Cooking centres me and I’ve been in a bad place for weeks. So today, bake!

Ended up with a carton of egg nog I don’t like because waaaay too much sugar so I’ve decided to experiment and make a rice pudding with it 🤭

The egg nog has 3x the sugar of normal rice pudding recipe 😱

Bay leaves; old fashioned British style 😋

I toasted the rice - it’s why it’s brown 🥳 Using premium medium grain Japanese rice - the closest to sticky short grain I have on hand. Won’t stick as well, might be tad soupy!

[vid: slowly pouring evaporated milk over toasted rice]

It’s going to be SWEET! Don’t have any citrus to offset so I added lots of cardamom which has citrusy notes. I cannot believe how much sugar is in this carton of egg nog!! 120g of added sugar by my calculation

This rice pudding recipe usually has 50g

[vid: pouring egg nog in]

Wholesome Saturday, let’s go!

I was just idly thinking while watching Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun that it’s like a 2020 version of old 90s late night British sketch shows like the Adam & Joe show...

Found this lovely video 🥺

Friends Like These

All these old shows coming to Netflix and I have zero interest in watching anything from the 90s or early 2000s again... except I would 1000% watch the Adam and Joe show.

I know this is how I’m nearing 40 because I’m nostalgic for late night stoner sessions of my teens 🤣

Also watch Aunty Donna on Netflix. It’s the wholesome medicine we need for late 2020 💙

I’m just gonna point out something I haven’t seen anyone else say -

In the trailer for Music, Maddie Ziegler is actually mimicking movements, facial expressions, and sounds that are closer to non-verbal cerebral palsy than nv autism.

It’s a really typical mistake people make.

Everything else has been said 1000 times today, but this is one thing that really illustrates WHY non-disabled people can’t play disabled characters authentically, why it hurts us ALL, and why us disabled folk see through it.

They can’t see the difference between us!! For REAL.

Even with apparent research we’re all the same to them! If we’re non-verbal = “spastic” but that is actually a very specific medical term turned slur/insult relating to very particular disabilities/diagnoses.

It’s been misused to portray everything from Autism to Down Syndrome.

Winter! Not my first rodeo with a face mask all winter. I’ve spoken about how much I’ve had to use them pre-pandemic. Only diff is now it’s 100% of the time on the odd occasion I leave my house. No cold face 😎

Lockdown never ended for me, so the surge is just more of the same.

I’m v privileged I CAN lockdown, but because I have the luxury I also don’t really have a choice.

I mean, technically I could choose to take the risks others have, but they’re actually different risks for people like me

+ I HAVE been close to death & prolonged, severe illness.

I know it too well. It’s not about fear, it’s about having seen it, experienced it, lived it, and come out the other side. Many of the times my disabilities and chronic illnesses progressed it was related to infection (bacterial often), or worsened by viral infections.

One of the hard things for me when I advocate about my literal job, is not trying to reach the toxic ass who’s already made up their mind and are here in bad faith.

It’s trying to grow understanding within the community, encouraging people to speak with nuance instead of flames

I struggle with being able to see patterns and systems - I can see when we stray and are beginning to end up in the woods. I can see when we’re making mistakes, and so many times I feel like I’ve tried to sound the warning and so few hear me we end up there any way.

It’s hard to undo mistakes & backtrack. It’s hard to beat back the woods and things get muddied.

So many different brambles too - the wrong lens, biases, a lack of understanding of design or conversely experiences, miscommunications, misinterpretations, assumptions - it goes on

Accessibility in games. is. a. MINDSET; a lens

It’s widening of game design - accounting for *unintentional barriers* in player experience.

It’s not a defined set of options, solutions, or even features (except in specifics like communication). Definitely not “difficulty modes”

Yes, options, specific features, difficulty modes, are sometimes *A* solution employed to address a particular barrier, but no, they’re not always the BEST solution. Can we always DO the best? Sadly, no.

Sometimes it’s a journey. Steps. Sometimes we have constraints in game dev.

Accessibility is about understanding, perspective, knowing player experiences for the whole spectrum of humanity. As our understanding and knowledge changes, so do our design approaches.

Design. Iterate. Implement. Test: like all game design.

It affects every feature and facet.

Shoutout to everyone who lives with chronic pain. It’s so limiting & exhausting in a way that is truly impossible to describe

It’s also not just ‘pain’ but the compounding impacts on mental or physical health & stress responses

I think that’s the thing that‘s hard to get across

I’m going to ramble a bit because I think

1. It’ll help me feel less utterly depressed about once again being trapped by pain

2. I think it’ll help others, even if the pain you live with isn’t as profound, all of this applies no matter what your personal pain scale looks like

I know I only tweet about this when I’m in the middle of a particularly severe flare because that’s the only time it’s possible to even begin to convey. In between those really bad times I cope so I forget.

I regularly work well day to day even when my pain is 4-6/10

I was reading this article and the whole time I knew, I KNEW that what she was describing was dysautonomia (autonomic nervous system dysfunction) and a lot of the associated symptoms, and I was RIGHT. It's PoTS which is one of the most common forms.

>>

https://twitter.com/theheatherhogan/status/1291028415072567297

You know the most utterly absurd thing? How are Drs STILL so uneducated about autonomic dysfunction? Even in a pandemic they don't twig on the constellation of symptoms

Here's the thing - it most commonly occurs with ME/CFS which is thought to be caused by... VIRAL INFECTION >>

I'm so mad reading this article. This isn't even about the pandemic it's going to be swathes of non-disabled people finally facing the tyranny of the medical system that so many of us have been dealing with for eons.

This story was super common even before COVID.
>>

OK, story time because it's one of those days and giving a talk is kind of an emotional floodgate opening

I get a lot of praise for my speaking/presentations. There's a few people responsible for me even being a speaker or believing/understanding it's something I could do

>>

I assumed, being autistic and having memory deficits along with speech impediments/disabilities I would never be able to be a public speaker. It was just not really on my radar.

I did it a bit in my previous job, on panels at comic conventions but it wasn't the same as now

>>

Since joining the games industry in earnest in 2013 as a v vocal advocate, unafraid to take to the internet & speak up (on issues that were so stigmatised they would immediately insight harassment*), I've changed a lot

*not to mention 2014+ which we all know was a time

>>