#cognitive decline
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i feel like we dont talk enough about how distressing and disturbing memory loss issues are. forgetting what you were talking about halfway through a sentence, putting something down and instantly forgetting where you put it. having to reread one paragraph over and over again because by the time youve moved onto the next sentence you dont remember what the one before it said. always doubting if your memories of things are real, not being able to remember important life events.
its so incredibly scary, it feels like your mind is constantly playing tricks on you and you start to doubt whats real and what isnt.
“i forgot” is treated like a lazy excuse when it’s genuinely such a big issue for so many people.
#this has been building up in me for a bit#i was talking to my mom and she brought up a concert we went to and i have zero memory of ever going#huge chunks of my life are just. gone.#every time i sew i put the needle down and spend fifteen minutes trying to find it#memory loss#memory issues#cognitive issues#cognitive decline#cognitive dysfunction
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Why indeed?
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this is a cripple punk post [also focusing on all kinds of HSN disabled folks]; ableds must tag reblogs with #i’m able bodied
for the record
i generally shower exactly once a week & wash my hair the same day
sometimes i can’t change undergarments for a few days, sometimes i change them multiple times a day
i rely on several adaptive tools to shower, period
i do need to shave/trim pubic and body hair for my hygiene, and can’t keep clean otherwise
in winter, i often can’t wash my hands unless i have lotion with me or they’ll crack painfully
i change clothes once or twice a day to make up for most of this the best i can
i’m saying this because all of those things are very common issues for many disabled people (especially high-support ones), and because i feel like if i’m going to talk about destigmatizing hygiene struggles, i should at least be open about my own.
hygiene is very difficult and energy consuming. it involves a lot energy that many of us can’t access.
not being able to maintain one’s personal hygiene doesn’t make anyone selfish, disgusting, or undeserving.
if you can’t be kind and supportive and not say “ew” when you hear about one of the most common impairments moderately to severely disabled people experience, you don’t support disabled people. if you don’t support disabled people who smell bad or have dandruff or cracked hands or un-exfoliated skin, you don’t support disabled people.
yes, even if you have sensory issues. yes, even if you’re germaphobic. your disabilities are not an excuse to be ableist to others. find a way to be kind anyway.
#DO NOT TAG AS “C SLUR/TW SLUR” OR “UNHYGIENIC”#use “cw hygiene issues” or don’t reblog. consider how your phrasing impacts those who struggle with their hygiene#cw hygiene issues#hygiene#cripple punk#cpunk#crippunk#cripplepunk#cognitive decline#neurocognitive disability#neurological disability#crazy cripple pride#mad crip pride#mad pride#madpunk#neuropunk#ableism
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Nikki comes to life. Media needs to follow this up. Don's bragging about these tests is super pathetic.
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There might be some wisdom in the Biden campaign proposing that both candidates undergo a battery of cognitive tests administered by a mutually agreed upon physician or group of physicians. We see three possible outcomes here, all of them good for Biden: (1) Trump refuses, making it look like he's hiding something; (2) the results affirm that both candidates are OK, helping to defuse one of Biden's biggest weaknesses; or (3) the results affirm that Biden is OK and Trump is not.
Note that we are not including "Trump is OK and Biden is not" because we are confident Biden would not fail the tests. That said, if he did, it would be valuable information for him, and would probably lead him to stand down.
Electoral-vote.com
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This is super specific but ever since I had covid, I misspell homophones (like two/to/too and there/their/they’re) and this NEVER used to happen to me before, spelling has always come naturally to me, and basically I was just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience?
Edit: I said two/to/two instead of two/to/too. I made the mistake in the fucking post.
#covid#covid 19#long covid#pasc#post-acute sequelae of covid#cognitive functions#cognitive decline#cognitive issues#my post#personal
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Exactly what language is Trump speaking? Professional translators are often baffled. But we do hear echoes of 1930s Germany in his diminishing attempts at communication.
Trump echoes Nazi propaganda and pushes lie that ‘no one speaks languages’ of migrants in wild border speech
This vid includes Trump's pseudo-English at Eagle Pass.
youtube
If you're an English teacher, get your students to attempt to transcribe some of Trump's attempts at human speech.
#donald trump#cognitive decline#languages#incoherence#nazi propaganda#eagle pass#texas#republican presidential nomination#trump derailed border reform so he could continue to rant about migrants#trump border crisis#election 2024#vote blue no matter who#Youtube
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So it turns out I’ve lost the ability to write.
Like, completely.
It’s so bad. I’m freaking out.
It’s never been like this, I’ve lost motivation before, but this is about my ability to put together words.
It feels like a cognitive thing, and I’m not ready for this illness to reach that point yet.
Praying to any and every deity that it’s just temporary.
#luckily for you guys I have weeks worth of drafts and Twitter threads to post here lnai#but I want to write NEW things#esp the fantasy fic :(#writing#cognitive decline#:(#chronic illness#lupus#cfs#endometriosis#irl tag#personal#cw health
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Langston Hughes
* * * *
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
January 20, 2024
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JAN 20, 2024
Last night at a rally in New Hampshire, former president Trump repeatedly confused former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is running against him for the Republican presidential nomination, with Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the former speaker of the House.
“By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6th,” Trump told the audience. “You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know they, do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people. Soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.”
Observers have been saying for a while now that once Trump had to start appearing in public, his apparent cognitive decline would surprise those who haven’t been paying attention.
That certainly seemed to be true on Wednesday, January 17, when he told a New Hampshire audience: “We’re…going to place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your—you know, your political beliefs, what they do. They want to debank you, and we’re going to debank—think of this. They want to take away your rights. They want to take away your country. The things they’re doing. All electric cars.”
His statement looks like word salad if you’re not steeped in MAGA world, but there are two stories behind Trump’s torrent of words. The first is that Trump always blurts out whatever is uppermost in his mind, suggesting he is worried by the fact that large banks will no longer lend to him. The Trump Organization’s auditor said during a fraud trial in 2022 that the past 10 years of the company’s financial statements could not be relied on, and Trump was forced to turn to smaller banks, likely on much worse terms. Now the legal case currently underway in Manhattan will likely make that financial problem larger. The judge has already decided that the Trump Organization, Trump, his two older sons, and two employees committed fraud, for which the judge is currently deciding appropriate penalties.
The second story behind his statement, though, is much larger than Trump.
Since 2023, right-wing organizations, backed by Republican state attorneys general, have argued that banks are discriminating against them on religious and political grounds. In March 2023, JPMorgan Chase closed an account opened by the National Committee for Religious Freedom after the organization did not provide information the bank needed to comply with regulatory requirements. Immediately, Republican officials claimed religious discrimination and demanded the bank explain its position on issues important to the right wing. JPMorgan Chase denied discrimination, noting that it serves 50,000 accounts with religious affiliations and saying, “We have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation.”
But the attack on banks stuck among MAGA Republicans, especially as other financial platforms like PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe have declined to accept business from right-wing figures who spout hate speech, thus cutting off their ability to raise money from their followers.
The attempt to create distrust of large financial institutions is part of a larger attempt to destabilize the institutions of democracy. Trump is the figurehead for that attempt, but it is larger than him, and it will outlast him.
The news media is often called the fourth branch of government because it provides the transparency and oversight that hold leaders accountable. But as soon as he began to campaign for office in 2015, Trump responded to the negative press about him by attacking the press, calling it the “fake news” media. In 2016, 70% of Republicans said they trusted national news media; by 2021 that number was 35%.
Once elected, Trump and MAGA Republicans started to undermine faith in the rule of law that underpins our democracy. Less than four months after he took office, Trump fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, for investigating the connections between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, and his attacks on the FBI and the Department of Justice under which the FBI operates have been relentless ever since.
Those attacks now involve the entire judicial system, which Trump and his loyalists attack whenever judges or juries oppose him, while judges like Aileen Cannon, who appears to be protecting Trump from the federal criminal case against him for mishandling classified documents, have escaped his wrath.
Trump and his supporters have also challenged the U.S. military, insisting that it is weak because it is “woke.” He has called its leaders “some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life.”
But it is not just the banking, justice, and military systems MAGA Republicans are undermining. They are sowing distrust of our educational system, claiming that it is not educating students but, rather, indoctrinating them to embrace left-wing ideology. Public education is central to democracy because, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, it enables a voter to “understand his duties to his neighbours, & country,…[t]o know his rights…[a]nd, in general, to observe with intelligence & faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.”
Extremists in Congress are undermining even that body, the centerpiece of our democratic system. They have ground business there to a halt, weakening the idea of Congress as a deliberative body that can pass legislation to represent the wishes of the American people.
In addition, they are now trying, quite deliberately, to end the country’s traditional system of foreign policy that protects the nation’s national security. Instead, they are trying to politicize foreign policy, standing against further aid to Ukraine although it has strong bipartisan support, thus tipping the scales in favor of Russia’s authoritarian leader in opposition to U.S. national security.
Over all, of course, is the Big Lie that undermines the nation’s electoral system by insisting that the 2020 presidential vote was “rigged” against Trump. Although there has never been any evidence of such a thing, 30% of Americans think Biden won the presidency only through “voter fraud.”
This weakening of our institutions threatens the survival of democracy.
Tearing apart the fabric of democracy invites an authoritarian to convince his followers that democracy is weak and that only a strongman can govern.
Three years ago today, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office, vowing to restore faith in our democratic institutions.
“This is a time of testing,” Biden said in his inaugural address. “We face an attack on democracy and on truth. A raging virus. Growing inequity. The sting of systemic racism. A climate in crisis. America’s role in the world. Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways. But the fact is we face them all at once, presenting this nation with the gravest of responsibilities.
“Now we must step up. All of us. It is a time for boldness, for there is so much to do. And, this is certain. We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era. Will we rise to the occasion? Will we master this rare and difficult hour? Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world for our children?”
“Let us add our own work and prayers to the unfolding story of our nation,” Biden said. “If we do this, then when our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us: They gave their best. They did their duty. They healed a broken land.”
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
#Democracy#Langston Hughes#Letters From An American#Heather Cox Richardson#MAGA Republicans#destruction of democratic institutitons#banking#education#military systems#justice#media#cognitive decline
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As the national security workforce ages, dementia impacting U.S. officials poses a threat to national security, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Pentagon-funded think tank. The report, released this spring, came as several prominent U.S. officials trusted with some of the nation’s most highly classified intelligence experienced public lapses, stoking calls for resignations and debate about Washington’s aging leadership.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had a second freezing episode last month, enjoys the most privileged access to classified information of anyone in Congress as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leadership. Ninety-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose decline has seen her confused about how to vote and experiencing memory lapses — forgetting conversations and not recalling a monthslong absence — was for years a member of the Gang of Eight and remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she has served since 2001.
The study, published by the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division in April, identifies individuals with both current and former access to classified material who develop dementia as threats to national security, citing the possibility that they may unwittingly disclose government secrets.
“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.
As the study notes, there does not appear to be any other publicly available research into dementia, an umbrella term for the loss of cognitive functioning, despite the fact that Americans are living longer than ever before and that the researchers were able to identify several cases in which senior intelligence officials died of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder and the most common cause of dementia.
“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.”
Most holders of security clearances, a ballooning class of officials and other bureaucrats with access to secret government information, are subject to rigorous and invasive vetting procedures. Applying for a clearance can mean hourslong polygraph tests; character interviews with old teachers, friends, and neighbors; and ongoing automated monitoring of their bank accounts and other personal information. As one senior Pentagon official who oversees such a program told me of people who enter the intelligence bureaucracy, “You basically give up your Fourth Amendment rights.”
Yet, as the authors of the RAND report note, there does not appear to be any vetting for age-related cognitive decline. In fact, the director of national intelligence’s directive on continuous evaluation contains no mention of age or cognitive decline.
While the study doesn’t mention any U.S. officials by name, its timing comes amid a simmering debate about gerontocracy: rule by the elderly. Following McConnell’s first freezing episode, in July, Google searches for the term “gerontocracy” spiked.
“The President called to check on me,” McConnell said when asked about the first episode. “I told him I got sandbagged,” he quipped, referring to President Joe Biden’s trip-and-fall incident during a June graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, which sparked conservative criticisms about the 80-year-old’s own functioning.
While likely an attempt by McConnell at deflecting from his lapse, Biden’s age has emerged as a clear concern to voters, including Democrats. 69% of Democrats say Biden is “too old to effectively serve” another term, an Associated Press-NORC poll found last month. The findings were echoed by a CNN poll released last week that found that 67% of Democrats said the party should nominate someone else, with 49% directly mentioning Biden’s age as their biggest concern.
As Commander In Chief, the President is the nation’s ultimate classification authority, with the extraordinary power to classify and declassify information broadly. No other American has as privileged access to classified information as the president.
The U.S.’s current leadership is not only the oldest in history, but also the number of older people in Congress has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1981, only 4% of Congress was over the age of 70. By 2022, that number had spiked to 23%.
In 2017, Vox reported that a pharmacist had filled Alzheimer’s prescriptions for multiple members of Congress. With little incentive for an elected official to disclose such an illness, it is difficult to know just how pervasive the problem is. Feinstein’s retinue of staffers have for years sought to conceal her decline, having established a system to prevent her from walking the halls of Congress alone and risk having an unsupervised interaction with a reporter.
Despite the public controversy, there’s little indication that any officials will resign — or choose not to seek reelection.
After years of speculation about her retirement, 83-year-old Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stunned observers when she announced on Friday that she would run for reelection, seeking her 19th term.
#us politics#news#republicans#Democrats#boomers#Gang of Eight#sen. Mitch Mcconnell#sen. Diane Feinstein#rep. nancy pelosi#Senate Intelligence Committee#the pentagon#classified information#RAND Corporation#National Security Research Division#national security#dementia#cognitive decline#Alzheimer’s disease#security clearances#Fourth Amendment#gerontocracy#president joe biden#us congress#2023#the intercept
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Hello! I know you love asks (and besides I'd like to read your take on a subject) so here goes. For me, i found it just stupid the way they made Annie, Ruby, and Beth uninterested or incapable of carrying for an infant. Along comes thug Mick to save the day. I know for me, I never wanted a kid or liked one until I had one. My kids are grown now, but show me a baby and I'll be bopping noses, singing, bouncing, rocking, feeding, burping, talking baby talk like i had that baby yesterday! What did you feel about this portrayal of the women's disinterest in the the baby? Seriously lol!
Hi! I found this ask submitted on an ancient scroll I’m so sorry I take years long breaks from tumblr sometimes 😫
Yes that was SO stupid hahaha they’re all mothers 💀 I get that they were in a high-anxiety type of a situation and adding a baby to the mix was stressful asf but it was cringe how they were like
However it was super cute seeing Mick take care of the baby. I do enjoy Mick doing anything really except for the wings situation.
#I Get locked out of my account#cognitive decline#due to perimenopause yes we will go with that#nbc good girls#ask#gg analysis#goodbyegal
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‘We may lose ability to think critically at all’: the book-summary apps accused of damaging authors’ sales
by Vanessa Thorpe
A tech sector dedicated to boiling things down has raised temperatures in some quarters of the publishing world
Hungry for niche knowledge to impress your colleagues? Troubled by the size of a hefty new book? Doubt your abilities to understand complex arguments? Well, today an increasingly competitive industry offers to take away these problems with one product: a book summary app.
Since these digital services first promised to boil down a title, usually a nonfiction work, a decade ago, the marketplace has become crowded. So much so that authors and publishers are concerned about the damage to sales, as well as to the habit of concentrated reading.
READ MORE
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this is a cripple punk post [even if it also applies to nonphysical disability]; ableds must tag reblogs with #i’m able bodied
actually tagging my last post reminded me--
if you're making a post about a disability you don't have, for fucks sake, please make or use a modified tag that IS NOT a community tag.
i get that you want to sort topics and make them easier to find on your blog or whatever, but if you misuse tags you are actively making it harder for people to find community.
avoid using just an asterisk or backslash or similar to modify the tag--these tags are usually even more explicitly for the community than the disability's unmodified tag is.
my personal go-to is 're: x', like, 're: intellectual disability', and i think ive seen 'includes: x' for fiction stuff. basically anything works if it's not used by the community. for some disabilities, you're fine just using the name of the disability as a tag, but for many, the name of the disability is the community tag. this is especially common, in my experience, with disabilities that affect cognitive/intellectual/neurological functioning. please err on the side of caution.
please, please, i am literally begging you, let disabled people have our spaces. a huge part of why i made this blog is that the tags relevant to my main disabilities are totally overrun by nondisabled people and "allies." it fucking sucks and does massive damage to disabled people--and i mean that very literally.
#cripple punk#cpunk#crip punk#crippunk#cripplepunk#neurological disability#neurocognitive disability#cognitive decline#nt sci#physical disability#disabled#ableism#anticrip ableism#mad pride#madpunk#neuropunk#actually disabled
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One of the hardest parts of being the caregiver of your spouse is finding the balance between those two roles. How do you fulfill the role of wife and also be a full time caregiver without blurring the lines? You don’t. You can’t. It’s impossible. Does this interfere with intimacy at all? Yes. Does it make it impossible to be intimate? No. It’s tough for me personally to keep the spark sometimes because cognitively, due to the PPMS progressing so fast, Josh is not able to think too deeply. He had a very surface level grasp on most topics and gets confused easily. His processing speed is very slow and it takes a lot of repeating for him to finally comprehend what I say, often times. This makes it difficult for me to feel connected because I am someone who thrives off of deep conversations. Something we used to be able to have. I’ve learned to accept what I cannot change though, and find the deeper conversations in my friendships, and be grateful for everything else I share with him. MS is a bitch… but you can do what you can to live with it and find the good in every day.
#ms#multiple sclerosis#PPMS#cognitive decline#cognitive impairment#dementia#early dementia#intimacy#neurocognitive disorders
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A new study found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment with a positive attitude about aging were 30% more likely to regain their cognitive abilities than those with negative beliefs about growing older.
Research has shown that looking at life through rose-colored glasses or having a positive outlook may offer benefits to health and wellbeing.
For example, studies suggest that possessing a positive attitude is associated with less memory decline, better heart health, and improved blood sugar levels.
Now, a Yale School of Public Health study published on April 12 in JAMA Network Open suggests that having positive thoughts and beliefs about aging may help older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) regain their memory.
"Most people assume there is no recovery from MCI, but in fact, half of those who have it do recover. Little is known about why some recover while others don’t. That’s why we looked at positive age beliefs, to see if they would help provide an answer," explains lead study author Becca Levy, public health and psychology professor, in a news release.
To test their hypothesis that positivity may help reverse MCI-associated memory decline, the scientists recruited 1,716 participants from the Health and Retirement Study — a national longitudinal survey. The participants’ average age was about 78 years, and had either MCI or normal cognition at the study’s onset.
Then, the team divided them into two groups based on a positive age-belief measure asking the participants to agree or disagree with questions such as "the older I get, the more useless I feel."
After evaluating the data, the scientists found that older adults in the positive age-belief group with MCI at the start of the study were 30.2% more likely to recover from their cognitive impairment than those in the negative belief group — regardless of MCI severity.
In addition, those without MCI at the study’s onset who had positive age beliefs were significantly less likely to develop the condition over the following 12 years.
Moreover, among all participants, those with a positive attitude about aging had a lower overall prevalence of MCI.
The study authors suggest that age-belief interventions could increase the number of people who regain cognitive function after experiencing mild cognitive impairment.
How to have a positive outlook on aging
Even if a person doesn’t feel optimistic about growing older, there are ways to reframe those thoughts and look at aging through a more positive lens.
For example, practicing positive self-talk can overcome harmful beliefs about oneself, including age-related negative thoughts. In addition, mindfulness meditation, objectively evaluating personal strengths, and other positive psychotherapy techniques can help a person feel hopeful throughout aging.
#brain science#aging#cognitive decline#aging and attitude#brain chemicals#Having a Positive Attitude About Aging May Reverse Cognitive Decline
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I want to talk about how hard life is with cognitive damage. A while back I was electrocuted to death and came back. I came back with less of myself than I had before. It feels like something I will never get back.
It's so hard to articulate what it is like.
I suppose that's the catch-22, isn't it? I use my brain to articulate my thoughts and it got seared by lightning so now I can't adequately articulate my thoughts about that damage.
There is so much I want to say but I don't know how to say it. Maybe I would have known before, but I wasn't so impaired before either.
I know it's not the same as a childlike mind. A child's mind is (ideally) not suffering any malfunction; they simply don't know things. When they don't know, they can learn.
I know a great many things. I have vast archives.
They are all burned.
I am walking through ashen remains, sifting through charred indices looking for things I already know but cannot access because all that remains is cinders. Sometimes I'll take a step and find myself falling through the weakened floorboards.
I don't know how to repair this library. I don't know if I ever can.
I want to say something more meaningful, more profound.
Maybe that phrase is in there, still intact, but the index pointing to it is burned away.
I don't know.
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