The Wordsmith's Forge

This is awesome.  Meanwhile, over in Terramagne, stuff like this is produced by Kraken.  Nerd science! 

 Meanwhile, at the Anything Goes Games ...

We watched Logorama over supper tonight.  It the most disturbing, hilariously apt depiction of America that I've seen in a long time. 

Here is a cartoon about different affect.

I am reminded of fairytales about the fey, who would cry at weddings and laugh at funerals -- and get hit for it, and go home to Underhill because the humans were so horrible. But there wasn't anything wrong  with the fey. They were just different.

So much of therapy is about forced affect. About training people to show what is expected, not who they really are. It doesn't help the way those therapists think it does.  Some people have the same feelings as everyone else, but not at the same times and they may not show it in the same way.  That's okay.  They have the same right to express themselves as everyone else does.

Sesame Street has introduced Julia, a Muppet with autism.  For a while now she has appeared in some of the background materials, but recently made her first appearance on the show proper.  Read about Julia and watch part of the first episode.

I think they did about as well as neurotypical people can do on a first attempt.  What I would really like to see is people sending in examples of what autism means for them, or how  they/their kids have interacted with autistic friends.  Using that to inspire Julia's character development and plot dynamics would help her authenticity.  But even in this first clip, I see a lot of things that I recognize.  :D 3q3q3q!!!

It's not shaped quite like anything from Earth, and it is crazy agile. Robot cheetah, bite my shiny metal ass!

Watch a robot solve a Rubik's cube.  I actually saw something similar not long after the cube first came out, but the robot was much clunkier.  This one is elegant, faster, and demonstrates a better grasp of physics.

What happens when a whale can levitate.  :D  This would so fit in Terramagne. 

This is an issue I came across earlier as part of recommendations on what to put in a homeless care package, but one of my readers found this terrific video summarizing it by itself.  I was intrigued to note that many of the methods homeless women use during their periods are the same as everyone used to employ before the invention of commercial products.

This makes me wonder whether it might be helpful to distribute reusable items, or in the case of cloth pads, patterns for making your own.  Menstrual cups have to fit closely, so they come in sizes, but cloth pads have a lot wider tolerance. Women who are crafty enough to make their own pads by ripping up old clothes for rags are probably capable of roughing out a slightly more detailed design that will work better -- and knowledge costs nothing.  

So now all we need is to know whether a reusable option would appeal to women who are homeless or have been homeless.  Since menstruation has been cited as one of the most miserable aspects of homelessness for women, and a reusable product would solve that problem about as well as it's possible to solve on the street, it seems like it could make a big improvement in people's lives.  Women differ, though, and not everyone likes reusables.  "Nothing about us without us" means consulting before deploying.

I was charmed by this tutorial on African dance.  It uses a clock metaphor to describe the moves.  They are simple, repetitive, and energetic.  That makes them easy to learn, good exercise, and fun to do.  You can see these in African documentaries. If a whole tribe is dancing together, they'll be very repetitive, using basic moves to synchronize lots of people for a long time. But if you're watching one or two dancers, it's like jazz, they'll improvise using the same moves.  Think of the steps like chords, once you know them, you can join a group or riff on your own.  You can also see these at a drum jam in a big city.  I've seen it at the Delmar Loop in St. Louis and Taste of Chicago.  (They were surprised that I joined in, because I do not look like the lady in the video.  :D )  Street music is awesome.

Over in Terramagne, this is the kind of stuff that appeared very early in Sankofa Clubs.  By now, lots and lots of people know at least a few basic African dance moves, which makes it fairly easy to get a group of people dancing.  Over time, they've thrown in samples from cultures around the world.  Usually they'll look for the simplest foundation steps.  Almost everybody has some folk dances, like circle or line dances, that are very easy to do.  Those transmit nicely.  So T-America has a lot more left of the social dance tradition compared to L-America.  \o/