This is my first time blogging in months. It's likely nobody will read this, but I felt I had to comment on the latest wave of parents of autistic kids killing their offspring. A few months ago, the mother and grandmother of a Chicago boy with such severe autism that he had to be restrained every time he went to the hospital gave him a fatal dose of sleeping pills, and when that failed to kill him, stabbed him in the heart. A few days after CBS aired a report that was perceived as sympathetic to the killers, Kelli Stapleton of Michigan locked her daughter Issy in a van with two portable grills blazing, hoping to kill her with carbon monoxide. She nearly succeeded, but fell short. She is now in a rural jail in northern Michigan, charged with attempted murder and facing life without parole. When that was in the news, a mother of two kids, one autistic, one NT, drove from Arizona to California and poisoned her kids in a motel near Disneyland. Those kids both died.
The autistic community is split on these murders. Autistic adults generally want to stand the parents up against a wall and shoot them. There is no justification for these murders, they argue, and the sympathy extended to the killers only encourages a view that the disabled are not worth the trouble ("life unworthy of life", in German parlance) and encourages more murders. The parents of autistic kids generally want people to consider the enormous stress that the parents are under. In that view, the mother "snaps" under the pressure, and deserves our sympathy.
A mother killing her kid is an act that is so unnatural that it's inevitable that many will recoil in horror. The general view of autistics is that my mom could have killed me, and then I wouldn't be here. Reading the blogs of Kelli and her friend Lisa Sain, whose son Preston was nonverbal and impossible to control as he got older, one gets the impression that these mothers were gradually losing their sanity over the challenges of raising a severely autistic kid. Issy would hit her mother on the head until Kelli lost consciousness. Preston would hit his mom too, and strip off his clothes in public. Both kids had been given medication (risperidone?) that had the side effect of turning them into physical Gargantuas, huge for their age and impossible to control.
It seems that the general procedure for controlling an autistic kid having a meltdown is simply to sit on them until they become exhausted and give up. Teachers do it, parents do it. This is the exact WRONG thing to do. It only encourages the kid to be more violent, and stops working once they get older. What happens when it takes 3,4,5 people to hold down a massive 14 year old? And then there's Lovaas ABA, which seems to be a more advanced version of this. Videos from the behavioral institute where Issy went show staff holding her hands so she can't stim, holding her shoulders down so she can't get up. Audio is missing, so we don't know what they were saying. Eventually Issy loses it and starts beating one of the staff, and other staff members rush in and yank her off. The general rule is to *keep doing this* until the autistic stops rebelling. In other words, break them of their will like a wild horse. Can't break them? Kill them. Apparently being "normal" is so important that these kids must be stuffed into the mold at any and all costs, including murder.
Did nobody tell Lisa that Preston is taking off his clothes because of sensory issues? Did nobody tell the behavioral "specialists" that stimming and pacing is like breathing to an autistic? Did nobody warn Kelli Stapleton in 2003 that hey, one day you won't be able to sit on Issy to control her, and she'll kill you? There's a video from a Kalamazoo TV station where Kelli is asked, you think Issy will kill you one day, and she says, she WILL kill me one day! Kelli's view was much like that of an abused wife, and eventually a choice is made: me or her. Either Issy dies or I die. That common thread seems to run through these murders: years and years of ineffective and wrong "treatments", followed by murder in the belief that the kid will kill mom, and so the kid has to die first.
We don't know a lot about treating autistics. What we DO know is that it's a "defect", if you will, in the basic wiring of the brain. You CANNOT rewire an autistic brain! You can't use force to rewire them. You are only teaching the kid that violence is ok, and soon you have a violent 14 year old with 5 grown men trying to restrain her, one who beats mom into Level 2 Trauma and closed head traumatic brain injury. Eventually, the violence becomes too much, and the mom kills the kid. How about, instead of violence, trying a different solution? When the kid throws himself on the floor and screams, let him scream until he's screamed out, WITHOUT restraining him? Few of these kids start out with abuse and destruction from here to Sunday, usually it's a 3 year old rolling around on the floor screaming. The kid is held down instead, and learns to hit to be released. From there it just picks up steam until you have a violent kid.
My mom used to just let me have my tantrums when I was little. It was embarrassing: I would start screaming in the middle of Sunrise Mall, and mom would simply drag me to the fountain and watch me until I calmed down. It was 1977 and nobody knew anything about autism, people would come by and say "shut that kid up!" She seemed to know that she couldn't stop a meltdown. Teachers didn't try to hold me down in the early 80s. It worked. Why not try that before you have a human wrecking ball on your hands?
Friday, September 20, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
ADHD in childhood linked to adult obesity
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/20/18343200-adhd-in-childhood-linked-to-adult-obesity-study-finds?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=3
I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 9, and today I'm only beginning to lose weight. I find it hard to concentrate on cooking a meal, so for years I simply ate fast food, until I couldn't afford it anymore. By 2011 I was 325 lbs on a 5'7" frame. Right now I'm 298. I have Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure from neglecting my health for so long, and eating sugar whenever I felt like it. I even kept eating cake and candy AFTER being diagnosed with diabetes, to the point where my mom had to take away my debit card to curb my runaway spending. The weird thing is, I never spent on luxuries like some people who fill their houses with junk, I only bought food. I never "window shopped", but impulsive buys at the supermarket are a constant problem. Supermarkets are set up to facilitate impulsive buying of junk food, which makes it even harder for those with ADHD to control their diets.
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/20/18343200-adhd-in-childhood-linked-to-adult-obesity-study-finds?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=3
I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 9, and today I'm only beginning to lose weight. I find it hard to concentrate on cooking a meal, so for years I simply ate fast food, until I couldn't afford it anymore. By 2011 I was 325 lbs on a 5'7" frame. Right now I'm 298. I have Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure from neglecting my health for so long, and eating sugar whenever I felt like it. I even kept eating cake and candy AFTER being diagnosed with diabetes, to the point where my mom had to take away my debit card to curb my runaway spending. The weird thing is, I never spent on luxuries like some people who fill their houses with junk, I only bought food. I never "window shopped", but impulsive buys at the supermarket are a constant problem. Supermarkets are set up to facilitate impulsive buying of junk food, which makes it even harder for those with ADHD to control their diets.
Monday, May 13, 2013
More on autistic people and employment
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/06/autistic-workers-employers-ignorance
The above article was recently brought to my attention. I suspect the situation is even worse in the US, where social skills and fitting in are far more valued than doing the job correctly, in fact those who know how to "brown nose" the right people often can get away with nearly completely shirking their job duties, and those who don't fit in are fired. In addition, getting hired in the US heavily depends on whether previous employers liked you, which means that eventually autistics who try to work end up with a lot of bad references and eventually nobody at all wants to hire them. I know that I have trouble making eye contact during interviews, which means that I can't get past them. My lack of employment experience occasionally leads people to think that I am some sort of criminal. Autistics who try to start their own businesses find that nobody wants to be their client. The result is that capable people are forced to subsist on disability pensions. Maybe that's just as well, since there's not enough work for the number of people who are alive. I suspect that eventually the "problem" will be "solved" via war, famine, and disease, and possibly a return of the gas chamber.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/apr/06/autistic-workers-employers-ignorance
The above article was recently brought to my attention. I suspect the situation is even worse in the US, where social skills and fitting in are far more valued than doing the job correctly, in fact those who know how to "brown nose" the right people often can get away with nearly completely shirking their job duties, and those who don't fit in are fired. In addition, getting hired in the US heavily depends on whether previous employers liked you, which means that eventually autistics who try to work end up with a lot of bad references and eventually nobody at all wants to hire them. I know that I have trouble making eye contact during interviews, which means that I can't get past them. My lack of employment experience occasionally leads people to think that I am some sort of criminal. Autistics who try to start their own businesses find that nobody wants to be their client. The result is that capable people are forced to subsist on disability pensions. Maybe that's just as well, since there's not enough work for the number of people who are alive. I suspect that eventually the "problem" will be "solved" via war, famine, and disease, and possibly a return of the gas chamber.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
The impossibility of feeding oneself
I was thinking today about how difficult it is to earn money. Here in California you need to be licensed out the wazoo simply to wipe an old person's butt. Any type of physical labor requires a contractor's license, which is nearly impossible to get unless it's a big corporation. Even computer repairmen need to be licensed. Stings are regularly conducted, with harsh prison sentences meted out to men simply trying to feed their families.
90% of autistics are unemployed. That's a big number, but consider the even bigger numbers: 60% of the labor force isn't participating in gainful employment. Most of the remaining 40% are working just minimum wage jobs.
Most people are finding out that all the junk they own is literally worthless. Books that originally cost $25 go for 99 cents on Ebay. Most yard sales are full of old glassware and stuff that maybe has recycle value, if that. Even tradespeople can't earn a living. People are so broke they do their own plumbing and house repairs, even cut their own hair. Physical labor pays so little for what it entails that only Mexicans do it, and they live like animals, 40 to a two bedroom house, to be able to make it on what they earn.
I started a blog and tried to apply for Adsense, only to be turned down so fast that it must have been rejected by a computer, and now my account is blacklisted, and I can't apply for Adsense at all. It's impossible to get an answer from Google, Google is just a black box, no communication, the computers automatically reject you.
If it was the intention of the elite to force everybody into such abject misery that they would willingly give up their freedoms for a few slices of bread, it worked. I owe so much money from previous business ventures, and from dental work, that I'll never pay it off. My mom owes so much money she'll never pay it off. Nothing pencils out, every avenue of earning money costs too much and pays too little. I looked into government surplus, but it costs too much, far more than I could ever resell it for. I can't even afford food. People are finding that the only way to earn money is to scam each other, but I'm not even a good liar. I have poor fine motor coordination, so I can't repair anything, which doesn't matter because people can't afford to have stuff repaired. I am out of options.
I was thinking today about how difficult it is to earn money. Here in California you need to be licensed out the wazoo simply to wipe an old person's butt. Any type of physical labor requires a contractor's license, which is nearly impossible to get unless it's a big corporation. Even computer repairmen need to be licensed. Stings are regularly conducted, with harsh prison sentences meted out to men simply trying to feed their families.
90% of autistics are unemployed. That's a big number, but consider the even bigger numbers: 60% of the labor force isn't participating in gainful employment. Most of the remaining 40% are working just minimum wage jobs.
Most people are finding out that all the junk they own is literally worthless. Books that originally cost $25 go for 99 cents on Ebay. Most yard sales are full of old glassware and stuff that maybe has recycle value, if that. Even tradespeople can't earn a living. People are so broke they do their own plumbing and house repairs, even cut their own hair. Physical labor pays so little for what it entails that only Mexicans do it, and they live like animals, 40 to a two bedroom house, to be able to make it on what they earn.
I started a blog and tried to apply for Adsense, only to be turned down so fast that it must have been rejected by a computer, and now my account is blacklisted, and I can't apply for Adsense at all. It's impossible to get an answer from Google, Google is just a black box, no communication, the computers automatically reject you.
If it was the intention of the elite to force everybody into such abject misery that they would willingly give up their freedoms for a few slices of bread, it worked. I owe so much money from previous business ventures, and from dental work, that I'll never pay it off. My mom owes so much money she'll never pay it off. Nothing pencils out, every avenue of earning money costs too much and pays too little. I looked into government surplus, but it costs too much, far more than I could ever resell it for. I can't even afford food. People are finding that the only way to earn money is to scam each other, but I'm not even a good liar. I have poor fine motor coordination, so I can't repair anything, which doesn't matter because people can't afford to have stuff repaired. I am out of options.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Cats in a dog world, ants in a grasshopper world
Somebody on Wrong Planet recently said that people with Aspergers are "cats in a dog world", meaning that "aspies" function more like cats and normal people more like dogs. Aspies are independent and willful, while most people just follow their pack. It occurred to me that the same dichotomy is at work with preppers vs non-preppers. It is frequently said that preppers are the industrious ants, laying in supplies during good times to survive bad times, while normals are grasshoppers, enjoying themselves during good times, partying the night away, then when bad times hit they are totally unprepared and figuratively freeze to death in the snow while the ant is warm and fed in his hole.
To be a prepper, you have to show a willingness to be independent and to swim upstream, many times our own families don't understand us and laugh. My mother keeps saying "what will be will be, no sense worrying about it" and "we will get through it". I see empty platitudes as just stupid in the face of pending economic collapse, and can only hope that I can get my own land before SHTF, since mom won't let me have meat animals or a garden.
The pack mentality is at work, since everybody else is buried in their iTrash and only care about Dancing With The Stars, who are we to intrude on their fun. Hey guys, the Fed is printing $85 billion a month. So what, they say, nothing will happen. And besides American Idol is far more important! Right? If they bother to watch the "news", it's on ObamaVision and everything is just great thanks to the Fearless Messiah, the economy is booming, people are back at work, la de dah. People simply don't want to prep, they don't want to understand what it's like to be independent. Fine, starve then.
Somebody on Wrong Planet recently said that people with Aspergers are "cats in a dog world", meaning that "aspies" function more like cats and normal people more like dogs. Aspies are independent and willful, while most people just follow their pack. It occurred to me that the same dichotomy is at work with preppers vs non-preppers. It is frequently said that preppers are the industrious ants, laying in supplies during good times to survive bad times, while normals are grasshoppers, enjoying themselves during good times, partying the night away, then when bad times hit they are totally unprepared and figuratively freeze to death in the snow while the ant is warm and fed in his hole.
To be a prepper, you have to show a willingness to be independent and to swim upstream, many times our own families don't understand us and laugh. My mother keeps saying "what will be will be, no sense worrying about it" and "we will get through it". I see empty platitudes as just stupid in the face of pending economic collapse, and can only hope that I can get my own land before SHTF, since mom won't let me have meat animals or a garden.
The pack mentality is at work, since everybody else is buried in their iTrash and only care about Dancing With The Stars, who are we to intrude on their fun. Hey guys, the Fed is printing $85 billion a month. So what, they say, nothing will happen. And besides American Idol is far more important! Right? If they bother to watch the "news", it's on ObamaVision and everything is just great thanks to the Fearless Messiah, the economy is booming, people are back at work, la de dah. People simply don't want to prep, they don't want to understand what it's like to be independent. Fine, starve then.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
When will SHTF? Watch California.
California is most people's last choice for a BOL, and with sky high taxes, millions of welfare leeches, and a liberal state government bent on wrecking the place, it's easy to see why. But the qualities that make California unattractive to preppers make it the place to watch as a canary in the coal mine to tell when SHTF might be right around the corner.
California's economy is going gangbusters right now, led by Silicon Valley which is about the only thing that America has left going for it. Apartments are literally impossible to find in San Francisco, long lines at open houses and deluges of applications complete with references, pre-pulled credit reports, and rental histories are the norm. And that's just the rental market-real estate is seemingly back to the halcyon days of the 2000s bubble, with the Sacramento News & Review even proclaiming "Housing Bubble 2". Needless to say, when the cracks start to show in this frenzy, it may be time to bug out.
California has been led back to illusory "fiscal solvency" by Jerry Brown, a small budget surplus is in the offing, the first since the dot.com bubble. Watch California's budget closely, when it starts to wobble, be wary.
One poster on Survivalist Boards noted that no-doc mortgages, yes those evil buggers that nearly brought down the world economy, are back in California. The real estate frenzy is so crazy in California that the banksters are willing to forget every lesson they learned about junk mortgages. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. And there's plenty of shame to go around. It seems that many in California are willing to be fooled over and over and over. Problem is, the fool's game can only go for so long before the foolers run out of fools. All bubbles pop. Use this one to get your preps in order.
California is most people's last choice for a BOL, and with sky high taxes, millions of welfare leeches, and a liberal state government bent on wrecking the place, it's easy to see why. But the qualities that make California unattractive to preppers make it the place to watch as a canary in the coal mine to tell when SHTF might be right around the corner.
California's economy is going gangbusters right now, led by Silicon Valley which is about the only thing that America has left going for it. Apartments are literally impossible to find in San Francisco, long lines at open houses and deluges of applications complete with references, pre-pulled credit reports, and rental histories are the norm. And that's just the rental market-real estate is seemingly back to the halcyon days of the 2000s bubble, with the Sacramento News & Review even proclaiming "Housing Bubble 2". Needless to say, when the cracks start to show in this frenzy, it may be time to bug out.
California has been led back to illusory "fiscal solvency" by Jerry Brown, a small budget surplus is in the offing, the first since the dot.com bubble. Watch California's budget closely, when it starts to wobble, be wary.
One poster on Survivalist Boards noted that no-doc mortgages, yes those evil buggers that nearly brought down the world economy, are back in California. The real estate frenzy is so crazy in California that the banksters are willing to forget every lesson they learned about junk mortgages. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. And there's plenty of shame to go around. It seems that many in California are willing to be fooled over and over and over. Problem is, the fool's game can only go for so long before the foolers run out of fools. All bubbles pop. Use this one to get your preps in order.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Shaving after SHTF
One of the craftiest moves Gillette ever made was getting rid of the old fashioned out-of-patent double edge safety razor in favor of proprietary cartridge razors that are "updated" every five years. Whoever thought of selling people a cheap plastic handle for $10 then pricing four cartridges that only last for a few shaves at $15 was an evil genius. In the UK Gillette cartridge packs are the most shoplifted item in the country. An investigation revealed that Gillette pays about 30 pence (maybe 75 cents USD) for a four pack that is then sold for 10 pounds. Of course, since you can't stock up on these things at that price, you run the risk of not being able to shave if there's ever a retail disruption.
I solved the problem by buying a Merkur 23C/180 safety razor for $35 off Ebay. The blades are out of patent and super cheap. As for blades, I was recommended Astra Superior Platinum blades made in Russia and sold online by bestshave.net for $1.07 for 10. Now THAT is easy on your wallet! If you don't want to wait a month for the blades to ship from Turkey (yes, Turkey), I've been told that the dollar store sells blades that will do a pretty good job. They're called Panoramio I think. At $1 for 10, you can stock up. And you're not locked into a proprietary shaving system.
By the way, I find that I bleed a lot less with a double edge than with a five blade cartridge razor. I hate shaving, so I let my beard grow until it's scratchy (about 2 weeks) before I finally give in and shave it. The cart razor couldn't handle such a thick beard, and would break, but the double edge can handle it just fine. The whole cartridge razor racket reminds me of an old comedy skit from the 1970s where they kept adding blades to a cartridge. The actor would come out with an ever bloodier face each time, with toilet paper stuck to the wounds. I suppose that they will be advertising the "close shave" next, like when irons acquired so many holes in the ironing surface that they left clothes damp, which was then used as a marketing gimmick.
One of the craftiest moves Gillette ever made was getting rid of the old fashioned out-of-patent double edge safety razor in favor of proprietary cartridge razors that are "updated" every five years. Whoever thought of selling people a cheap plastic handle for $10 then pricing four cartridges that only last for a few shaves at $15 was an evil genius. In the UK Gillette cartridge packs are the most shoplifted item in the country. An investigation revealed that Gillette pays about 30 pence (maybe 75 cents USD) for a four pack that is then sold for 10 pounds. Of course, since you can't stock up on these things at that price, you run the risk of not being able to shave if there's ever a retail disruption.
I solved the problem by buying a Merkur 23C/180 safety razor for $35 off Ebay. The blades are out of patent and super cheap. As for blades, I was recommended Astra Superior Platinum blades made in Russia and sold online by bestshave.net for $1.07 for 10. Now THAT is easy on your wallet! If you don't want to wait a month for the blades to ship from Turkey (yes, Turkey), I've been told that the dollar store sells blades that will do a pretty good job. They're called Panoramio I think. At $1 for 10, you can stock up. And you're not locked into a proprietary shaving system.
By the way, I find that I bleed a lot less with a double edge than with a five blade cartridge razor. I hate shaving, so I let my beard grow until it's scratchy (about 2 weeks) before I finally give in and shave it. The cart razor couldn't handle such a thick beard, and would break, but the double edge can handle it just fine. The whole cartridge razor racket reminds me of an old comedy skit from the 1970s where they kept adding blades to a cartridge. The actor would come out with an ever bloodier face each time, with toilet paper stuck to the wounds. I suppose that they will be advertising the "close shave" next, like when irons acquired so many holes in the ironing surface that they left clothes damp, which was then used as a marketing gimmick.
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