Check Out How Minutely Detailed The Alt Text Is. That's More Admirable Than Any Epic-scaled Artwork On

The EAW Poll Results and Analysis Site

Thank you very kamsa for the extraordinary reactions to this aspirationally extraordinary poll of an extraordinary series! The warm response from flippered and non-flippered friends to the poll has been very touching. While there are pages of reasons why the reported sentiments will not necessarily reflect real-life inclinations, may these results bring hope and comfort where they exceed expectations. The point of the segmented analysis is not to demonize anyone, but to get a better look at fault lines so that we can mend them and become one. Note also that selection of "None of the above" for the above question does not always reflect stubborn discrimination. The question is after all whether the series has expanded your possibly already wide-ranging knowledge of the subject matter or made you feel more for autistic persons than you already felt.

Readers can examine the differences between allistic and autistic responses themselves using this painstakingly designed tool. Should there be sufficient time in the future, a tool facilitating broader DIY analysis will be provided as well. In the meantime, the following are a snapshot of the present tool and more infographics from the poll. By and by, though, we should popularize a more sensitive acronym that reflects the strengths of the autistic community. Anyone else also voting for an ocean symbol? Until next time, take good care of yourselves and your loved ones.

A love letter to dramas and other art forms.

The curation process was long and arduous but also a source of precious delight and balm. Another callout to y'all pollophiles: How about casting a vote for your favorite setting, among a whooping 18 settings, in the casual poll right at the end of the article? You can see the results right after you submit your choice(s). The link has also been reproduced slightly further ahead in this post.

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Many-Worlds Liminal Yoga

Physical Experience Bubble: A breathtaking network of yoga complexes and outdoor yoga locations in which thematically attired participants p

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Many-Worlds Liminal Yoga

Which settings would you sign up for if such a network existed?

Would You Want a Narwhal Boss?

Narwhals have never been seen hurting each other with their tusks. Yet those tusks may still be intimidating enough to deter marine life lovers from studying them up-close.

📷: © Aimee Ray, shared under the permission of CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Hello all. How's the insurgency against the crowned microbe going? How has life been for the carpenter, you ask? Let's just say that, going by common experience, some things will only come to a fiery end. You can only slap on cooling balm here and there, now and then. Right now, the autistic lawyering series Extraordinary Attorney Woo (native title: Eccentric Attorney Woo Young Woo), currently ranked third place worldwide across all English and non-English language Netflix TV titles, is that balm for many subjects to that crown, with the soothing metaphors, dreamy people and atmosphere, and of course brilliantly rendered whales. But will this series remain just balm, while neurodivergent people continue to face the horrific violence detailed in studies, reports and real-life Asian(-American) autistic attorney Lydia X. Z. Brown's accounts? Do we believe the show, regardless of questions about the autistic acting? Can we afford to? Are we willing to give real-life Woos a chance at an upwardly mobile, complete life in this hectic and anxiety-ridden age? No amount of debate can settle these questions better than a democratic poll.

Everyone is warmly welcome to take part in this very short one-month survey which commenced yesterday. So far, thanks to some very kind friends, six people have submitted their answers, taking only an average of 1.5 minutes each. If you are unfamiliar with the show, you can still check it out before the deadline. Results will be published on this site only if there are at least 50 sets of answers. Spread the news around to see how many people share your sentiments!

Good luck to you and the Woos in your own lives! Let's all not forget what's it's like to be truly human.

Nuclear Wasteland

The nuclear war had been over for two years, but the world was still a very different place. The few remaining cities were overcrowded and chaotic, and resources were scarce. Soot from all the firestorms still blocked out sunlight, while enemies might strike again at any time.

In one of these cities, a man named Adam was trying to board a lorry to get necessities for his parents and children, all of them on the autism spectrum like himself. He had been finding transportation for hours, and he was starting to get frustrated.

"I'm an autistic caregiver," he said to the soldiers guarding the lorry. "I need to get on board to get food and medicine for my parents and children, who are autistic too."

The soldiers looked bored. "We have many families with autistic children in this city," one of them replied.

"Please, I mean I am also an autistic person myself. My sensory issues mean I need to stay warm more than others as I fetch necessities for my family. I cannot be trekking in this frozen wasteland for too long."

"Ah, I hear you correctly now. But what's a person with special needs doing out in the open right now? Hunker down in your bunker and tell your family to run their own errands."

"No, no, you heard me correctly. They are also autistic."

"So your kids are the ones who're autistic?"

"I am, too."

The soldiers still didn't understand. "How can an autistic person be a caregiver?"

"It is difficult but necessary," Adam said. "Autism often runs in the family."

"Poor thing. The mother didn't survive the bombings? Get the kids' grandparents to help out."

"Like I've said before, they're autistic themselves. Their symptoms have been worsening with age. They're practically deaf to vehicle horns, and their bodies feel like rumpled bags of broken bones."

The soldiers shook their heads. "Come up with a more believable multigenerational sad-sack story, dude. I don't even know autistic people have girlfriends in peacetime, let alone in war and breeding till now. At most, you're either just autistic or just a caregiver and neither would make you so special," one of them said.

"Get your facts right before you cosplay autism. Autistic guys live in their own heads. They don't run all over the place for parents or kids," another chimed in.

"You can't get on board. Period."

Adam was starting to lose his temper. "I need to get on board!" he shouted. "My family is depending on me!"

The soldiers raised their guns. "Back off!" they ordered.

Soldiers further away, who were not even paying attention to them or Adam before, turned their heads and threw accusatory glances at him.

Adam knew that he couldn't argue with them. He turned and walked away.

Later that night, he was so worn out and frostbitten he huddled among trash bags in an alley behind a dilapidated power station, his chest heaving against the supplies. A string of fairy lights peeked out from one of the bags, its extinguished bulbs emptied of dreams.

Adam started to imagine the fairy lights powered on, glowing underwater and on the tiers of a musical fountain buttressed by statues of mythical guardians, but quickly punched himself in the head, the way his class monitor, flanked by bootlicking underlings, repeatedly did to him all those years ago. Why couldn't his identity be neat and simple? Be either the stereotypical autistic tech genius or a typical family man. Have either so-called autistic interests in some scientific or mathematical field or the skill to deceive himself and abandon his passion for interior design from the beginning. What sort of rational person would care about art and decoration when radiation was in your only meal of the day while tank guns pointed everywhere?

If he could just switch his interests and match them with economic logic as readily as nerds in old clips solved Rubik's Cube in a split second, he would be the one launching the stealth planes that must be gliding overhead right now, not a pathetic hitchhiker of a military lorry. His family would be cloistered away in one of those underground enclaves for the super wealthy, with all the aides and sitters they needed.

The red hazard sign on the drab wall opposite seemed to be glaring at Adam: We told you so. No, rewind that a second. How marvelous his aesthetic mind still had the luxury to judge the appeal of the power station, as if a red sign on some royal blue background could order food to automatically march into stomachs.

Adam's train of thoughts came to a halt. He had a brainwave.

Years later, a group of journalists felt like they were stepping into a dream as they navigated an office space filled with art and soothing music. There were little bulbs in shades of purple everywhere, glowing in the low-light conditions its creative employees preferred to work in. In the depths of the office were laboratories and showrooms with magenta lights in various stylistic arrangements. Below the lights were lettuces, cabbages, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and many other crops, some of which looked healthier than those grown under the sunlight of the pre-apocalypse years. The chlorophyll hungrily absorbed the different combinations of red and blue light tailored for the plants. The greatest value a design firm could bring to indoor agriculture, though, was optimization of lighting and area usage under the varying and challenging space conditions of post-apocalypse dwellings. Adam was feeding stomachs one fairy light at a time.

The old question popped up. "What's the secret to your success?"

"I don't have a convenient, pared-down identity," Adam replied simply.

Credits

Story concept: Human

Story setting: FierceOcean @ Character.ai

Text: Mostly Human + some AI input

Images: Mostly Character.ai + some Human input

References

Liang, Y., Kang, C., Kaiser, E. et al. Red/blue light ratios induce morphology and physiology alterations differently in cucumber and tomato. Sci. Hortic. 281, 109995 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2021.109995

Sabzalian, M.R., Heydarizadeh, P., Zahedi, M. et al. High performance of vegetables, flowers, and medicinal plants in a red-blue LED incubator for indoor plant production. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 34, 879–886 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-014-0209-6

Winstead, D.J., Jacobson, M.G. Food resilience in a dark catastrophe: A new way of looking at tropical wild edible plants. Ambio 51, 1949–1962 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01715-1

Xia, L., Robock, A., Scherrer, K. et al. Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection. Nat Food 3, 586–596 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00573-0

Ghibli Geometry Homework

Merch Bubble: A petition for Studio Ghibli to best OpenAI by channeling the 2025 trend of cheery citrus-juiced images into an endeavor with more lasting impact — revamping the image of math and captivating young learners through geometry problem sets jazzed up with visuals and story contexts from its films.

Picture the following in their relevant aesthetic backdrops:

Estimate the height Spirited Away's Chihiro successfully descends despite her fear as she speeds down a rickety stairway section with 20 horizontal steps. Each gap between the steps is 5 units in slope and 4 units in width.

Spirited Away's No-Face tries out a circular mask 3 units in radius. Its holes for his eyes are 0.3 units in radius. How many times larger in area is his fake face compared to his fake eyes?

He next tries out a fancy circular mask which outline circumscribes tightly-packed, non-overlapping circles each 0.3 units in radius. The circles are made up of k rings of six circles surrounding one circle. Two of those hexagonally packed circles form holes for his eyes. How many times larger in area is his fake face compared to his fake eyes?

Witch Kiki in Kiki's Delivery Service is on a 10-unit long broomstick tilted at 45 degrees as she takes freshly baked cinnamon rolls to a customer. As she passes by a tall structure, she notices its tip is labeled 10, 000 units. The rolls are in a 2-unit long satchel hanging halfway on the broom. Since the temperature of the air affects how fast pastries go stale, she wonders: How far are the rolls from the ground?

A bunch of kids are squeezing onto the ginormous, fluffy tummy of the furry creature Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro. Predict how many kids can stay on the tummy given the relevant simplifications, assumptions and information. (You already got the drift.)

Make no mistake. There's much virtue in the uncluttered designs of typical math worksheets: faster concept rendering, faster information perception, lower workloads, lower technical requirements and lower production costs. One might sum them up as higher time, resource and cost efficiencies. Add to those pros a potential cultivation of academic asceticism on the learners' part. That would be efficiency as well, in the sense that we meet two student developmental goals (math and discipline) in one shot.

In eyeing these efficiencies, however, teachers and allied industry players may be neglecting their numerator terms, most of which concern learner progress. That is ironically where pure quantitative logic breaks down. We are all emotional creatures. That is all the more so, all things equal, in young people whose brains are still underdeveloped. Looking around, we can see many school leavers who have not matured in time to take full advantage of educational resources temporally and financially accessible only in early life stages. Nor have they met adult figures sufficiently skilled in the elusive art of mathematical motivation. By the time such school leavers gain an appetite for delayed gratification, austere thinking as well as for the inherent beauty in quantitative subjects, adulthood commitments and sociocultural barriers like ageist biases often deter or delay their reentry into the educational system, threatening their scholastic journey and any STEM career trajectory. There is therefore a case to be made for deep yet down-to-earth arts-based engagement of apathetic young learners, many of whom struggle to perceive the relevance of abstract fields like geometry and find math problems in general mundane, through instructor-independent means. The emotional resonance and relatability of Studio Ghibli's works — evinced through their box office successes and the controversial generative art trend applying a warm, effusive and rustic Ghibli style to personal images — would make them powerful helpmates in battles against math hate viruses, which feel as far-reaching as influenza bugs.

Even engagement of kids who will become non-STEM high-fliers can make a huge difference. Ever heard of the phrase "The medium is the message"? Our communication approaches communicate values and signals beyond what our content says. In denying all exuberant expressions of emotion and wonder a place in mathematical materials, even in the face of learners impaired by hopelessness despite their best efforts, adults are reinforcing perceptions of mathematics experts as inflexible, unfeeling and boring nerds. The persistence of those stereotypes in spite of genial, approachable educators painstakingly passing down the magical field's legacy of ingenious problem-solving tactics to students is unfair. And the few pops of color in worksheets that do try to inject fun are not enough to make a strong counter-statement. In the end, non-STEM high-fliers inherit the math as well as the stereotypes, perpetuating the latter in everyday life interactions and media portrayals. Reversal of such perpetuated negativity may spur more kids, especially counterparts who struggle in non-STEM careers and could have flourished in STEM careers, to persevere in the subject and widen their career options.

Ghibli geometry should not distract attention from school-based or educational ecosystem solutions like sharing of best pedagogical practices since they involve different chief solution architects. Content drafting may be accomplished by Studio Ghibli through the blending of its imagery and story contexts with licensed, existing geometry problem sets, leaving only an ideally quick task of expert review to math educators. Moreover, pedagogy discussions and Ghibli-related visuals occupy different influential niches. One speaks to educators, from whom successful translation of advice into action is not guaranteed. The other speaks directly to students.

The existence of entertaining math video clips and games does not obliterate the potential value of Studio Ghibli's math creations either. Unlike graphics that can be transferred onto printouts, video engagement prolongs device usage, already a hot issue of concern in today's youth climate. Moreover, no math clip or game to date has matched the cultural reach and memeability of Ghibli works. The maker of a long string of fantasy films has big shoes no mortal teacher, Tiktoker, YouTuber or software developer can readily fill.

A formidable rival to pop culture, on the other hand, is pop culture itself. This proposal can be generalized to cover a wide array of quantitative subjects and popular screen brands, except that it can be problematic to bring investigations of real-world physics into universes governed by supernatural forces.

By and by, we may even wean captivated students off fancy elements after the relevant aesthetics and narrative structures coax them to develop a fondness for the subjects' intermingling of order and surprises. The capacity for such standalone devotion can stand them in good stead in professional lives dotted all over with mundane but vital to-dos. But first, we need that captivation.

Seasonal bows 🌸🌿🍂❄️

A Geopolitical Reading of Knulp

A Geopolitical Reading of Knulp

Identity has a peculiar relationship with itself. According to art and literary theorists, the act of naming or otherwise describing something replaces the true nature of the object with a representation which accuracy and comprehensiveness are constrained by human limits. Yet in public consciousness, one may contend, this caricature tends to be mistaken for the real thing in the long run. Thus,…

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