punkyneuronerd

[punkyneuronerd]

That’s me

i like sea slugs a lot

[punkyneuronerd]

This user supports xenic identities and neopronouns. 

[punkyneuronerd]

What kind of monster would pop a child’s balloon? Our parents and our grand-parents. We, students, are right now marching all around the world to make the old generations and gouvernements move forward to stop climate change. But some of us, can’t participate for many reasons. The streets are not accessible or safe for every students. So if we can’t walk for the climate, let’s create instead! Let’s write, sing, paint, draw and imagine to show that we are walking too! Use #artforclimatechange and #youthforclimate to share militant art and spread the mouvement!

[punkyneuronerd]

Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal)

People who are blind from birth will gesture when they speak. I always like pointing out this fact when I teach classes on gesture, because it gives us an an interesting perspective on how we learn and use gestures. Until now I’ve mostly cited a 1998 paper from Jana Iverson and Susan Goldin-Meadow that analysed the gestures and speech of young blind people. Not only do blind people gesture, but the frequency and types of gestures they use does not appear to differ greatly from how sighted people gesture. If people learn gesture without ever seeing a gesture (and, most likely, never being shown), then there must be something about learning a language that means you get gestures as a bonus.

Blind people will even gesture when talking to other blind people, and sighted people will gesture when speaking on the phone - so we know that people don’t only gesture when they speak to someone who can see their gestures.

Earlier this year a new paper came out that adds to this story. Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow looked at the gestures of blind speakers of Turkish and English, to see if the *way* they gestured was different to sighted speakers of those languages. Some of the sighted speakers were blindfolded and others left able to see their conversation partner.

Turkish and English were chosen, because it has already been established that speakers of those languages consistently gesture differently when talking about videos of items moving. English speakers will be more likely to show the manner (e.g. ‘rolling’ or bouncing’) and trajectory (e.g. ‘left to right’, ‘downwards’) together in one gesture, and Turkish speakers will show these features as two separate gestures. This reflects the fact that English ‘roll down’ is one verbal clause, while in Turkish the equivalent would be yuvarlanarak iniyor, which translates as two verbs ‘rolling descending’.

Since we know that blind people do gesture, Özçalışkan’s team wanted to figure out if they gestured like other speakers of their language. Did the blind Turkish speakers separate the manner and trajectory of their gestures like their verbs? Did English speakers combine them? Of course, the standard methodology of showing videos wouldn’t work with blind participants, so the researchers built three dimensional models of events for people to feel before they discussed them.

The results showed that blind Turkish speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts, and the same for English speakers. All Turkish speakers gestured significantly differently from all English speakers, regardless of sightedness. This means that these particular gestural patterns are something that’s deeply linked to the grammatical properties of a language, and not something that we learn from looking at other speakers.

References

Jana M. Iverson & Susan Goldin-Meadow. 1998. Why people gesture when they speak. Nature, 396(6708), 228-228.

Şeyda Özçalışkan, Ché Lucero and Susan Goldin-Meadow. 2016. Is Seeing Gesture Necessary to Gesture Like a Native Speaker? Psychological Science 27(5) 737–747.

Asli Ozyurek & Sotaro Kita. 1999. Expressing manner and path in English and Turkish: Differences in speech, gesture, and conceptualization. In Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 507-512). Erlbaum.

[punkyneuronerd]

I think many of us need a space for softness, kindness and warmth these days. It’s so easy to fall into nihilism and hopelessness the way things are now, and difficult to remember that we’ve still got eachother. You deserve a space to recharge and feel loved and welcome.

[punkyneuronerd]

Yall will preach and preach about supporting autistics until they don’t fit the “ideal” autistic mold.

Until they’re “low functioning”

Until they’re not “uwu soft needs to be protected”

Until you can’t infantize them

Until they’re “ugly”

Until they dont get the joke

Until they’re “dumb”

Until they stand up for themself

Until they’re loud

Until they’re messy

Until they’re not your perfect idea of what an autistic person should or shouldn’t be.

You only support them if they’re something you can romaticize or if they fit your aesthetic.

[punkyneuronerd]

Weird but noteworthy…

If ur autistic and ur getting a colonoscopy, be prepared to be totally overstimulated and updated by the taste of the laxative. It wasn’t this bad last night, but taking it again this morning literally made me cry and almost melt down. It’s not fun.

[punkyneuronerd]

[punkyneuronerd]

Yasuo Ōtsuka (mentor to Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata) short lecture clip on character design

courtesy of @AnimeGolem on twitter

[punkyneuronerd]

At least I think I’m funny

[punkyneuronerd]

when u spend hours researching adhd bc ur adhd made u hyperfocus on adhd

[punkyneuronerd]

Reparo

(on twitter)

[punkyneuronerd]

Single dad, ex-boyfriends Grindeldore AU?  Just imagine Albus and Gellert being this tight-knit couple before eventually breaking up, and reuniting years later when their adopted sons Credence and Harry become best friends at school  Albus also has two angsty teenage sons, Tom and Severus, and they both think Gellert is really cool because he rocks a slightly gothic vibe that they’re both into

And eventually Albus and Gellert get back together and live happily ever after with their four kids

[punkyneuronerd]

[punkyneuronerd]

Their office is already the cutest thing ever

[punkyneuronerd]

child: *is passionate about absolutely anything*

parent: gotta insult it

[punkyneuronerd]

Want to know how corrupt the pharmaceutical industry is?

See this?

This is called Afrezza. It’s an inhaler for diabetic insulin. That’s right. An inhaler. That means no more needles. It’s only for fast acting insulin, but it could still vastly improve the life of a lot of diabetics. 

Imagine having to constantly prick yourself with needles to keep yourself alive, and then suddenly there’s a new product that could change the whole way you live your life for the better.

And here’s the thing: it works. It works really really well. People with diabetes that have been lucky enough to have used it think it’s amazing.

But sadly, it’s probably going to end up as a failure because the pharmaceutical company (a French company called Sanofi) that was in charge of marketing it didn’t care enough to actually try. Not only that, but they made it incredibly expensive so hardly anyone could afford it. Most people have never heard of it, and the way things are going, no one else ever will.

Please reblog this to raise awareness of this product and hopefully get another company to market it. It could change so many lives.