Books, Legos, 'n other stuff

Most of what I post nowadays falls underneath the "other stuff" category...Web Analytics Made Easy - Statcounter

 

butchnoise:

butchnoise:

butchnoise:

truly possessed with envy any time i drive by someone sitting on their porch with a beverage

made this post bc I saw a fat man with a mustache zonked out in a rocking chair and it made me so jealous that I almost threw up

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crimethinc:

Today in Atlanta, City Council has to vote once again to endorse the millions of dollars that will be channeled to the police and their allies through the Cop City project.

Hundreds of people lined up at City Hall to speak against the police training facility. The authorities cut off the signup process after the first 300 applicants, attempting to silence opposition as they have throughout this process. People are chanting “Stop Cop City!”, “Let us speak!”, and “Viva viva Tortuguita!” in memory of the forest defender police murdered in January.

Background:

http://crimethinc.com/ForestintheCity


#StopCopCity

transmonstera:

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seeing other trans people be happy and enjoy being trans is not a threat to you. to doubt their transness because they’re (perceived as to be) not as miserable as you is, however, a threat to them. - transmonstera

[IMAGE ID: “to measure the validity of other transsexuals by their misery is to hold the cissexual narrative higher than your own right to joy” in bold white text. the background is a number of yellow measuring tapes and rulers. the base of the measuring tapes has a sad face sticker on the side. the background is solid black. END]

cozy-fish-crow:

slinkster-cool:

indignantlyindigo:

F.D.A. Ends Ban on Blood Donations From Gay and Bisexual Men

“Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized recommendations for assessing blood donor eligibility using a set of individual risk-based questions to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV. These questions will be the same for every donor, regardless of sexual orientation, sex or gender.”

“This policy eliminates time-based deferrals and screening questions specific to men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with MSM. Under the final guidance issued today, all prospective blood donors will answer a series of individual, risk-based questions to determine eligibility. All prospective donors who report having a new sexual partner, or more than one sexual partner in the past three months, and anal sex in the past three months, would be deferred to reduce the likelihood of donations by individuals with new or recent HIV infection who may be in the window period for detection of HIV by nucleic acid testing.”

[fda.gov]

Wow this sounds worse. Am I missing something?

i dunno how much you know about HIV and the AIDS crisis, so i’ll share all i learned from a prev health job of mine:

HIV is spread through contact with blood, semen and pre-seminal fluid, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids, and breast milk. having a monogamous relationship technically decreases the liklihood of the couple getting HIV cause there are no uncertain variables introduced into the closed system. your risk of getting HIV increases when you get a new partner (though it’s like no risk if you had both tested negative and in the meantime wasnt possibly exposed to HIV). your risk also increases the more sexual partners you have because there are more variables and opportunities for one to get HIV and infect the others.

however when it came to donating blood, the actual science of how the disease spreads (which does not discriminate based on the type of sex going down) wasnt considered at all. because of the AIDS crisis, there was the fear that any gay man (regardless if they even were sexually active) would have the disease, so they tried to stop it with the discriminating screening question on if men had sex with other men (no matter if they had 0 risk of HIV infection).

now it is based more on the science behind how HIV is spread where your risk increases with new and more partners. however, i personally cannot see why a closed polyamorous relationship would be at a substantially greater risk than a monogamous relationship when the highest risks are new and untested-for-HIV sexual partners.

basically, its gone from discriminating against all sexually active mlm people (cis and trans) to discriminating against anyone at higher risk of HIV (defined as sexually active with new and multiple partners).

so, is it worse in number discriminated against? i dont got numbers, but i’d guess its a smaller number. is it worse in That’s Too Personal to ask for blood donation? its not too unlike what was already there, and HIV is spread through blood, so not really. is it worse for open relationship polyamorous folks? perhaps if they weren’t already having man/man sex, otherwise its similar to the original q.

but like, if you’re sexually active in any way, no matter if you plan to donate blood: please get tested for HIV and other STDs for yours and your sexual partners wellbeing.

plantyhamchuk:

chase-prairie:

North American friends, please don’t mistake UK “let our native weeds grow freely” as blanket permission to claim US non-native weeds as equally beneficial. They don’t have the same value to our native pollinators

No Mow May is a huge case study on cross-Atlantic mistranslation

Listen to Dr. Sheila Colla, NA native bee expert, instead of UK honeybee people:

“Coming back from the biodiversity crisis will require active stewardship, not neglect, of altered landscapes.”

I permanently keep this article open as a tab on my phone because I reference it so much

yes, something flowering is better than nothing, but all this money, research, PR, and literal seeding of weeds going on could instead be used to support our actual native bees, instead of offering them non-native, poorly nutritious diets that can literally lead them to canibalize their own eggs

GREAT article - highly recommend

“Instead of encouraging #LazyLawns what we need to do, urgently, is to steward, tend and nurture landscapes for native biodiversity and ecological integrity. A month of long lawns filled with dandelions and other non-native weedy species just doesn’t cut it. It’s the ecological equivalent of opening a fast-food restaurant on every corner – for a short amount of time. At best, burgers and fries for a while, but not a sustained full-service menu of healthy nutrition and habitat for pollinators.

While we need to loosen the grip of the lawn on our collective landscape imaginings, here’s what the little research done to date on dandelions tells us. Dandelion has allelopathic pollen, a scientific term that basically means the pollen of dandelions can reduce reproductive success in native wildflowers, disrupting the native plant communities it invades. Another study showed that queen bumblebees (some of the early emerging wild bees that pro-dandelion campaigns say dandelions help) resorted to eating their own eggs when fed a diet of protein-deficient dandelion pollen.

This is not an argument for vilifying the dandelion or dismissing the value of rethinking manicured lawns. Indeed, one of the benefits of #NoMowMay is that it undermines the conventional lawn aesthetic and, in doing so, helps to normalize acceptance of “messy-looking” habitats that support pollinators (dead leaves and dead plant stalks, for example). Another benefit of the campaign is that not running the lawn mower will reduce noise and air pollution.

But #NoMowMay is not a one-stop solution to the loss and degradation of pollinator habitat.“

mordrediscariot:

mordrediscariot:

i hate high-budget star trek you have no business with that. put a unicorn hat on a cocker spaniel. wear felt

star trek should be about three things

1. a hopeful, if complicated, future

2. the most batshit insane gay subtext youve ever seen in your life

3. sequins