I…. I do not think this is going to please anyone, actually.
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My therapy practice just announced is no longer doing televisits. Telehealth has been a godsend for me in terms of my mental health. It’s not the kind of medical appointment where I need to get a blood test. There’s no physical reason to go to an office. This sucks so hard.
The first person to ever have received an autism diagnosis, Donald Triplett, has died. He lead a full life in a community that supported and appreciated him. wlbt.com/2023/06/16/don
My spouse is moderately to severely immunocompromised (takes daily high dose corticosteroids) and just got turned away for a second bivalent booster at our local pharmacy. So that’s frustrating. The new CDC guidelines don’t mean a lot if pharmacies aren’t following them.
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Ah yes, the extremely apolitical era after 9/11 and during the early phase of the Iraq War. Nothing political happened in schools at all during that time.
One of the weirdest things about covering disability is that sometimes when I interview disabled advocates, they'll namedrop someone we both know is a big deal historical figure, but then I go to Google looking for a news article explaining that and there's nothing.
. took her daughters to see #Barbie. But a broken elevator meant they went up to see the movie while she waited outside.
33 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, much remains inaccessible, even for a US Senator.
I was born disabled. But most people acquire their disability later in life. Learning to exist in a disabled body is hard.
This is a stellar story from my colleague about disability doulas — People who help newly disabled people navigate.
Happening now: marching near the Capitol, chanting “affordable, integrated housing” for people with disabilities. Organizer I spoke with pegs it at about 80 marchers? I like the hats.
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I am begging TV writers to understand that being autistic and being terrible to women are not the same thing.
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The Good Doctor
Cool autism fact: We don't really know what percentage of autistic people are nonspeaking because the only research on the topic has tiny sample sizes. There are billions going into autism research and nobody thought looking into this might be a good idea?
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I actually really like beets but this is not an entree.
. has been on the front lines of disability advocacy and activism for 37 years. I interviewed her about the most interesting places she’s been arrested, fighting racism within the movement, and what she’s planning post-retirement.
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Do… Do people not know who Steve Albini is anymore? I feel like my body is going to crumble into dust and blow away.
If you ever think “people being mean to me about my job is just like racism” and you’re not a person of color, probably don’t say it out loud. Definitely don’t publish a whole academic paper about it. Trust me on this.
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ABA professionals now seem to be suggesting autistic-led critique of their method is somehow like anti-black racism? This is just incredibly crass on so many levels. The persecution complex of psych professionals knows no bounds.
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Disability history has been very poorly documented. There's a handful of books and NYT has been doing an "overlooked" series of obituaries, which are great but only happen when somebody dies.
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Nurses have to lift people in and out of bed. What major physical exertion does engineering involve? Are those numbers heavy?
#CovidIsntOver for disability advocates. But with the end of the COVID public health emergency, organizers are struggling to figure out best practices for a world where everyone else acts like it is.
Disability and aging advocates got an extremely unexpected win at the Supreme Court today. My latest .
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At this point it’s not even about the COVID risk for me. Televisits for talk therapy are much more convenient and allow me to use my lunch break and get right back to work. I haven’t missed or had to reschedule an appointment in three years because it’s so much easier to do.
For #AutismAcceptanceMonth, I interviewed . She’s a rising disability rights leader and her signature issue is communication access. Zimmerman types to talk and wants more nonspeaking people to be given opportunities to fully express themselves.
Maybe we should use our editorial judgement and not give RFK Jr. prime time TV news interviews in the first place.
This is straight up eugenics and it shouldn’t be getting cute, completely credulous headlines.
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I don’t know if this is related to the end of the public health emergency. I had hoped discussion of continued flexibility from the Biden administration would have meant I could keep doing my appointments online.
Apropos of nothing, I stopped going to my local autistic adult meetup group years ago because autistic men kept making passes at me. In one particularly memorable incident, a guy’s mother tried to get me to go on a date with him.
It didn’t make me feel safe or supported.
I think it’s worth mentioning that how our current society treats old and disabled people is Incredibly Awful. We don’t live in a world where elders are respected. Feinstein’s behavior makes perfect sense in that context, as does our current gerontocracy. twitter.com/AnandWrites/st
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#NothingAboutUsWithoutUs is a principle from disability rights that is good to apply to journalism. If you are not interviewing the people you’re writing about, you didn’t do your job right.
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so a month or so ago, i wrote an article about how to cover trans kids. chief among my points was talking to actual trans kids for your story and centering it on them. the FP piece that went viral yesterday and the actual trans kids' response is a case study proving my point.
Yesterday, an Uber driver congratulated me on my pregnancy. I’m not pregnant. I’m just fat. I still gave 5 stars and tipped because I’m not a monster and he was well intentioned. But. Don’t congratulate people on being pregnant unless you are 100% sure!
Hannah Gadsby was the first autistic woman like me I ever saw on television, and I will always love her for that even if it isn’t especially cool to do so.
I find the TikTok and autism influencers annoying and alienating too, but that seems less to do with “identity politics” and more to do with the fact that I’m in my 30’s.
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Back in @nytopinion, this time discussing what happens when mental illness and neurodiversity become entrenched in our ever-expanding identity politics.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/opi
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People, especially younger people, need time and space to be cringe for a little bit as they figure their identities out. This isn’t even a neurodiversity specific problem.
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I would like a moratorium on calling every annoying thing people from minority groups do/say “identity politics.”
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I imagine this must be very difficult for disability historians. What do you do when nobody wrote the “the first draft of history”?
RFK Jr. has definitely had people with intellectual disabilities at spear tip his whole life. That part is accurate, although not in the way he thinks he means.
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"I have never seen someone my age with full-blown autism," says Kennedy, "and I've been at the spear-tip of people with intellectual disabilities my whole life."
It’s very cool that the first hundred or so replies on any remotely controversial news article right now are just a fountain of hate. twitter.com/AdamWeinstein/
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Making autism your whole personality is common when people first get diagnosed (or self-identify) and then eventually people chill out as they get more comfortable with themselves. I think it’s fine to people be excited about finding what makes their lives make sense.
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Like great, it’s authorized. How do people who need them get them, though?
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I feel like part of the point of being in a long-term relationship is that if one of you gets sick, you have someone there who can take care of you. I get that relationships mean different things to different people but stuff like this is just… Man.
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“I didn’t see people like that growing up” yeah dude it’s because they were shoved places like Willowbrook. It has nothing to do with vaccines.
I sincerely believe that if we found out asbestos causes cancer today, certain politicians would go on TV with blocks strapped to their faces, railing about their inalienable, Constitution and God-given right to get mesothelioma.
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It appears House Freedom Caucus is taking Save Gas Stoves legislation hostage in response to “bad faith” attempts by leadership over the debt limit negotiations. “Unfortunately, two weeks a deal was made and it broke away what we had made,” Rep. Chip Roy tells reporters.
It's interesting that this piece from says we should take Marianne Williamson seriously, but it also does not mention her historical (and current) statements on things like vaccines, psychiatric medication and disability.
Say what you will about Ashkenazi cuisine but we are objectively good at bread. Babka, challah, bagels. Just hit after hit.
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I was talking with my mom about how much I love babka and how I get some anytime I am in New York City, but she thought I was saying vodka, which is pretty awkward as a sober person. (FWIW, I preferred dark liquor when I drank)
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I am acutely, intimately aware that autism can be very isolating. It’s harder to make friends. It’s harder to date. None of that justifies how some autistic men choose to act.
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I’m married now and much older, but also I don’t need the support as much as when I first got diagnosed. It sucks that autistic women get locked out of IRL community spaces because some autistic men are entitled creeps.
Sincere question: Are there any organizations tracking radicalization among older adults? I get that it’s hard to quantify. But it seems like a problem a lot of people don’t want to acknowledge, or that we want to minimize because it makes us uncomfortable to really look at.
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I’ve been ostracized by people I thought were my friends or colleagues because of disagreements. It sucks! But if I ever let a sense of grievance over it become my whole personality please just take me out behind the barn and put me out of my misery.
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A while ago, someone mentioned to me, offhandedly, that a friend of theirs had become akin to "the mother hen of the cancelled." Naturally, I was like, "I need to know everything about this."
That's how I met the Thought Criminals. (1/x)
newyorker.com/news/our-local
I regret to inform you that Bethany Mandel found one of the worst autism discourses and has blasted it to her hundred thousand plus followers.
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This is an absolute must-read. This is the kind of journalism that only @TheFP is producing. thefp.com/p/the-autism-s
I didn’t date until I was in my 20’s. I got married last year. If you’d told me that would happen a decade ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Autistic people do things on our own timescale sometimes. I’m really glad was able to find his people. t.co/VBE091cRXQ
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Marriage means different things to different people, but to me, part of it is that when I’m sick and gross, someone will take care of me. And when my spouse is sick and gross, I’m there to take care of them. That’s part of the deal.
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Your husband should never see you
poop
pop zits
pluck any hair on your face beside an eyebrow
do a face mask
wax your bikini line
see you in an outfit you would be embarrassed to be seen in by anyone else
and a bunch of other gross fundamentally human stuff
WHY?
TIL it is “gatekeeping” to just make words up when I don’t know a language.
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This is how a Tik Tok star who botched sign language renditions of songs into gibberish responds when he’s called on it washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/
Supreme Court ruled on Talevski. I still need to talk to experts but it seems like an unambiguous win for disability and aging advocates. The court ruled 7-2, with Justice Jackson writing for the majority. I covered it back in November, for a refresher.
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I also know older folks who were just considered deeply weird for their entire lives and then got autism diagnoses in late adulthood. Not an uncommon type of person.
Earlier this month, the Biden admin announced they will end federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates. That includes the mandate covering nursing home workers, who care for the people who are still most vulnerable to the virus. I wrote about it for .
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We’re both up-to-date otherwise, so it’s not an emergency. It’s just frustrating. I want to keep the people I love safe.
I wrote about the history of secular disability rights opposition to medical aid in dying and why it exists as a position in the first place.
Somerville, Mass. recently became the first city in America to extend legal protections to people in polyamorous relationships — As well as folks with other alternative family structures. I wrote about it .
Vaccinate your goddamn kids. It is 2023 and we have to be worried about diseases we should have and could have obliterated by now.
Hard disagree. Part of my autism is that I struggle with organization. My inbox has a lot of stuff in it and sometimes I miss things.
Even better than following up, if I miss your email and we have a preexisting relationship, text me.
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"You don’t ever have to resend a message with the note 'Bumping this up in your inbox.' Thanks, but I manage my own priorities … and you just dropped further down the list," writes @AdamMGrant. nyti.ms/3UzbyuR
I am so, so grateful the Internet wasn’t a thing when I was a little kid and first got diagnosed. The way people blog/TikTok/whatever about their kids is horrifying and invasive.
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I wrote about #medicalmoms, parents of disabled & chronically ill children who share videos of their kids in the hospital, details of their meds, and explanations of their disabilities set to trending songs
for @washingtonpost:
washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023
Why is doing prevalence numbers on an autism sub-type that does not officially exist, has a relatively vague definition and was first proposed two years ago?
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I'm trying to pull numbers for an article and I'm getting 25-50% which is a completely ridiculous range, plus all of the studies have fewer than 250 people in them???
Nightmarish. These poor parents. That poor child.
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Tamika has been to about 20 actions and Rodney has been a member of ADAPT since 2009. We’re going up a hill, so Rodney, who uses a manual chair, is catching a ride with Tamika by holding on the back.
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I am very excited about an upcoming piece I wrote for a partnership between and and also completely dreading the hate mail because it’s about the history of a very controversial disability rights issue. Stay tuned.
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This seems like a lot of police for this situation?
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Putting someone in a chokehold is not “trying to help.”
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They all involve kids, obviously. Delayed speech is also a thing in autism so unlike raw autism prevalence, you can't really extrapolate to adults.
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IDK I feel like if it’s essentially legal to murder homeless people, that’s bad for public order.
I am working on a piece for with @i_oriion about how trans autistic people are being impacted by legislation restricting access to gender affirming care. Do you live in a state that has already passed or is considering it? Want to share your story? Please DM or email.
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“The Constitution says we all have a right to live. But they don’t want to make the world accessible. They want to put us away.”
I don't do a lot of culture criticism anymore -- I like reporting and politics writing better, honestly. But it was fun to dig into it again briefly with .
The Biden administration has announced a new EO intended to expand access to care. The EO takes about 50 different actions across various federal departments.
The Americans with Disabilities doesn't just protect people in wheelchairs. It's not just about ramps or Braille. writes about how the ADA also serves pregnant people, domestic violence survivors, trans people, and many more. #ADA33
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Anyway, we’re going through a very tense period where a generation of kids who got ABA are now online and talking about it. Last year the Autism Society held town halls to talk about it, for the first time in their history. Practitioners aren’t taking it super well.
These parents lost their newborn baby to CPS because they opted to use a midwife and care for their baby at home. Important reporting from my colleague .
Protip for nonprofit advocacy groups: The #1 thing you can do to get your organization included in news media coverage is to respond to emails from reporters and schedule interviews the same day day.
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Some folks have been arrested. Others have left because they don’t want to get arrested. A lot of folks are still in the hallway though.
Also TIL ’s office is right across from ’s office. The Black Lives Matter flag is hers.
I don’t know what everyone is complaining about. This is super realistic representation. I scream “I AM A JOURNALIST” at my boss all the time when I’m having a bad day.
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I know several older adults who are on the spectrum. A lot got diagnoses like PDD-NOS or “mental retardation” (now considered offensive). It’s really not hard to find them. A lot of them are formerly institutionalized and weren’t allowed out in normal society.
I interviewed / anchor about his new documentary and his experience caring for his parents. It’s a beautiful doc and I recommend it highly.
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That celebrities are getting their blue checks back but journalists aren’t really just hammers home that this whole thing has been an exercise to delegitimize journalists.
. published a piece yesterday claiming the latest ADAPT action “got no press.” Which is weird because I was there and I published a piece about it the day before. We used Getty photos, who were also there.
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A whole train car of people watched this homeless man get choked to death and they thought it was fine. There are a lot of terrible things about this story, but this is one of the most chilling to me.
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I really, really appreciate ’s take on the recent Hannah Gadsby discourse. I didn’t know anything about the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and it’s important context that has been lacking.
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This is a gorgeous and necessary call against despair. I needed this, . Thank you for writing it.
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I’m fine. My spouse is not. It’s probably not fatal but it’s bad enough that we can’t just go home.
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A “collective of youth lead groups” to cancel student debt was already here doing a sit-in so it looks like this is accidentally a double sit-in?
. Disability Pride Month coverage continues! writes about how Fannie Lou Hamer’s work was shaped by her experience with disability.
I got dog-piled for days because I said it was inappropriate for the New York Times to call a US Senator “special needs.” twitter.com/nfkfkkfkdkkfe/
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Everyone told Susie Talevski she was wrong. That she was insane. That going to the Supreme Court would gut civil rights protections for millions of disabled and older Americans.
She went to court and won.
I didn’t go to J school. I didn’t know I even wanted to be a journalist until I was in my mid-20’s. I also qualified for Medicaid basically the whole time I was freelancing, despite winning awards.
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I want to see more interviews with people who have messy careers, who have learned hard lessons, who took longer than people expected them to take to get to where they're at.
I want THOSE people to talk about holding onto their hope while their situation felt hopeless.
A fact checker just informed me that we don’t know exactly how the two characters in this Monty Python scene are related. I unironically love working with fact checkers so much.
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Heading towards the Capitol I think? Brief stop to put on ponchos to protect power chairs from the rain.
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The police have arrived. Protesters have been informed that if they do not stop demonstrating, they will be under arrest.
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This isn’t even the first story written about this specific couple. Can we just stop giving them and their terrible philosophy attention?
It is admittedly very funny that Elon gave Sir Ian McKellan and LeBron James free blue checks but not the Pope.
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Despite the implication when you click the blue badge that has mysteriously re-appeared beside my name, I am not paying for the "honour".
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I am so, so glad selected as one of their Ben Bagdikian fellows. Hiring disabled journalists changes disability coverage for the better.