Kristen Bottema-Beutel

Space Law, Race, and Neurodiversity: Autistic Advocate AJ Link We live in a country & society that is built on racism. The neurodivergent community isn't free of that racism—per Autistic advocate AJ Link.

“As a neurodiversity advocate and as an autistic person, I’m really grateful for so much of the work that’s been done that allows me to be myself and to be successful being myself.” Link, who has been *banned*!?!? from this platform?

thinkingautismguide.com/2025/06/spac... #AutisticWhileBlack

The Trump administration’s approach to autism is tangled up with ableism, eugenics, and pronatalism “The current political establishment and their supporters have consistently pathologized difference,” particularly when it comes to autism, a professor of medicine writes.

"The often referenced moral test of the measure of a civilization being based on how it treats its most vulnerable members is not one that the United States would pass today." Shoumita Dasgupta on our ableist administration, @statnews.com:

www.statnews.com/2025/10/03/a... #autism #neurodiversity

table 1 extract from Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

5 Ghostwriter in the Machine A unique selling point of these systems is conversing and writing in a human-like way. This is imminently understandable, although wrong-headed, when one realises these are systems that essentially function as lossy2 content-addressable memory: when input is given, the output generated by the model is text that stochastically matches the input text. The reason text at the output looks novel is because by design the AI product performs an automated version of what is known as mosaic or patchwork plagiarism (Baždarić, 2013) — due to the nature of input masking and next token prediction, the output essentially uses similar words in similar orders to what it has been exposed to. This makes the automated flagging of plagiarism unlikely, which is also true when students or colleagues perform this type of copypaste and then thesaurus trick, and true when so-called AI plagiarism detectors falsely claim to detect AI-produced text (Edwards, 2023a). This aspect of LLM-based AI products can be seen as an automation of plagiarism and especially of the research paper mill (Guest, 2025; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025; van Rooij, 2022): the “churn[ing] out [of] fake or poor-quality journal papers” (Sanderson, 2024; Committee on Publication Ethics,

In addition, who is held accountable if nobody with intent authored the text? Because while the original data fed into the system is certainly written with goals, messages, and audiences in mind jumbling this into ad-libbed word salad removes authorial intent (Bender et al., 2021). So do the companies who own the chatbot own the text or do the original authors? These questions denote legal battles, which are being currently fought in the public eye and which affect all of us in all roles, not just as academics (Creamer, 2025; Knibbs, 2024; Reuters, 2025). Either way, even if the courts decide in the favour of companies, we should not allow these companies with vested interests to write our papers (Fisher et al., 2025), or to filter what we include in our papers. Because it is not the case that we only operate based on legal precedents, but also on our own ethical values and scientific integrity codes (ALLEA, 2023; KNAW et al., 2018), and we have a direct duty to protect, as with previous crises and in general, the literature from pollution. In other words, the same issues as in previous sections play out here, where essentially now every paper produced using chatbot output must declare a conflict of interest, since the output text can be biased in subtle or direct ways by the company who owns the bot (see Table 2). Seen in the right light — AI products understood as contentaddressable systems — we see that framing the user, the academic in this case, as the creator of the bot’s output is misplaced. The input does not cause the output in an authorial sense, much like input to a library search engine does not cause relevant articles and books to be written (Guest, 2025). The respective authors wrote those, not the search query!

Third, the peculiar idea that somehow we don't need to read, write, or perform literature reviews anymore; popping up like a satanic mushroom in almost all so-called OK uses of LLMs.

Companies writing our papers via their chatbots is not scientific at all. See section 5: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More - Consumer Reports AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

🫡

Right?!

Anti-ableism and scientific accuracy in autism research: a false dichotomy It was recently argued that autism researchers committed to rejecting ableist frameworks in their research may sacrifice “scientifically accurate” conceptualizations of autism. In this perspective pie...

"Anti-ableism vs. scientific accuracy is a false dichotomy," plus "autism science has a history of false leads in part because of unexamined ableist ideologies that undergird researcher framings & interpretations of evidence." @kbottemabeutel.bsky.social et al:

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

The recovery of ABA has all the trappings of rhetorical discovery: excavating the human from the prison of autism; remapping the autistic brain to forge plastic and flexible neuronal territories; affecting the queer by refusing to acknowledge its presence; making the known the deviant by rendering it non-deviant. In book club, we autistics recover from “fuck you” as a social worker whips out a volume chart, hastily points to “TOO LOUD!”, and then leads us in the communal practice of indoor voicing.

My yearly reading of Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness, in which Remi Yergeau eviscerates the logics of autism interventions.

Are you interested in studying longitudinal developmental trajectories of children with developmental disabilities in Ethiopia and Kenya? Please consider applying for a PhD! More information about the project is here: kcl-mrcdtp.com/project/2026... #AutRes

And the division of “parents” on the one hand and “autistic people” on the other hand is of course false because many parents of autistic children (including autistic children with high support needs) are themselves autistic.

I will be accepting a PhD student for Fall 2026 in our Curriculum and Instruction program. If you are interested in autistic sociality, caregiver influence on their autistic children's development, and neurodiversity in school contexts, please get in touch!

For autistic children, Israel’s war on Gaza brings acute suffering Abeer Hassan, looking after her autistic son, Abdallah, faces peril amid Israeli bombardment and displacement.

Abeer Hassan, looking after her autistic son, Abdallah, faces peril amid Israeli bombardment and displacement.

There is absolutely no good faith reason to use the term “AI” for any technology one is selling.

It serves only for dazzling people into thinking the technology has capabilities that it doesn’t.

If one wants a technology to be trustworthy, just use a transparent, informative term without hype.

Ah, another productive workday listening to my neighbor leaf- blow six leaves back and forth across her lawn for three hours

Infographic titled "AI Isn't a Ticket To an A," explaining how chatbots work, what the data show about the prevalence of these technologies and how they're used, what we know about the quality of their output, and what we know about the impact that frequent use of these technologies has on their users and on content creators, low-wage workers, and the environment.

For their first project, my Kids and Society students have to create an infographic clarifying a common misconception about "kids these days." I'd prefer that they not use AI to create their projects, so I made my own infographic explaining why : )

Accepting Clinical or Counselling Psychology Grad Student?

Are you applying to a PhD in Clinical or Counseling Psychology? Here is a list of mentors who are taking students. Please circulate widely (and on X) so all applicants can benefit 😀. If you are mentoring please do add your name!
#clinicalpsychology @abctnow.bsky.social

If my writing about autism does anything, whether it be in my books, my columns or my reported stories, I hope it advances the idea that autistic people are whole human beings as they are with legitimate needs and inner lives that deserve to be told the same as other stories.

Nothing says “land of the free” like armed agents of the state saying “show me your papers if you want your daughter back” bsky.app/profile/nbcb...

Stands on rooftops: 📣 🗣️

🗣️THERE IS NO LINK BTW ACETAMINOPHEN & AUTISM. IT HAS BEEN STUDIED FOR MANY YEARS IN MILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

🗣️THE ONLY REASON THEY ARE TALKING ABT THIS IS THAT THEY DO NOT WANT AUTISTIC PEOPLE TO EXIST.

🗣️IT IS EUGENICS.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION IN THIS MATTER. -EmilyPhD

Getting close to 50k views and I'm wondering is it just everybody is scared to say this and pleased I did? Because if there's so many of us who agree, trust me I'd know if 1k people disagreed with me let alone 50k, why are we letting AI ruin our universities?

Together we can turn back the tide.

When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900 The world is in a “wave of autocratization.” Yet, recent events in Brazil, the Maldives, and Zambia demonstrate that autocratization can be halted and reversed. This article introduces “U-Turn” as ...

“52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy”

V-Dem data

Universities:
- Stop offering workshops on how to use ChatGPT to write papers
- stop using DeepL to translate your websites or make it sound useful for our research
- stop pretending AI usage is inevitable.

I don‘t want to work for institutions who can‘t employ critical thinking to new tech.

Censorship Is the Authoritarian’s Dream The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things.

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history."
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Can anyone direct me to some resources with MRI videos of vowel productions? I know I've seen websites or youtube channels with a collection of them before, but I'm having trouble locating what I'm thinking of. #linguistics #phonetics

“I’m Kind of Stuck in the Middle. I Don’t Know Where to Go”: Race, Autism, and Intersectional Stigma Among Black and White Autistic Adults | Autism in Adulthood Background: Autistic adults frequently experience social stigma, which may be compounded by additional marginalized identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Black autistic adults, in particular, may face unique challenges at the intersection of racial bias and autism stigma. However, the experiences of autistic people with intersecting marginalized identities remain underexplored in research, contributing to a limited understanding of stigma’s impact across diverse communities. Methods: We used qualitative methods to explore how intersecting identities shape autistic adults’ experiences of stigma and marginalization, with an emphasis on Black autistic adults. In total, 32 autistic adults (16 Black and 16 White) completed a semi-structured interview regarding their social experiences. Participants shared recent stories of peer exclusion, acceptance, discrimination, and support that they had experienced, as well as their feelings surrounding these events. We recorded and transcribed these interviews and used an inductive, or data-driven, approach to thematic analysis to identify salient themes in the data. Results: We generated three intersectional themes, which encompassed the unique impact of stigma on those with intersecting identities. Specifically, these themes included: (1) identity-based discrimination shaped by race, gender, and LGBTQ+ status; (2) challenges in obtaining and processing an autism diagnosis; and (3) difficulties navigating personal identity, particularly among Black autistic participants. While autistic adults broadly reported stigma experiences, Black participants often described layered forms of exclusion related to both their race and autistic traits. Across racial groups, women and LGBTQ+ participants also reported distinct forms of marginalization and erasure. Conclusion: These findings highlight how autism stigma intersects with other marginalized identities to shape social experiences. Black autistic adults, along with autistic women and LGBTQ+ autistic people, may encounter compounded barriers to acceptance, identity development, and belonging. These results underscore the need for more inclusive research and supports that attend to the diversity of autistic experiences.

Black autistic adults are too often left out of conversations about stigma and autism.

Our new paper shows how stigma is shaped by race, gender, and sexuality, creating unique challenges for Black autistic adults, women, and LGBTQ+ autistic people.

www.liebertpub.com/d...
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The tuba meme, where a schoolgirl has her head pressed against the wall by another girl wielding a tuba, pushing it right up to her face, suggesting and intense, unavoidable onslaught of sensory information Girl against wall:Me trying to do a basic ask I've managed Jo do every day Without incident for many years Girl with tuba: EVery organisation on Earth Tuba: AI

Daily life in 2025.

#AI #Tech #JustLetMeBe #FFS

PhD student in Linguistics, sign language The Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University conducts research and offers education in a number of areas such as child language development, computational linguistics, general linguistics, ph

🚨 Open PhD position in sign language #linguistics 🚨

The focus should be on the structure of signed languages, or connect to other research profiles at the department (e.g. computational linguistics, acquisition, typology, multilingualism)

su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Deadline: 15 October 2025

This is simply untenable. There is no way forward with media and political classes captured by the right. Every time someone commits a crime you have to pray it's not an undesirable or it's purge time, then when it turns out to be themselves again they just shrug and wait for the next one.

So my keynote at #AECongress25 involved a lot of memes to illustrate my points about how to understand and apply the neurodiversity paradigm.

The focus is on LIBERATION from OPPRESSIVE systems and beliefs.

This will work best, I believe, when we COLLECTIVISE our action.

Here we go…

Transgender people are owed a retraction and apology from @wsj.com. The lie has already become canon to millions and it seems the least they could do.

"I got so immersed in the data, I suffocated and died" ~ a doctoral student working on their qualitative dissertation analysis