Emma

Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need - scoop.me In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Why? The country applies the "Housing First" concept agains homelessness.

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”

Yes! But I’m fascinated by how much my brain just wants to trust them, how easy it is to glance at them and go “yup, looks great”, in relation to how absolutely nonsensical they really are. How intuitively trusting we are, and how hard we work to make things feel reasonable when they really aren’t.

Facebook keeps showing me AI generated origami instructions, and on every level I should hate this (Facebook, unnecessary AI, click farming etc), but I'm slightly obsessed with them. I really want to post a load here but I'm daunted by the prospect of trying to alt-text these surrealist nightmares.

[Autscape logo: orange and black swirls] Online Autscape 2025. Theme: More Autistic Joy. Friday the 7th to Sunday the 9th of February. On Zoom and Discord. [Image of Autscape 2024 presenter Joanna Ławicka, a dark-haired woman, wearing a white shirt and black trousers, speaking into a microphone, next to a flip chart full of Post-It notes] [Image of nine Autscape 2024 participants in the park, standing near-ish each other but somewhat scattered about, apparently in conversation] Autistic-friendly. Presentations. Music. Comedy. Lightning talks. Activities. Discussions. Website: www.autscape.org E-mail: info@autscape.org

Announcing #OnlineAutscape2025 “More Autistic Joy”:
Fri 7th – Sun 9th February 2025, Zoom + Discord

Featuring a performance by the great autistic stand-up poet Kate Fox, a presentation on “The joy of autistic parenting”, and much more!

Schedule and registration:
www.autscape.org/2025/registr...

We view The Free Press as an ideal partner for this initiative because of its longstanding presence on Substack, which extends back to its founding in early 2021, and because of its commitment to pursuing high-integrity journalism. The Free Press is old school in the best way, with meticulous editorial standards that it upholds through in-depth reporting, fact-checking, editing, original photography, and more. The Free Press, like Substack, is also dedicated to a business model based on subscriptions.

Substack choosing Bari Weiss's The Free Press as its official partner for a relaunch tells you everything you need to know about the values of Substack's leadership. I'm begging the writers I love to move their newsletters off Substack.

Source: on.substack.com/p/the-new-me...

Meme with the title 'Mary, watching churches everywhere quote the Magnificat' Underneath are two photos of Captain Ray Holt (character from the police comedy show Brooklyn 99) with the captions 'Why is no one casting down the mighty?' 'I specifically requested it'

Posted last year by @karenod.bsky.social and well worth another shout:

Image: Cartoon penguins reading books Text: OUR NEURODIVERSITY AFFIRMING ADVENT CALENDAR SHARING SOME OF THE BEST COMMUNITY RESOURCES 0F 2024, Recommended Reading Learning about Autism can happen in many different ways. If you like reading then we have a great list of books here! WITH LOVE FROM LISA CHAPMAN @COMMONSENSESLT Allintar HELPING YOU BUILD YOUR OWN AUTISM RESOURCE LIBRARY

Day 12 Neurodiversity Affirming Autism Resources

There is a wonderful list of Autism Books By Autistic Authors

The Autism Books by Autistic Authors Project collects books-about and related to Autism by Autistic authors.
Collated by @autisticbooks.bsky.social

autismbooksbyautisticauthors.com

Google AI overview of search results. "Actress Joanna Lumley's diet includes: *Grazing: she prefers to eat a little throughout the day instead of large meals. * Vegetarianism: she is vegetarian and doesn't eat bones. * Minimal food waste: she eats almost everything, apart from bones, and buys only one egg per month. Lumley has also shared some of her sustainable living tips, including wearing clothes 120 times and not throwing away food".

Generative AI summary of a search result about Joanna Lumley's diet (long story). I have questions...

My child gets DLA, and will be eligible for PIP after the age of 16, but that can't fill the earnings gap left by losing a day a week to appointments, on top of the time constraints of regular caring responsibilities, before you even start on the added costs of life as a disabled person.

If I consistently earnt below £151 per week I could claim Carer's Allowance - but a penny over that, even once, and the whole lot gets clawed back.

I'm aware that it's an enormous privilege to have free access to this healthcare (though that's been a whole other battle). But how does anyone think we live like this? Am I meant to not be working, so I can attend appointments in the middle of the day at a week's notice?

I'm self-employed because of this - which means I don't get any paid time off, but does at least make it possible for me to take huge amount of time off at short notice - what employer, what job, would let me do that?

That's just the appointments, before even beginning to think about the routine stuff - how long it takes to do ordinary things like washing, or going to the toilet - and the tasks of disability, the daily physio and the meds and prescriptions and laundry and all the rest.

In the last 5 months, there are only 2 weeks in my diary that don't have any medical or social care appointments in. Some are an hour, some are whole days; some remote, some home visits, some long journeys.

The week before, a full day at a specialist hospital - and again, delighted to be there, having begged for this referral for months. Left home at 8.30am, home 5.30pm, no work, needed after-school childcare.

Last week, we had to go to two one-hour hospital appointments on different days. Each one of those means at least 3 hours out of the day, between preparation, travel time, unpacking once hone etc. So again, 6 hours of work time lost.

This week, we've had two home visits from health professionals - really grateful for them coming here, but one of them works by assigning a whole day, then calling at 9am to say exactly what time they'll come. So a whole day of me not working, because I couldn't know when I'd be free.

To be clear this is my experience as a carer, not physically disabled myself (though neurodivergent and dealing with multiple low-level physical health problems).

One of the most striking things about living with chronic illness or disability is just how time consuming it is. I don't know if many of the politicians and journalists who talk about "getting disabled people back to work", or who want to change PIP to vouchers, have the faintest idea.

Massive away win for the little fella.

A List of Things People Blamed on Short Skirts

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Katharine Rundell wrote a book called “Why you should read children’s books even though you are so old and wise” which makes a great case for this (and tears into certain people who are snooty about writing for children being the easy option).

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil."

Thomas Mann

This is clever. Great work @theo.io 👏 bsky-follow-finder.theo.io