alright y'all, i didn't wanna ask for more money on top of my rent and i hate paypal but i have a serious money emergency at the moment!  i'm late on paying my phone bill due to the fact that i'm in the midst of renewing my county benefits and simply trynna get a hold of anybody is an absolute mess. been on the phone off & on all week with them (mostly on hold, i spent seven hours on the phone on tuesday 🫩) and won't get things rectified till after the holiday weekend on monday!

i haven't received my general assistance check yet and won't till next month, so my phone bill hasn't been paid like i'm normally able to at the beginning of the month. i need my phone to stay on so i can keep in touch with all my social workers & my dad.

i'm only late on this bill and only need $88.59, which is due by today so the late balance won't roll into next month and get even higher. please help me out if you can—thanx for your help, as always! 

➡️ my paypal: https://www.paypal.me/magnoliaowls

This #DisabilityPrideMonth, I do my best to keep some perspective. In that spirit:

Some Ways I Am Disabled (CW: Medical Stuff)

Cognitive, sensory and movement issues due to Autism, ADHD, Bipolar RC, and PTSD.

Arthritis in most of my major joints, my hands and feet.

My bones break easily due to intraosseous lipomas, especially my feet and ribs.

HS, a disease that causes deep wounds in response to friction, sweat, etc. Infections are frequent and extremely painful.

(1/3)

🖤 In memory of the one and only Marianne Joan Elliott-Said aka Poly Styrene, frontwoman of the punk rock band X-Ray Spex, born on this day in 1957, Bromley, United Kingdom 🖤

Photo by Falcon Stuart

#punkrock #womenofpunk #polystyrene #xrayspex #punkrockhistory #otd

Fuck Microsoft. No wait, actually fuck all the execs at every big tech deciding to keep laying on the layoffs while taking larger and larger bonuses. Over 9000 people got layed off from their gaming division today, cancelling a number of projects. This also included the majority of people working on Forza, essentially putting the game on life support.

https://www.theverge.com/news/696676/microsoft-forza-motorsport-turn-10-studios-layoffs-xbox-cuts

I got a bit emotional because it really sucks seeing this happen over and over, and in the case of Forza it's a game that means a lot to me personally because it's the first, and basically only racing game that's playable by blind gamers. It's the game I've logged by far the most time in recently, because it's a genre I always wanted to play and I had an interest in... And honestly, if it ever gets shut down and no one else decides to follow in their footsteps there's really nowhere else to go for this genre at least. Which really sucks. Well, there is F1 25 from EA, but it doesn't have a menu screen reader and the racing assists are less precise and not as complete.

Something else this is making me realise is a lot of the gaming accessibility successes we enjoyed recently have all broadly been considered a disappointment or involved in some controversies with the mainstream. The Last of Us 2's ending had people up in arms, the game also launched in the middle of a pandemic which didn't help, though I think it might be enjoying a bit more favor now. Mortal Kombat 1 seems to have largely disappointed WB games with Sales, which considering the game was designed to be a live service much like Forza actually is not good. We know plans for a second content expansion were cancelled and the game has basically had no updates since April, and knowing WB's CEO especially after the split they just had I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to lay on some layoffs of his own. Blizzard also experienced a lot of layoffs which affected the team working on Hearthstone which already resulted in 1 mode being completely removed, another frozen and the game pivoting even harder into microtransactions recently enjoying some controversy of its own involving a cosmetic pet item that can potentially cost over $100. All of these games were celebrated by the disabled gamer community but disliked in some way by everyone else, and could potentially shut down any minute. On that note earlier today I signed the stop killing games petition which would make preserving games like this much easier in the future, and if you're either in the UK or EU you should seriously do so as well.

https://www.stopkillinggames.com

"A US and pan-African research group published the findings this week in The Lancet Global Health. The researchers had collected dosage information, sometimes covertly, from a dozen hospitals and 25 pharmacies across Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Cameroon.

They tested nearly 200 unique products across several brands. Around 17% — roughly one in six — were found to have incorrect active ingredient levels, including products used in major hospitals.”

https://www.dw.com/en/nearly-20-of-cancer-drugs-defective-in-4-african-nations/a-73062221

A MAN HAS FALLEN INTO THE RIVER

IN LEGO CITY