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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2025

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  • I am a case worker for people with disabilities, including several people on my caseload with autism. It does depend where you are and how autism presents, even within my small caseload there is a lot of variation. Even people with “heavy degree” autism can have lot of variation. In general, my agency and jurisdiction take the person centered planning and self determination pathways; the person if able, communicates to us what they do and not want in their plan, who they do and not want caring for them, and what they want us to request (funding from Medicaid. US). In many cases, they are in command of themselves enough to have that much control.

    I suppose the question you ask is; what happens to the people who are non verbal, perhaps even combative. The answer is a little sadder. The agency I work for specializes in IDD but also community mental health. Our system famously dismantled the asylums in the 90s under Reagan austerity (good) but I do think there is an infinitesimally small group of people for whom community mental health is not meeting their significant needs.

    In many cases, like you said family has high needs people in their homes, until parents die. Many times, siblings become their primary guardians. Many of them are living their own lives. There exist group homes, with round the clock care. Some of them will apply for co - guardianship (that is to say, the agency running the place). It is this threshold that my agency will hand them off to another more specialized one. Medicaid will pay for staffing but not rent, so this is what occurs for families without much money.

    If there is enough money, then the family might get the person their own space, so they can remain independent. In that case, my agency can petition funding for as much staffing as they need (although 24 hour staffing is pretty close to institutionalizing someone. There exist a lot of institutional barriers to funding 24 hour staffing.) Either of these combine with rights restrictions, which I have thankfully never had to institute. These are special provisions in their plans, which are reviewed by a jurisdictional authority board. Example, a lock on the knife drawer, or some kind of safety mechanism to prevent the stove from being turned on.

    If they are lucky, their family has some money, they can set them up with a place. Their siblings take over as guardian and they can continue with the same support apparatus that their parents set up, with the staff handling the day to day. If they do not come from some means, then they will likely end up in a group home. They might also end up in a group home if they are too combative to live on their own.






  • I work in social work; I would say about 60 percent of what I do is paperwork. My agency has told us not to use LLMs, as that would be a massive HIPPA nightmare. That being said, we use “secure” corporate emails. These use Microsoft 365 office suite, which are copilot enabled. These include TLDRs at the top, before you even look at the email, predictive texts… and not much else.

    Would I love a bot who could spit out a Plan based on my notes or specifications? absolutely. Do I trust them not to make shit up. Absolutely not.






  • If you want some of that DnDness, I really liked 13th age, and Fanatsycarft. They are on opposite sides of the complexity spectrum. I liked those more than either PF. Ryutama taught me a lot of things about RPGs but a half assed combat system means I can’t recommend it., especially for a longer campaign. However if you’re interested in something on the experimental side, then I think its perfectly lovely for a one shot.

    Daggerheart is new, and Im not particularly interested in CR, so I haven’t really checked out Daggerheart beyond a cursory scan of the PDF.

    I enjoyed the heck out of Icon. Exalted is also fun for your fantasy needs. Its a different flavor from dnd though, both mechanically and the kinds of stories they want you to tell. If you’re looking for more flexible, open ended stories, fantasy or otherwise, I really liked Fate Accelerated.

    Thats just if youre looking on the fantasy side of things. On the Sci fi side, Ive been playing Cyberpunk Red and really liking it (although fatigue has yet to set in.) I really liked Shadowrun 4e, and I recommend that to anyone who wants to dip into that (Karmagen optional rule and Chummer.exe are you best friends). Lancer is a heck of a thing.



  • My dad always leaned center-left, and he’s only gotten slightly lefter as I reach middle age and get very left. I’m very fortunate. My mom is long dead but I would like to think she would be on board too.

    The real bugbear is my extended family, typified by dad’s sister and her family. Always leaned into the Rush Limbaugh right, but really she isn’t so much visibly MAGA as she is aggressively Zionist. It happens with a lot of Jewish boomers; Does ‘Never again’ mean for everyone, or just for the Jews?

    Anyways, I was a protest at our local holocaust center in 2018, protesting the detention camps on the border. The proudboys and others were counter protesting. I told her about it, and she just said,

    “They cant use that word, thats our word!” “You know who would agree with you? The nazis?” “What do you mean?” “They were there! I have pictures!”

    Anyways, shes been surface level cordial ever since.






  • I’m aware of the term Christfag. I was there, Gandalf. 4chan also had an incredibly abrasive board culture as a means of social filtering, so {append}fag was their way of referring to someone who had identified as some way, or else for someone to refer to themselves as that thing, usually because they were trying to tell everyone they had unique perspective on what was being discussed. It got to the point where I saw a person open their post identifying as a “Gayfag.”

    I don’t like using the term for this because its punching down at an actually oppressed minority who would be caught in the crossfire.