The Research Accessibility Aid Is: IN!!!

This thread is for people to ask for help looking stuff up!

I have fun doing casual research, to the point where it's the main activity I do some days, but for a lot of people it's hard work. It can be anxiety or panic inducing, and sometimes the tide of results is so vast that it seems pointless to try. On top of that, surprise triggers or unexpected offensive content can be incredibly off-putting for anyone!

But how else are you supposed to find out how to make gluten-free doughnuts, or exactly what ancient sami peoples did for food during famine, or what became of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror once they were abandoned en route to the north pole?

Tell me what you need to know, and I (and anyone else who wants to) will look it up for you.

Services Include:

1. A link to the relevant Wikipedia page
2. Links to at least three sources which are or reference peer-reviewed sources
3. A quick breakdown of what each linked page says
4. Any requested content tags on each linked page
5. Any reasonable user-accessibility services needed
6. A listing of search terms used so that the search results are repeatable

Caveats Include

1. I won't write out a full citation, as this is meant to be casual.
2. I won't write out full transcripts for you, because I don't have the patience to do so.
3. I won't record myself reading anything out loud for you, because I don't have a microphone

*edit: If people like this enough, I might set up a tumblr page for it too, to let more people in on the fun

 

Would you be willing to do "I dont know if this is legit but I cant check sources because they will contain triggers" ?
(Not a question right now, but a general query.)

 

Absolutely! The research can be for anything at all, however big or small. I can do fact checking as well as question answering, and in the case of things involving triggers, if you tell me how broadly those topics need to be edited out I can sumarize or copy/paste sections that don't have anything.

 

i can look up pretty much any fandom thing you're curious about. i'm not sure about my ability with non-fandom stuff but my fandom google-fu is pretty good.

 

The relevant wikipedia article, even though you've already found it
-I recommend source 31, which is a detailed timeline of the storm. Source 32 touches on it, but is undetailed, and source 30 is a dead link.

site 1
-listing of major disasters in Seychelles, references a text by W. Agricole which I have been unable to locate

site 2
-report of damages associated with Tropical Storm Fantala, references it in passing as being similar in impact to Ikonjo.

site 3
-disaster preparedness plan for Seychelles
-very brief description of impact on page 12, stating "The storm destroyed a great part of the island hotel of Desroches and strong winds on Mahe blew in the south westerly direction. No major damages were officially reported on Mahe but eyewitnesses remember trees being flattened in some areas."

All of the links agree on the reports of monetary damages, as well as facts about the storm itself. I used "Seychelles Tropical storm Ikonjo" and went through the first seven pages of google, before results started being either in other languages or about a person named Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

In short, it seems like the storm was bad but not devastating, and earned its ranking as a major disaster through widespread light damage as opposed to concentrated annihilation.

 

*camps for next time I see Some Nonsense on my Tumblr dash that I don't have the spoons to tear apart myself*

 

there's a few things I want info on about brain stuff (not the mental illness kind) for oc purposes, but I cannot concentrate at all on actually reading about it (something about the language that tends to be used just fucks with my focus--it's so damn impenetrable) and I don't really want to stumble onto any freaky body or medical details and have to deal with the imagery, so I'd appreciate if someone else could help me out

Spoiler: the deets

essentially wanting two things:
1. if there's any long-term brain disorder that can occur from birth and causes stuff like narcolepsy + concentration issues + headaches + possibly shortened lifespan (and if there isn't, if there's a similar disorder that more-or-less fits, especially the narcolepsy + short lifespan parts). (from what I can tell narcolepsy is its own thing but I'm not getting if something else can cause it too? if there isn't I guess then if she can have narcolepsy + separate disorder that has the other symptoms)

2. if getting shot in the head can be potentially survivable without many large physical consequences, but the brain damage essentially turns the victim into an emotionless or otherwise emotionally-numb sociopath (also where exactly she'd have to be shot for this to work--need this detail specifically to know where to put her Sick Bullet Scar)

 

Oh cool! The first one I don't even need to look up, because I have a variant of it myself! All of the links are to wikipedia since you don't seem to be looking for hardcore citation stuff, and there's no gore or blood anywhere at all

As for the first, the most simple and easily-understandable-to-laymen explanation would be a condition known as sleep apnea. there are three forms of the disorder- obstructive, central, and mixed sleep apnea. I myself actually have the obstructive variant, which is the one which is not a brain disorder

Essentially, sleep apnea is a condition where, for one reason or another, your body is unable to breathe properly while asleep. The obstructive variant is due to over-large or over-relaxed tissues in the throat blocking the airways, while the central variant is due to the brain's respiratory regulations malfunctioning (i.e., your body forgets to breathe for 10-30 seconds, sometimes more). Depending on the time setting, the stubbornness of the character in question, and the competence of local medical professionals, your character may be diagnosed and have to use a CPAP while they sleep but be in all other ways perfectly fine, or they may be undiagnosed, in which side effects gradually worsen over the course of 10-20 years from "hey this person snores a lot and is chronically fatigued" to "this person is narcoleptic, unable to maintain any kind of focus, and is prone to serious migraines," eventually leading to "wow, this person is dying from heart disease and has had multiple strokes and they're not even 50!"

Or if they have the central variant and are exceedingly unlucky, they just stop breathing and die one night. it's rare, but it happens.

For your second question, the short answer is Yes. Brains are flat-out weird, and brain injuries are infinitely more-so, and we have no real clue as to all the possible permutations of symptoms. The long answer is that trauma to both temporal lobes can result in complete affective indifference, or apathy, and damage to the frontal lobe can lead to a complete change in personality. the Sick Bullet Scar would be either one massive scar going from right beside either eye to the back of the head, or a pair of smaller scars basically anywhere on the front half of the head. Again, there's no real hard-and-fast rules for how penetrative brain trauma works. there's even one kind where you just suddenly have cravings for gourmet food. You might lose all ability to perceive the right side of anything, including yourself. You might forget how to make new memories. Anything goes, really.

 

ah this is super helpful! I can actually understand the stuff involved now... (loving how the cosmos have just aligned with me on these particular instances so I won't have to do a whole bunch of tweaks or nonsense to fit these in with the character concepts, too--now if only that could happen for Certain Other Characters.........might have to come back here on those ones, actually.) thank you so much!!

 

glad to be of service!

 

Hi Cosmo, I'm not sure if this falls under something you'd be interested in helping out with but I've been looking for either a service through which I can rent a garden or a small plot of land (not acres, think about... the size of a doublewide) around Boston to start an urban farm. I would also (even especially) be interested in the same amount of room indoors for a small hydroponic veggie situation.

It's just...almost all of the resources I have found seem to be community gardens where the land is owned and you volunteer to work it and donate the harvest, which while noble isn't my aim right now, or for beginner farmers who want an acre+ and are looking to start a career. I just want a bit of land I can work to supplement my groceries and get my harvest moon larp on.

(I'm willing to drive up to an hour and a bit to it)

 

Hey could you help me maybe find something?
The psych who gave me my shiny autism diagnosis suggested something called stimulant therapy for the hypersensitivity.
This seems to mean meds but the only results for stimulant therapy I can find are all about adhd. Could you help me find info on this? (Or if theres something else meant by that)

 

@TrillianAri Sorry it took so long to get back to you, I never saw the notification!

I think your best bet for urban agriculture would be to look into a house with a yard, or find an empty housing lot and research the legality of gardening. You may find that it's perfectly legal to do both garden beds and livestock like chickens or rabbits, or just garden beds, or that you may need to research getting the lot re-zoned entirely. Honestly the legalities are too rabbit-holed even for me, simply because a lot of jurisdictions still keep most of their documents in physical rather than digital form, and thus I would have to go to Boston to be sure about basically anything I told you.

On the other hand, if you back-yard it, AKA you have bought the house and are living in it while you garden in the yard, you really should only have to deal with neighborhood regulations, which for simple garden beds should only make it so you garden in the back yard as opposed to the front yard.

Either way the moment livestock gets involved things get hairy.

All in all, you shouldn't need more than a back yard if you're just supplementing your groceries, rather than producing them. A good size herb bed, capable of comfortably spicing meals for a family of four in perpetuity, only takes one 12'x4' garden bed, which you can do in a raised bed on the roof if its flat and the apartment complex allows it. a garden filling the whole back yard, not just part of it, should be able to provide one person literally everything that isn't grain, meat, or dairy. If you make a rabbit hutch and get some meat rabbits, they'll cover meat and fertilizer so you only have to buy dairy, grain, and hay (which is a lot cheaper than meat).

Basically the only reason, and I do mean the only reason you should need more than 1/20th of an acre (2450 square feet of land) is if you are trying to feed/sell to more than one person, or if you are also growing grain, meat, and dairy. If you want to produce a lower percentage of your, well, produce, get a smaller portion of land to match! Considering that the average Massachusetts yard size is 6 times that area, I think you should have no trouble finding something in a good size for you!

PS: A word to the wise- if you want animals, get rabbits. Chickens are loud and smelly birds that WILL cause your neighbors to raise an equal if not greater stink, and while they do lay eggs, it very well might not be worth the trouble in an urban environment. Rabbits on the other hand are quiet and relatively odor-free when kept well. Whats more, chicken manure is a "hot" fertilizer, meaning it will burn your plant's roots if you use it without allowing it to... ferment. the process is about twelve times as nasty as it sounds. Rabbit manure however is a "cool" fertilizer, meaning it is safe to use directly on plants. Also, rabbits can be litterbox trained, and chickens cannot.

 

@Codeless Congrats on the diagnosis! *teaches you the secret autism handshake, consisting of at least one texture of fabric that is soooooo goooood somehow conveyed without any of said fabric being involved*

First up, one interesting thing about treating some of the sucky symptoms of autism is that autism is commonly co-morbid with ADHD. Basically what this means is that they can happen at the same time. The tricky part of diagnosing this is that a whole lot of the diagnostic symptoms are identical between the two. As we all know from zombie movies, the best way to make sure you kill something is to hit it twice in the same spot. That's basically what happens if you have both disorders. Autism makes you super sensitive, ADHD makes you super sensitive, and if your autism/ADHD comes with sensory processing disorder THAT makes you super sensitive, and the net result is that you are too sensitive to function. Add in that the broken brain functions that are the root of the symptoms can be caused by both disorders and not just one or the other, and there's a good chance that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

TL;DR there's a solid chance that medication for one aspect of ADHD will apply to the same aspect of autism.

Here's some scholarly sources (because while for theoretical medical research non-scholarly sources are fine, you should never just take the unsanctioned medical advice of some rando on the internet)

1. this one on stimulant therapy for co-morbid autism and ADHD
2. another of the same subject
3. this one on stimulant therapy for autism alone

After reading through these yourself, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend talking to your psych AND your doc about what specific stimulant you go on. Stimulants are a stupidly broad class of drugs, with a stupidly broad range of applications. When you know what they're thinking of putting you on, hop back on the internet and research that drug specifically. Find out what it's used for, how it works, what you want to watch out for, so on and so forth. I would also talk to your psych and your doc about sensory processing disorder, as that is the clinical term for the "hypersensitivity". Sensory processing disorder is EXTREMELY co-morbid with both ADHD and autism, and if you're like me and you like being neurodivergent but you don't like feeling like everything happens so much, then you want to see if your psych and your doc can find something that will target the sensory processing disorder and leave the rest of it alone.

 

Thank you!
Sensory processioning disorder does not exist as a diagnosis here in Germany. I do have ADHD as well, though I´m not really interested in taking medication bc I don´t feel I could handle medication roulette and potential side effects. When I first saw it my helper person had suggested it might also be some kind of behavioral therapy thing, so I wanted to know what it actually is.

 

err, das me idk what happened

 

Glad to help!

Yeah, stimulant therapy is medication stimulants. Since you're not interested in medication, I'd suggest going over this wikipedia page with your helper for ideas. Non-medication treatment for sensory processing disorder is basically a whole lot of "uhhhhhh maybe this does something????" and hoping for the best. The disorder itself is kinda dubious overall, not just in Germany, and it is consistently unclear whether it's an actual disorder on it's own, or just a set of symptoms common between a lot of other brain issues. Your best bet for looking for treatment would be to use it as a google search keyword so you can find stuff specific to that aspect of your autism.

 

Thank, I did not know those things existed.