Oh No. Guys. Don’t Do This. Don’t Be A Dick.

Content warning:

A potentially sensitive blog and I need to say it mentions abuse of autistic children.

The two critical factor about me which I suppose lead to this blog are two loves and a hatred:

I love the Murderbot Diaries and the character who I (don’t need to say this, but some people may have missed it) love the most (other than SecUnit, obviously) is Gurathin*.

I also love science, it’s my passion: especially the communication of science.

My hatred (and this will need clarifying, as I have limited reserves of hate and use it sparingly) is of the people who run, coordinate, organise and monetize the anti-vaccination movement. I don’t hate someone caught up in their often seemingly plausible and oh so seductive lies, I hate the Wakefields and the Kennedys and the Bigtrees.

And one reason I hate them is for the way they portray autism: they claim autistic children are “vaccine damaged” and they promote dangerous “cures” (horrific things like MMS, aka bleach).

As if autism were a thing to be feared, that autistic children are somehow broken.

I HATE THIS

This idea that you can cure autism, that autism could or should be defeated, that it’s a form of damage.

Hopefully that indicates where I’m coming from…

The Corporation Rim in The Murderbot Diaries is a capitalist hellscape.

In this horrific future world where we have the literal, explicit, slavery of constructs and the enslavement of bond workers I can imagine that those in power might encourage (even force) parents of autistic children to “treat them”, make them “normal”.

Hopefully you can see this would be very much NOT what I’d see as a good thing, but an extension of the terrible things we already see being done today.

And what if one “treatment” was a form of augmentation: something that is in the autistic person's brain “correcting” their behaviour to “act normal”, a device which might be said to “govern” their behaviour. Like ABA, but a device in your brain.

In the Murderbot Diaries we have Gurathin, an augmented individual who has made his way to Preservation. The nature of his augments are never made explicit (though he does apparently have a better connection with the feed, and visual augments- though we don’t know if the two are related). I think Gurathin is great, and the Murderbot Gurathin canon relationship is brilliant and extremely funny, Exit Strategy:

(“I don’t want to be a pet robot.”

“I don’t think anyone wants that.”

That was Gurathin. I don’t like him. “I don’t like you.”

“I know.”

He sounded like he thought it was funny. “That is not funny.”

“I’m going to mark your cognition level at fifty-five percent.”

“Fuck you.”

“Let’s make that sixty percent.”)

There is friction, a lot of it, in their relationship. An obvious root cause of this is their similarity**, as Murderbot says in Fugitive Telemetry to take just one little example:

“Gurathin seems to hate talking to strange humans almost as much as I do. ”

Perhaps his augments are why? Perhaps Gurathin’s augments’ purpose (or one purpose) was to moderate his behaviour, like the awful treatments promoted for autistic children in our world, the augments’ intent was to make him act like “normal”, or allistic people. Perhaps this is why he (remarkably) notices that their SecUnit is acting unusually, or not like a normal SecUnit? Perhaps Gurathin knows what it is to have something in your head controlling you, like SecUnit’s governor module.

Gurathin asks:

“You don’t blame humans for…what happened to you?”

I wonder what happened to Gurathin?

I’m so glad the both of them found Preservation.

So- it’s just a thought!

*I adore ART

** there is the ‘revealing that it’s rogue, calls itself Murderbot and the whole ‘killing 57 clients’ thing’ too, but they seem to have gotten past that!

For some reason the versions of this where he gives two salutes is being deleted and replaced with a version with a quick cut to a cheering crowd so I’ll just share it here 🙃

If you like lawyer jokes, here are some of the best recorded interactions that have happened in actual courts or trials

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?

WITNESS: He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?’

ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?

WITNESS: My name is Susan!

________

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?

WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

________

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?

WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

________

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?

WITNESS: July 18th.

ATTORNEY: What year?

WITNESS: Every year.

________

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?

WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.

ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?

WITNESS: Forty-five years.

________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

WITNESS: I forget..

ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?

WITNESS: He’s 20, much like your IQ.

________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?

WITNESS: Getting laid

________

ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: How many were boys?

WITNESS: None.

ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?

WITNESS: By death..

ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

WITNESS: Take a guess.

________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?

WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard

ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.

________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

________

ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?

WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?

WITNESS: Oral…

________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?

WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No..

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

________

ATTORNEY: How far can you see at night?

WITNESS: I can see the moon, how far is that?

Still in progress. ADHD mom of neurodivergent kids here. My executive function is nonexistent.

I have disappointed more loved ones in the past ten years than all my other years put together.

Honestly, good on you! High five, fellow academically-challenged academic!

a decade ago i was 15 and a jock and on the swim team and was a closet nerd obsessed with pjo and made a secret tumblr to reblog fanart of leo valdez

OP: noahwaybabe

Springtime Hilda! Floral Hilda! Hilda of bright and colorful Nature!

(Part 1 of 3 because Tumblr only allows 10 pics per post - the rest will be in reblogs so stay tuned!)

the concept and idea of “you can always start trying to be a better person” is extremely important to me both in media and irl and i continue to be deeply deeply disturbed by the trend on this site pushing that these ideas in media are bad writing or even morally reprehensible

because theyd rather someone stay terrible or just straight up die than become a better person 

from a compassionate point of view it’s deeply distressing and from a pragmatic point of view it’s outright frustrating

it’s fucked up. 

I made a comic of one of my favorite Network Effect scenes!

This was so fun!! I love Murderbot!