madelaine caritas longman

so stunning I was too stunned to spell "stunning," apparently.

Victoria Chang: “The Swan” A poem by Victoria Chang: “The thin shirtless / man fishing by / the river. The woman // by his side, smoking.“

Stuninng Victoria Chang poem: yalereview.org/article/vict...

Honestly, anyone who has treated me as a person. And not in the sense that I'm grateful for scraps; like everyone else, writers are overworked and trained by capitalism to see everyone as rivals. It takes effort and integrity to offer your time to an early-career writer without expecting a reward.

I complain a lot but do want to express my gratitude to people who've helped me feel welcome in a writing community, whether that was a kind comment when I was a teenager posting poems online, or a prof who reacted with encouragement rather than accusation when I struggled with undergrad stress.

There are no circumstances where human beings should be without food. There are no qualifications that make someone undeserving of access to food. If you are a human being, you should get food. I don’t care about ability, job status, legal status, or anything else. If people are hungry, feed them.

Not sure if there's a word for this fallacy but ime there's a recurring trend of people in arts communities declaring (with varying levels of correctness) that a smug, toxic, elitist in-group holds too much power, and responding to this by trying to create their own smug, toxic, elitist in-group.

most writing advice is terrible but this is truly helpful: find a sensitive rat and let him ride your head. allow him to pull your forelocks and thus guide your typing. do not ever let anyone else know about the rat. you also have to be French

Susan J. Dawe, 1986

Susan J. Dawe, 1986

[4/4] And, ironically, after all of that relentless self-monitoring, self-abandonment, self-sacrifice, and self-loathing, that high-masking person will probably still get clocked as "weird" at first sight.

[3/4] Evaluating "social skills" by how compliant and unobtrusive a person is, rather than that person's ability to meet their needs, is hugely misleading. That stereotypically blunt person probably has better odds of meaningful friendships, career advancement, and emotional wellbeing.

[2/4] But when neurodivergent people describe social difficulties, they often describe being overly socially submissive, feeling like they aren't allowed to express disagreement, walking on eggshells and neglecting their own needs in order to avoid conflict, and being exploited for these traits.

[1/4] I noticed that when neurotypical people talk about neurodivergent people having social difficulties, they typically think of someone who is argumentative, bossy, takes over the conversation, seems indifferent to others' feelings, etc.

For some people, telling them to appreciate ordinary life conveys the message to appreciate the everyday ways their basic needs are met. For others, it comes across as a message to ignore the everyday ways those basic needs are neglected.

“I’ll settle for nothing less than being a TikTok star” and “I don’t want to be pressured into being a housewife” are extremely different sentiments, but both may be worded as “I don’t want an ordinary life.”

Depending on demographic and cultural positioning, an average life can mean anything from a life of small pleasures to a life of alienated drudgery. People will therefore receive different messages when told to appreciate it.

A caution I have about "More people should romanticize an average, ordinary life" (as well as with "Never settle for an ordinary life") statements is that "ordinary life" is rarely defined, and this category means very different things to different people.

would love to vent about this next time we see each other. the odious vapours are real.

Confused orange flag? Maybe they googled you and just read things that popped up there? It's nice that they looked and made some effort, but they're probably not super familiar with your work.

i'd be super interested to hear your experience! from what i read it works for a pretty large percentage of people but not everyone.

stim toy, being in a public place, physically sitting on hands or keeping them under a blanket, chewing something as a different for of figeting, covering the picking area. none of this has totally fixed the problem but i try to apply them when i catch myself. i find tiredness is also a trigger.

Thank you!

It sucks to feel rejected for being awkward, but sometimes that awkwardness comes from having zero shared values or interests; faking those qualities to gain the other person/group's approval won't lessen those feeling of distance. And it adds guilt to the mix while consuming your time and energy.

I am not a subscriber to "no one should ever mask their personality in any situation, ever," but it is worth recognizing how often ingratiating yourself to people you are deeply uncomfortable around will only result in having to spend more time with the people you are deeply uncomfortable around.

organizing poems and currently have a 60 page manuscript, plus another 60 pages of possible poems to add (which must now be sorted through to find the best fits). still a long way to go, but a shape is emerging.

My various responsibilities include tutoring, teaching, and reading lit journal submissions, all of which mean I am reading an inordinate amount of really, really bad AI generated writing (in fields where making AI do the work defeats the entire purpose) and learning to recognize it very quickly.

maslow's pyramid but every level is Listen to Tori Amos' "Crucify" while staring into space in the grocery store

An Autistic “Linguatype”? Neologisms, New Words, and New Insights In this commentary, we present new ideas about autistic neologisms. This essay has two primary goals. First, we argue that an autistic predilection to form neologisms generates intriguing new hypothe....

Wonderful paper reframing autistic neologisms (inventing new words) as linguatype (an autistic way of speaking) rather than a deficit onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1... (with thanks to the ever-excellent @pkwalkersharpe.bsky.social for flagging it up!)

if you can replace "psychotic" with "autistic" and it'd be horrifically offensive to autistic folks, rest assured this is also the case for people who experience psychosis. stop

[3/3] into trying to change your natural mannerisms, or otherwise approaching your self/personality as a defect to be hidden, is a doomed and irrational approach to improving one's self-confidence.