Tootfinder

TL;DR: spending money to find the cause of autism is a eugenics project, and those resources could have been spent improving accommodations for Autistic people instead.
To preface this, I'm not Autistic but I'm neurodivergent with some overlap.
We need to be absolutely clear right now: the main purpose is *all* research into the causes of autism is eugenics: a cause is sought because non-autistic people want to *eliminate* autistic people via some kind of "cure." It should be obvious, but a "cured autistic person" who did not get a say in the decision to administer that "cure" has been subjected to non-consensual medical intervention at an extremely unethical level. Many autistic people have been exceptionally clear that they don't want to be "cured," including some people with "severe autism" such as people who are nonverbal.
When we think things like "but autism makes life so hard for some people," we're saying that the difficulties in their life are a result of their neurotype, rather than blaming the society that punished & devalues the behaviors that result from that neurotype at every turn. To the extent that an individual autistic person wants to modify their neurotype and/or otherwise use aids to modify themselves to reduce difficulties in their life, they should be free to pursue that. But we should always ask the question: "what if we changed their social or physical environment instead, so that they didn't have to change themselves?" The point is that difficulties are always the product of person x environment, and many of the difficulties we attribute to autism should instead be attributed to anti-autistic social & physical spaces, and resources spent trying to "find the cause of autism" would be *much* better spent trying to develop & promote better accommodations for autism. Or at least, that's the case if you care about the quality of life of autistic people and/or recognize their enormous contributions to society (e.g., Wikipedia could not exist in anything near its current form without autistic input). If instead you think of Autistic people as gross burdens that you'd rather be rid of, then it makes sense to investigate the causes of autism so that you can eventually find a "cure."
All of that to say: the best response to lies about the causes of autism is to ask "What is the end goal of identifying the cause?" instead of saying "That's not true, here's better info about the causes."
#autism #trump
P.S. yes, I do think about the plight of parents of autistic kids, particularly those that have huge struggles fitting into the expectations of our society. They've been put in a position where society constantly bullies and devalues their kid, and makes it mostly impossible for their kid to exist without constant parental support, which is a lot of work and which is unfair when your peers get the school system to do a massive amount of childcare. But in that situation, your kid is in an even worse position than you as the direct victim of all of that, and you have a choice: are you going to be their ally against the unfair world, or are you going to blame them and try to get them to confirm enough that you can let the school system take care of them, despite the immense pain that that will provoke? Please don't come crying for sympathy if you choose the later option (and yes, helping them be able to independently navigate society is a good thing for them, but there's a difference between helping them as their ally, at their pace, and trying to force them to conform to reduce the burden society has placed on you).

I’ve worked over the past year to reduce the amount of noise in my consciousness on a daily basis.
By that I mean - information noise, not literal sounds “noise”. (That problem was solved long ago by some good earplugs and noise canceling earphones.)
I’ve gotten used to spending less time on social media, regularly blocking most apps on my devices (anything with a feed news, most work communication apps, etc.), putting my phone and other devices aside for extended periods of time. Often go to work places with my iPad explicitly having its WiFi turned off and selecting cafes that don’t offer WiFi at all.
Negotiated better boundaries at work and in personal life where I exchange messages with people less often but try to make those interactions more meaningful, and people rarely expect me to respond to requests in less than 24 hours. Spent a lot of time setting up custom notification settings on all apps that would allow it, so I get fewer pings. With software, choosing fewer cloud-based options and using tools that are simple and require as few interruptions as possible.
Accustomed myself to lower-tech versions of doing things I like to do: reading on paper, writing by hand, drawing in physical sketchbooks, got a typewriter for typing without a screen. Choosing to call people on audio more, trying to make more of an effort to see people in person. Going to museums to look at art instead of browsing Pinterest. Defaulting to the library when looking for information.
I’m commenting on this now for two reasons:
1. I am pretty proud of myself for how much I’ve actually managed to reduce the constant stream of modern life esp. as a remote worker in tech!
2. Now that I’ve reached a breaking point of reducing enough noise that it’s NOTICEABLE - I am struck by the silence. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to navigate it and fill it. I made this space to be able to read and write and think more deeply - for now I feel stuck in limbo where I’m just reacquainting myself with the concept of having any space in my mind at all.

What if we could hot swap our Biometrics?
Jon Crowcroft, Anil Madhavapeddy, Chris Hicks, Richard Mortier, Vasilios Mavroudis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17962 https://

What if we could hot swap our Biometrics?
What if you could really revoke your actual biometric identity, and install a new one, by live rewriting your biological self? We propose some novel mechanisms for hot swapping identity based in novel biotechnology. We discuss the potential positive use cases, and negative consequences if such technology was to become available and affordable. Biometrics are selected on the basis that they are supposed to be unfakeable, or at least not at reasonable cost. If they become easier to fake, it may b…

The thing about a life-logger, is you input sensitive data about your life, lifestyle and activities, so privacy and data-integrity are some of the most important issues.
There can be no server, the data has to be yours and yours alone. Because you can’t tell what is happening to the data in a closed-source app, it must be completely free and open source.
You can’t trust a corporate diary, they must sell to anyone offering enough money.
So it is with my life log app, all data completely in your own device. No home server ever sees anything.
There is no home server. Just the code.
To achieve this Exocortex Log is a Progressive Web App. It downloads when you are online at the website and can be installed onto the homepage of your phone.
It keeps all data on the local device using indexdb.
This means you must be responsible for your own backups. Be sure to export and back up your data regularly. I have gaps in my ten year record where my phone was stolen and most recent backup was months prior.
Once installed it will work offline, airplane mode, no internet, down in the tube station at midnight, anywhere.
There's a blog on the website saying this and more: https://exocortexlog.com/news/articles/2025-12-06-release/

Brutal similes
Using #AI is an ethical choice.
I know that there cases when an #LLM could make my job easier. Which doesn't mean I'll use one. Just like I won't be buying cheap junk gadgets that could help me with some random stuff a bunch of times before they'll end up on a trash pile.
Yes, sometimes I am curious what an LLM could come up with. But then, there are people who are curious how many donuts they can eat before throwing up. A waste of good donuts.
What world would you rather live in? One where you put a little more effort in your job? Or one where LLM helps with with your job, but you can't enjoy your free time anymore because the capitalists are using LLMs to turn every single aspect of your life into a nightmare, and eventually your employer just makes you do more and more until you're thrown out? But at least you will get a monthly trial of a statistical "friend" to "talk" about your trouble to.
Yeah, you can claim that training models does the most harm, and that's already happened, so not using them doesn't change much, and all the energy spent on it would be wasted. Or use the traditional "others" fallacy — others will use it anyway, others will fuel the vicious circle, so why renounce convenience. It's like when you learn that your dinner is human meat, and you decide to eat it anyway, because not eating it won't bring that human back to life, and if it's wasted, then their death will be for naught.
#AntiCapitalism

If the Brewers win the World Series that would be cool and all but I was sort of hoping the Cubs would win because Chicago could really use some love this year…
#sports #baseball #midwest

,
“... speaking out or speaking up about basic things like medical treatment, they would come & basically throw your head to the ground, shackle your hands behind your back, & then take you to either sit in the hot sun or sit in total isolation & shackle your ankles as well & just leave you there for the day.”
“This is routine for Palestinians who are in indefinite detention, let alone in torture camps,”
David Adler Details His ‘Violent Abduction’ by Israel

"What do you lose by using Facebook", asked a friend who is keen to keep his account there for some reason.
What made me leave was the manipulation. I mean: they started hiding your friends posts in order to show you adverts instead! Feeding you slop from their promoted posts and "viral" messages (that aren't actually boosted by anyone, just picked out by their megaphone to show to everyone).
If you let the algorithm determine what you see than you let it determine what you are, who you become.
Even if you think it's better at finding shiny things than you, even if you think it builds the parasocial relationships that you want, even if you think it's saving you time to let the robot manage your reading-list: if you are letting Facebook, or any algorithm written by advertisers, do your reading selection then you are letting Facebook decide who you are.
On behalf of the advertisers who bribe them the most.
This is why you gotta use RSS. You gotta use the chronological timelines not the "for you" feeds. You gotta build follow relationships that you choose and understand because otherwise, you are letting the corporation and it's systems determine these things. You are abdicating some control of your very self to the machine.
Not to mention that we have to stop feeding money to the evil multi-trillion dollar companies built to control and manipulate us through our relationships with our friends. They have enough money, they need less participation not more.
#fediverse #algorithm

Door Dasher Life Fun Facts: This might be useful to think of when you're rating your Dasher.... Who's at fault in this situation?
Let's say I accept an offer for McDonalds.
I head straight there... pull up to the store, and as I walk in the app buzzes again with a 2nd order for the same McDs.
Naturally, I accept. (not accepting reduces my Acceptance rate and potentially my ability to get new offers).
Now I have two orders at the same place! Great! Efficient!
The first order comes up quickly, I put it in my bag, 'pick it up' in the app, and wait for the 2nd order.
Now the fun begins. The restaurant says the 2nd order will be 10 minutes beyond the pickup time. I notify the app, and both customers of the wait... and I wait... and wait... if I remove the 2nd order from my app it affects my completion rate *and* means the customer has to wait for another dasher to come along.
Eventually the 2nd order is ready and I head out to make the deliveries. Both of course now late.. the first potentially cold (even in an insulated bag) *and* late.
In addition, sometimes, often a day or two later, the dasher will receive a “Contract Violation” for the lateness. 3 Contract Violations in a short period and you can be deactivated.
So... there ya go. It happens. I'm never sure what the best course of action is... unless both orders are immediately ready, which you can never predict, someone will end up losing; the store, customer, dasher, or a mix of all three.
#DasherLife #GigWork #DoorDash #Uber
P.S. It's worth noting that Door Dash is the only service I know of that is this strict. Uber Eats does not have mechanisms like this (at least in my experience). Never used Skip, so can't say on that.