#world federation of the deaf

[pixoplanet]

It's September 23rd, International Sign Language Day. The United Nations instituted this event in 2018 to commemorate the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD)’s founding in 1951. The objective is to raise awareness of sign languages and deaf culture and to promote the acceptance of sign languages as deaf people’s basic human rights. The event has grown into a global movement to resolve the many issues deaf people face in their everyday lives and is celebrated through various activities by respective Deaf Communities worldwide.

These activities call for participation and involvement of various stakeholders including families, peers, governmental bodies, professional sign language interpreters, Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs), and concerned people all over the globe. All of us are invited to unite in endorsement of the need to secure and promote the human rights of deaf people. Please affirm your support for full human rights for all deaf people by signing the WFD Charter on Sign Language Rights for All at https://wfdeaf.org/charter.

Sign languages are visual languages that transmit messages. The 72 million deaf people on our planet use over 300 distinct natural sign languages, although there is also an international sign language that deaf people use when mingling, traveling, and attending international meetings. The international sign language is considered to be a pidgin form because it isn't as complex as the natural sign languages and has a limited lexicon.

Sign languages have been used by deaf people throughout history. Plato’s “Cratylus,” published in the 15th century BCE, has one of the oldest recorded accounts of sign language. Socrates also commented on the utility of sign languages: “If we didn’t have a voice or a tongue and wanted to communicate with one another, wouldn’t we try to make signals by moving our hands, heads, and the rest of our bodies?” Naturally. ☮️ Peace… Jamiese of Pixoplanet

[signlanguagesday]

Participate to the celebration of the International Week of Deaf People 2023.

Theme for the International Day of Sign Language 2023 is ''A World Where Deaf People Everywhere Can Sign Anywhere!''

[lescroniques]

La CNSE i la WFD celebren la Setmana Internacional de les Persones Sordes defensant la presència de la llengua de signes com a llengua natural de les persones sordes

servimedia.es La Confederació Estatal de Persones Sordes (CNSE) i la seva xarxa associativa s’han unit a la comunitat sorda internacional, representada per la World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) per a reclamar la presència de la llengua de signes en tots els àmbits, amb motiu de la Setmana Internacional de les persones Sordes, que se celebra del 18 al 24 de setembre de 2023…[…] (servimedia.es)

[personswithdisabilitiesday]

Protect the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Mr. Ádám Kósa, Member of the European Parliament and the European People's Party, Chair of the informal session on women with disabilities; Ms. Jenny Nilsson, President, Youth Section, World Federation of the Deaf, and Swedish delegate to the Conference.

[suntears1037]

Re: Watcher's Stupid Ass Decision

As I have been watching the Watcher disaster unfold on both YouTube and on Tik-Tok. I have yet to see anyone bring forth this one fact.

The U.S. federal minimum wage is ONLY $7.25!

When your subscription service only leaves a person with $1.25 cents to their name is it really that affordable?

That is dismissing the REAL issue that 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck as well. (Not to say that only Americans make up their audience by any means but they make up a large sum of viewers)

So taking Steven Lim's dumbass statement that "Anyone and every body is able to afford it!" is tone deaf at best and horrifically inconsiderate and offensive at worst; given our worlds socio-economic structure, and the pain and hardships that so many working class people are battling currently.

When now, you only view the people who have given you your empire and luxury as a stepping stone and a tool to step on "One last time." as a means to climb the capitalistic ladder you tried to stray away from.

It truly makes me wonder if anyone on the Watcher team took time and consideration to understand their target audience at ALL.

[thoughtdump]

My takeaway’s from Anna’s interview that nobody asked for or probably even wants:

- Explaining how she used to be so lively/energetic & loved attention as a kid but once she started figure skating she was able to put that energy into something “more productive” (figure skating) because of how now she’s not like that anymore. She never speaks up, she puts up with everything & bottles all her emotions inside. (And she says this like it’s a good thing). No babe you just lost your light & got the life sucked out of you!

- I appreciated her interrupting the interviewer when the interviewer was going down a path of trying to get Anna to talk about “controversial” topics because it was inappropriate but on the flip side Anna practically saying “if the news regarding the Russian ban isn’t good developments then I just don’t pay attention to any of the news “over there”” is incredibly tone deaf & beneath her. Didn’t expect that from her. I guess they ALL are full of themselves & brainwashed beyond repair.

- These girls have undiagnosed eating disorders. Every single one of them.

- Abused abused abused. She doesn’t even know it. It’s just downright sad.

- Alina seemed/seems to be the only one who truly supports her & always saw she was a gold medal contender even when everyone else thought she wasn’t. I also think it goes both ways, Alina doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends aside from Anna. Glad they have each other in this disturbing environment.

- Interviewer sprinkling Russian propaganda every 2 seconds by pretty much saying the Russians are the only good athletes in the entire world & without them, other athletes from other countries “know that competitions without Russians aren’t fair” (which isn’t true, it’s the complete opposite actually & tbh it’s been nice to watch figure skating knowing their demonic presence isn’t there) is not surprising but still incredibly blood boiling. These people are on another planet. Delusional is an understatement. Lost causes.

- Her explaining her emotions/mental state after winning gold is literal depression. As she mentioned, it was complete emotional burnout. The abuse isn’t worth it. At the height of her career & she feels absolutely nothing & it sends her into an existential crisis of essentially ‘this is it? This is what it feels like to win gold? Nothing?’ Just another example of how these girls are used as tools for the federations success. The life of a girl is worth nothing to them. A long, healthy career is nothing to them. The pressure of knowing that you have literally ONE chance to be perfect, that you will never come back to the Olympics because your body has been broken down by our methods… it’s too much & that’s what you get because of it. A 17 year old winning gold at the Olympics & feeling complete emptiness. Because winning isn’t everything.

- Overall, every time a Russian does an interview I wish I never read it :)

[literary-illuminati]

Books I Read In August

38. When the Tiger Came Down The Mountain by Nghi Vo

I’m an increasingly big fan of Vo’s work. The Empress of Salt and Fortune was good, but honestly didn’t really stick with me nearly as much as this did. 

Part of that is just the increased centrality of the framing device, honestly. I mean first of all I don’t really tend to have much patience for wish-fulfillment characters, but very hard to overstate how much Chih is just living the dream life (and my university indoctrination was thorough enough that the association of the study/preservation/gathering of history and sacredness seems very right and fitting to me. 

Also, I just absolutely adore when the story makes a thing of unreliable narrators. Like, when someone’s telling a story and as the scene’s ending someone else interrupts and goes “You’re telling it all wrong!” and gives a completely different version that’s at least as biased in another direction? Poetry. 

The actual myth with the lesbian romance and the were-tiger warlord and stuff was also a lot of fun don’t get me wrong, but like, would have been a bit forgettable without the framing device stuff around it. 

Anyway, give Chih a tv show. Or at least a half dozen more novellas like this. 

39. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

This is the first actual full book of poetry I’ve read….I mean ever, probably, if we’re taking cover to cover. Certainly since I finished high school. So there’s some Culture achieved. 

I was…not especially impressed, if I’m being entirely honest? Or, properly - “We Lived Happily During The War '' and “In A Time of Peace '' were both really affecting, but also I had already read both (posted here on tumblr, actually). They’re what sold me on the book. Everything between them did, well, not really live up to it?

I mean, I’m sure that there’s all manner of genius in craft and stuff that flew right over my head, but it just seemed so focused on being clever with line breaks that it failed to do much else. Like, most of the books on the list have plenty of lines that are more poetic by my (doubtlessly irredeemably philistine) definition than any of the poems that made up the middle of the book. 

40. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

I honestly forget where I first heard about this book, but it’s been very vaguely sitting on my mental tbr list for the last few years,and the library happened to have it in, so. 

Anyway, the conceit (an alternate history where WW2 went slightly differently, and also Israel lost in 1947, and through a bunch of political compromises there ended up being an autonomous federal district carved out in Alaska as a temporary national home for the Jewish people - ‘temporary’ meaning expiring on the near year as the novel takes place) is just fascinating, and Chabon had a lot of fun with little offhand references to how different the rest of the world has gotten, too. The fact that everyone speaks Yiddish but with occasional catch phrases and curses called out as being said in American was cute, too.

The story itself was just incredibly, almost painfully noir - genius of a police detective with a ruined marriage, crippling alcoholism, and no future is woken up in the middle of the night because a heroin addict who boards in the same hotel as him was found dead by gunshot, discovers that the victim was the firstborn son of a prominent underworld/religious authority, disowned and ostracized for being gay, through this he stumbles into a sinister conspiracy involving the CIA and the death of his sister. He can’t stop the conspiracy but he might just be able to get justice for the murder, etc, etc. The commitment to the genre is fun,but the late night diners and descriptions of hangovers do begin to get old eventually.

It was also kind of dated, in an interesting way? Like, the Federal government spooks being clean cut bible college boys, all polite and well mannered and sincere Christian Zionists trying to get America into a war to help bring about the End Times, really feels like the sort of thing that only gets written during the Bush Administration. (The single tragic too-good-for-the-world dead heroine addict gay guy and the constant jokes about every less-than-perfectly-feminine woman being mistaken for a lesbian, also somewhat dated).

Anyway, think my vocabulary of random Yiddish words about doubled from reading this, and also many themes about Judaism that I am not even slightly qualified to comment on. 

41: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

This books are so fun. And just about perfectly bite-sized, too.

Or tv episode sized, really - each has about the perfect amount of plot for an hour long episode of network tv, I think. Pity they’re basically unadaptable. 

Anyway, not too much to say about this, really, except that Murderbot’s complete inability to understand their own emotions would probably be annoying by now if it wasn’t so funny, and reading it really left a grin on my face. 

Or well, also, I do really enjoy all the little hints that the ‘corporate rim’ is actually kind of a galactic shithole, and Murderbot just treats it like the hegemonic default because its all they know. Certainly nowhere else seems to be nearly as bad about synthetic life (nowhere’s exactly good either, mind, but).

42. Radiance by Catherynne Valente

Oh I adored this book. 

I mean in large part because I’m a big fan of Valente’s prose when she gets all grandiloquent, and also the basic aesthetic of the setting (High Victorian Space Age by way of the Golden Age of Hollywood on the moon) is just utter catnip to me. But the whole epistolary pretension, telling the story through interviews after the fact and remaining scraps of documentary footage and different drafts of a dramatization made a decade latter that are each completely different genres and occasional clips of Severin’s previous films? 

It’s all just showing off to an incredible degree and I’m sure if I didn’t love the book I’d find it unbearably pretentious, but I do, so it’s absolutely great. 

The amateur historian in me was kind of irked by the sort of political stasis - it does the fallout thing where the fin de siecle kind of just continues uninterrupted for another fifty years bit with stranger and more wondrous tech, the apocalypse of the Great War put off by all the virgin lands to colonize and everything just kind of continuing as it was (except for the development of the film industry). But that’s kind of a theme. (Much more minorly, the world only seems to have gotten weird in the late 19th century, except that there are sovereign and internationally significant Seneca and Iroquois nations that get mentioned several times, which kind of require a fundamental change to the nature of the American state significantly before then.) 

The ending also didn’t really land for me - anything about infinite multiverses honestly makes it difficult for me to stay invested, and anything where the fictional setting tries to encompass/include the ‘real world’ almost always loses me instantly (qualified exception for actual portal fantasy, if it’s good. But introducing the real world in the third act has basically only ever worked for me exactly once).

Which is a pity, because aside from those bits the ending could have been designed to appeal to me in a lab. Was so close to perfection. 

43. How to Invent Everything by Ryan North 

I took a three week break in the middle, so this technically took me a full calendar month to read. Library was getting pretty angry. 

Anyway, I think I said it before but I stand by it  - this book would be a significant improvement over the majority of currently existing middle/high school science curriculums. (In the same way that Magic School Bus and Bill Nye taught me more than science class ever did until high school (and even then)). 

Anyway, did pick up a lot of interesting trivia, and the author is apparently the dinosaur comics guy(?), which really shows through in the writing (not ALL the jokes come anywhere close to landing, but the ones that don’t are mostly dad-joke like enough that it’s kind of endearing). 

Also learned the exact limits of my understanding in (in decreasing order of) mechanical engineering, electricity, and computers. (I really do need someone to gently take me by the hand at some point and explain how basic logic gates doing addition and subtraction ends up with, well, tumblr, or triple A video games, or any of it. Like on a mechanical level.) 

Anyway, I should take up sewing. And write the half-essay floating around my head about how horrible mines are and how morally uncomfortable that is.

44. Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

Okay I forget who on here recommended this to me, but thanks! Was a ton of fun, great light morbid summer read.

Roach has a great sort of chatty style, and she does the thing I normally rather dislike working personal anecdotes and descriptions of people she interviewed into everything, but she honestly actually makes it work. 

It came out in the early 2000s and was endearingly dated at times, and vaguely racist in a ‘the strange and exotic Orient!’ way at others, but like generally mostly holds up, I think? 

It’s not nearly as difficult a read as you’d expect given the subject matter (‘the human corpse, how it decays, and things we do to it’, essentially). Or, well,that might me a be mostly a me thing, but I found it a trove of fun trivia, anyway. 

(The one exception being the section on the history of the pursuit of the human head transplant, and specifically the animal experiments done on the subject. That made me more queasy than anything I can remember reading recently, which is I suppose a useful thing to know about myself.)

[fancoloredglasses]

Zorro (Get your swashes buckled, folks!)

[All images are owned by New World Television and Zorro Productions, Inc (really!) Please don’t sue me or ruin my clothing with Zs]

(Thanks to megafan_12)

For those who are unaware, Zorro (“The Fox” in Spanish) is a masked swordsman who fights a corrupt government in the same vein as Robin Hood or the Scarlet Pimpernel, but in the town of Los Angeles during the time California was under Spanish/Mexican rule. Much like the aforementioned literary heroes, Zorro is a member of the local aristocracy (Don Diego de la Vega, son of one of the largest landowners in the region) who acts like a dandy and a coward to hide his masked activities.

He has been in literature since 1919 and has been in several movies and television shows (usually by a white man) In fact, it wasn’t until the 70s that a Latino (or Spanish) actor was cast in the role! Talk about injustice!

Most people know the Zorro films that starred Antonio Banderas as the title character (who inherited the mantle from Anthony Hopkins, yet ANOTHER white guy!) Many have seen Guy Ritchie as Zorro in the 50s (who didn’t need to worry about being white since the series was filmed in black & white and no one could tell his skin tone) The film I was first introduced to the character was Zorro, the Gay Blade (no, it wasn’t porn!) which starred Goerge Hamilton (yep, another while guy) as Don Diego and his twin brother Ramon (AKA “Bunny Wigglesworth” who was, shall we say, a bit flamboyant) The less said about that film, the better.

But the subject for this review was a forgotten gem from the 90s that aired on the cable network known as The Family Channel (I swear I saw it in the USA Network, but I couldn’t find any record in my research to prove this)

The series, naturally, follows Don Diego (played by Duncan Regehr yet ANOTHER white guy!)

…and his masked alter ego. (NOTE: Regehr was more muscular and fit than most previous actors in the role, meaning he could be a bit more physical. The character was also written as being a bit of a science buff)

Don Diego lives with his father Don Alejandro (played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr (yep, also white), who voiced Alfred in Batman: the Animated Series, in season 1…

…and Henry Darrow (FINALLY! A Latino actor, and one who actually played Zorro a few years earlier!) for the rest of the series)

…as well as his family’s mute servant Felipe (played by Juan Diego Botto), who also pretends to be deaf and is the only one who knows Don Diego’s secret (it’s not like he can tell anyone)

Don Diego’s love interest is Victoria Escalante (played by Patrice Martinez, who also played the love interest in The Three Amigos)

Zorro fights the corrupt Alcalde (governor) of the territory around Los Angeles Luis Ramone (played by Michael Tylo...yep, another one)

…but was replaced in season 3 by Ignacio de Soto (played by J.G. Hertzler (Seriously?!))

The Alcalde’s chief aide (and leader of the garrison) is Sgt. Mendoza (played by James Victor, the ONE Latino on the bad guys' side), who is the comic relief (of course...) for the series (which explains why they can never stop Zorro)

The plots generally revolve around the Alcalde’s latest plot to stop Zorro by trapping him while performing some form of injustice against the people of Los Angeles, only to be foiled. Note that while the series is very by-the-numbers, the action sequences are well done and there are a number of well-known (or soon-to-be-well-known) actors (as well as, for some reason, a handful of World Wrestling Federation wrestlers) who have guest starred.

As always, if you would like to see an episode reviewed, please let me know!

[darkfictionjude]

I thought you & some of the readers might find this interesting, things that happened in 1994 (according to Wikipedia):

February 12: Edvard Munch's painting The Scream is stolen in Oslo

March 12: A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as "proof" of the Loch Ness Monster, is confirmed to be a hoax

April 5: Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, commits suicide at age 27 at his home in Seattle. His body was found three days later.

April 27: South Africa holds its first fully multiracial elections, marking the final end of the last vestiges of apartheid. Nelson Mandela wins the elections and is sworn in as the first democratically elected president the following month.

May 10: Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

May 10: A solar eclipse occurs in The United States.

May 18: The Flavr Savr, a genetically modified tomato, is deemed safe for consumption by the FDA, becoming the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption.

June 12: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman are murdered outside the Simpson home in Los Angeles. O. J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in a civil suit.

June 15: The Lion King, the highest-grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time, is released by Walt Disney Feature Animation.

June 17: NFL star O. J. Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings flee from police in a white Ford Bronco. The low-speed chase ends at Simpson's Brentwood, Los Angeles mansion, where he surrenders.

June 17: The 1994 FIFA World Cup starts in the United States.

July 12: The Allied occupation of Berlin ends with a casing of the colors ceremony attended by U.S. President Bill Clinton.

August 12: Woodstock '94 begins in Saugerties, New York. It is the 25-year anniversary of Woodstock in 1969.

August 12: All Major League Baseball players go on strike, beginning the longest work stoppage in the sport's history.

September 13: President Bill Clinton signs the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which bans the manufacture of new firearms with certain features for a period of 10 years.

September 14: The 1994 World Series is officially cancelled due to the ongoing work stoppage. It is the first time a World Series will not be played since 1904.

September 17: Heather Whitestone is crowned the first deaf Miss America; she is crowned Miss America 1995.

September 19: Andrew Wiles proves Fermat's Last Theorem, solving the 357-year-old mathematical theorem first proposed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637. He would publish it in 1995.

October 1: The World Wide Web Consortium is founded by Tim Berners-Lee, becoming the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web.

November 5: George Foreman wins the WBA and IBF World Heavyweight Championships by KO'ing Michael Moorer becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.

December 3: Sony releases the PlayStation video game system in Japan.

And that is why it’s such an interesting year to set the story in. So much happens in all areas of the world. I knew some of these but it’s nice to know how much the world began to change here. And yes I will pat myself on the back for picking 1994 as the set year for the story 🥳

Thank you nonnie this was very cool 💜 (rip to Kurt — I should add more nirvana to the game playlist).

[xtruss]

70 Years After WWII, Japan Brings New Disaster To The World

— Chen Yang | August 24, 2023

Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

Japan kick starts discharging the Nuclear-Contaminated Water Stored at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear ☢️ Power Plant into the sea on Thursday afternoon. This move, prioritizing Japanese government's own interests over the common interests of all humanity, will ultimately lead to Japan's isolation and leave another indelible permanent stain on human history.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake struck off the coast of northeastern Japan, triggering a towering tsunami that caused a nuclear leak at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear ☢️ Power Plant. As of now, the amount of nuclear-contaminated wastewater stored in Japan has exceeded 1.3 million tons, and it is increasing by 100 tons per day. In April 2021, the Japanese government decided to dump the nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean, choosing the most convenient and irresponsible method among various methods of treating the contaminated water. Since the Japanese government plans to discharge the nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean over a period of 30 years, the impact on the global marine ecosystem and human health and well-being is not temporary, but long-term and enduring.

Since deciding to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean, Japan has consistently faced strong opposition from domestic and international public opinion. On Tuesday, the chairman of the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations in Japan, Masanobu Sakamoto, reiterated during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, "Nothing will change in our opposition to the release of water into the ocean without the understanding of fishermen and the public."

On July 1, South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party, held a rally in Seoul condemning the Japanese government's plan to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean, urging the South Korean government to clearly oppose it.

Cooperation Needed to Minimize Economic Risk Brought by Fukushima Nuclear ☢️ Contaminated Water Dumping — Hu Weijia! August 23, 2023. Japan's reckless dumping of nuclear wastewater poses a grave danger to Earth. Cartoon: Carlos Latuff

Despite the continuous doubts and opposition to the discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean from Japan domestically and internationally, the Japanese government has turned a deaf ear and insisted on pushing forward with the discharge process. This fundamentally reflects that discharging nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean is a selfish act that sacrifices the public health and well-being of its own country and neighboring countries and regions in exchange for short-term benefits.

In fact, one of the main reasons why Japan has insisted on dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean is the tacit approval and tolerance of the US, which has long claimed to be a "defender of human rights."

The US is Japan's ally and has had a wide range of influence on Japanese politics, diplomacy, culture and other aspects. It can even influence Japan's domestic and foreign policies to some extent. In theory, the US should exert its influence to prevent Japan from adopting irresponsible practices in dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean. However, unfortunately, regarding this public issue that poses a threat to the global marine ecosystem and human health and well-being, the US did not criticize or condemn it, worse, it praised the Japanese government for its "transparent efforts" in dealing with the issue and considered Japan's dumpingplan to be "safe."

Fishers Against Fukushima Nuclear ☢️ Contaminated Water Dumping! Fishers of the South Korea's National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives hold a rally on August 16, 2023, in the coastal area of in Goheung county in South Jeolla Province, to protest against the dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from Japan as Japanese government reportedly is eyeing dumping the contaminated water in late August. Photo: VCG

Perhaps it is precisely because of the support and "double standards" from the US that Japan has the confidence to push forward with the process of discharging nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean without any scruples until a specific date is determined and the discharge is implemented.

During World War II, Japan launched aggressive wars against neighboring countries, bringing great disasters to neighboring countries and regions. Today, the discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater can be said to be a new disaster that Japan, which has gone through defeat and surrender for more than 70 years, has brought to neighboring countries and regions.

The ocean is the common property of all humanity, not a dumping ground for Japan's arbitrary disposal. Regarding the issue of nuclear-contaminated wastewater, Japan should recognize its own responsibility, adopt a scientific attitude, fulfill its international obligations, and respond to the serious concerns of its own citizens, neighboring countries and the international community. If it simply ignores these concerns, it will ultimately leave an indelible permanent stain on Japan in human history.

— The Author is a Guest Research Fellow at the Centre for Japanese Studies, Liaoning University.

[signlanguagesday]

A world where deaf people everywhere can sign anywhere.

Today, we share the WFD’s vision of a world where deaf people everywhere can sign anywhere. A world where deaf people are seen as a part of the natural range of human diversity, and national sign languages are celebrated and used everywhere as part of national societies. The WFD calls upon all governments to take measures to ensure at least 50% of their children and youth know their national sign languages, as a step towards building societies in which deaf people everywhere can sign anywhere.

[lescroniques]

Dia de la Llengua de Signes 2022: Què és la llengua de signes i quantes existeixen?

Dia de la Llengua de Signes 2022: Què és la llengua de signes i quantes existeixen?

Sara Caro / tododisca.com Día de la Lengua de Signos 2022: ¿Qué es la lengua de signos y cuántas existen?

[spanishroyals]

September 15th, 2022 is Queen Letizia's 50th birthday.

Casa Real informs that there will not be photos or any special celebration. Not even a public event, since Queen Letizia has office work, tomorrow she will attend an event with the Spanish Association Against Cancer and on Monday will fly to London with the King for Queen Elizabeth's funeral. From London, Her Majesty will fly to New York. There she will take part in events at the UN's General Assembly as UNICEF's Mental Health Advocate for children and adolescents and as honorary president of the Spanish Association against Cancer, in events for World's Cancer Research Day.

To celebrate this birthday, associations that work with the Queen have released a video to thank her for her work and wish her a happy birthday.

The associations taking part in the video are the following:

Foundation Against Drug Addiction, Spanish Red Cross, UNICEF Spain, the Spanish Association against Cancer, the Spanish Federation of Rare Diseases, the Confederation of Mental Health, Aldeas Infantiles, the Royal Patronage of Disabilities, Association for Prevention, Reintegration and Care of Prostituted Women, Association for Rural Women and Families, the Observatory against Domestic Violence, the Romani Secretariat Foundation, Confederation of Deaf People, the Federation of Deaf-Blind People Associations, Mutua Madrileña Foundation, A la Par Foundation, Princess of Girona Foundation, Plena Inclusión, Telefónica Foundation, Integra Foundation, Spanish National Organization of the Blind, Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities, Banco Santander Foundation)

EFE has also spoken with some of these associations on the occasion of Queen Letizia's 50th birthday:

The president of the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (CERMI), Luis Cayo, has highlighted the "sincere and genuine concern" of the Queen for social causes, which has earned her the "appreciation and esteem" of all the disability sector.

"We feel her as one more disability activist," Cayo stressed.

"Warmth, empathy and involvement" is how the president of the Spanish Federation of Rare Diseases (FEDER), Juan Carrión, describes it, who recalls how, when the Queen began to collaborate with them, the organization was almost completely unknown and, thanks to the media focus on the Queen, have acquired visibility and relevance, even in the UN.

Doña Letizia's collaboration with the organization has also given them great social visibility, and now their work has a greater impact and reaches sectors of the population that they did not reach before, says a spokesperson for the confederation.

Also at UNICEF, they highlight Doña Letizia's ability to "give visibility" to the work of the organization and to the problems and deficiencies of children and adolescents, especially the most vulnerable, says its president in Spain, Gustavo Suárez Pertierra.

In addition, the representatives of the organizations agree in highlighting the capacity and thorough preparation of the Queen before each new meeting, and her willingness to seek solutions and to get personally involved.

Thus, the president of CERMI assures that "the degree of current and conscientious knowledge that she possesses is striking" and the fact that she always "delves into the issues and provides valuable, personal, but very accurate visions."

We have to be very prepared for those meetings because her level of precision and rigorousness is so high that we must have everything covered," he says.

For his part, the president of UNICEF highlights "the active listening, the interest in deepening and debating the issues that are raised and the exhaustive preparation with which the Queen attends the meetings."

The NGOs also underline the human profile and warmth with which Doña Letizia treats the affected people and their families.

Thus, the president of FEDER highlights the "close and very attentive" attitude of the Queen and her "great capacity to listen and connect with each one of the people in the group, their stories and challenges," says Carrión.

In fact, in all FEDER events in which she has taken part, Doña Letizia “always looks for the way to talk to fathers, mothers and patients to learn about their experience first-hand. And then she incorporates those personal stories into her interventions to bring society closer to the more human side of problems.”

The Confederation of Mental Health also points out the "exquisite and close manner" of the Queen, who remembers "the names and surnames of each person she has met, especially each woman who shared with her their stories, an experience or a poem"

The relationship of this organization with Doña Letizia began in her years as Princess of Asturias, a decade ago, and since then "it has remained firm and has consolidated", to the point that the organization allocates to the Queen a large part of the merit of having achieved a UN Resolution in 2021 in favor of the importance of mental health.

The Queen has also actively worked to promote relations between organizations from different countries, especially with Latin America, and has shown "great tenacity to overcome collective challenges," he points out.

The Queen's international prominence and willingness to get involved with the organizations with which she works is also evident in the fact that Letizia has recently been named UNICEF Global Advocate for Mental Health for Children and Adolescents, with deepens her commitment to the organization.

[rockislandadultreads]

Disability Pride Month: More Nonfiction Recommendations

Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig

A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.

Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.

Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

The Pretty One by Keah Brown

From the disability rights advocate and creator of the #DisabledAndCute viral campaign, a thoughtful, inspiring, and charming collection of essays exploring what it means to be black and disabled in a mostly able-bodied white America.

Keah Brown loves herself, but that hadn’t always been the case. Born with cerebral palsy, her greatest desire used to be normalcy and refuge from the steady stream of self-hate society strengthened inside her. But after years of introspection and reaching out to others in her community, she has reclaimed herself and changed her perspective.

In The Pretty One, Brown gives a contemporary and relatable voice to the disabled—so often portrayed as mute, weak, or isolated. With clear, fresh, and light-hearted prose, these essays explore everything from her relationship with her able-bodied identical twin (called “the pretty one” by friends) to navigating romance; her deep affinity for all things pop culture—and her disappointment with the media’s distorted view of disability; and her declaration of self-love with the viral hashtag #DisabledAndCute.

Helen Keller by Meredith Eliassen 

This book provides new and exciting interpretations of Helen Keller's unparalleled life as "the most famous American woman in the world" during her time, celebrating the 141st anniversary of her birth.

Helen Keller: A Life in American History explores Keller's life, career as a lobbyist, and experiences as a deaf-blind woman within the context of her relationship with teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy and overarching social history. The book tells the dual story of a pair struggling with respective disabilities and financial hardship and the oppressive societal expectations set for women during Keller's lifetime. This narrative is perhaps the most comprehensive study of Helen Keller's role in the development of support services specifically related to the deaf-blind, as delineated as different from the blind.

Readers will learn about Keller's challenges and choices as well as how her public image often eclipsed her personal desires to live independently. Keller's deaf-blindness and hard-earned but limited speech did not define her as a human being as she explored the world of ideas and wove those ideas into her writing, lobbying for funds for the American Federation for the Blind and working with disabled activists and supporters to bring about practical help during times of tremendous societal change.

The Underdogs by Melissa Fay Greene

The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age twenty-four by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was “too disabled.” Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life. “How many people are stranded like I was,” she wondered, “who would lead productive lives if only they had a dog?”

A thousand state-of-the-art dogs later, Karen Shirk’s service dog academy, 4 Paws for Ability, is restoring broken children and their families to life. Long shunned by scientists as a man made, synthetic species, and oft- referred to as “Man’s Best Friend” almost patronizingly, dogs are finally paid respectful attention by a new generation of neuroscientists and animal behaviorists. Melissa Fay Greene weaves the latest scientific discoveries about our co-evolution with dogs with Karen’s story and a few exquisitely rendered stories of suffering children and their heartbroken families. Written with characteristic insight, humanity, humor, and irrepressible joy, what could have been merely touching is a penetrating, compassionate exploration of larger questions: about our attachment to dogs, what constitutes a productive life, and what can be accomplished with unconditional love.

[mizkit]

new blog post: Reading Roundup: The Starbridge series

new blog post on https://mizkit.com/reading-roundup-the-starbridge-series/

Reading Roundup: The Starbridge series

I decided in my re-read of AC Crispin’s Starbridge novels that aside from the first one, I wouldn’t do individual reviews, but rather cover all of them in one longer post. I may or may not regret this decision. :)

I’ve read all of the Starbridge novels at least once, most of them twice, and a few of them three+ times. Once upon a time I hoped to write one with Ann, and even now, re-reading them, I would dearly love to write in her world. It really holds a special place in my heart.

STARBRIDGE: SILENT DANCES, AC Crispin & Kathleen O’Malley – This, after STARBRIDGE itself, is my favorite of the series, and depending on the day, it might take the lead.

SILENT DANCES is the story of Tesa, a young, Deaf Native American woman whose Starbridge work brings her to a planet of crane-like people whose thunderous voices can destroy human hearing. She’s not at risk, although everyone around her wants her to return to Earth to have her hearing ‘fixed,’ a path she’s not at all sure she should take. Like all Starbridge novels, it’s a story of first contact, and the trials and tribulations therein.

I *love* her story. I love the Grus, the enormous, crane-like people who mostly speak through sign language themselves, and I love the world they inhabit. I love the truths that Tesa discovers in her time on Trinity, and the beauty of her path of self-determination. It’s by far my favorite Starbridge world.

SILENT DANCES, like STARBRIDGE, suffers the problem of an age-gap romance that didn’t bother me at all when I read it the first few times at an age much closer to the protagonist’s than I currently am, and upon re-reading in adulthood suffers even more from the fact that the romance is *completely* unnecessary and so quickly developed it’s actually unbelievable, whereas STARBRIDGE’s at least develops well. That’s a huge frustration to me as an adult reader, because I can now see how easy it would have been to just…not do that.

But the flaw is not fatal. I love the story, the world, and the characters too much to let that one aspect of the book–which is somewhere around tertiary or arguably even quad…quaternary (i had to look that up)–in plot importance wreck it for me. It’s such a good story. ♥

STARBRIDGE: SHADOW WORLD, AC Crispin & Jannean Elliot – I’ve read this one twice, but remember liking it less than the first two. In re-reading it, I understand why; it deals with death a lot, and has some really heartbreaking moments that are just beautifully written and really tremendously powerful. There was one point in the book where I gasped out loud and my husband was like “IS EVERYTHING OK–oh, you’re reading, okay.” :)

SHADOW WORLD follows our first male protagonist in the Starbridge series, Mark…who does not have a creepy age gap romance. Go figure. In the wake of his mother’s death, he’s about to give up on Starbridge Academy, but is drawn into a devastating First Contact in which a faction of the new alien race *violently* disagrees with becoming part of the, uh, Federation. (It’s actually the Collective League of Starfaring Worlds or something like that, but, you know: the Federation.) The aliens in SHADOW WORLD live only around fifteen years, and the internal struggle over whether they should allow the CLS to help them extend their lives is the central conflict of the book.

Coming at this from adulthood, it’s…god, it’s a beautifully written book in almost every aspect. It deals delicately with grief, anger, despair and healing, and I have a *much* greater appreciation for it as an adult than I did as a teen. They did a really good job here, and I’m really glad I re-read it.

[heartsoftruth]

Bits from the AMuS article on the two accidents at T13 and despite the drivers asking for it no reaction from the FIA

Actually, the place [corner] looks harmless. Curve 13 is a left bend, which is driven at 140 km/h in third gear. Despite the relatively low speed, telemetry showed high delay peaks. 47 g for Sainz, 51 g for Ocon. If the wall had been protected by Tecpro or a pile of tires, it would have taken a lot of energy from the impact. Carlos Sainz complained of pain in the neck and hip after the impact. Ocon bounced his knee on the steering wheel.

Both drivers attributed their injuries and the massive damage to the cars to the severity of the impact. Sainz raised the case at the driver meeting and demanded a Tecprobarrier as a safeguard. He hit deaf ears with FIA race director Niels Wittich. He taught the Spaniard that the simulations of the accident experts of the FIA had shown that no protection from the wall was necessary at this particular point.

Sainz replied that you can't blindly rely on simulations in life. Reality does not always adhere to the data world. This is often enough evident in vehicle development. Wittich also referred to his simulations, which had shown that Tecpro could even be counterproductive at this point, because the car never hits frontally, but always at a gentle angle and can hook with the front axle and stand in the way. This poses the risk of a rear-end collision in the race. To which Sainz again contradicted: "But I did not hit forward, but backwards and did not crash back on the track."

Lando Norris backed Sainz and Ocon: "As drivers, we often know better than the experts where the risks lie. We should be listened to from time to time. We made our recommendation after Carlos' accident and the FIA did not respond. That's not okay." The World Federation argues that due to the lack of space at the point, the wall could not be moved and that two layers of Tecpro would narrow the distance by at least one meter at the point. And then it would be too tight there again.