If you want to stand up for transgender Canadians, then there's a petition to ask the federal government to repeal the acts signed into law that restrict transgender medical care for transgender youth:

You need only be a resident of Canada, not a citizen to sign. Please help us give transgender youth a fighting chance. Their medical care decisions should be between the handling physician and family only. This isn't a matter for politicians to decide.

hey, so I would he grateful if people living in Canada could sign this and if non-Canadians could signal boost, please.

The petition will be closed for signatures on February 16, 2026.

This needs to be boosted.

Okay so. So decomposing executive function problems, and the things people grapple with, is a thing that I've been chewing over lately. We talk a lot on Tumblr about executive dysfunction but that's a pretty broad category of brain no worky good, and I'm honestly really curious: for other folks who struggle with executive dysfunction, which specific function causes the most problems for you day to day?

If you have more than one thing you struggle with, pick the one that causes you the most problems day to day.

so here's the dirty little secret from when I put this poll out last year:

technically, motor initiation is not a form of executive dysfunction. this is because cognitive psychologists don't think about motor behavior as part of the same continuum as cognitive dysfunction, and the "executive" in "executive function" is all about performing cognitive tasks. Specifically, these are skills that are conceptualized as top-down "cognitive control" abilities that help us obtain our goals without letting those goals get eroded by pesky environmental or internal influences. Executive function is fuzzily defined in the academic literature at the best of times--much less the way we discuss it in popular media and social media!--but that much everyone seems to agree on.

And that means that motor initiation is.... not an executive dysfunction! Because motor initiation isn't cognitive.

For this reason, motor initiation is pretty much the exclusive domain of Parkison's researchers. which is fascinating to me, because a lot of aspects of decisionmaking happen in the striatum, and the striatum moves seamlessly from integrating information in the ventral striatum for decisionmaking right up into the dorsal striatum, which handles--you guessed it!--motor movements and initiations.

that said, there is pretty clearly something going on here for people with broader executive dysfunctions, particularly for people with ADHD and autistic people. the best research I am currently aware of on the topic comes from Amitta Shah's Catatonia, Shutdown and Breakdown in Autism (2019), but that work is relatively focused on people who are deep in the throes of breakdown and have more severe presentations than we usually see folks discussing on the socials.

(commented first, but also wanted to reblog)

i wonder if maybe the issue is badly named/categorized. like the issue of wanting to do something but not being able to start doing it doesn't seem like a MOTOR issue to me? it's not about whether i can physically do the motions of the thing it's about whether i can translate desire to do a thing into ...will to do the thing. does that make sense?

I mean, I am not gonna simp for executive function as currently categorized here; I agree that the way it's usually categorized by cognitive neuroscientists as a top-down process really doesn't do a good job of recapitulating the brain as it truly exists. I have been particularly enjoying the critiques levied by Koziol et al (2013) on the topic tonight as I round up definitions and discussions on what exactly executive function is for my evening's reading.

however, I am going to gently push back on the motor thing, because I think that there's something getting missed here: if there isn't a motor dimension, then deciding to do the thing should be immediately followed by physically moving in the direction of the task without requiring a buildup of willpower to move the body at all. I'm being really persnickety here about task initiation / motor initiation because the point of decision--the point at which you go, okay, here's what we're doing next--is the last strictly cognitive point on the continuum from "having a desire to do X" to "physically doing X with my body." Most people do not have to build up a critical mass of willpower to self-initiate movement and transition to a new task. You know who does, though?

Parkinson's patients. In their case this is usually considered as part of a motor pathology! And that's because they aren't able to as easily self-initiate movements upon deciding to perform them: they often have to struggle to build up momentum to perform actions (unless taking advantage of external stimulation to initiate movement). Since these are problems that people who work on dysfunctions of motor systems have identified and work on today, I think it's reasonable to frame them as motor problems even in populations that haven't traditionally been classified as dealing with the same kinds of motor issues. This is especially true because paradoxical kinesis--that is, when impairment in motor actions often goes away when an external stimulus provides an impetus to move--is also a feature of these dysfunctions, just as it often seems to be for folks with autism and/or ADHD.

THE WILL OF THE BALL!

(Refers to an anecdote about a patient with Parkinson's who couldn't move their hands no matter how hard they tried—but if you tossed a ball at them, they could catch it. Which did a lot to clue researchers in to the idea that we have more than one way to motivate behaviour. It got talked about a lot when the ADHD community was figuring out body doubling as a concept.)

I think splitting off motor initiation might be a deeply useful concept here. I personally have noticed that my own problems with motor initiation can't be solved with cognitive strategies.

Specifically, to get off my ass and moving, I need to stop thinking, especially about the task I'm planning. It takes a minute of very concentrated focus on my body, putting my feet on the ground and going to the place I need to work in.

I've often had the issue of wanting to solve all my issues cognitively, when the truth is that many times only behavioural techniques will work. It's much harder to think yourself out of loneliness than to go get a hug for it. So this seems like a promising approach.

Right, yes! This is why I've been doing all that work with my dog Matilda: essentially, I've been using her to toss balls at me every time I want to pick a ball up and can't. Obviously, that is not useful for everybody, but I do think there's a lot of scope to using pets (especially at home) in order to provide that external focus. When I find myself stuck these days, I can almost always ask Matilda to come and nudge me and then I can do whatever I need to--usually as soon as I get the pressure from Matilda's attention and expectation to move.

A while back I asked folks if just wiggling their hands or their toes helped when they were physically stuck, and it didn't seem to help everyone but it helped a lot of people. I think that's something that should be a more well-known trick: sometimes, just getting motion going can make it more helpful to get your body moving to do the thing you'd like it to. I promised to explain why I thought that was helpful at the time, but then the grant mechanism I was applying for got shitcanned under the new Trump administration and the depression got me.

Here's what I think is happening.

Okay so. So decomposing executive function problems, and the things people grapple with, is a thing that I've been chewing over lately. We talk a lot on Tumblr about executive dysfunction but that's a pretty broad category of brain no worky good, and I'm honestly really curious: for other folks who struggle with executive dysfunction, which specific function causes the most problems for you day to day?

If you have more than one thing you struggle with, pick the one that causes you the most problems day to day.

so here's the dirty little secret from when I put this poll out last year:

technically, motor initiation is not a form of executive dysfunction. this is because cognitive psychologists don't think about motor behavior as part of the same continuum as cognitive dysfunction, and the "executive" in "executive function" is all about performing cognitive tasks. Specifically, these are skills that are conceptualized as top-down "cognitive control" abilities that help us obtain our goals without letting those goals get eroded by pesky environmental or internal influences. Executive function is fuzzily defined in the academic literature at the best of times--much less the way we discuss it in popular media and social media!--but that much everyone seems to agree on.

And that means that motor initiation is.... not an executive dysfunction! Because motor initiation isn't cognitive.

For this reason, motor initiation is pretty much the exclusive domain of Parkison's researchers. which is fascinating to me, because a lot of aspects of decisionmaking happen in the striatum, and the striatum moves seamlessly from integrating information in the ventral striatum for decisionmaking right up into the dorsal striatum, which handles--you guessed it!--motor movements and initiations.

that said, there is pretty clearly something going on here for people with broader executive dysfunctions, particularly for people with ADHD and autistic people. the best research I am currently aware of on the topic comes from Amitta Shah's Catatonia, Shutdown and Breakdown in Autism (2019), but that work is relatively focused on people who are deep in the throes of breakdown and have more severe presentations than we usually see folks discussing on the socials.

(commented first, but also wanted to reblog)

i wonder if maybe the issue is badly named/categorized. like the issue of wanting to do something but not being able to start doing it doesn't seem like a MOTOR issue to me? it's not about whether i can physically do the motions of the thing it's about whether i can translate desire to do a thing into ...will to do the thing. does that make sense?

I mean, I am not gonna simp for executive function as currently categorized here; I agree that the way it's usually categorized by cognitive neuroscientists as a top-down process really doesn't do a good job of recapitulating the brain as it truly exists. I have been particularly enjoying the critiques levied by Koziol et al (2013) on the topic tonight as I round up definitions and discussions on what exactly executive function is for my evening's reading.

however, I am going to gently push back on the motor thing, because I think that there's something getting missed here: if there isn't a motor dimension, then deciding to do the thing should be immediately followed by physically moving in the direction of the task without requiring a buildup of willpower to move the body at all. I'm being really persnickety here about task initiation / motor initiation because the point of decision--the point at which you go, okay, here's what we're doing next--is the last strictly cognitive point on the continuum from "having a desire to do X" to "physically doing X with my body." Most people do not have to build up a critical mass of willpower to self-initiate movement and transition to a new task. You know who does, though?

Parkinson's patients. In their case this is usually considered as part of a motor pathology! And that's because they aren't able to as easily self-initiate movements upon deciding to perform them: they often have to struggle to build up momentum to perform actions (unless taking advantage of external stimulation to initiate movement). Since these are problems that people who work on dysfunctions of motor systems have identified and work on today, I think it's reasonable to frame them as motor problems even in populations that haven't traditionally been classified as dealing with the same kinds of motor issues. This is especially true because paradoxical kinesis--that is, when impairment in motor actions often goes away when an external stimulus provides an impetus to move--is also a feature of these dysfunctions, just as it often seems to be for folks with autism and/or ADHD.

THE WILL OF THE BALL!

(Refers to an anecdote about a patient with Parkinson's who couldn't move their hands no matter how hard they tried—but if you tossed a ball at them, they could catch it. Which did a lot to clue researchers in to the idea that we have more than one way to motivate behaviour. It got talked about a lot when the ADHD community was figuring out body doubling as a concept.)

I think splitting off motor initiation might be a deeply useful concept here. I personally have noticed that my own problems with motor initiation can't be solved with cognitive strategies.

Specifically, to get off my ass and moving, I need to stop thinking, especially about the task I'm planning. It takes a minute of very concentrated focus on my body, putting my feet on the ground and going to the place I need to work in.

I've often had the issue of wanting to solve all my issues cognitively, when the truth is that many times only behavioural techniques will work. It's much harder to think yourself out of loneliness than to go get a hug for it. So this seems like a promising approach.

Deep Blue is 30 years old and was capable of defeating chess grand champions. It could be housed in a single cabinet.

ChatGPT spans untold data centers devouring massive amounts of electricity and it got its ass whipped by an 8 bit gaming console from the 1970s.

...yeah? That's not what it's made for. If you take a hammer and a chainsaw and you compare which one is best for driving nails into a board, the chainsaw is gonna lose. Does this mean that the hammer is more technologically advanced? Or that the chainsaw has no use? No, of course not.

They were testing intelligence. When a company continuously markets its technology product as an intelligence supposedly capable of thought and reasoning, it makes sense to place it in a situation to see if it can follow a rule set and understand a game.

ChatGPT failed to recognize pieces it had been introduced to, failed to remember rules, repeated illegitimate moves, and demonstrated a general lack of ability to play chess on even a beginner level.

The AI showed a complete inability to understand a game.

The main takeaway from this test is that large statistical models lack any actual intelligence behind them contrary to the assertions made by companies developing them.

It has been stated before, but this simple test was just a way to illustrate it. As the Atari 2600 is noted to be quite weak in playing chess, generally only capable of think 1-2 moves ahead of its current turn. For a CGPT to be unable to meet even that level is notable.

#dipshits in the notes going

#WELL ACTUALLY chatgpt wasn't DESIGNED for that so--

#yeah chatgpt wasn't designed to DO much of anything we know it's a grifting machine that's what we're saying

#WELL CHAPTGPT ISN'T MEANT TO BE GOOD AT STRATEGIC PLANNING AND THINKING AHEAD

#yeah. see that is in fact the problem

#because they are marketing this shit as an 'assistant' in making BUSINESS DECISIONS AND MEDICAL TREAMENT PLANS

#the point of this and why it's important is that it's illustrating what we already know

#which is that these 'ai' nonsensebots are incapable of meaningfully processing information

#like this isn't 'hammer bad at turning screws news at 11'

#this is 'snake-oil mystery box advertised as universal multitool that will revolutionize construction and put carpenters out of business

#demonstrably incapable of performing the basic functions of a hammer or screwdriver'

#the dunking is extremely relevant to the advertising and culture surrounding LLMs

I really hate the moralistic myths surrounding the Prohibition and the motivations behind it. It is a precautionary tale on why letting Evangelical moral outrage win is bad for everyone.

“We need to ban alcohol because it makes people violent and causes crime.” [HIGHEST HOMICIDE RATE OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ENSUES, GOLDEN AGE OF ORGANIZED CRIME] “We need to ban alcohol because it is really, really, really bad for your health.” [GOVERNMENT POISONS ALCOHOL SUPPLIES, KNOWINGLY CAUSING THE DEATHS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE]

it is important to remember that many TERFs/“gender-critical” feminists do go around saying they believe in gender abolition. it’s just that what that looks like for them is the collapsing of the sexgender system into a solely sex-based system. in the TERF genderless utopia, everyone reifies their sex assignment. it’s important to recognise that this is separate from transfeminist gender abolition, where the sexgender system is abolished entirely. “the end of gender” is a goal for many distinct groups with different agendas, and you need to be able to recognise what different people mean when they say that

having the Aviation Accident Investigations Autism™️ has actually done wonders for the way I process and respond to my own fuck-ups

And I don't just mean "oh, my little work mistake is actually nothing compared to a fiery crash that kills people," either. The reason commercial flight is so many orders of magnitude safer than any other form of transportation is because after every accident and incident, an independent regulatory body investigated it with the express goal of figuring out exactly what happened, why, and how to prevent the same thing from ever happening again—not to root out which person deserved the blame or the liability.

It's a simple, shockingly effective idea. It's also worlds away from how most people approach their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.

Because it’s never just one person’s fault. And even when it is, it still isn’t. 

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

Everyone eventually has a bad day. Every component breaks down. Every computer gets a bad a Windows update and spirals into a reboot doom loop. If it’s possible for one person’s mistake to domino into a mushroom cloud of a fuckup, then that task is too critical to be one person's sole responsibility. The accident sequence starts with the design of the system—so how do you improve the system to keep it from happening again?

This

Love when Gringos, specially from north America approach the Bolsonaro trial with "I can't believe Brazil has more democracy than us" like we're a bunch of savages with no laws and it's somehow surprising to see Brazil jailing a man who attempted a coup.

It just shows you see Latinos like they're somehow less civilized than yourself, really and it's not the compliment you think it is

Did you know Brazil has set chairs for black people to study in college or get jobs in the public sphere? Did you know Brazil have the biggest universal healthcare system in the world? Did you know we have solid labor laws in place? Did you know gay marriage has been legalized since 2009, 5 years before it was legalized in USA? Did you know we have social name in place since 2016 so trans people can be called by their chosen names before they change it legally? Did you know we have free universities and colleges that are considered the best ones in the country? Of course not because all you guys think when you think about Brazil is gangs, drug smuggling and getting robbed because y'all think that all of Latino america is some kind of criminal paradise

Brazil went through a dictatorship backed by USA from 64 to 85. A lot of our problems nowadays happened because of that, and USAmericans have the gall to think were less civlized than then from a lack of our own instead of being systematically killed, oppressed and taken advantage of

Happy tag canonization to the Geese of Soulmate Enforcement!

Nothing slapped my shit back into place like someone pointing out that the "genius gifted child with so much potential who got burnout and mental illness" is just the nerd equivalent to the jock "could have been a pro at sportsball if it wasn't for the injury".

Yeah, and in both cases it’s generally caused by people who should know better pushing them past what their body/brain can safely do.

No, maybe you wouldn’t have been a genius, or a professional athlete or whatever, but the fact is, without that external pressure, you certainly wouldn’t be 30 and in chronic pain from a torn ligament that never-healed-right, either.

Utah Phillips to children at the Washington State Young Writers' Conference:

Great news! Belgium today becomes the first country in the world where sex workers can sign a legal employment contract and gain access to all employment-dependent social security (which includes saving for a pension, paid pregnancy leave, paid sick leave etc.). It gives sex workers more rights and makes them less dependent on the goodwill of their employer because they now have state protection through a legal contract.