iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

To Kathleen Stock: Just for you, tonight I’m going to do my testosterone HRT while sitting in my wheelchair 😘

Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I’m looking to finalize and post some personal essay drafts I’ve been working on for a while now that I finally got a new computer. What do people want to see?

A) My History BA capstone research about the roots of modern Wellness Culture in 1970s magazines

B) A concept map I made for that same capstone exploring connections between Spiritualism, Nazis (please don’t censor me, the project is very anti-Nazi, I’m just explaining their role in history), woo-woo New Age stuff, Organic Farming, and more

C) What the treatment of cane versus wheelchair users says about ableism more broadly, and how we, as people with a wide range of different disabilities, need to come together as a community

D) My soccer team metaphor for gender identity — Defining gender in a way that is both trans-inclusive and also not just the vague, circular logic of “a woman is anyone who calls themself a woman”

E) Medicine cannot be anti-ableist until medical education is accessible and welcoming to disabled people so that we can become physicians; towards a mutual-aid-inspired model of medicine

Potential posts pt. 2 (the 1st poll I made ran out of spaces (LOL ADHD brain has sooo many half-finished ideas))

2A) When your conditions and life factors cannot be entirely separated out from one another into neat diagnostic boxes, and medicine is not built for that, using the example of the tangled mess that can occur when OCD, eating behaviors, executive dysfunction, and chronic illness come together

2B) Hot take: Are preferred pronouns the liberal, HR department-capitalism-compatible corner of the trans rights movement that have overshadowed more important issues and alienated people who fear being yelled at for making genuinely accidental mistakes? Including an analysis of this question applied to early episodes of NCIS because that’s currently my bedtime comfort show (I know I know, cops bad and lots of Islamophobia baked into the context/assumptions of this show, I just think it’s fun to watch when it’s not being racist etc.)

2C) Hot take: It’s OK if you were “influenced” into being trans as long as you’re happy that way. In another time or place, maybe I wouldn’t have labeled my identity as transmasculine nonbinary, and that’s fine. That doesn’t need to send anyone into a panic about “ROGD.” There’s no such thing as a human untouched by social influences.

2D) My 2 cents on the “Autism Wars,” different levels of support needs, passing as non-autistic, and the misunderstandings that can come from how autism is represented most loudly online

2E) My body (or my stomach, or whatever other organ is having issues) does not “hate me”! (Why this rhetoric is problematic) And on dissociating from certain organs with chronic illness; trying to identify with my body and saying “No” to the Cartesian mind-body split; Playing Internal Family systems with my body/organs

Finally, at the bottom, there’s the part of the screenshot that shows how the poll option buttons appear on Substack. The abbreviated options are as follows:
Can't separate "comorbidities"
Pronouns hot take
Trans hot take - on "influence"
"Autism Wars"
Body doesn't hate me; IFS

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

1 year ago, when the “”Big Beautiful Bill”” passed, I had the privilege of it not feeling personal, but now my friends & classmates & I are graduating college & losing university-associated insurance & the educational exemption from work requirements. This dumps us right into…

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

substack.com/@emilyladau/... “June 22, 1999: Disabled people in the United States won the right to live in our communities through the Supreme Court's Olmstead decision. “June 18, 2026: The U.S. Dept. of ‘Justice’ tries to roll back our hard-won civil rights victory. “Here's what's happening…”

substack.com

Emily Ladau (@emilyladau)

June 22, 1999: Disabled people in the United States won the right to live in our communities through the Supreme Court’s Olmstead decision. June 18, 2026: The U.S. Dept. of “Justice” tries to roll ba...

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

chuffed.org/project/save... Walaa, a pregnant mother in Gaza, reached out to me. She & her family desperately need funds to cope with the horrific conditions Israel has imposed on them. Walaa needs medical treatments similar to ones that my family & I have been lucky enough to benefit from…

chuffed.org

Saving the life of a mother and fetus in Gaza

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

#disability @ CVS & other companies increasingly locking up all their products: Do you realize that this makes your stores less accessible to people who have trouble standing🧍for an extended time? & this is a larger population since COVID. No one wants a POTS flare just b/c they had to stand…

Photograph of a shelf at CVS where tubes of skin cleanser are behind locked panes of glass. There is a red plastic attachment at the top of the shelf with a button labeled “customer service,” which you’re supposed to push to request that an employee come over to unlock the sliding glass

Another shelf at CVS where all the products—in this case, sunscreen—are locked behind glass

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

40 years ago Langdon Winner & David Noble warned that critiques of tech in society need to be about BOTH the social & political context of tech’s promotion AND the functionalities of tech itself. Focus on only the former leads to faulty social constructivism & the latter to tech determinism. 11/n

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

The defense is: "we use a vetted set of authorized texts for the purposes of training AI to generate responses to questions." Aside from the uncanny valley horror of necromancy that such automated history-telling incites, there's also the issue of sources being processed like this w/o context. 7/n

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

What's important isn't the quality. It's the sales pitch for AI products as having not simply the *capacity* to educate, but the *right* to be used in this way, which, as I type this out, is now a mandatory part of secondary school education in Boston. www.forbes.com/sites/johnwe... 4/n

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

One of the things I research is the cooperation of cultural institutions like museums in pitching tech products--specifically AI--to the public. This is advertising for the capacity of AI to educate and thus to reshape education itself as a project better left to private tech companies. 1/n

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Another thing: My eyeglasses serve the EXACT SAME PURPOSE as an ambulatory wheelchair user’s mobility aid. B/c I’m nearsighted in one eye & far sighted in the other, my eyes compensate for each other, & I can actually see almost 20/20 without glasses… #disability #ambulatorywheelchairuser

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

According to U.S. cultural norms, if you want symptom management (& meds don’t solve everything), you go on a diet, whereas wheelchairs are only to be used when you have no other options are are absolutely forced into the chair. That culture seems not to care that certain mobility aids are…

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

open.substack.com/pub/sterling... Interesting quote from Hyde et. al. in Dr. Fausto-Sterling’s new piece on why our bodies’ biological sex isn’t binary

open.substack.com

The Sex Category is Complicated!

An annotated reading list

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

This week, another call for solidarity across types and severities of disability. If you have an invisible illness and/or a condition that is frequently misunderstood and dismissed and you’re tired of being asked if you’ve tried yoga or supplements or whatever, know that…

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Ok so it’s been more than a week (oops), but I’m back & thinking abt how people with intellectual & developmental disabilities & high support needs deserve better in healthcare. Disability inclusion, adaptive communication, trusting disabled ppl’s knowledge of their own bodies, etc. …

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

substack.com/@cyreejarell... Also this, definitely important to read this, too. It’s refreshing to see 2 people online genuinely trying to understand each other’s points & respond in depth when someone has a good critique

substack.com

Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (@cyreejarellejohnson)

Ok, I fixed the way I misspelled your name (my bad, genuinely!) so now I feel like it’s appropriate to respond. Look, at the beginning and end of this critique is the fact that the article is in itse...

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

open.substack.com/pub/blackmed... Sharing this as well for balance. I don’t 100% share Cyrée Johnson’s interp of Fuad’s piece, BUT I agree that it was very concerning to see Fuad agree with a commenter who was essentially fearmongered about diagnosis faking. Also, Johnson is right that…

open.substack.com

Oh Great, Another "Leftist" COVID Take So Bad it Literally Fucking Stinks

"Y’all Make It So Fucking Embarrassing to Be Disabled" and the conservative co-conspirators in leftist spaces

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

This week, I’m starting with two things: the concept of the Dignity of Risk, and the book Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings. 1) The Dignity of Risk is the idea (used in talking about intellectually disabled people’s rights)…

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

After reading Zoe Fuad’s latest piece over on Substack (if you’re going to go click over to that, please read it in full before responding! The title is kinda yikes but the article is interesting) open.substack.com/pub/leftistb... I’m reminded of how people like me (a white American with …

open.substack.com

Y’all make it so fucking embarrassing to be disabled

On the clout-ification of disability (and all that this obscures)

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Super interesting new ep about body tech ⌚️ as corporate surveillance. I get what they mean about finding useless results—I got a CT scan for chronic condition& it showed kidney cysts, which sound concerning until you learn they’re usually asymptomatic & very common

podcasts.apple.com

Who Up Quantifying the Self?

Podcast Episode · Binchtopia · 10/08/2025 · 1h 18m

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Freedom of the Press Foundation @freedom.press · 10/10/2025

A bill empowering Congress to censor information about its members online has passed the Senate. But it's not too late to stop it. Use our new action center tool to tell the House not to sacrifice transparency for a false sense of security.

freedom.press

Protect Journalism Online

Efforts to undermine First Amendment rights on the internet and to censor online content are a fundamental threat to the free press.

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

If you liked this video, I highly recommend Diego Armus’s chapter “Tango, Gender, and Tuberculosis in Buenos Aires” in Disease in the History of Modern Latin America. It talks about how Industrial-Revolution-era Buenos Aires had 2 different stereotypes of the consumptive woman—one for

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

I know this video isn’t new, but continue to be impressed at how Hank & John Greene can produce content that’s so widely known & beginner friendly while at the same time not at all basic. Vid touches on rarely acknowledged humanities-of-illness themes that fascinate me youtube.com/watch?v=7D-g...

youtube.com

The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time | Crash Course Lecture

YouTube video by CrashCourse

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Something I want to add: “Neurotypical” is an archetype/representation of an ideal. Some of us are certainly more neurodivergent (in both the impairment sense & the political “systems are not built to include us” sense) than others. Neurotypical & NT-passing privilege are very real. However, …

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

I think “Body Fascism”—forced bodily conformity to fascist standards—might be the missing link to explain why MAHA, ableism, fatphobia, and prohibitions on gender-affirming healthcare (and so much more) feel so similar. I write about it over on Substack. open.substack.com/pub/nolahadl...

open.substack.com

Body Fascism

The missing link between MAHA, ableism, fatphobia, and prohibitions on gender-affirming healthcare?

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Nola @nola3.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

You have to understand that wellness influencers and others who hype up panacea diets and supplements aren’t just misunderstanding the science. They are promoting an ideology based on deeply held beliefs. I watched Hank’s recent YT vid critiquing “miracle drugs,” including a clip of (continued)

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