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Kindly donate to Software Freedom Conservancy 's yearly fundraiser by January 15, 2023, to help us continue impacting and supporting #DiversityinTech .

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Looking back, they say, prepares one for the future.

The year 2023 was an impactful year for us at Outreachy Internships. Thanks to everyone who makes this possible🤝

Here is our year 2023 in review: outreachy.org/blog/2024-01-1…

Cheers to making more impacts! 🥂

#OpenSource #DiversityinTech

Are you organizing a conference or moderating an online community? Learn about how to make your event or community safe by attending my Code of Conduct Enforcement workshop: otter.technology/code-of-conduc…

Next CoC workshops:
- Oct 18
- Nov 8

#CodeOfConduct

Thank you Taliesin Jaffe for signing the art I commissioned of Caduceus Clay's speech to Trent Ikithon!

Art & caligraphy by delsdoodles.com

Destroy systems of oppression art by craftedfromscratch.square.site

The fatigue piece is intended as a companion to last year’s one on brain fog. They’re both biographies of deeply misunderstood symptoms. I wanted to do them back to back but life got in the way. I’m glad both now exist, and I hope they help. 11/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

People with long COVID and ME/CFS face *so much* disbelief. But the reality and severity of their experiences is so obvious if you actually talk to them, supported by the scientific literature, and deserving of empathy and support. 10/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

There’s no easy way out of this. Most treatments are about symptom management. Pacing—a strategy for keeping your activity levels below the levels that cause debilitating crashes—is crucial, but also very hard esp since our society isn’t set up for it. 9/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Note also that long-haulers might not know the biochemical specifics of their symptoms, but are uncannily good at capturing those underpinnings through metaphor. As ever, patients are the most important sources of knowledge. 8/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Contrary to popular belief, long COVID & ME/CFS are not mystery diseases. There’s plenty of evidence for at least two major pathways that might cause extreme fatigue and PEM--one neurological, one metabolic. 7/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Why this dismissal? This piece offers a brief cultural history, but there are three main factors—reductionism, sexism, and capitalism—all blending together into a cocktail of stigma. 6/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

PEM *can* be objectively measured, and yet is often dismissed because it so thoroughly inverts the dogma that exercise is good for you & you should push through ill health. Here, doing that can make you much worse. 5/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

Post-exertional malaise—the cardinal symptom of ME/CFS—is distinct & worse. Less a symptom than a physiological state. After gentle physical/mental activity, your batteries aren’t drained but missing entirely. PEM is the annihilation of possibility. 4/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

When long-haulers talk about their fatigue, they often hear “Oh I’m tired too”. But theirs is utterly different to the everyday version healthy people get. More severe. Very hard to push through (& costly if you try). Not cured by sleep. Multifaceted. 3/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…

🛑I wrote about what “fatigue” really means for people with long COVID and ME/CFS, and why this profoundly debilitating symptom is so often misunderstood and trivialized.

(This piece also covers PEM.) 1/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…

I finally finished hearing/reading and I am weeping at the accuracy.

Someone text this article to whoever has the power to make some change around this happen.

#LongCOVID #PASC #PEM #MyalgicE #fatigue

Sketchbook. I'm trying to be less organized about them. More chaos! More mediums! Glue stuff in there!

A huge thanks to the outreachy organizers Sage Sharp @[email protected], Omotola Eunice and the Software Freedom Conservancy for the support 💙✨ Forever grateful to OpenArchive for selecting me to intern with them for the May 2021 cohort. Without them I wouldn't have been here 🫶🏻

I recently organized and hosted Outreachy Internships 1000 Interns Celebration in India and wrote a blog summarising the event. Do give it a read!

vanichitkara.wordpress.com/2023/07/11/out…