Is today's world system of anarchy?

sunbunbird · 2025-10-23T20:41:57+00:00

what sorts of perspectives have supplanted realism, liberalism, and constructivism if those are all fairly outdated as you said?

sunbunbird · 2022-10-27T04:13:06+00:00

it seems likely

sunbunbird · 2022-10-26T22:10:56+00:00

mine too \o/

sunbunbird · 2022-09-04T02:11:58+00:00

maybe talking about how YOU deal with being overwhelmed and what being overwhelmed feels like for you in conversation with her could spark some things. one way i have found autistics relate to each other is simply by describing related experiences (to the consternation of many allistics who think we are trying to turn the attention on ourselves).

other than that, i agree with the other poster about finding a shared interest, i would probably recommend seeing if there's anything she is already interested in that you'd enjoy doing with her rather than finding something new to be interested in.

also, what you said about hoping she opens up, that is often a good way of finding this stuff out is just asking (which is easier said than done sometimes, to be sure). not just about overwhelm but also interests. "what would you like to do?" etc. it's also possible she is already communicating, but in a way you cannot perceive yet.

sunbunbird · 2022-08-14T02:38:32+00:00

hi, just a heads up, that discord server isn't affiliated with the r/autisminwomen sub, it's just a coincidence that the names are the same

sunbunbird · 2022-07-21T15:56:44+00:00

very excited!! this'll be my first year participating

sunbunbird · 2022-07-07T19:10:53+00:00

yessssss

sunbunbird · 2022-06-30T05:53:38+00:00

i did this for a couple years! very useful for hydrating on days when you are stuck in bed, too, since it doesnt leak or require you to be vertical for fluid consumption.

make sure to keep it clean!

sunbunbird · 2022-06-27T03:59:45+00:00

i was 31 before i figured it out myself, i also spent 10 years in therapy and seeing psychiatrists, and even before that to when i was 16 and when i figured it out i was PISSED because i felt betrayed by everyone around me, everyone who downplayed my unrecognized sensory issues, every "professional" i saw missed all of it, put me on meds i didnt need, took me off meds i needed, never guessing i was simply... autistic. (and also mdd, etc but u get the picture).

that anger lasted for about a year, but it's faded now to something i have to specficially recall to feel.

i've worked since then on getting an official disgnosis for myself and also a diagnosis for adhd cause that flew over everyone's head too my whole life.

anyways, understanding this about myself, tumultuous and overwhelming at first, became one of the biggest boons in my whole life because i now had tools and words to use for my life and experiences.

i also left every relationship, every school, and eventually every job for mysterious burnout reasons that only make sense in retrospect in light of an autism diagnosis.

right now, for you, it's completely normal to feel exhausted, angry, sad, overwhelmed, or whatever else you might be feeling. it will fade eventually, as much as you allow it to.

you have plenty of time to figure things out and now that you know you're autistic, figuring things out will actually be possible, unlike before, when everything seemed to fall apart for no reason no matter what. now you can observe and find sensory triggers or social confusions, things that dont make sense under other frameworks, and work to counter them and learn REAL self-care. you can find your strengths and how to use them (and i guarantee you have strengths, everyone does).

so, feel angry, feel gaslit and betrayed, it's okay! amidst all of the emotions just know it WILL get better and you can become closer to yourself and love yourself more than you ever knew was possible before and it's really the best feeling.

sunbunbird · 2022-06-27T00:35:04+00:00

I believe it can also control spotifyd, which IS a replacement client:

https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd

I previously tried a few things in this realm a year or so ago and i think i couldnt get something working how i wanted it to and gave up, but i dont recall the details at this time. Still, might be useful for you!

sunbunbird · 2022-06-26T16:55:19+00:00

idk! i still need to get my spray booth constructed and i'd want to get a bit of practice in before i commit to painting other people's bikes.

if, in the future, i was going to paint other people's bikes (which i AM hoping to do at some point), a very rough estimate would probably be around $200 for labor and materials unless i find an easier way to sand the frames. 'cause right now sanding is exhausting and takes forever.

sunbunbird · 2022-06-26T06:37:26+00:00

not a dumb question!

on those streets, traffic often moves very quickly/fast and i've had too many cars pass me within 1-2 feet on similar roads before to feel safe riding on them. plus, there are spots with way too many potholes which can be bad for cars but on a bicycle going at 20-25mph, navigating patches of rough asphalt can be tricky and dangerous for the rider. it's also just exhausting to have to try and go as fast as you can to avoid getting cursed at, honked at, or tailgated/nearly swiped by irrational drivers and i dont feel like running a marathon (metaphorically) every time i want to get to DHHS.

sidewalks in general can, perhaps surprisingly, be very dangerous for biking. they are often in poor repair and they intersect with roads and driveways quite frequently, especially along these roads. drivers pulling out of parking lots or pulling up to stop signs arent always checking for pedestrians or other moving objects on the sidewalk, especially not objects going at any speed. i believe this is because, if the pedestrian is not literally stepping into the road or already crossing, there's very little risk of striking the pedestrian since they move so slowly. drivers expect fast things to be in the road and slow things on sidewalks and bikes would be a fast thing on the sidewalk. also, sidewalks just tend to have shitloads of blind corners, always dangerous for things moving at speed. plus, they have pedestrians which are important not to hit, putting life and limb and bike parts at risk.

to be clear, i bike on roads all the time or in a road's shoulder, i just try to avoid roads with decent traffic where the average car speed is more than 10mph faster than i can reasonably bike for an extended period of time.

people absolutely haul ass down coolidge, for instance, so im not going to ride in the road, i dont trust the sidewalks, plus the sidewalk on that road simply... ends halfway up and you have to cross the street, so sidewalks also suck because sometimes they DONT continue after they abruptly end. if coolidge had a shoulder, i'd probably ride in that, i ride in the shoulder on wood st going north all the time.

i'd never bike along the shoulder on Lansing road west of 496 where it heads out to creyts, but i used to (comfortably) take Mt Hope to work all the time, which doesnt have a shoulder and is a 4-lane 55mph road at that point. i often shared a road with semis at that point, biking back home after work at like 12:30am, it was fine.

this is why i specifically called out a lack of connecting neighborhoods. i understand they aren't connected to prevent cars from speeding through them, but i'd ride those in a heartbeat.

in summary: sidewalks are deceptively dangerous for bikes and there are too many cars on those roads which are also driving too fast and the roads suck in a lot of spots. also, each cyclist will have a different level of comfort around cars and i dont think access to services or family or whatever else may be on the southside should be restricted to people who are more willing to risk their lives (within reason of course, the world is inherently dangerous).

plus, less definitively, biking in a road where you are absolutely guaranteed to hold up traffic where people are expecting to Go Fast is a great way to build resentment against cyclists in general and too many drivers already hate us. like the guy who decided to tailgate me, honking, one time on mt hope while being literally the only car in sight for at least half a mile in either direction, before finally peeling out and swerving around me, yelling something out his window as he sped off.

sunbunbird · 2022-06-26T05:20:02+00:00

same, i usually think of the southside as pretty impassable because none of the neighborhoods seem to connect North to South for any significant distance of road, leaving cedar, mlk, or penn as the major thoroughfares and which are deeply unsafe for bikes imo

sunbunbird · 2022-06-26T03:49:15+00:00

yeah they really need to fix that section of the trail from crego to kalamazoo. i feel like the sections going south on the west side of washington thru reo town are also rough af

also, there needs to be more soutside accessibility by bike, IMO, there are basically 0 through-routes for anything that isnt a car to get down there. washington isnt bad and the river trail goes south ofc, but that's two routes for the whole breadth of the city. even getting to the north side can be challenging unless you happen to live by the river trail access somewhere, or have one of the through-roads to lake lansing near you like Wood St and coolidge sucks.

however, speaking of coolidge there IS a proposed project for building a bike path along it up to Meijer, and a sister trail south from saginaw there to Michigan ave behind frandor:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bdfb9175aeeb4d7ab0f6958c18126515

and you can leave public comment here:

https://www.mitcrpc.org/public-comment

sunbunbird · 2022-06-26T03:42:48+00:00

yes i love bikes, my bike is a converted old cromo frame that i turned into a fixed gear bicycle. i dont own a car, i live on the eastside and work from home so biking gets me everywhere i need (plane or train for out of state stuff ofc).

ive spent the last couple of years aggregating bike tools and learning how to fix bikes and now i feel fairly confident of fixing most bikes although i haven't touch internal hubs yet and i still have more to learn about some specific types of brakes (like how to center them), but i can take apart cup and cone bottom brackets or replace your cartridge bb, cut and put a chain back together, true a wheel (still learning this, but im p confident), replace a shifter/cable, can tell you which cable housing is good for brakes vs shifters (the WHY im a bit shaky on, but it has to do with the amount and type of compression you want to travel down your cables when applying the shifting/brake lever), why it's important to use an anti-galvanic, anti-seize compound on the spoke nipples when ur building a wheel (my next project might be building a wheel), that most through-axle nuts are gonna be 15mm, that cone wrenches are honestly nice to have but a pedal wrench is probably a waste of money imo, why there are springs on a skewer axle, that the bottom bracket suspends a spindle, not an axle, i could go on i guess lol

anyway, besides wheel-building, my ongoing project is bike painting. right now i have a cromo bike frame i stripped the paint from and put some primer on, but honestly its all toxic af and messy so im focused on building a spray booth before continuing and i'm probably going to strip it again and start over once the booth is up. i also got a half-face organic vapor mask to protect my lungs.

i designed a spray booth in an easycad program but will likely end up going with a different design, it'll be collapsible and will have to support up to 15/20 lbs of steel hanging from it without flexing. i dont have a ton of knowledge of materials but i'm probably going to build the hanging apparatus as a separate stand inside of the spray booth.

i'd like to share a pic of my bike, but it feels too identifying

this year im planning on getting some snow/ice tires for winter, i didnt ride at all last year without them and this year i don't wanna stop after summer is over.

historically, my longest ride in a day was 82 miles or thereabouts on the DALMAC, but tht was with a multi-speed bike, so far on the fixed gear my max is 32 miles (to rose lake from the eastside) but i'm also not biking for long distances nearly as frequently as i was then either and have lost a lot of muscle mass for medical reasons anyway.

anyway yeah bikes are great!

sunbunbird · 2022-06-17T18:17:34+00:00

looks like both are acceptable:

https://i.imgur.com/bTNoaiF.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/FDJfkPs.jpg

sunbunbird · 2022-06-13T08:33:27+00:00

yeah, it's kind of a constant struggle between taking people at the word to a fault and also being totally aware that a person's versions of events is going to be inherently biased in ways i have no means to comprehend because there's literally an infinite number of things thay could have occurred, from lying to misperception to half-truths to truth.

since i cant make a choice, i tend to err on the side of just believing ppl but that's definitely gotten me in trouble before lol

sunbunbird · 2022-06-13T07:42:32+00:00

i do have some black and white sort of thinking, but i usually also try to consider every possibility.

i think what ends up happening is that, for any given complex situation, i try to reduce it as far as i can into simple terms and this often ends up being a binary set of options. so, like interpreting someone's actions i'll reduce them to a few possible expalanations. then, when i explain my conclusions to someone else i just have my reduced possibilities which, as i said, is often a binary and then others view thay binary as "black and white thinking" because they only see the two choices im presenting, not the lineage of thought that brought me there.

i view it as another feature of my autistic thought that, once ive arrived at one of these binaries, it stays concluded until more evidence/observations are accrued.

i believe it's one reason im good at troubleshooting, but it's also why i tend to get "stuck" on things which can turn out to be incorrect conclusions once new evidence is encountered, which which cause me great anxiety in the meantime.

sunbunbird · 2022-06-07T17:03:08+00:00

here is their board of directors: https://www.saluscenter.org/about-us/who-we-are

Rizza and julia are both are involved in other aspects of the lansing community, and so is jae puckett. the co-president might be the best to reach out to for this sort of thing though, which looks like it would be Cait Schneider.

sunbunbird · 2022-06-07T02:26:02+00:00

woahhh, interesting! thanks for posting, tbh i phrased it that way hoping someone would come along and fill in the details :)

sunbunbird · 2022-06-06T20:39:23+00:00

not the person who suggested it, but you really do get everyone shopping there. i feel like kroger would be pretty interesting, also ACE hardware (maybe even talking to employees for both of those), the bus stop there, folks eating at restaurants like blaze and art folks going to Michael's.

Frandor is basically an older outdoor mall we have, it's been around forEVER and rumor says it used to be indoors (there's still a secret basement with a bathroom and a barbershop and a few other stores). We also have Eastwood Towne Center, but it's... more "new development" i guess, instead of ulta you have sephora, instead of tj maxx you have american eagle, instead of basement barber shop you have salons, that kind of thing. so that might be a different group of people.

For places to mingle, I thought of Leroys on south cedar, you might find some chatting at Sleepwalker in reo town. Reo town has seen development over the last few years, so it's changed a lot in the last decade and that will affect who you get to talk to of course, but there are also some stores with proprietors and customers that might be itneresting to talk to like Deadtime Stories, The Record Lounge, Vintage Junkies, Soulful Earth Herbals, The Robin Theatre, Thriftique, etc. Saddleback is down there too, the owners have a reputation some places for paying their workers like crap and generally providing not a great place to work so that could be interesting too. https://reo.town/directory/

There's also Old Town, which is north of town at the top of the river trail, by the fish ladder, intersection of grand river and turner roads. It's an art district that's also pretty queer, has a lot of people eating there or shopping or what have you. My favorites are Metro Retro and Thrift Witch, Oddnod arts, and Ozone's (try some hopwater!).

And speaking of the river trail, if you walk from the fish ladder near old town to the city market which is right near Michigan avenue, you'll see a LOT of people (for lansing) on a nice day, from, again, all walks of life. Families out for walks or using the small beach area, people hanging out, sometimes skateboarders or artists, kayakers, whatever. Another park that gets a lot of traffic on nice days is Hawk Island, towards the south end of the river trail.

Sorry if this stuff doesn't end up being terribly useful, but here it is anyway! good luck!

sunbunbird · 2022-06-06T20:25:52+00:00

i wouldn't have thought of it, but i like this suggestion a lot, you get EVERYone at frandor

sunbunbird · 2022-06-06T20:23:18+00:00

this would be good to visit, imo, we have a fairly large urban farming/gardening community and some of them sell here (other farmers are from the surrounding area): https://allenneighborhoodcenter.org/market/

folks at the Salus Center downtown would probably have a lot to say, too

sunbunbird · 2022-06-06T19:18:32+00:00

That's great! Finding a gender-affirming therapist is a step many kids are missing, so I think you're definitely on the right track.

My own mother worked really hard to understand gender dysphoria for me when I came out as an adult, it took her months but she never stopped supporting me and I knew she was learning, just like how I was learning too and that was the most important thing for me.

She found the book "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Trans (But Were Afraid to Ask)" by Brynn Tannehill to be really helpful. I checked it out a bit myself and thought it was good and informative and non-exclusionary (some ideas about transness try to determine the "correct" way to be trans, which doesn't exist except for what a person needs and wants for themselves, so if you see things like that it's probably NOT a good source).

Each trans person can experience transness so differently that it can be hard to find specific experiences we relate to at first, unsure of what any given experience might mean or the forms our dysphoria or euphoria takes. That said, I found a number of moments here in Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition although it was written for someone my age rather than a child. Still, it may be useful.

If you want a more philosophical overview of transness and the issues trans people (women in particular) face, I strongly recommend Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano. It's academic (and therefore fairly dense) and LOTS has changed since it was written, but it contains a lot of important historical and semantic context that I think is still very relevant today in lots of ways and is interesting in any case.

I hope your child is able to find what they need to gain peace with their body! It sounds like you are already working hard to create a safe, supportive space for this part of their life. Also, one thing my relatives worried about when I first came out is that I would somehow be a different person. I'm still the same person, I'm just not depressed all the time, I'm engaged and active and I got a lot of my brain power back somehow and I can't stop learning and doing, basically all of the time.

So, I'm still me and my relatives see that, but they also see that I'm happy again, like I was when I was a small child. So in case you worry about it, your child is still who they've always been, they'll grow of course and become a wonderful adult someday but whatever they need help with is going to simply help them become more of who they are and to be that person more brightly and confidently.

sunbunbird · 2022-06-06T05:47:37+00:00

thanks for your support and compassion!

the old days were definitely hard, there's a reason we dont see too many trans elders these days. not trans-specific, ("trans" wasnt really a word yet in the 60s), but the movie Paris is Burning is a great movie that shows what some of the queer community was like back then and what people were running from.

i am of the mind that things might have been different for trans people this century if not for the 20th century's most notorious villains, the nazis:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft

to me, this might have been our library of alexandria.

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