffany, Valentino, Vogue and Versace); and used that to buy out all the other eyewear retailers of any note (Luxottica owns Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical) and then also bought out insurers like Eyemed Vision Care and Essilor, the leading prescription lens/contact lens manufacturer.

Controlling the labs, insurers,  frame makers, and all the major retail outlets has allowed Luxottica to squeeze suppliers – frames are cheaper than ever to make, thanks to monopsony buying power with Prada-grade designer frames costing $15 to manufacture – while raising prices as much as 1000% relative to pre-acquisition pricing.

It’s even worse for lenses: a pair of prescription lenses that cost $1.50 to make sell for $800 in the USA.

LA Times columnist David Lazarus wrote a column about skyrocketing eyewear prices and was approached by Charles Dahan, who once owned one of the largest frames companies in America, Custom Optical, which supplied 20% of the frames sold at Lenscrafters prior to the Luxottica acquisition. Dahan describes how Luxottica cornered the horizontal and vertical markets for eyewear and pushed out or bought out every other company (Oakley refused to sell or lower prices, so Luxottica boycotted it from its retailers, forcing the company into such a precarious position that it Luxottica was able to buy it for a fraction of its peak book-value just a few years later).

This is a good example of how decades of far-right ideologically driven antitrust malpractice has hurt everyone. After all, glasses aren’t just a fashion item: they’re a necessity for people with poor vision, a prerequisite for driving, walking, cycling, reading, getting an education or doing your job.

Luxottica grew through acquisition, by buying up its competition. This was banned under classic antitrust law, until the Reagan years. This pattern has been repeated in many other domains: beer, whiskey, retail pharmacies, and so on. In every one of those domains, we are getting screwed, as are small businesspeople and the families they serve.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/12/luxottica.html

[aroaceotaku]

It’s good to have fun with your a-spec identity. It’s good to make jokes and create puns and post pride art and buy stickers and make memes. It’s good to enjoy being a-spec.

[aroaceotaku]

The world is falling apart

[aroaceotaku]

When I think I have enough energy to leave the house, then NOPE…

[aroaceotaku]

↖This blog will be screamer free on April Fool’s Day.

God please don’t use screamers or flashers. That’s how you hurt people. People with seizure disorders, PTSD, severe anxiety or phobias can be really hurt from these.

It’s childish, anyways.

[aroaceotaku]

being hypermobile is like being a worn out elastic hairtie

[aroaceotaku]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXSLVroFBWQ/

[aroaceotaku]

Confession #4,595

When I was still in school I had a key to use the elevator since I always used either a cane or a wheelchair. It was after school and the halls were a bit busy. I was waiting for the elevator with a friend and we were just talking. Some guy looks at us then the elevator, then says “oh I have to use the elevator because I’m a cripple”. He couldn’t see I was using a cane because I was standing behind my friend. I said “really dude, really?” And we stepped on. When he realized he had a face of horror and tried to defend himself, but he was cut off by the door closing. But then when we got to the bottom floor, he actually /ran down the stairs/ to meet us. He said he was sorry. I just said “don’t say that shit ever again”. Moral of the story? If you wouldn’t say a word in front of someone that word applies to? It’s a slur and you shouldn’t fucking say it. Period.

[aroaceotaku]

Beautiful black diamond

[aroaceotaku]

If you’re going to publicly complain about friends not reaching out to you to see how you are, you should probably reach out to your friends sometimes too. It’s emotionally manipulative to shame and guilt people for something you are doing yourself.

[aroaceotaku]

shoutout to the disabled people who can’t or have trouble with leaving their bed or the house, working or studing or taking care of themselves, the ones who get stigmatised as being “basement dwellers”, “scroungers”, seen as just lazy or losers or not contributing to society. it’s not your fault, your limitations do not make you a bad or unimportant person, and screw anyone who says otherwise.

[aroaceotaku]

beep beep sometimes when you have been in survival mode for a long time the parts of you dedicated to Wanting Things atrophy and you forget how to envision a future that feels rewarding because you are busy with the business of staying alive, and it can seem like your life must be pointless because you can’t imagine any long term goals. sometimes even when you leave survival mode you can’t remember how to Want Things. that doesn’t mean you need to give up on having a good and fulfilling life, it just means that Wanting Things is a muscle you need to gradually strengthen. the part of you that has dreams and aspirations is still there, it just fell asleep, but if you wiggle it enough it can and will regain feeling. it’s okay to start small

[aroaceotaku]

the maker of faygo and lacroix literally made an official company statement in a press release that disabled people are comparable to inanimate concepts because they have no agency or personality without permission

where is the fucking outrage among anyone other than disabled people. where. show me an outrage comparable to anything that can be considered outrage. fucking show me any amount of care even half as much as if they said that about any other group. even a fourth. anything. disabled people are mad and nobody else is saying SHIT after all that horse shit of everyone on here claiming to give a fuck about disabled people

[aroaceotaku]

[aroaceotaku]

Catra - Second in Command of the Horde