why do we keep pets?

This morning I woke up to find my horrible kitten repeatedly rifling through my trash can.

He was stealing (and no doubt, consuming) my used tissues.

I... how... why... screw it, I'm going back to sleep.

And maybe finding a trash can with a lid.

Signal Boost: Article about Disabled People being Suited for Space

access_fandom posted: Article about Disabled People being Suited for Space

Rose Eveleth at Wired:
"It's Time to Rethink Who's Best Suited for Space Travel"

https://www.wired.com/story/its-time-to-rethink-whos-best-suited-for-space-travel/?mbid=social_twitter_onsiteshare

We need the strongest, smartest, most adaptable among us to go. But strength comes in many forms, as do smarts. And if you want to find people who are the very best at adapting to worlds not suited for them, you’ll have the best luck looking at people with disabilities, who navigate such a world every single day. Which has led disability advocates to raise the question: What actually is the right stuff?

Go check out access_fandom, if you haven't already. This article is really good, and I've left a longer comment there in the comm.

The Good Doctor S1E1 thru S1E2

I owe everyone and their brother comments right now, but I'm sick and I slept for two hours and all I want is to sleep again, so I'm watching this show for the bits I missed before I got tossed into the deep end yesterday.

( First impressions under the cut. )

The thing I am missing most, I think, as I catch up on these episodes, is the total absence of self-awareness and humor on Shaun's part. Maybe that will pop up eventually, but it is something I particularly miss about Community's Abed--the notion that someone on the spectrum might be quite aware of how other people consider them, and find certain things about allistic people funny. It's never quite clear if the moments when Shaun references his autism in his line of reasoning ["You are a very arrogant person. Arrogant people don't bother to lie"] is something he finds funny, and I don't think I've seen him laugh once yet.

Which is fair. It's been a while. But I miss that. I love listening to Deaf humor, too, and like--

people expect disability narratives to be so serious, like our lives are an endless struggle, and never seem once to think about the notion that those lives might influence a sense of humor about things. It's one of the things I loved about the Netflix Daredevil series--for all it was frequently weird about Matt's blindness, he got to crack blind jokes and wrongfoot people and have someone who got him and leaned in on that. I hope we get that for Shaun at some point in this show.

The Good Doctor S1E14

Oh, goodie, the transgender episode; and Shaun is predictably clueless about all flavors of gender ID and queerness. Really clueless, and not taking hints either, which the show views as him clearly putting his foot in it.

Which does not ring true for me, as an autistic person who grew up talking to other autistic people, and sure this character is clueless and isolated, but--

We are so much likelier to be gender non-conforming or trans or nb than allistic people! Even growing up with Wrongplanet back in the day--that would have been in 2007ish--I remember people talking frankly about gender issues and sexuality issues and being present with those things. Did this kid whose entire social circle knows he's autistic, who never ever passes, just... never so much as think to look for other people who got him?

( Did he never have a chance to talk to people like him? )

What I'm getting at is that one of the things I am missing, looking at this depiction of this man, is that sense of... autistic community exists. I wish that even in a show that is clearly thinking of allistics as its audience, we were reminded that that community exists. I am tired of this idea that autistic people don't talk to each other.

...and okay, the very next episode features a little disabled kid who is gleefully explaining how the Internet lets her make all the friends which she couldn't have otherwise, so. Huh.