Posts

I like blogs. I like them a lot. One of the things I like the most about blogs is that I don’t have to read them in my browser! Sure, frequently I do, so I can see the nice formatting you put so much work into, but, just as often, I’ll read them in my RSS reader. With an RSS reader, I can subscribe to your blog, get updated whenever you post something new, and keep track of exactly what posts I’ve read!

Or: I Bought a VPN, Stopped the Government from GPS Tracking my Phone, and Still Cut $8/Month off my Phone Bill

Hiii! So, I’ve finally added comments to this thing! That’s right, no more will you have to message me personally if you have thoughts about mine! Now, we can discuss my posts in public, with everyone! What fun! Please note that alternate-language versions of posts have their own, separate, comments sections. I’m immensely looking forward to talking to you!

So, I was actually planning on writing a different post this month, and while that post is actually nearly done, I suddenly felt the urge to copy my friend Brin and write out an inventory of my backpack, since I’ve just upgraded to a backpack from a very large purse (which contained mostly the same things, but much more poorly-organised, and was much more work to carry). Also, I felt that it would be unsafe to post the other post without another few revisions.

This article was originally drafted and shared on October 4, 2020. It has been uploaded here due to the inaccessibility of its original publication. This article is an incomplete first draft, and may be updated and reposted at a later date. Death of the Author is a concept and term originally coined in the eponymous essay by Roland Barthes. In his essay’s conclusion, Barthes writes the following: In this way is revealed the whole being of writing: a text consists of multiple writings, […] but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, […] and this place is not the author, as we have hitherto said it was, but the reader:

They drag my body towards the pit. I don’t want to go. I knew, when I made the decision, what they would do to me if I failed, and it was the strongest reason to turn back: the pain, the terror, my body forming into something bestial and wrong - despite my convictions, if I knew it would come to this, I would have fled. I’m standing over the pit now, if it can truly be called “standing” when my body is so held by others, as it is now.

I think I can do better than “nasin nanpa kijetesantakalu”.

To be autistic is, in many ways, much like it is to be an immigrant from a foreign land. I do not mean this in the sense of metaphor, but more so that in some ways, it is the same experience. I do not know, directly, what exactly it is like to have come from another culture into one which I do not understand, but I do know for myself what it is like to be in a culture which is not mine and which I do not understand.