callmemanatee

[callmemanatee]

[callmemanatee]

I live in Mississippi. I just received a (sadly unsurprising) email response from one of our senators, saying very plainly that he supports the efforts to pull funding from PBS and NPR. He claims that this decision is "supporting free speech".🙄

I strongly encourage those of you in red states (including MS) to *blast* your elected officials with calls and emails about why federal funding for public media does, in fact, matter. They can easily dismiss a few dozen emails or calls, but it is much harder to ignore thousands.

Please. I'm furious, but we can't give up on this.

[callmemanatee]

"Pouring gruel into the troll trough" is hilarious phrasing and I am so borrowing it.

It's so crazy how "Don't feed the trolls" was like the Motto of the internet & in forum culture of the 00s and early 10s and now you log onto a certain website and it's just an endless sea of people pouring gruel into the troll trough day in day out and no one seems to realize or care that their internet experience being a constant deluge of misery and bad faith discussion might in fact be their own fault

[callmemanatee]

There's a train station in my town.

I have a close friend in a neighboring state.

I really, really want to be able to take a train to see my friend and get there in a reasonable amount of time, but the quickest train journey is 63 hours (for comparison, it's 8 to 9 hours by car).

I know that car-centric infrastructure and lack of funding for railways have a lot to do with that, and I know it's unlikely to happen any time in the next four dystopian years, but...

I'd really, really like efficient, widespread train travel in the US within my lifetime. With, of course, good working conditions and fair pay for railway workers.

Trains!💙

[callmemanatee]

I want to hug this rock. 💙

[callmemanatee]

We can't stop fighting back against abuses of power.

[callmemanatee]

I am once again asking everyone who sees this, and is able to make phone calls, to PLEASE protect Medicaid.

Cuts to Medicaid will ruin my life, and that is NOT hyperbole. People who depend on these programs aren't some abstract "other". I'm one of them.

The proposed budget reconciliation bill makes massive cuts to Medicaid & ACA. The CBO says that at least 13.7 million people lose coverage if the proposed cuts pass.

We’ll have an action alert later today. Meanwhile, call and tell Congress: protect Medicaid!

[callmemanatee]

As a library worker, I'm once again asking those who are able to make an uproar over this... to do so.

always great to hear my boss say "we're living through the collapse of the american library system" while I'm at my american library system job

[callmemanatee]

Update: our director doesn't want to risk asking the board of trustees about updating our dress code... because the board of trustees was thinking about making us wear uniforms, and none of us, including the director, want that.

Why are people who've never worked in a library allowed to make decisions about libraries? Ugh...

When we talk about sensory accessibility, we need to talk about temperature. A room that's way too hot is uncomfortable for all, but it's almost unbearable for some.

I'm plus-sized, I take antidepressants, and I'm in the Deep South. And the AC at my work still isn't fully fixed despite needing repairs for literal years.

I work at a public library. We should be a refuge from dangerous heat... especially on a warming planet. And our 25-year-old dress code needs to be revised to allow knee-length shorts, because long pants are unbearable in this climate, and skirts are way less practical.

We had our first 90°F day of the year yesterday (April 27, over a month away from the actual start of summer) and I am over this.

[callmemanatee]

Teens and young adults are so often treated as if they're barely people. The fact that I stopped having huge screaming meltdowns when I left home for university isn't a coincidence. I was no longer under a microscope, no longer being criticized for every tiny thing.

"teens are prone to tantrums and are emotionally unstable" - okay, yeah, puberty is real, and emotional regulation is a difficult skill to learn. but also. any adult person would be pissed if their opinions were disregarded, they had no say in what happens to them, their emotions and feelings were downplayed and their privacy were intruded on.

[callmemanatee]

An 80s era Apple portable laptop computer prototype.

[callmemanatee]

Back when I was still on Facebook, I encountered a parent who, in a conversation about the importance of teaching autistic kids about consent, said her son didn't seem capable of understanding consent. Further conversation revealed that her son was only 4 years old!

On another occasion, I lurked in a facebook group for autism parents in my state. One mom lamented her son's "lack of empathy" because he played too rough with her and didn't seem to understand that he'd hurt her. This child was also only 4.

Are the parents of autistic children just not being taught that learning boundaries and consent takes time? Are they being told they shouldn't bother because there's no way their child will ever understand these topics?

Because that is scary to think about.

[callmemanatee]

I just don't trust parents who claim that the reason their kid is troubled is because they're "easily influenced". Like that's how all kids start out, they're naturally hardwired to be influenced by their surroundings so they'll learn to live in the society they are growing up in. What they are not naturally and instinctively prone to do is to bolt from their parents into the arms of strangers in hopes of finding support and safety. Funny that yours would do that.

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[callmemanatee]

Paper job applications need to make a comeback too. They shouldn't be the only option, but they should still be an option. Working in a library, I've seen so many older people get walled out of jobs because of all the online hoops they have to jump through.

i think it should be illegal to not have paper menus. and it should be illegal to only accept digital payments and not accept cash

generally making anything accessible only with a phone sould be illegal. like genuinely regulated by the govt and forbidden. IMO

[callmemanatee]

"PBS is made possible in part by viewers like you."

That's still true.

If you're able, you can donate to them. Let's not give up just because of a bigoted executive order. We can't let PBS die!

[callmemanatee]

Further thoughts in rough draft form on RFK, Jr.'s remarks about autism:

-Yes, autistic people who'll never play baseball or write poetry or pay taxes exist, and yes, we have to speak up for the value of their lives and not just go "well, I'm autistic and I pay taxes."

But the the thing is, he's not just specifically devaluing the lives of autistic people with high needs or who may well never do those things--he's creating and reinforcing the conditions that keep autistic people with the highest needs from living the fullest lives.

There's been a lot of "It shouldn't matter if someone never does any of those things!" and as far as whether their life inherently matters to us, yes, that's true.

But what I can do matters to me, and I'm sorry but it's allowed to. I care. He's lying about me, and I get to say it.

There are absolutely autistic people who'll never do any of the things on his list, or a lot of other things, either, their lives are worthwhile and they don't deserve to be talked about that way, and he's still not telling the truth about those autistic people, and he's helping create conditions that keep their lives limited.

-It is something else right now to be an autistic person working in theater and the arts, who pays taxes on that basis, while these fucking people ...deny my existence, try to dismantle Social Security (which I will depend on to ever retire properly, since being autistic means that while I've managed to maintain a career, it has been an erratic and not high-paying one), and now are floating ending the NEA, which has as a result already started canceling grant money to theaters where I work.

While I get told by some in my own community that RFK wasn't talking about me and that it shouldn't matter whether I get to have a career, while this administration is very much working to dismantle my life.

Which they also claim isn't real in the first place, so why does it matter if autistic people will or won't ever work and pay taxes, right?

Something. else.

Okay. I'm done for now.