My mum, Dr. Dinah Murray, spent the last three decades of her life largely focused on making the world better for autistic people, by promoting better understanding through her theory of autism, monotropism; and by working to support and promote autistic people and autistic communities in many other ways.

Full text here: https://oolong.medium.com/my-mum-and-monotropism-0a09a21545fb

Video is also available.

A keynote talk delivered by Fergus Murray at the Scottish Autism Research Group 2023 Meeting.

The full text is available here: https://monotropism.org/wellbeing/

The video is here: https://youtu.be/DLpLSPQXtV4?si=IOamEyh2NctzJLnK

In a world of 7.6 billion people, does it really matter what each of us does?

I argue that it does, and that it's very convenient for extremely powerful people when they're able to convince us otherwise.

Full text: https://oolong.medium.com/on-smallness-and-power-4005b6066862

Jeff Melton voices the quotes.

This recording features a short clip of Kimya Dawson's song I Like Giants, which you can hear and buy here: https://kimyadawson1.bandcamp.com/track/i-like-giants

There is also a snippet of 'Do It For Her', from S02E09 of Steven Universe - full video contains minor spoilers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yG8caPPY1Y

What the science of perception can tell us about the problems with categorising anything.

Text: https://oolong.medium.com/colour-categories-and-the-pursuit-of-objectivity-8fe7f5660808

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODDdn81NOXQ

In which I talk about my favourite organic acids and why I like them.

Text: https://everything2.com/user/Oolong/writeups/My+favourite+organic+acids

This is Sonny Hallett's talk at Autscape 2019.

Full text: https://medium.com/@sonyahallett/intense-connections-2e0ecd1bcbb8

Autscape programme from 2019: http://www.autscape.org/2019/programme/presentations#sonny

XIII: Death.

I wrote this thirteen years ago, but the XIII in the title refers to the Tarot card.

A lot of what I wrote is still true; some of it is not, and some of it is true again.

Here's what I said, then:

https://everything2.com/title/XIII%253A+Death

Image is from the Johann Georg Rauch deck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_(Tarot_card)#/media/File:Troccas-13-der-tod.jpg

The politics of autism is so entangled with the politics of everything else that addressing the problems flagged up by neurodiversity can’t help but mean trying to unpick broader problems in politics, economics and culture.

Full text: https://oolong.medium.com/autism-and-the-politics-of-everything-else-370d10a62a05

On weird pride: the value of embracing the things that make you, and others, weird.

Weird Pride Day is on the 4th of March.

The text is here:

https://medium.com/p/were-here-we-re-weird-get-used-to-it-26a5333fad30

Video of this reading: https://youtu.be/2JS2fdWjrCM

The idea of neurodiversity is that substantial variation in the way brains work is part of the diversity of humankind. The simple fact of the matter is that human brains vary a lot. The neurodiversity paradigm is a way of looking at this: the suggestion is that this variation is not necessarily a problem. No one kind of brain is the right kind; it’s natural and healthy that people think differently. People have different cognitive styles, which manifest in the things we label autism, ADHD, dyslexia and so on. This is not necessarily a bad thing, either for neurodivergent individuals or for society.

Full text: https://oolong.medium.com/what-neurodiversity-isnt-591b1bd18ae0

Video with largely irrelevant visuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCvjRfUe9I