07
Jul
2020

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here, so here goes!

categories: personal; word count: 329 words

Ancestry has been giving me some new information, especially on their website.

On their website, it pointed out that a considerable enough percentage (although it has yet to tell me what) of my England, Wales, and Northwestern DNA must come from Belgium… for it to point that out. That surprised me, because I didn’t expect to have any Belgian DNA, so I definitely remembered it. Given that Belgium is frequently lumped in with Scandinavian countries though, that would account for the fact that 23andMe uncovered Scandinavian DNA when I did a test with them, although they were not able to conclusively identify from what country — or countries — it came from and still have not been able to. This seems to go a ways toward answering that question. If I bring up that portion of my DNA on the Ancestry website, it now tells me that I have an affinity for watching BBC Sherlock and Doctor Who my DNA from that section is primarily located in Belgium, the Channel Islands, England, and Wales. Not much of a surprise!

Clicking the Ireland & Scotland section, which is right below it, tells me that my DNA from that section is primarily located in a ball of spitfire and sass Ireland, the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The last section available for me, Germanic Europe, simply reveals not much of a surprise Germany.

A friend of mine was also nice enough to use his paid Ancestry account to help me begin to put together a family tree for research purposes, which answered some questions that I had about relatives on my mom’s side. One of the questions that got answered, although I didn’t really have it going into that, was “who those “first cousins”/presumably half-aunts were that popped up high on my Ancestry match lists might be related to me through”, and now I think I have a much better idea who I am related to them through because of this.

06
Jul
2020

And before I completely forget to mention this here.

categories: personal; word count: 289 words

By the way, I (“we”) eventually did get our economic stimulus payment… or as some people have taken to calling it, “coronavirus check”. I had begun to give up on it after awhile, after so many of my friends had already gotten their checks, checking on the Get My Payment tool daily just to see day after day that there was absolutely no information on it for me even though I had filled out the Non-Filer form with our information the day that the IRS uploaded it and gotten automated confirmation four hours after that stating that our Non-Filer form was approved. So finding out that I (“we”) were actually approved for it in the middle of June actually surprised me, because by that point I had actually begun to blow off the payment as something that had just been shoved under the rug, something that I was just not going to receive because so many of the non-filers had been forgotten about and there was no actual way to call IRS to ask about this… funny how they weren’t actually staffing their call centers, not even from home, to answer questions about this. Almost like they were running from how badly they botched sending these checks out, let alone in the right amounts, which is what I’m about to get to in this post, just for the sake of chronicling this in here.

I (“we”) got our base payment, but none of the dependent money, even though I have two dependents.

Typical.

Apparently this has happened to no shortage of people, especially those who filled out the Non-Filer form.

I mean, I guess I should be happy that we (eventually) got anything at all, but… really? Seriously, IRS?

05
Jul
2020

Before I completely forget to make a post on it…

categories: personal; word count: 411 words

My thoughts on ABA (“applied behavioral analysis”) for autistic children, in a nutshell:
· causes C-PTSD and PTSD in many autistic adults who were… exposed to this as children
· Pavlovian dog training, or the equivalent thereof, for autistic children
· what you try to do because you want a neurotypical child and not the autistic child before you
· what parents need to stop inflicting on their children in the way of “aspiring for a neurotypical child”
· the literal end goal of this is to “have a child that is indistinguishable from their neurotypical peers”
· “planned avoidance” is abuse and I don’t care what anyone neurotypical has to say about this
· some clinicians strike the hands of a child when they stim, “even gently”, to get them to stop
· “taking away an autistic child’s special interest to force them to comply” is literally abusing them
· forces compliance without teaching the autistic child why you even want them to comply in the first place

I think I’ve made my thoughts on how ABA is frequently (“almost always”) practiced clear enough.

Love your child for who they are. Aspire to help them be the best version of themselves that they can be.

Don’t aspire to have a neurotypical child, or a child “indistinguishable from neurotypical peers”, when you have a lovely autistic child before you. No matter who they are (did I say that functioning labels are bad?), they will catch on to the fact that you don’t think that they are good enough if you don’t think that they are.

Parents of autistic children focus so much on “curing” their autistic children, “making their children (not) autistic” that in doing so, they very frequently break the autistic child that they have before them. Like I said up above, there is a difference between wanting the child before you to be the best version of themselves that they can be, and to be a completely different child — not at all the actual child that you have before you. I’ll eventually get into functioning labels and how damaging they are over the course of another post, because that would take up a complete post in and of itself to dissect the… rightful problems that are with them, and then they wrap themselves up in being “martyrs to the cause” for their children’s struggles as well.

The question that I want to end with: why is all of this okay to do to autistic children? Only autistic children?

04
Jul
2020

I never knew the joys of free Epic games until now.

categories: action and adventure, RPGs; word count: 295 words

It never even crossed my path that Epic Games had been offering free games every now and again (okay, to the tune of… once a week or so) until they began Trending on Twitter for offering Grand Theft Auto V free.

Of.

Charge.

Needless to say, as soon as I found out about that, I jumped on it, downloaded the Epic Games game installer, and downloaded that as my first free game. I first got into Grand Theft Auto with the third game in the franchise, finding one quest so difficult that I remember stealing a tank and eventually successfully catapulting myself across a bridge that I just barely got over to start the next section of the game. At any rate, getting back to what I came here to say — since downloading Grand Theft Auto V free, I’ve kept checking back to download each free game they’ve made available, although I think I’m going to have to start juggling which games I actually have downloaded copies of on our computer (all of them will remain in our library though) because one of them might have involved biting off more than I could chew with it taking up nearly three-quarters of our one terabyte hard drive on our PC. I was gobsmacked to see just how much space it actually took up when I looked at the amount of hard drive space that we actually had free on our PC and… well, yeah. You probably would be too. You probably were if you downloaded ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK Editor when I did. I have no regrets though because that is the sort of game Bub enjoys.

No regrets. I swear. Even though our PC’s hard drive is practically screaming uncle at this point. Seriously.

03
Jul
2020

It took me awhile, but I eventually succeeded.

categories: personal; word count: 181 words

Surprisingly, it took me longer than I had thought to find an old copy of Windows Movie Maker (which is just the easiest thing for me to use at this time because it doesn’t have that much of a learning curve… I grew up using it, and I’ll teach myself something more complex later) to download. Apparently it doesn’t come bundled with Windows any more — shocker, seriously — and to get the 2020 one you have to pay for it, which I don’t want to do right now. Maybe I’ll want to do that at a later date, I don’t know. Just not right now. It still confuses me a bit why a basic movie “maker” (editor) that used to come bundled free with Windows now doesn’t, and to get one you have to pa— oh, wait a minute, profit. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?

I am so excited that I can actually use our camcorder as it has been intended to use, though.

Also note that I’m not celebrating the Fourth of July here, but instead Juneteenth, until further notice.

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