In Australia we call this “skimpflation” because they aren’t shrinking the final product, they’re skimping on ingredients to lower production costs.

It’s the bane of my existence because brands I know and love will change their ingredients without warning and without changing anything on the packaging (sometimes not even changing the ingredients list! If the ingredients list has always just said “starch” they don’t have to change anything going from arrowroot starch to cheaper potato starch)

I have allergies and I’ve bought two boxes of the same product at the same time, and had an allergic reaction to one, but not the other.

I used to always blame it on my housemates not washing the cooking utensils properly, but I now use separate cooking equipment and I clean down the kitchen before I start and cook at odd times so I’m the only one using the kitchen.

I’ve started emailing companies after my allergic reactions to determine if they have changed an ingredient, and 90% of the time they confirm they have changed the ingredients. Usually they put some PR spin on it about the new ingredient being more allergy friendly or sustainable (they don’t clarify “environmentally” so I assume they mean “financially sustainable for the profits of our company”)

Again, it depends on the purpose of the group you’re creating, does this person in question face discrimination for their perceived race? Then a support group for people who have faced discrimination for their race may be the right place for them, assuming the intersection of having “chosen” to present as a race they’re not doesn’t create an unsafe space for the other group participants.

However if your group is for people who have grown up POC or been raised in a non-dominant cultural group to discuss shared experiences, then obviously someone who identifies as POC later in life would not be served by that group, so would not be eligibile to join that group.

There are circumstances when even if you fit the criteria of the group, you may still be excluded due to the way various identities and experiences intersect, or because your personal actions are not serving the group.

It’s not discrimination to be told you can’t use a private service because the service can’t serve your specific needs, and your personal circumstances reduce the groups ability to serve its other members.

I’m not trying to be rude, I’m trying to understand.

As far as the language is concerned, I’m just trying to understand how a trans woman could be a cis lesbian, when my understanding is that being cis and being trans are mutually exclusive.

Am I missing something?

If you’re a private entity and there is a specific reason that having non-black people in the group would be detrimental to the purpose of the group, yes, in Australia you can make a black only space.

For example, if you want to create a support group for POC to discuss trauma around being subjected to racism, to ensure you create a safe space, making the space POC only is not only legal, but often the more ethical choice for this group.

Want to create a social and dating app for queer women to meet other queer women? What purpose would it serve to let straight people into that group?

There is difference between public spaces, that must allow access and entry to all, and a private organisation that caters to specific demographics, and being freely open would completely defeat the purpose of the private organisations goals.

I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t personally know anyone who has struggled with alcoholism. Why can’t I go to an AA meeting to talk about my feelings on alcoholism? Obviously, Because that’s not helpful, it has the potential to be harmful to the people who attend because they have lived experiences with alcoholism. I could argue I’m being discriminated against because of my medical history, but I’m not being discriminated against, I’m just not being catered to, because I don’t have an unmet need in this specific situation.

How does that even work?

I mean, to be a cis lesbian also implies being a cis woman…

I mean, given what’s happening with the women’s only art exhibit at the MONA right now, this woman definitely has a legal leg to stand on even with this being a private company.

Even if it’s just a matter of false advertising (if the app means cis women they should say cis women, not say “women” and then go out of their to exclude an entire group of women) or compensation for being given access then having access removed.

Meditation wasn’t super helpful for me, guided meditation required too much sustained focus and was cognitively fatiguing to stay on track. I have dysphantasia so that doesn’t help when you’re told to picture things or imagine things as part of meditation, because imagining something requires me to talk to myself in my head, which doesn’t feel meditative, it feels too similar to ruminative thought patterns. Doing the “quite wandering mind” style of meditation was risky because I already experience maladaptive daydreaming.

But I discovered “somatic regulation”, which is something I kind of already did instinctively when I was getting really stressed or overwhelmed.

When stressed I’d tap my teeth together in a pattern, drum on my chest, hum, wiggle or do fidgety little things, often not even consciously.

Now that I understand what this does for my emotional regulation, I set time aside every day to consciously and mindfully do things that look and feel absolutely ridiculous. Like lying on my stomach and rhythmically slapping the tiled floor, focusing on the sensations rather than trying to clear my mind, or guide my mind.

I started mid last year, and it’s been the only form of mental health self care that I’ve been able to remain consistent in, and I’ve noticed a drastic decrease in how often I feel overwhelmed, stressed and anxious. I’m also able to identity when I’m starting to get stressed much earlier than I used to, and more quickly identify a way to reduce it. I’ve always struggled to identify emotions in the moment, but I feel like now my mind-body connection is stronger. It’s easier to tell when my headache is because I’m hungry/thirsty vs stressed or tense. Before I used to just guess, try everything and hope something worked, then look back with hindsight thinking “guess that was a hunger headache because relaxing didn’t help but carrot sticks did”. Now I’m more likely to know what I need.

Edit: just realised this post was in the Autism community, lol, I need to learn to read things more thoroughly, I was talking about stimming without saying the word “stimming” because I’m so used to getting flak for that in the NT subs I post in.

I think the reason the idea of a “skill cap” feels instantly incorrect is because there is obviously no point at which any human “stops learning”. There will always be more to learn an more that someone (autistic or not) can learn.

The skill cap applies to specific metrics of measuring skill gain.

A large number of people with “level 3” autism who are non verbal will never learn to communicate verbally as fluently as non-autistic verbal people, even with decades of supportive education. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have a “communication skill gap”, there’s a lot of communication skills that can and will be developed with the right support. But expecting someone in that situation to “try harder” and “learn to talk” is unrealistic, when the more achievable goal should be “learn to effectively communicate”.

It really depends on the way someone’s autism effects their social skills. Not everyone has the capacity to learn these skills, Autism does create a skill cap for many people.

It’s also a question of involved effort. I was in a form of ABA therapy as a kid and I was capable of learning to identify sarcasm and read social cues, so I did.

But it doesn’t come naturally to me, it requires a level of concentration and conscious processing that I don’t hear non-autistic people discussing. It causes headaches and migraines and after a few days of work, using these skills every minute of the day, I’m exhausted and struggle with basic tasks at home. I don’t have these same issues with exhaustion or conscious processing when I’m with other autistic people (I work in disability programming, I coordinate/admin 3 days a week with mostly neurotypical people, and run programs 1 day a week with mostly neurodivergent people, and there’s a big difference on how much “effort” it takes to understand people in those two environments)

Not saying it’s not worth learning. If you can learn these skills they are incredibly important and at the bare minimum they will keep you safe.

But as a society we need to accept that for a small subset of people with disabilities, these skills are unachievable, and reasonable accommodations will still need to be made, and for a slightly larger subset, accommodations may still need to be made on occasion because while someone may have these skills, they might not have the cognitive capacity to employ these skills 100% of the time.

That feels like a large payout for that type of injury, but that’s not my business.

Everytime I hear news like this, or stories of people who “receive support for xyz injury, but can still do abc activity so must be cheating the system” I can’t help but think how brightly it highlights that the author has never had to experience chronic pain and dynamic disability.

Anyone who has ever injured anything knows, some days it just randomly hurts more than others, and you have very little control over predicting or changing that randomness other than through avoiding certain activities when you can to preserve your health and energy for days and times when you don’t have a choice and have to perform that action.

It’s also about balance.

Because of my wrists I can’t do the dishes and do latch hooking on the same day. I have to do the dishes, I can’t just live in squalor. But some days I also “need” to take some time for latch hooking because it’s a mindful hobby I find enjoyable and it’s so good for my mental health.

Now is it wrong of me to tell my OT that my wrists mean I struggle to do the dishes and latch key, so I’d like support with the dishes - maybe I get a dishwasher, or a helper twice a week to come in and do the heavy dishes for me.

If I’m sat on the couch doing my latch hooking putting pressure on my wrists “just for a hobby” while the dishwasher runs in the background - was I lying about my injury? Was I being a cheat? Do I no longer deserve the dishwasher because I’m “abusing it just so I can run off and have fun latch hooking”

She tossed one Christmas tree at a one off event.

How does that change the pain it is causes to play with her kids or carry groceries every single day that she wants and needs to do those tasks?

Thank you, British and Irish Islands seems like it would be more easily understood by the general populous. When I hear South Eastern Icelandic Archipelago, I get a bit geographically turned around because I’m an idiot and I picture Iceland near Greenland which is near Canada, and I picture Ireland near England which is near France, so in my tiny brain Ireland and Iceland are a whole ocean apart (even though paleo-geographically, it’s the same soil)

Makes sense, as a geographical location I imagine it has had many names over history based on who controls the narrative. Can I ask what other names there are for the area that isn’t supportive of British colonialism?

Britain is historically just England and Wales, though colloquially now used as a shorter way of saying “Great Britain”, which is England, Wales, and Scotland.

The British isles is England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (and all the smaller islands like the Hebrides, Orkneys, etc)

I mean, a little bit. I had to quit weed for a while job and so I was having a glass of wine at a party and a few people made judgemental comments about how I’m “drinking again”.

Similarly, now that I can smoke again, and as the only one in my extended social circle who can roll a joint that burns properly, I’ll ask the person who brought the gear if they want me to roll joints, spliffs, or a few of each, and how strong, and again there will be one or two people who say “I can’t believe people cut their weed with the tobacco, that’s disgusting”

But at the same time, those judgy friends would never campaign for alcohol and tobacco to be completely criminalised. They just think weed is much better.

That said, a few of us were pretty happy to see the 100% vape ban coming into Victoria, not so much from the drug side of it, but I’m sick of seeing “disposable” vapes everywhere and seeing the parking lot bins catch fire almost every day at work because people chuck them out and the batteries explode.

The actual law bans using the swastika to “glorify or profit from Nazi idiology”.

Wolfenstein would not be impacted by the ban because at the core of the gameplay, the Nazis are the bad guys. It does not glorify the Nazis or celebrate them.

Sure Bathesda is profiting from the game, but they aren’t profiting from the glorification of Nazi idiology, they’re profiting from people’s desire to shoot zombie Nazis in the face.

That’s the second sentence. And that’s all only one sentence. I’ve re-read it multiple times and I’m still scratching my head at most of it.

Yeah I don’t think I have enough working memory to remember how the sentence started by the time my dyslexic neurodivergent ass has reached the end of the sentence.

It’s unfortunately reading as word salad for me.

My experience with the internet as someone born almost the exact same time and place as the author was that once you found your space, it really was a great community. Finding that community was the difficult step, not as difficult as finding community offline, but certainly with more potential to stumble upon gore and grotesque imagery that I can still remember, 25 years later, thanks 4chan. Not much has changed in that regard, there’s weird shit everywhere.

Given the authors relatively young age in the grand scheme of the internet, I wonder how much of the sentiment they’re expressing is just pure nostalgia.

The internet did feel better back then. But so did life. Because I was a teenager with no real problems and no real sense of what was happening in the world.

The internet was novel and new, many of us felt like we were part of something, that we were building and creating something. Now the internet feels like it controls us, companies and corporations are building something that we must participate in whether we like it or not, lest we be left behind economically, socially, educationally, etc.

But it’s all personal perception. Federation and decentralisation has changed my perception and I have a lot more hope for the future of the internet, it’s feeling a little bit more like old times.