jimmyhoffathecat:

Dapper young man

topazadine:

Happy pride everyone, it’s all Ohio (always has been)

viralfrog:

everythingfox:

Must get

topazadine:

Happy pride everyone, it’s all Ohio (always has been)

the-voidkin-playground:

yahooo-official:

hey guys. the carbon monoxide detector in my home started going off earlier today. it turned out to be a false alarm, but i feel like i should take this opportunity to say: it is so important to have a carbon monoxide detector in your home! carbon monoxide is scentless and tasteless, so you won’t know unless you have one! if you don’t have one, get one! if you do have one, when was the last time you replaced its batteries? and how old is it? carbon monoxide detectors last for about 10 years, so if yours is older than that, replace it! if it dies, it could either go off indefinitely (which is what caused my family’s incident,) or not go off when it’s supposed to (this is much worse!)

important addition!

do you often hear a shrill beep every minute or so?

that’s probably your carbon monoxide detector telling you to replace the batteries!

(text version: 4 beeps and a pause: emergency. this means that carbon monoxide has been detected in the area, you should move to fresh air and call 9-1-1.

1 beep every minute: low battery. it is time to replace the batteries in your carbon monoxide alarm.

5 beeps every minute: end of life. this chirp means it is time to replace your carbon monoxide alarm.)

Carbon Monoxide Detector Beeping - Why is my Carbon Monoxide Alarm Beeping

according to first alert, you’re also supposed to replace your carbon monoxide detectors every 7 years, because the sensors get weaker! yes, even if it’s not giving end-of-life beeps!

carbon monoxide poisoning can lead to permanent brain damage and death

(plain text: carbon monoxide poisoning can leas to permanent brain damage and death)

symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include: headaches, weakness, dizziness, nausea or vomiting, shortness of breath, confusion, blurred vision, drowsiness, loss of muscle control, and loss of consciousness.

Carbon monoxide poisoning - Symptoms and causes

over 400 americans die every year from carbon monoxide poisoning not linked to fires, over 100,000 visit emergency rooms, and over 14,000 are hospitalized

(plain text: over 400 americans die every year from carbon monoxide poisoning not linked to fires, over 100,000 visit emergency rooms, and over 14,000 are hospitalized)

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Basics

please don’t take the risk, the best way to stay safe is to replace your carbon monoxide alarm’s batteries when needed, and entirely replace your carbon monoxide alarm when it reaches the end of its life

:

weezeryuri:

making a collection

hey op heres a new one

bloedgetuige:

sparkle, if you must. its tuesday. be whoever is most convenient for you

detective-slenderman:

kuromi-hoemie:

sonic-justice-real-for:

pansyfemme:

relationships and jobs are temporary. your shitty unpopular tumblr blog is forever

The crowd dances on…

memories:

One iced latte with low-fat #shadow wizard money gang milk, please.

memeuplift:

lyricwritesprose:

three–rings:

mikkeneko:

doctorbluesmanreturns:

pennie-dreadful:

fluffmugger:

godlessondheimite:

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary.  And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to participate in this system.  If that means I go to Hell, so be it.  Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature.  Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.  Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.”  Interesting guy.  Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

creekfiend:

do it scared. do it vaguely uncomfortable. do it mysteriously damp

lyricwritesprose:

three–rings:

mikkeneko:

doctorbluesmanreturns:

pennie-dreadful:

fluffmugger:

godlessondheimite:

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary.  And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to participate in this system.  If that means I go to Hell, so be it.  Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature.  Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.  Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.”  Interesting guy.  Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

purplepints:

missrebelred:

carnivalseb:

huggablekaiju:

madgastronomer:

mycroftrh:

smallswingshoes:

psychoactive-teratogen:

elfwreck:

star-anise:

brs-love:

aphilologicalbatman:

freedom-of-fanfic:

star-anise:

My girlfriend and I talk a lot about our different generations of queerness, because she was doing queer activism in the 1990s and I wasn’t.

And she’s supportive of my writing about queerness but also kind of bitter about how quickly her entire generation’s history has disappeared into a bland “AIDS was bad, gay marriage solved homophobia” narrative, and now we’re having to play catch-up to educate young LGBTQ+ people about queer history and queer theory. It gets pretty raw sometimes.

I mean, a large part of the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.

“Excuse us,” she said bitterly the other day, not at me but to me, “for not laying the groundwork for children we never thought we’d have in a future none of us thought we’d be alive for.”

“the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.”

thank you for giving me a good reason to finish my dissertation and try to make it in the academy

Wait, idk LGBTQ+ history, but they died of AIDS cause, what, hospitals refused to treat them or…?

Oh heck yeah.

When an epidemic happens, public health agencies spend millions of dollars trying to understand what happens: Why are people sick or dying? What caused it? Who else is at risk? Government health departments like the Centres for Disease control and private companies both invest hundreds of millions of dollars into preserving public health. This happened in 1977, when military veterans who all attended the same gathering began to get sick with a strange type of pneumonia, with 182 cases and 29 dead, and the CDC traced the illness to a bacterium distributed by the air conditioning system of a hotel they all stayed at, and in 1982, when seven people died of tainted Tylenol, and pharmaceutical companies changed the entire way their products were made and packaged to prevent more deaths.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic took six years to be recognized by the CDC (1975-1981) because at first the only people dying were intravenous drug users, which is to say, heroin addicts; when it was recognized, President Reagan’s government pressured the CDC to spend as little time and money on AIDS as possible, because they literally didn’t think gay lives were important. So yes, hospitals refused to treat them and medical staff treated them as disgusting people who deserved to die, but also, there was very little funding for scientists to understand what this disease was, what caused it, where it came from, how it spread, or how to stop it. The LGBTQ+ community had to organize and fight to get hospitals to treat them, to fund scientific research, to be legally allowed to buy the drugs that kept them alive, and to have access to treatment. An effective treatment for AIDS wasn’t found until 1995.

And it’s ongoing; a lot of the difficulty of fighting AIDS in Africa is that it’s seen as “the gay disease” (and thanks to European colonialism, even African societies that used to be okay with us were taught to think LGBTQ+ people are bad).  Even now that we have medications that can treat or prevent AIDS, they’re incredibly expensive and hard to get; in 2015, New York businessman Martin Shkreli acquired the exclusive right to make a drug that treats an AIDS-related disease, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. 

Here’s one history on what it was like to have and fight AIDS, one history on how politicians responded to the epidemic, and if you can get a copy of the documentary How to Survive a Plague, it’s a good introduction, because it’s about how AIDS patients had to fight for their lives. A lot of these histories are imperfect and incomplete, because privilege played a big part in whose lives and deaths were seen as important–Poor people, people of colour, trans people, and drug addicts were less likely to be able to afford or access medical care, and more likely to die without being remembered; histories often tend to focus on straight people who got AIDS through no fault of their own, and then white cis gay men who seem more “respectable” and “relatable”.  

I mean, people who will talk about how homophobia led to neglect of AIDS still find ways not to mention that AIDS isn’t just sexually transmitted; it’s hugely a disease of drug addicts, because sharing needles is a huge way the disease spreads. But because society always thinks, oh, drug addicts are bad and disgusting people and of course criminals, that often gets neatly dropped from the histories, and it’s still hard to get people to agree to things that keep drug addicts alive, like needle exchanges and supervised injection sites. But if you want my rant about how the war on drugs is bullshit used to control poor people and people of colour, and drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you’ll have to ask for that separately.

They died of AIDS because

• Hospitals refused to treat them, and when they did get admitted, treated them like dirt so their will-to-live was eroded - refused to let long-term partners visit them, staff acted like they were disgusting nuisances, etc.
• Very little funding was put into finding causes or cures - AIDS was considered “god’s punishment” for immoral behavior by a whole lot of people.
• Once causes were understood (effective treatments were a long ways off), information about those causes weren’t widely shared - because it was a “sex disease” (it wasn’t) and because a huge number of the victims were gay or needle-drug users, and the people in charge of disease prevention (or in charge of funding) didn’t care if all of those people just died.
• Not until it started hitting straight people and superstar celebrities (e.g. Rock Hudson) did it get treated as A Real Problem - and by that time, it had reached terrifying epidemic conditions.

Picture from 1993:

We lost basically a whole generation of the queer community.

As a current AIDS survivor, this is really important information. I was diagnosed not only HIV positive in 2014, but I had already progressed to an AIDS diagnosis. Knowing how far we’ve come with treatment and what the trials and tribulations of those who came before cannot and must not ever be forgotten. Awareness is the number one goal. I often speak to the microbiology students at my university to explain what it’s like to live with, how the medications work, side effects, how it’s affected my daily life, and just raise general awareness.

Before my diagnosis, I, like many others, was clueless to how far treatment has come. I was still under the belief my diagnosis was a death sentence. Moving forward, even if only one person hears my story, that’s one more person that’s educated and can raise awareness.

I believe it’s time for us as a society to start better education of this disease. The vast majority of the people I’ve spoken to are receptive to the knowledge of my status, and I’ve received lots of support from loved ones, friends, and total strangers. It’s time to beat the stigma.

This is slightly off-point, but as for the cost, I wanted to mention that some pharmacies have specialties that let them get special coupons/programs and stuff to save money.

A bottle of Truvada (a month supply commonly used for treating this) is at least $3,000 out of pocket and insurance doesn’t usually take a lot off of that. But the pharmacy I work at is an HIV specialty and we always get te price down to less than $10.

If you’re on HIV meds and they’re ludicrously expensive, ask your local pharmacy manager if there are any local HIV specialty pharmacies that they know of. They might be able to help.

I think it’s important to emphasize that, while the diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, it is also true that people dying of AIDS because of homophobia is not history only.

My brother’s first boyfriend was kicked out/disowned by his parents for being queer, got AIDS, couldn’t afford treatment, and died.  He died in 2019, at around 20 years old.

In 2019.

Barely more than a kid.

Of a treatable disease.

Because of homophobia.

Because his parents cared more about not being associated with a queer person than they cared about their son’s literal life.

AIDS is not just history.  Neither is homophobia.

Back to history: When AIDS patients held die-ins, they went to hospitals, lay down in front of them, and literally waited to die.

If you’re young & either queer or queer-adjacent, think about the number of people out of the closet you know your own age & think about how many you know your parents age.
They’re not stamping us out of the mould any quicker these days than in the ‘60s, except in lockstep with population growth.

I think, growing up, my picture of relative numbers of queer people & straights was unavoidably impacted by the number of empty seats at our table. That might be the case for you too.
The number of elders you never got to meet.

Remember this when people talk about how small the LGBTQIA+ population is. That it’s “such a small percentage of the population to be catered too”. Remember this and tell them, “that’s because homophobia killed them”.

This picture of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is often included with the “The men facing the camera/in white are the surviving members” but it leaves out something extremely important:

By 1996, all of the men facing the camera in the picture were dead.

Every.

Single.

One.

Eric Luse, the photographer, said this in a more recent article :

By 1996 the obituary list was almost 50 names longer than the entire choral roster. All of the positions plus four dozen more, gone. The obituary list continued to grow, too. The cost and availability of any treatments in the mid-late 90s continued to cause more death.

If you were queer in the 80s and 90s, you knew someone who had it and knew people who died from it. Period. I cannot stress the impact this had on the queer community and those of us who were alive at the time, and I know the scope of it is almost unimaginable to younger people today.

By 1996, there were NO surviving original members of the SFGMC. You need to know that when you see this picture.

Dozens of the men turned away from the camera here in this shot were also dead alongside the men in white. It is vital to recognize that.

There is no hope in this picture, it isn’t a display of a lucky few who avoided death. There is no “Well at least some of them survived” because no, they didn’t, and this time was so fucking bleak and painful it’s astonishing that anything got done. They’d march one week and die the next. Their friends would bury them in the morning and march in the afternoon. This went on for years.

Bigotry and hate and ignorance killed generations of queer people. It speaks to the sheer resilience of the community that from that all but state-sanctioned genocide, we have gained so much ground in the last few decades. Much is owed to the people who refused to stay quiet and who fought even on their deathbeds, so please consider learning about LGBTQ+ history as a way of continuing the fight and showing respect. Many of us coming of age at that time didn’t have that opportunity, and made it a point to learn and get involved as teenagers and young adults because we saw what we were losing.

Sing for two.

purplepints:

missrebelred:

carnivalseb:

huggablekaiju:

madgastronomer:

mycroftrh:

smallswingshoes:

psychoactive-teratogen:

elfwreck:

star-anise:

brs-love:

aphilologicalbatman:

freedom-of-fanfic:

star-anise:

My girlfriend and I talk a lot about our different generations of queerness, because she was doing queer activism in the 1990s and I wasn’t.

And she’s supportive of my writing about queerness but also kind of bitter about how quickly her entire generation’s history has disappeared into a bland “AIDS was bad, gay marriage solved homophobia” narrative, and now we’re having to play catch-up to educate young LGBTQ+ people about queer history and queer theory. It gets pretty raw sometimes.

I mean, a large part of the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.

“Excuse us,” she said bitterly the other day, not at me but to me, “for not laying the groundwork for children we never thought we’d have in a future none of us thought we’d be alive for.”

“the reason TERFs have been good at educating the young and queer people haven’t is, in the 80s and 90s the leading lights of TERFdom got tenured university positions, and the leading lights of queerdom died of AIDS.”

thank you for giving me a good reason to finish my dissertation and try to make it in the academy

Wait, idk LGBTQ+ history, but they died of AIDS cause, what, hospitals refused to treat them or…?

Oh heck yeah.

When an epidemic happens, public health agencies spend millions of dollars trying to understand what happens: Why are people sick or dying? What caused it? Who else is at risk? Government health departments like the Centres for Disease control and private companies both invest hundreds of millions of dollars into preserving public health. This happened in 1977, when military veterans who all attended the same gathering began to get sick with a strange type of pneumonia, with 182 cases and 29 dead, and the CDC traced the illness to a bacterium distributed by the air conditioning system of a hotel they all stayed at, and in 1982, when seven people died of tainted Tylenol, and pharmaceutical companies changed the entire way their products were made and packaged to prevent more deaths.

Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic took six years to be recognized by the CDC (1975-1981) because at first the only people dying were intravenous drug users, which is to say, heroin addicts; when it was recognized, President Reagan’s government pressured the CDC to spend as little time and money on AIDS as possible, because they literally didn’t think gay lives were important. So yes, hospitals refused to treat them and medical staff treated them as disgusting people who deserved to die, but also, there was very little funding for scientists to understand what this disease was, what caused it, where it came from, how it spread, or how to stop it. The LGBTQ+ community had to organize and fight to get hospitals to treat them, to fund scientific research, to be legally allowed to buy the drugs that kept them alive, and to have access to treatment. An effective treatment for AIDS wasn’t found until 1995.

And it’s ongoing; a lot of the difficulty of fighting AIDS in Africa is that it’s seen as “the gay disease” (and thanks to European colonialism, even African societies that used to be okay with us were taught to think LGBTQ+ people are bad).  Even now that we have medications that can treat or prevent AIDS, they’re incredibly expensive and hard to get; in 2015, New York businessman Martin Shkreli acquired the exclusive right to make a drug that treats an AIDS-related disease, and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. 

Here’s one history on what it was like to have and fight AIDS, one history on how politicians responded to the epidemic, and if you can get a copy of the documentary How to Survive a Plague, it’s a good introduction, because it’s about how AIDS patients had to fight for their lives. A lot of these histories are imperfect and incomplete, because privilege played a big part in whose lives and deaths were seen as important–Poor people, people of colour, trans people, and drug addicts were less likely to be able to afford or access medical care, and more likely to die without being remembered; histories often tend to focus on straight people who got AIDS through no fault of their own, and then white cis gay men who seem more “respectable” and “relatable”.  

I mean, people who will talk about how homophobia led to neglect of AIDS still find ways not to mention that AIDS isn’t just sexually transmitted; it’s hugely a disease of drug addicts, because sharing needles is a huge way the disease spreads. But because society always thinks, oh, drug addicts are bad and disgusting people and of course criminals, that often gets neatly dropped from the histories, and it’s still hard to get people to agree to things that keep drug addicts alive, like needle exchanges and supervised injection sites. But if you want my rant about how the war on drugs is bullshit used to control poor people and people of colour, and drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you’ll have to ask for that separately.

They died of AIDS because

• Hospitals refused to treat them, and when they did get admitted, treated them like dirt so their will-to-live was eroded - refused to let long-term partners visit them, staff acted like they were disgusting nuisances, etc.
• Very little funding was put into finding causes or cures - AIDS was considered “god’s punishment” for immoral behavior by a whole lot of people.
• Once causes were understood (effective treatments were a long ways off), information about those causes weren’t widely shared - because it was a “sex disease” (it wasn’t) and because a huge number of the victims were gay or needle-drug users, and the people in charge of disease prevention (or in charge of funding) didn’t care if all of those people just died.
• Not until it started hitting straight people and superstar celebrities (e.g. Rock Hudson) did it get treated as A Real Problem - and by that time, it had reached terrifying epidemic conditions.

Picture from 1993:

We lost basically a whole generation of the queer community.

As a current AIDS survivor, this is really important information. I was diagnosed not only HIV positive in 2014, but I had already progressed to an AIDS diagnosis. Knowing how far we’ve come with treatment and what the trials and tribulations of those who came before cannot and must not ever be forgotten. Awareness is the number one goal. I often speak to the microbiology students at my university to explain what it’s like to live with, how the medications work, side effects, how it’s affected my daily life, and just raise general awareness.

Before my diagnosis, I, like many others, was clueless to how far treatment has come. I was still under the belief my diagnosis was a death sentence. Moving forward, even if only one person hears my story, that’s one more person that’s educated and can raise awareness.

I believe it’s time for us as a society to start better education of this disease. The vast majority of the people I’ve spoken to are receptive to the knowledge of my status, and I’ve received lots of support from loved ones, friends, and total strangers. It’s time to beat the stigma.

This is slightly off-point, but as for the cost, I wanted to mention that some pharmacies have specialties that let them get special coupons/programs and stuff to save money.

A bottle of Truvada (a month supply commonly used for treating this) is at least $3,000 out of pocket and insurance doesn’t usually take a lot off of that. But the pharmacy I work at is an HIV specialty and we always get te price down to less than $10.

If you’re on HIV meds and they’re ludicrously expensive, ask your local pharmacy manager if there are any local HIV specialty pharmacies that they know of. They might be able to help.

I think it’s important to emphasize that, while the diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, it is also true that people dying of AIDS because of homophobia is not history only.

My brother’s first boyfriend was kicked out/disowned by his parents for being queer, got AIDS, couldn’t afford treatment, and died.  He died in 2019, at around 20 years old.

In 2019.

Barely more than a kid.

Of a treatable disease.

Because of homophobia.

Because his parents cared more about not being associated with a queer person than they cared about their son’s literal life.

AIDS is not just history.  Neither is homophobia.

Back to history: When AIDS patients held die-ins, they went to hospitals, lay down in front of them, and literally waited to die.

If you’re young & either queer or queer-adjacent, think about the number of people out of the closet you know your own age & think about how many you know your parents age.
They’re not stamping us out of the mould any quicker these days than in the ‘60s, except in lockstep with population growth.

I think, growing up, my picture of relative numbers of queer people & straights was unavoidably impacted by the number of empty seats at our table. That might be the case for you too.
The number of elders you never got to meet.

Remember this when people talk about how small the LGBTQIA+ population is. That it’s “such a small percentage of the population to be catered too”. Remember this and tell them, “that’s because homophobia killed them”.

This picture of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is often included with the “The men facing the camera/in white are the surviving members” but it leaves out something extremely important:

By 1996, all of the men facing the camera in the picture were dead.

Every.

Single.

One.

Eric Luse, the photographer, said this in a more recent article :

By 1996 the obituary list was almost 50 names longer than the entire choral roster. All of the positions plus four dozen more, gone. The obituary list continued to grow, too. The cost and availability of any treatments in the mid-late 90s continued to cause more death.

If you were queer in the 80s and 90s, you knew someone who had it and knew people who died from it. Period. I cannot stress the impact this had on the queer community and those of us who were alive at the time, and I know the scope of it is almost unimaginable to younger people today.

By 1996, there were NO surviving original members of the SFGMC. You need to know that when you see this picture.

Dozens of the men turned away from the camera here in this shot were also dead alongside the men in white. It is vital to recognize that.

There is no hope in this picture, it isn’t a display of a lucky few who avoided death. There is no “Well at least some of them survived” because no, they didn’t, and this time was so fucking bleak and painful it’s astonishing that anything got done. They’d march one week and die the next. Their friends would bury them in the morning and march in the afternoon. This went on for years.

Bigotry and hate and ignorance killed generations of queer people. It speaks to the sheer resilience of the community that from that all but state-sanctioned genocide, we have gained so much ground in the last few decades. Much is owed to the people who refused to stay quiet and who fought even on their deathbeds, so please consider learning about LGBTQ+ history as a way of continuing the fight and showing respect. Many of us coming of age at that time didn’t have that opportunity, and made it a point to learn and get involved as teenagers and young adults because we saw what we were losing.

Sing for two.

jouster-ari:

catslock:

theladyscribe:

when I was younger I didn’t understand why “may you live in interesting times” was considered a curse in ancient greece.

I get it now.

doesn’t get much more interesting than this

wizardarchetypes:

I had to find this post. I read this in 2017 and it had a profound effect on me. I couldn’t stop saying it. It was echolalia. And now to this day, for seven years, I can still quote it perfectly Word for Word and often do when I do something stupid. This is the perfect post in my opinion 

sadomarxist:

captain-price-unofficially:

lmao

yeah, we can tell.

cryptotheism:

Good news for American minorities: shooter was white

bees-official:

non-tyrannical-usa:

gibbish-anon-from-gell-deactiva:

gh0stcvlt:

:

ashes-onthewind:

ashes-onthewind:

altheadajoysoul:

pixliidraws:

creepychippy:

asheandaxy:

hyper-raccoon23-deactivated2024:

yourlocalbreadenthusiast:

dubiouscats:

alyxtherat:

you have been SNIFED, reblog to snif the next person

Snif

SNIF

Snif

@creepychippy Snif

snif snif

snifsnifsnif

@irishfry @cactus-with-boobs @mrmorphea @ducks-on-jupiter @the-cereal-simp snifs u guys

@irishfry @mrmorphea @cactus-with-boobs @the-cereal-simp @ducks-on-jupiter @banhamm3r-r3al @sunglasses-in-the-bentley

RADAR HAS SNIFFED YOU

ALT

shniffff

@dis-is-cord

snrf snef snif

@thesmallestclown @orange-oracy

SNNIF

@rat-detector

homunculus-argument:

tfisathoughtfulnickelbakeryfire:

homunculus-argument:

homunculus-argument:

Invite a friend to come over. Leave your front door unlocked, leave your phone on the table and climb out of your window. When they show up to your place, just sit quietly nearby and observe. See if they try the door. The door is unlocked. If they go in, wait a few minutes. Come home like normal. Act spooked that they’re there. Demand to know what the fuck they’re doing in your house. Act confused by their claim that you invited them, and point out that your phone was at home this whole time. They could have sent those messages to themselves from your phone to invite themselves over.

It’s your word against theirs and you both have the same defense: nobody normal would do that for no reason.

Just after making this post I got a tumblr ad suggesting whether I’ve considered finding jesus.

Well. Have you?

It’s his turn to search and I’m too good at hiding.

newtsfrogstoads:

newtsfrogstoads:

Going from being an introverted lurker on reddit to trying to post my own stuff here is so wild. I keep typing out a post, deleting it, then retyping because I think it’s not good enough but then I look at other posts and why am I so worried?

It’s like I’m at a fancy Italian restaurant and keep glancing around the room to see which hand people use to pick up the forks. But then I realize that everyone is shoveling spaghetti into their mouths using their bare hands and I’m like ah okay so I’m clearly overthinking this

This restaurant is absolute chaos and I’m giving it 5 stars

wondersmith-and-sons:

wondersmith-and-sons:

foreman. babe. we’re at the bottom end of season 8. you have worked here for almost a decade. why are you still surprised there’s medical malpractice going on at the medical malpractice department that you, personally, used to do medical malpractice at

some of my fave tags on this post

god this show is truly bonkers isn’t it.

adaine:

the death of dvds is so fucked. what about bonus features

neometalpussy:

i don’t know man, i just wish that we could [suddenly realising i’m coming dangerously close to expressing a real and earnest thought instead of filtering everything through several layers of intangible running bits] blow up the entire world. or something.

neometalpussy:

i don’t know man, i just wish that we could [suddenly realising i’m coming dangerously close to expressing a real and earnest thought instead of filtering everything through several layers of intangible running bits] blow up the entire world. or something.

blignick:

aniseandspearmint:

hunter-rodrigez:

catchymemes:

Some good old american infrastructure right there!

crashtestjeffy-deactivated20240:

@wilwheaton

echohousehold:

o1ie:

o1ie:

brb going outside to wistfully observe the reflections of the shop lights in the wet streets

thats what im fucking talking about

good post, op

sreegs:

teaspoon-sarah:

sreegs:

sreegs:

i’m not a lesbian as far as i know and i already have a wife but thanks tumblr

man what did i click on that tumblr thinks im gay

the sign in button?

yaboy-miz:

Sometimes the best way to get back into drawing again is to draw a silly little creature or two.

I’ve been struggling to get myself to draw and then a drew a rat and now I’m on stuck drawing little guys for the next few hours.

b0nkcreat:

this image is like a brother to me. it isn’t even a meme it’s just real life

yardsards:

bringing back this vintage meme for the anniversary of dashcon and totally not for any other current events :)

ALT

thehmn:

The scariest part of becoming an adult is not making your own doctor’s appointment or having to learn how to do taxes. It’s that children will now see you as an adult and rely on you for help and protection.

A comedian once told a story where his son came into his bedroom at night and said he was scared because he heard a sound outside. The comedian said “Oh shit we better get an adult. Oh no. I’m the adult” and the first time this new role as expected protector of children really became clear for me was when my neighbor’s daughter knocked on my door and asked me to come help her and her friend get a dog back into the house.

Long story short my neighbor was running a small dog recuse for Eastern European street dogs and one got outside while the kids were home alone. They had managed to corner it in the front garden but had been told to never touch it for their own safety. As I followed the girl into the garden I heard her yell to her friend “I got an adult!” and I had the same feeling as the comedian “Oh no. I’m the adult” It turned out to be a midsized dog that could have hurt me but very unlikely to kill me and luckily it wasn’t aggressive at all and the situation was easily solved.

Since then I’ve been in several situations where children have looked to me for help or protection, including strangers. And I know people will want to rant about how parents should be more protective of their children but that’s not the point. When you’re an adult you’re a real shithead if you don’t help young children because they are completely reliant on adults for survival and sometimes that can be scary but you’re an adult now so at the very least you have to get them somewhere safe. One time a young boy approached be at a bus stop because a group of older teenagers had stolen his phone and were now following him. Groups of teenage boys can be fucking monsters and I was probably as scared as him but I took a photo of the group in the messenger app which meant the image was immediately sent to my friend, which made them back off when they realized they had no way of getting out of it. I ended up following the boy home. It was terrifying and I missed my bus but that’s the scariest part of being an adult we never consider as children.

linkerbell:

beautysnake:

What he doesn’t know wont hurt him………

nice

the-trash-eating-llama:

that-weird-art-girl-deactivated:

pogasm:

Always get the itemized list, babes. ALWAYS.

Not just for medical either. Ever got smacked with a huge ass fee for “damages” when you move out of an apartment that not just eats your security deposit but tries to take an arm and a leg as well.

Ask for the itemized list, you will be surprised how fast they come back with a “huh, that’s weird, I can’t seem to find where these damages are coming from” and let that shit go.

People WILL try to screw you on all kinds of routine and mundane shit. Don’t let them.

eikotheblue:

hybridzizi:

eikotheblue:

triviallytrue:

eikotheblue:

eikotheblue:

California girls we’re unaccountable

California girls we’re unforgivable

unintentional plagiarism of another post! hbomberguy kill their ass

california girls we’re unoriginal 😔

You’re from Washington.

california girls we’re washingtonian

bun0nthemoon:

MEET SPARK

longhorned:

laurae, a small Native farmer who built up her farm over the last five years, was served a 90-day eviction notice despite being promised by the landowner that she would be given a purchase agreement and the farm would never be sold to another person. Everything she has is in this farm - she’s put thousands of hours of work into it, built her cabin by hand, and invested every penny she’s made back into it. we are fighting to help her get the money to purchase her land before someone else buys it and kicks her - and us, her tenants who had no access to land without her help - off.

she ships her jams & honey, which you can buy here

you can also donate directly to the gofundme here

I know we’re all hurting right now and the world is fucked. but I love laurae and she’s done so much for all the people in her life. She has nowhere to go, no other options for a home, and no means to start over. she is a veteran, a survivor of multiple cancers, and close to fifty. all she wants is to live out her days on her farm till she hands it off to the next generation of farmers and I don’t want to see that simple thing taken away from her.

gaynfl:

Representative Rashida Tlaib (the only Palestinian member of the US Congress) holds up a sign saying “WAR CRIMINAL” and “GUILTY OF GENOCIDE” as Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress.

paper-mario-wiki:

punkitt-is-here:

hello transgender woman on reddit. before you is a transfem who is pre-everything asking about how to get a close shave on facial hair. if you reply “just get laser hair removal” a bomb will go off killing you instantly

safety razor and shaving butter is the way to go, in my experience!

blades with multiple razors tug and irritate my skin more often, and don’t cut nearly as closely. and shaving cream is inconsistent with its actual viscosity and overall quality for the shave.

i keep a bit of shaving butter in my left hand at all times, and i keep my right hand for my razor, that way i dont make the handle all slippy.

also, since most safety razors have two sides, i recommend using one side for each half of your face! it spreads out the wear more evenly, making it easier to reuse them. i reuse razors for 2-3 shaves. i could probably reuse them for one or two more shaves, but i prefer not to take a chance.

to dispose of razors, i get a piece of packing tape and fold it over the razor. the only way anyone’s gonna get hurt by that is if they go out of their way to pry open the tape to get to the dangerous object.

the total cost of this was about $100 for the safety razor (this is the one i use), butter, and 100 reusable razors, which i paid over a year ago. since then i havent spent a penny on shaving, and i foresee myself not needing to for a while longer. maybe on shaving butter, but that’s it.

for actual shaving technique, i give my face 3 passes. once while going with the grain (the direction your hair is growing in), once taking the grain from the side, and once going against the grain. that usually leaves me smooth for a day and a half. with a bit of foundation, you can cover up the next day’s stubble relatively easily.

shaving every day is bad for you, so i try to leave at least 2 days for the microcuts on my face from the razor to heal between shaves, and i recommend doing the same.

princematchabelli:

the main driving force in my life is acquiring information. if you ever see me doing something stupid please understand its because i have probably developed some bizarre idea about how to acquire more information and i have disregarded other concerns (“safety,” “politeness”) in favor of my ultimate goal. what am i going to do with this information? nothing at all. i am going to sit on it like a dragon sits on its golden hoard. dragons dont need gold to buy anything they are just using it as some type of really big couch or sensory sand type of situation. this is my relationship to information. in the past i have been happy to eat villagers in order to acquire my information but i am trying to be better now and only blackmail them, which i understand is more polite in many human cultures. im losing track of this metaphor. someone tell me a secret.

disgustinggf:

vro0ms-evil-twin:

vro0ms-evil-twin:

Wait I’ve just read something and I can’t. Can people stop thinking?

I’M DEAD SERIOUS

CAN YOU GUYS STOP THINKING??????

yes

no

See Results

Yes?? Just look at some random point in your environment and stop thinking thoughts. Just look at the point.

Sure it gets tiring and boring pretty quickly but still it’s not hard?

headspace-hotel:

dramaticowl:

explorerrowan:

angiethewitch:

eco-socialism:

hey a local town actually did this!

they planted berries, root vegetables, leafy greens, herbs, all sorts. they label each plant and the sign said “free to take, leave some for others to enjoy!”

and people did. they took a bit, but left some for others.

it also fed the homeless people living around there.

bearing in mind this is a tourist town, so i half expected to see the plants gone. but nope, there’s always some left.

people aren’t naturally selfish, and they will share. the initiative works

And honestly? Most people who don’t need it won’t bother to stop and pick fruit. It’s only people who actually need it who will devote the time. People with money still have grocery stores.

[Image description: tweet by Black Botanist @CreativeTiana: transcript follows]

I was talking to someone about planting food and fruit trees in public spaces and they were like “Why so everyone can steal the food?”

And I was like “See, that’s the problem right there. Why should taking food off a public tree be stealing?”

“Urban food forest” is something I’m hearing more and more. Do some poking around, there may be an opportunity to help with or start something like this near you.

doll-ovipositor:

the machine and the divine are the same kind of erotic because they’re the same kind of perfection. btw