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I cannot overstate how much I love Tom Lehrer's story. It sounds so fake but is entirely real.

He's a goddamn genius- he started studying mathematics at Harvard when he was 15 and graduated magna cum laude. He worked at Los Alamos for a few years before being drafted and working for the NSA, where he claims to have invented jello shots to get around alcohol bans.

He then went back to Harvard for a couple years before starting to teach political science at MIT.

Through all of that, he was writing and performing both some of the funniest shit you'll ever hear (Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Masochism Tango) and absolutely scathing political satire (Who's Next, Wernher von Braun, Send the Marines). Until the mid/late 60s counterculture gained momentum. He didn't like their aesthetic, so he stopped making music.

Shortly after, he moved to California and started teaching math and musical theater history at UC Santa Cruz for the next 30 years.

I don't know if non-Californians understand just how goddamn funny that is. It's where stoners and math (and now computer science) kids who couldn't get into Berkeley go. Leaving Harvard/MIT for UCSC is peak academic phoning it in. And by all accounts he had a blast.

Plus the whole putting all of his music in the public domain thing. That fucked.

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Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97

this should be a working gift link

Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ’60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.

"When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. But don't you worry. No more ashes, no more sackcloth, And an armband made of black cloth Will some day never more adorn a sleeve: For if the bomb that drops on you Gets your friends and neighbors too, There'll be nobody left behind to grieve."

from We Will All Go Together When We Go

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everyone on replies is terrified of this fact but i just think it's so sweet and heartwarming. she's holding our hand and leading us somewhere secret and we're both giggling like kids. i love her

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Be silent, foul thing.

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unable to enter a building unless explicitly invited

often seem out of place as if they come from a different time

very sensitive to certain smells/flavours (garlic)

this one is quite obscure now, but there's an old vampire myth that says that if you throw grains of rice on the floor in front of them, they will be compelled to count them all and be unable to focus on anything else until they do

Vampires Are Autistic:

Lights too bright

Sounds too loud

Eats the same thing every day

Don't understand modern society

Can't be around groups of humans without feeling overwhelmed

Gets obsessed with certain topics (and sometimes people...)

Humans are disturbed by them but don't know why

If they go out during the day, they need weeks to recover

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also a lot of them don't really respect their child's privacy at all. Yeah good luck trying to have a healthy understanding of your own mind when thousands of strangers have strong opinions on every autistic behaviour you've ever exhibited, and they all know your face and name

I can't stand how Autism Parents™ will tell autistic people not to make autism our entire personality when their child's autism is their only personality trait!

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07/15/2025

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Whenever the history of video game consoles comes up on this blog, folks tend to be surprised by remarks like describing the PS2 as "sixth generation" – like, if the PS2 was already six generations deep, what the fuck did the other five look like? The idea that home video game consoles have been around since the early 1970s is unexpected to many, and I 100% encourage anybody with an interest in the medium to read up on those early consoles, not only because knowing your history is handy, but because they were often pretty fantastic aesthetically. Like, look at this thing:

This is a Magnavox Odyssey from 1972. I love the juxtaposition of sterile white plastic, faux leather texture, and artificial wood grain – it's like it can't decide whether it wants to be a Star Trek prop or a footrest. However, I personally regard 1977's Coleco Telstar Arcade as the pinnacle of the form, because... well:

Like, this is it, folks. This is what peak performance looks like.

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a crime happened ON them?  TO them?  ABOUT them?  how specifically do crimes happen on or about parents

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People will look at you dead in the eye and insist that some animated series isn't for kids just because it had a few mature and serious moments, and the show in question aired on a network like Disney Channel

Sure, there's nothing wrong with liking kids stuff, it's just when people try to act it wasn't made with kids in mind

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Series 19 GOAT 🏆

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07/11/2025

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One thing that my perspective changed on after getting to know more autistic people is on multiple diagnoses

I used to see a lot of people make fun of those who had long lists of diagnoses as if that means they must be making it up

But after getting to know more autistic and neurodivergent people... people who have just one condition and nothing else are actually in the minority, from anecdotal evidence.

That's including people who are professional diagnosed as well as those who are self-diagnosed. The number of people who got diagnosed with autism and nothing else is actually relatively small.

I looked it up and found that research backs this up too -- between 70 and 95% of children with ASD have at least one other psychiatric disorder.

And that's just the ones that are known about. A lot of autistic people I know suspect they have some other condition (for example, I suspect I have dyspraxia) but don't seek out a diagnosis because, if you're already getting accommodations for autism, there's not necessarily much reason to pursue an additional diagnosis.

I think this is something that fictional portrayals of neurodivergent people often miss. Generally a fictional character will have just the one thing. Most autistic characters are just autistic, nothing else.

From a storytelling perspective this makes sense. A 2 hour movie isn't really enough time to fully explore one diagnosis, let alone 5 of them.

But I do think it partly contributes to this false perception that diagnoses are these isolated things and only silly people lying for attention would claim to have more than one

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TASKMASTER Series 19 Episode 10 "The Clever Side?"