Open Society

How the idea of “able-bodied” is abused

The White House is telling Medicaid users to get jobs—while attacking everything that makes that possible.

Understanding autism prevalence within the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and forensic settings has implications for identifying clinical/forensic needs, planning responses, potentially improving ou...

When talking about flow, most people probably think of a highly desirable state associated with a broad variety of positive outcomes in terms of positive motivation, well-being and performance. In contrast, this chapter suggests that the characteristics of flow also...

On December 6th, a group of autism researchers commissioned by The Lancet released a report on the future of autism services and research. This report primarily deals with the need for better services and research for autistic people, including the need for individualized services, and research that prioritizes quality of…

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Among the attempts to create hagiographic eulogies of Charlie Kirk, I’ve seen more than a few people suggest that Kirk should be respected for being willing to talk to “those who disagree with him”…

Brian Merchant's assertion that "The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing," The Jacobin's claim that "The AI Revolution Might Be Running Out of Steam" – these feel a bit too optimistic perhaps, particularly if you're one of many educators who's been compelled these past few weeks/months to sit in back-to-school training sessions in which administrators crow about whatever "AI" product they purchased last spring: how it's poised to allow you to "do more" [unspoken: with less]. "AI" as counseling.

Self-identification as Neurodivergent can be a difficult topic to navigate. If you are newly learning about your own Neurodivergence there are often multiple conflicting sources of information. This guide explains what self-identification is and the reasons that people may self-identify, in addition

When you or your kid is diagnosed as autistic, almost all of the professional advice you get from education and healthcare is steeped in deficit ideology and the pathology paradigm. There is a better way.

Objective: Experiences of “auditory hyper-reactivity” and decreased sound tolerance, which can be separated into phenotypes such as hyperacusis and misophonia, ...

Researcher Emily Casanova, PhD, provides updates on her emerging research findings on genes and susceptibility to autism.

Do you know what it really means if Tylenol shows an association with autism? It means we need stress models. •We need to understand neurodiversity as emergent — traits and trade-offs, not pathologies. •We need to understand timing and context, because the same exposure can have completely different outcomes. •We need to understand how everyday stressors destabilize ecosystems: nutrition, infections, trauma, social inequity, toxins, sleep loss, maternal age, and dozens more. •We need biopsychosocial-nutritional models, not single-cause scapegoats. •We need ecological models that show how stress loads interact. Tylenol and vaccines are everyday stressors. If something that common can sometimes tip a system, it’s not about toxicity alone — it’s about stress as a messenger. Oxidative stress, inflammation, HPA recalibration: these are signals, not villains. Autism is not “caused” by one pill or one shot. Autism is an emergent neurotype, shaped when developmental scaffolding adapts under stress-energy constraints. The real takeaway? 👉 If the same thing can lead to different outcomes, then our current medical models don’t work. We need complexity. We need stress science. We need to evolve beyond germ theory and linear cause-effect thinking. Until we do, every public debate will stay stuck in the wrong question: Did Tylenol cause autism? Instead, we should be asking: Why does stress, in all its forms, shape our health outcomes — and how can we build systems that listen, buffer, and recalibrate? Tylenol & Autism: 6 Key Studies 1. Ji 2019, JAMA Psych — Cord-blood Tylenol metabolites → dose–response with ASD/ADHD. 2. Baker 2020, JAMA Peds — Meconium biomarkers → ADHD risk + brain connectivity changes. 3. Ahlqvist 2024, JAMA — 2.5M births; signal in crude models, gone in sibling controls. 4. Alemany 2021, Eur J Epidemiol — 6 EU cohorts; modest ↑ risk, mixed sensitivity results. 5. Hornig 2018, Mol Psych — Prenatal fever (reason for Tylenol) linked with ↑ ASD risk. 6. Prada 2025, Env Health — Nav. Guide systematic review; evidence = “limited but concerning.” ✨ Takeaway: Association ≠ causation. Signals are rare. Stress, timing, and ecosystem context matter. We need stress models, not single-cause villains.

We’ve come too far to go back to a time when autism was defined solely in terms of deficits and mothers were made to feel guilty.

Words to Know  Artificial intelligence - When a computer program does things that normally need to be done by humans. We call artificial intelligence “AI” for short. Centers for Independent Living (CILs) - Places that help people with disabilities make our own choices about our lives.  Department of Health and…

New research finds half of LGBTQ young people live in the 27 states where a swell of new laws restrict their in-school rights.

Autism. Here we are, 100 years on from the work of Sukhareva, and 80 years on from the original misunderstandings in the 1940s.   So, what...

Autism stereotypes can often portray autistic people in a negative way. However, few studies have looked at how autistic people think they are perceived by others, and none have specifically asked autistic people what they think the autistic stereotypes are. Semi-structured interviews with 12 autist …

The updated COVID/histamine link thread because people keep tagging me in to explain it and I keep intending to update the post from 2023 (synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html) and just not having the capacity because of my own health shit so here is a thread I can pin https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

THE HYPOCRISY IS THE POINT!!

I get why everyone is dunking on this, but, having trained a very simple model on the ~3 million words I’ve written over the last 25 years, it’s actually very interesting to explore what’s there, to see what’s surprising or where I’ve changed my mind, or where my opinion diverges from its output. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Hi, maybe you saw this already… but here is a writer who used his own work via LLM as a tool: https://bsky.app/profile/viticci.macstories.net/post/3lzbmnmrqzc2j [contains quote post or other embedded content]

This fall, the new luddites are rising

In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Why? The country applies the "Housing First" concept agains homelessness.

Right-wingers love to insist that members of Adolf Hitler’s party were socialists. But Nazism’s real economic policies upheld hypercapitalist principles rooted in social Darwinist ideas about the value of human life. They weren’t socialists at all.

Monotropism, and the subsequent work of Tanya Adkin in conceptualising Monotropic split, has been an incredibly meaningful set of ideas for the neurodivergent community. One of the most common questions, however, has been- How do we fix it? This article aims to answer that question. This is a solution to Monotropic split.

How We Curate Space And Create Felt Safety