I Think Part Of What Bothers Me (among Many Other Things) About The Dilution Of Punk On Here Lately Is

hey you!

you know that you don’t have to be special or achieve anything great in order to justify your existence, right? it’s okay to be average. it’s okay to be mediocre. it’s okay to not be special. you deserve to exist and i love you<3

love how when i get a new interest, i’m like “oh god it’s happening again” and i’m stuck like that for about a week until everything explodes and any interest i’ve had prior is completely dwarfed for an unknown amount of time

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

"New (old) perspectives on self-injurious and aggressive biting" published in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis / Nine Inch Nails- The Hand that Feeds

I was troubled to see a trend of claiming that Autistic people who do not support Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) are a group of "low-support-needs" autistics who are monopolizing the conversation and taking resources away from autistics with higher support needs—I think it is misunderstanding.

Individual positive or negative experiences with ABA are irrelevant here—the fundamental core of the therapy is behaviorism, the idea that an autistic person can be "treated" by rewarding "desirable" behaviors and punishing "undesirable" behaviors, and that an increase in desirable behaviors and decrease in undesirable behaviors constitutes successful treatment

In researching I found that ABA practitioners have published statements condemning conversion therapy. They refer to an unfortunate historical association between ABA and conversion therapy, but it is not association—ABA literally is conversion therapy; the creator of it used it to try to "cure" little boys that were too feminine.

ABA is considered "medically necessary" treatment for autism and the only "proven" treatment, in that it is proven to create decrease in "undesirable" behaviors and increase in "desirable" behaviors.

Undesirable behaviors for an autistic person might include things like stimming and talking about their interests, desirable behaviors might include eye contact, using verbal speech, playing with toys in the "right" way.

The BCBA behavior analyst code of ethics does not prohibit "aversive" methods (e.g. electric shock) to punish undesirable behaviors

The code of ethics only discusses the consent of the "client," not the person receiving the treatment

Many people will say "my child's ABA therapist would never make them repress harmless stims, give up their interests, use electric shocks...They understand the value of neurodiversity and emphasize the consent of the child..."

But consider...if nothing binds or requires an ABA therapist to treat stimming as important, nor restrains them from using abusive techniques, nor requires them to consider the consent of a person being treated, what protects vulnerable people other than luck? The ABA therapist still has an innately unethical level of power over a child being "treated."

Furthermore, consider: can a therapy built on the goal of controlling the behavior of a person who cannot meaningfully consent to it, especially without hard limits or protections on the kinds of behavior that can be coerced or controlled, ever be ethical?

I found many articles that discuss teaching "compliance" in autistic children, treating "compliance" as a reasonable goal to strive for without qualification...

The abstract of the above article struck me with a spark of inspiration. Biting is an undesirable behavior to be controlled, understandably so, since most would feel that violence should not be allowed. But I was suddenly reminded of the song "The Hand that Feeds" by Nine Inch Nails, which is a play on the saying "Don't bite the hand that feeds you," meaning don't lash out against someone that is kind to you.

But doesn't "the hand that feeds you" implicitly have power over you through being able to give or withhold food? In this case, kindness can be a form of coercion. Thus "biting the hand that feeds" is used in the song as a metaphor for autonomy and resisting coercive power. The speaker asks the audience if they have the courage to test the benevolence of their oppressors, or if they will remain compliant and unquestioning even though they know deep down that it isn't right.

Likewise the article blunders into something unintentionally poetic when it recognizes that biting is an innately possible behavior in response to "aversive" stimuli or the "removal of reinforcers." Reinforcers and aversives in ABA are discussed as tools used by the therapist—the presentation of a preferred food would be a reinforcer, for instance (and is often used as such in ABA).

The journal article considers biting as a behavioral problem, even though the possibility that someone may bite can never be eliminated. Contrastingly, "The Hand that Feeds" highlights the coercive power behind the ability to control your behavior, even when that control appears benevolent and positive, and argues that "biting the hand that feeds you" is not only a possibility but a moral imperative.

Consider: In what circumstances would you bite someone? To defend your own body? To defend your life? Are there circumstances in which biting would be the reasonable and the right action to take?

What authority decides which behaviors are desirable or undesirable, and rewards or punishes compliance or resistance? Who is an authority—your therapist? Your teacher? Your caregiver? Any adult? Any person with the power to reward or punish?

In what circumstances might compliance be demanded of you? In what circumstances would it be justifiable not to comply? What authority decides which circumstances are justifiable?

Can you imagine a circumstance where it might be important for a child to not comply with the demands of an adult? For a citizen to not comply with the demands of a government? Which authorities demand compliance in a right and just manner, and which demand compliance to things that are evil and wrong? Which authority has the power to differentiate the two? Should you trust them? Will you bite the hand that feeds you?/Will you stay down on your knees?

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

Every now and then I remember that Malbolge exists and I get to spend the better part of an hour cry-laughing at the world’s worst programming language

already starting off strong, but it gets worse

Wow! Sounds easy and intuitive to use! What’s the “crazy operation” you ask? We’ll get to that later. For now let’s see what a program in this language looks like :)

Thanks! I hate it!

it’s so difficult to work with that the first program was written by another brute force search program

mmmmm delicious base-3 arithmetic, what could go wrong? (For reference, that means this program forgoes the usual “0/1″ values of binary code in favor of a much more fun “0/1/2″ set of values)

ah.

Here’s how the language actually figures out what to do. It’s got 8 “simple” commands that can be executed easily by *checks notes* running the code itself through the modulo operation and taking the result.

As a bonus, on top of all that every single character in your code will now alter what every single other character does. So I hope you’re alright with cracking a cipher every time you add a new letter to your program!

oh god oh fuck.

behold, Malbolge’s primary arithmetic operation and what you’ll be using for most of your math while programming with it :)

This looks specifically designed to be the least logical math operation you could make, and knowing what the rest of Malbolge is I’d wager that’s precisely what happened. I never want to ever use this and it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge

Anyways here’s the wiki page if you wanna read through it more deeply, I’m gonna sit here holding in my laughter staring at the hello world program again.

lightning

What, this? Oh, it’s just my Krana. Yeah, I always wear it while I clean the house, it gets me in the zone.

Bionicle Anomalocaris V.2

finding out your friend has a new name/gender is so hype. Like yess give us the patch notes