David

@sparkydjm1.bsky.social

Historian, writer, Good Guy Gamer, PlayFriend, baby queer Working a Light Novel in the background. Pfp and banner by @hiperbolicart.bsky.social

One thing you will never think after reading a great book or listening to a great album or seeing a great piece of art is, “I’m really glad this person remained cautious while they were making this and guarded against being perceived as weird.”

Tada! A while back, I found @volodez_art's work on IG and have wanted to do some fanart ever since. Their OC, Chloe, is just so darn cool, and I can easily imagine the twins finding the now-iconic RV to get her insight into whatever is troubling Belle Harbor this time. #OCsky #webcomic #fanart

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Remember Streeting's review into whether young people are being overdiagnosed with ADHD, autism, and mental health issues? Well, the interim report is out, and there's a reason the media are silent on it (spoiler: it proves what a lot of us have been saying all along)

In others, notably ADHD and autism, rising diagnoses and referrals appear to exceed changes in underlying epidemiological prevalence and are likely to reflect a combination of:

improved recognition
changing help-seeking behaviour
institutional incentives
pressures within existing service pathways
Across both ADHD and autism, best currently available population-based estimates remain relatively stable, while administrative diagnoses, self-identification and recorded service demand have increased substantially. In autism, the evidence also points to particularly rapid growth in identified need within educational systems, including increasing identification among girls and among young people without learning disability.These patterns suggest that rising demand is not simply the result of increasing prevalence, but of several processes operating simultaneously, including:

real increases in distress in some groups
improved recognition of previously unmet need
changing expectations about support
systems that frequently rely on formal diagnosis as the primary route to assistance
Across the system, support is too often accessed through pathways that are slow, fragmented and heavily dependent on diagnostic categorisation. While diagnosis remains essential for some forms of clinical decision-making, the evidence suggests that current arrangements do not always provide the most effective or efficient way of identifying and responding to need. In particular, where access to support depends heavily on formal diagnosis, demand for diagnostic assessment can increase more rapidly than systems are able to respond, generating long waiting times, duplication of assessment and pressure on specialist services.

The next phase of the review will therefore focus on clarifying the relationship between distress, diagnosis and need, and on examining how systems might respond more effectively to these patterns. A central objective will be to identify opportunities for developing more coherent, evidence-informed care pathways that enable support to be provided earlier and more proportionately, while ensuring that specialist services are available in a timely and appropriate manner for those whose needs are most complex.

So not only is this a deeply cynical ploy to appeal to Americans and get lots of money broadcasting this worldwide, but it also breaks the only rules that FIFA will allow its members to use. Not that FIFA would know anything about sticking to the rules at this point...

The Times and Sunday Times@thetimes.com · 3w ago

The half-time break at the World Cup final is expected to be around 30 minutes long in order to accommodate Fifa’s star-studded show — breaching the maximum time of 15 minutes permitted under the Laws of the Game

Here is Graham gloating about "killing all the right people." Just in case you see anyone try to do the whole "we should have decency for the dead" nonsense.

If any of you happen to know someone who was either an Animator or a Programmer who implemented animation in an old-school MMORPG (Everquest, OG World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1, etc), I'd love to talk with them!

Ugh, comics can be so exhausting. The artist that was really keen on me writing a medieval heist book for them seems to be completely ghosting me, after having never read the (now 80% finished) script. Which leaves the question, what should I do with it?

I’ve been worried about her campaign since it started & I’ve not said much because her trauma must be truly horrific. But at this point she is basically lying about Brianna’s death. Matthew Shepard’s mother fought homophobia & pushed to create hate crime legislation. Esther is doing the opposite.

Mark Grimshaw@markgrimshawtism.bsky.social · 2mo ago

At this point, I genuinely believe the entire public is being actively gaslit by both the media, and Esther Ghey herself, into forgetting that Brianna Ghey was murdered, by people she knew from school, in real life, who were partly influenced by transphobia, fuelled by the media and politicians.

At this point, I genuinely believe the entire public is being actively gaslit by both the media, and Esther Ghey herself, into forgetting that Brianna Ghey was murdered, by people she knew from school, in real life, who were partly influenced by transphobia, fuelled by the media and politicians.