Nazis, Medievalists, and Taylor Swift
Nazis love Taylor Swift, at least in part because she never talks politics, so she’s a blank page on which people can project hate. The Middle Ages has a similar problem.
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Tech and Disability: Apps to Solve Human Issues
I don’t want your app. I don’t want your ID card. I don’t want your CIT. I want you to STOP SHOOTING PEOPLE. https://t.co/rW3aw49shr — Rebecca Cokley (@RebeccaCokley) September 1, 2017 St. Paul has a new app to help cops. I’ll have more to say this week, but for now let’s just know one thing:…
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Ari Ne’eman – ABA and Behavior Suppression
UPDATE: This article is from 2014. It was circulating through my feeds and I didn’t notice the publication date. Still useful stuff from Ari. Happy Friday! The New York Times has a long feature on “the kids who beat autism.” It is the article you expect it to be. They do talk to Ari Ne’eman, though,…
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Internet of Restaurants in the New York Times: Rah Rah Data Mining
Last May I went to the annual National Restaurant Association meeting with Bruce Schneier, a well known technologist, and listened to Internet of Things pitches. Here’s what we found: Some of the sales pitches are compelling: Companies offer to harvest customer data so the restaurant can better track its clientele’s needs. They offer to manage…
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CRISPR and Down Syndrome
I wrote a piece for The Nation on the Age of CRISPR. I argue we’re going to need new approaches both to regulation and to our discourse around “normal” as we develop these new tools. I use the ongoing failures to change how we talk about Down syndrome as my example: A few weeks ago,…
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Portlight – Disaster Relief for People with Disabilities
Today at Pacific Standard, I have an interview with Paul Timmons, co-founder of Portlight Strategies. They provide inclusive disaster response to make sure that emergency responders respect the civil rights of disabled folks, they repatriate people with their mobility devices, and they coordinate relief. I’ve been watching on social media as Portlight has been helping…
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The Scarcity Model of Disability Services
In Florida, parents are forced to call their disabled children “limited” or they risk losing effective healthcare in order to fund GOP donors. It’s a nasty story, but it’s part of a big parent where parents, teachers, and therapists are forced to emphasize deficits in order to preserve access to needed supports. I wrote: I…
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AL School Official: Segregate Disabled Students to Help Test Scores
From Alabama: Is it against the law for us to establish perhaps an academy on special education or something on that order,” asked Bell, “so that our scores that already are not that good would not be further cut down by special-ed’s test scores involved?” When Bell’s colleagues mentioned LRE, she didn’t seem to understand….
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Savannah Leckie
Savannah Leckie, an autistic teenager, seems to have been murdered by her mother. The autistic community, led by ASAN, has long sought victim-centered narratives when such murders happen. This, from Ozark County Times, tells us about Savannah. Over the next few weeks, we will see increasing discussion of the killer’s mental health. We won’t see…
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What’s Going On At InBev?
Yesterday, Pacific Standard published a piece of mine on medieval brewing and lack of gender diversity at Google. I mostly talked about medieval history and the Bennett-thesis on patriarchal equilibrium. But as I reached the end of the draft, I started doing a little research into contemporary brewing, tipped off by a friend that there had…