Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i’m researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there’s an awful lot of just, like, “Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else”
I’d have to research this, but I kinda feel that, what with how much the eugenics movement pervaded everything for a huge chunk of recent history, our narrative of how disability was for much of history has gotten a little warped.
I feel like I always heard “yeah they assumed people were possessed by demons Back Then” but actually researching religious history? I’ve found a lot more of people seeing a person showing signs of (what we would call) neurodivergence or mental illness and being like “hm. yea that’s god.”
It’s also definitely like…in the US anyway fundamentalism has absolutely decimated a lot of AWARENESS of what Christianity specifically can look like.
american evangelicalism is based a lot on Belief in your religion as axiomatic Fact and at the same time a very buddy-buddy view of god where Jesus is like, your cool dad. Both of which are not very good for allowing the numinous and divine “mystery” to exist
So I think we assume people throughout history would default to “things I don’t understand are of the devil.” when very often they would instead be “things I don’t understand are of God.”
and they would see someone speak in strange sounds or move his body strangely or respond differently to the world and see something divine in it, and there are instances of this across many religions
@invisibleoctopus There’s this fascinating book about the cultural aspects of how mental illness presents called Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters that is not without its flaws, but that (among other things) discusses how schizophrenic people do significantly better in cultures where there’s a precedent/religious or spiritual explanation for people ‘hearing voices’ and such, because for one thing, they’re not treated as social outcasts for it. Those environments are better equipped to help and accommodate those people on the basis of being able to keep them integrated into a community. At least according to the Ethan Watters guy.
The thing about imagining that autistic children would have been left to die for most of history is just… it’s so lazy. And it betrays a huge failure to understand what autism looks like for autistic people and what daily life looked like in history at the same time. It’s very frustrating.
There’s this weird idea that autistics only develop special interests in this very narrow stereotypical STEM-field domain of life, also, which is total nonsense. Of course religion autistics are a thing. Judaism, too, has a lot of room for autistics: you develop very deep spheres of knowledge, about which you argue constantly, and prayer is sung and you get to move back and forth during it rhythmically.
The other thing that gets me is that it’s not just that there’s historical room to interpret weird behavior as Godly, it’s that autistic people are relatively likely to come up with unusual ideas about people and how people do and should work. If you’re talking about any theological tradition that involves contextual study and argument, you often find a very autistic sort of perspective writing the theology.
Also, just as a general data point: my stepdad, who is in his mid-70s, grew up in a rural farming community, and was never diagnosed with anything, is Obviously Autistic to anyone who knows what autism is.
He can only tolerate about 2 different fabrics against his skin.
And can only eat about 5 foods for obvious food texture reasons.
He hums softly and continually.
He never looks at people.
He has a bunch of other people-related sensitivities, like the inability to tolerate a lot of sounds and nearly all perfume smells.
He has about 3 topics of conversation, which are a) tractors, b) agriculture, and c) Rottweilers.
And you know what? He has had a nice long life of being a Rural Farmer and gets along great with other old farmer dudes who want to talk dogs-tractors-farming with him.
I mean, it’s generally understood that he is Weird, but also that he knows Really A Fucking Lot About Tractors. Which counts for everything in a rural farming community.
It goes beyond lazy into a type of downright cruelty. No matter how autistic people did or did not fit into their communities in the past, chances are someone loved them. When they were little, someone found the clothes they could tolerate and food they would eat and something they could do that matched their interests and abilities. And people married some of them and had children with them. Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least were loved.
We know this because archeology shows over and over again a great level of care and because these traits are still present - they had to get passed on somehow. And we know it because we too feel love for others, despite them constantly failing to live up to any ideal whatsoever.
Anyone who approaches other people with this attitude is only seeking to perpetuate an excuse to be cruel to them. It has nothing to do with what happened in the past and everything to do with what they hope they can get away with in the future. They discount the love that must have existed because it can’t be used against us.
Asmalllist of random ass sites I’ve found useful when writing:
Fragrantica: perfume enthusiast site that has a long list of scents. v helpful when you’re writing your guilty pleasure abo fics
Just One Cookbook: recipe site that centers on Japanese cuisine. Lots of different recipes to browse, plenty of inspiration so you’re not just “ramen and sushi”
McCormick Science Institute: yes this is a real thing. the site shows off research on spices and gives the history on them. be historically accurate or just indulge in mindless fascination. boost your restaurant au with it
Cocktail Flow: a site with a variety of cocktails that’s pretty easy to navigate and offers photos of the drinks. You can sort by themes, strengths, type and base. My only real annoyance with this site is that the drinks are sometimes sorted into ~masculine~ and ~feminine~ but ehhhh. It’s great otherwise.
Tie-A-Tie: a site centered around ties, obviously. I stumbled upon it while researching tie fabrics but there’s a lot more to look at. It offers insight into dress code for events, tells you how to tie your ties, and has a section on the often forgotten about tie accessories
Even more:
Types of High Heels: A page describing twenty five different types of high heels. It gives a description and pictures. Shake it up from just “stilettos and kitten heels”
Random Job Generator: Exactly as it says. The site offer more generators like characters, plots, or town names.
Pulling apart duct tape causes chemical bonds to break which indirectly gives rise to a faint blue glow in an effect called triboluminescence
how i have not known this my whole life. why didnt anyone go ‘hey check this out’
probably because most people won’t say “hey come into this completely dark room I want to show you something involving duct tape”
If you have those breath-right nose strips, the packaging for them does the same thing. I discovered this while on a week-long medieval reenactment camping trip.
Pulling apart duct tape causes chemical bonds to break which indirectly gives rise to a faint blue glow in an effect called triboluminescence
how i have not known this my whole life. why didnt anyone go ‘hey check this out’
probably because most people won’t say “hey come into this completely dark room I want to show you something involving duct tape”
If you have those breath-right nose strips, the packaging for them does the same thing. I discovered this while on a week-long medieval reenactment camping trip.
In the equator, when the sun forms a right angle with the earth, the tree and its shadow.
Not to be an asshole, but im pretty sure this happens everywhere at noon
…It most certainly doesnot, I live up north and that’s the freakiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I feel like I’m looking at a graphical error.
This is called Lāhainā Noon, and it only happens at the equator and only twice a year (in any given location). Apparently objects like poles that are straight up-and-down look like they don’t even have shadows. More hereandhere.
Looks like its from a videogame
This is how we first knew the earth was round. Greek dude measures the length of the shadows at two different points during the solstice, and worked out from the difference the diameter of the world to within a few hundred feet, which is pretty good for the bronze age.
I’m so fucking emotional about the 7 planets of Trappist 1.
Imagine living so close to another habitable planet that it’s like a moon in the night sky. Imagine that for six other planets. Imagine hypothetical aliens in their equivalent of the renneisance, mapping orbits and studying the sky, starting to notice each other through their telescopes. God that’s so cool. Imagine knowing something is there so soon and slowly working towards getting to know them.
Heck, even just being able to see your neighbour planets that close, even without life, makes the solar system so obviously devastatingly lonely by comparison.
also the star type is apparently called an “ultra cool dwarf“ which I can appreciate
I’ve been so hype about this too. I couldn’t have imagined how significant that press conference I’d heard about a day or two ago was going to be. Considering this AND just how many liquid oceans and organic compounds on other bodies in OUR system we’ve been finding, maybe we’re just a bit closer to finding some neighbors!
It’ll be nice to not be so lonely someday, even if we just found some germs to start.
reblogging back around for great contributions from my besties<3
The author’s biography doesn’t always tell you anything terribly significant about a literary work, but when I think about the fact that Sir Thomas Malory, the compiler of the most well known English-language literary interpretation of the Arthurian myth cycle, was a double-dealing knight who fought on both sides of the War of the Roses, was repeatedly charged with horse thievery, escaped from prison or skipped bail at least five times, and evidently made himself so obnoxious to those in power that he was specifically excluded by name from a general pardon of prisoners on two separate occasions – an accomplishment in which he is, to the best of my knowledge, unequalled – well, that tends to suggest a certain interpretive lens, is what I mean to say.
