Lilly

Sending you all the love. We're always here if you need to vent ❤️🫂

I hope this bought you a small moment of joy! Keep them coming ❤️

I cannot be party to silencing writers, which is why I am resigning as director of Adelaide Writers’ Week | Louise Adler Cancelling the Australian Palestinian author Randa Abdel-Fattah weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation

“art in the service of social cohesion is propaganda”: Louise Adler standing tall as always. What a legend✊🏼❤️

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

This is stunning!

The accessories aren't welded to Barbie - people can pick and choose what to play with. You're never going to represent everyone and they did well to consult with ASAN. At the end of the day, it is a child's toy & not designed to represent an adult with decades of honed Oscar-worthy masking skills.

The world of so many autistic people opens up when they're given access to appropriate AAC, but far too many people are denied the basic right of communication and live a restricted, impoverished life as a result. AAC representation is a good thing and maybe it will help more people access it.

Hoping you and your family remain safe. I grew up in the Blue Mountains and had my yard burn and was evacuated multiple times. I know how eerie and scary it can be.

As stated, this is an interim list which will be updated. Many people on it won't even know about the fiasco yet. People are free to make their choice, once they know about it. (What an incredible line-up has been so insulted & sabotaged. Look at this list of what the festival was going to be.)

💔

A Total Fire Ban will be in place tomorrow, Saturday 10 January, for Greater Sydney, Illawarra Shoalhaven, Far South Coast, Greater Hunter, Monaro Alpine, Southern and Central Ranges and the Southern Slopes. Hot, dry and windy conditions are forecast across much of the state, increasing the fire danger. Take action now. Know your fire risk and what you will do if fire threatens. Report all unattended fires to Triple Zero (000). For more information on Total Fire Ban rules, visit the #RFS website: www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fdr

"A Total Fire Ban will be in place tomorrow, Sat 10 January for Greater Sydney, Illawarra Shoalhaven, Far South Coast, Greater Hunter, Monaro Alpine, Southern and Central Ranges and the Southern Slopes. Hot, dry and windy conditions are forecast across much of the state, increasing the fire danger"

In an emergency the abc.net.au and emergency.vic.gov.au websites may be unavailable in your area.

You can tune into the local radio stations on:

Goulburn Valley: 97.7 FM
Corryong: 99.7 FM
Upper Murray: 106.5 FM
Melbourne: 774 AM
Alexandra: 102.9 FM
Mansfield: 103.7 FM
Eildon: 98.1 FM

Happy International People with Disabilities Day Australia!

I'm pretty sure there was a period in the 90s where I thought this too!

Sounds like a more preferable activity. Hope the call was brief and productive!

Amazing 😍 Hoping it goes really well. You'll definitely have to keep us updated 💜

To honor Alice—and all our disability ancestors—is to keep building that connective tissue she described. To love fiercely, politically, on purpose. To ensure the filaments they left behind continue to glow in us, and through us, long after the world has forgotten their names. We won’t.

Alice Wong taught us that disabled people don’t just leave memories behind—they leave infrastructure. Lineages of care. Methods of collectivity, survival. She named the connective tissue that holds our communities together, even across death, even across the losses that come too fast and too often.

Black text on a yellow background - This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing. Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time. I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out. I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more. As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin. We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching. I'm honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.”

Yes, this is what I was trying to say! Sorry if it wasn’t clear (I am much better at explaining myself with long passages rather than being succinct as is needed on social media) 😊

‘A Lovely Safe Umbrella to Describe Yourself With’ or ‘Meaningless’: An Online Survey of UK-Based Neurodivergent Adults’ Views of Neurodiversity-Related Terminology - Aimee Grant, Jennifer Leigh, Moni... Background: Neurodivergence refers to people with ways of behaving and thinking that diverge from the norm. Examples include Autism, Attention Deficit Hyperacti...

📣New research

Q: What do neurodivergent people think about words like "neurodiversity".

A: it's complicated; they use it, but it has limitations and could stigmatise.

Full paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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It became very apparent to me that this wasn't a reality once I began to learn about the experiences of earlier diagnosed autistics, both those of a similar age to me, and present day.

I completely agree. I think if you're late diagnosed, it's very easy in those early days to romanticise about a life that could have been if you were diagnosed at a young age and given all the support you needed. But those supports weren't around, and generally aren't now either.

I suspect I am reading the same book. I'm not very far in, but it otherwise seems good so far.

Copyright laws to protect creatives from AI data mining Tech developers will not have a "free pass" to use creative works to train AI systems, but advocates say more protections are needed against copyright theft.

The ASA welcomes the Albanese Government’s decision to rule out a Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception to Australian copyright law, which would have allowed for AI training on authors’ work.

aapnews.aap.com.au/news/copyrig...

🥲🫂

That sounds amazing. Maybe one day there won't be so much physical distance

Autumn shares a poem:
“Nothing about us without us means all of us together
The loud, the silent, the joyous, and the somber
The future is an echo that arrives before the sound”

The first award is the Nothing About Us Without Us Award, given to self-advocates whose work fights to make sure that our community’s voices are being heard. This year, this award goes to Autumn Lauener for their tireless work supporting both the autistic and trans community across Texas.

“Most of all, we know that, whatever laundry list of activities they can and cannot do, the life of every autistic person is worth living.” – Colin Killick, ASAN’s Executive Director

“We know the world is full of autistic people, including those with high support needs, who do all those things amazingly, from nonspeaking poets, to policy experts with intellectual disabilities.”