hamaan loppuun saakka

i do think there is a degree to which certain kinds of Instagram activists have convinced themselves that traumatising themselves in solidarity is a useful form of activism. "I'm having nightmares and crying so much I want to be sick because of all these videos of dying children but I can't look away while people are getting hurt" I mean don't you think you'd be able to help more if you weren't having nightmares and crying all the time?? don't you think this is a one-way trip to burnout? don't you think maybe increasing the amount of trauma going around is counterproductive? I dunno bro there's something to be said for bearing witness but there comes a point where you gotta look hard at yourself and go "am I helping, or am I just making myself suffer so I don't feel guilty for not suffering while somebody else is experiencing bad shit"

I say "there is no such thing as a thought crime" a lot on my blog. Well, the other side of the coin is there is also no such thing as thought heroics, thought charity or thought activism.

I remember an interview with Rachel Maddow where someone asked her if she felt doing her TV show was activism, and she said absolutely not. She had worked as an activist focused on getting better conditions and treatment for HIV positive people in prison earlier in her career and was very clear on the fact that taking in information, aggregating it, and sharing it with others is NOT activism.

When asked for an example of what she did consider to be activism, she talked about how they were once trying to improve the situation for people with HIV in a specific prison, so they were trying to figure out how to persuade the guy running the prison to meet with them. So they found out where his wife went to church, and who the pastor was, and then they figured out where he golfed, and that there was another member of that country club who was a lawyer that one of them had gone to law school with, so they asked the lawyer to golf with the pastor and talk him into doing a sermon on treating all people with dignity, with an emphasis on treating people with HIV fairly, and to talk about the issues at the prison with the wife of the guy who ran the prison, and they ended up getting that meeting and convincing the guy to take the necessary steps to improve conditions for people with HIV in his prison.

She emphasized that they had a concrete goal, and they developed a strategy made up of concrete steps that they could take and had a shot of working, and then took those concrete steps to reach it. That’s activism. Scrolling online is not and never will be activism.

Conflating taking in information online from unvetted sources with righteous activism and focusing on that instead of taking concrete steps to improve the world is probably a pretty good recipe for ending up as a fringe conspiracy theorist who is scared of 5G and chemtrails.

Even saying ”I’m so sorry, I completely forgot” sounds marginally better than ” I’m so sorry, I didn’t completely forget, I actually completely remembered. I thought about it the whole time and it stressed me out so much my brain built an insurmountable wall around it.”

Is this a prank? What….

Edit: holy heck it’s real…

They might be able to help us…

The stage that they're at is animal testing but it sounds like it's been successful in mouse and primate models.

My understanding: The way autoimmune diseases usually seem to work* is the immune system is "flagging" the wrong thing as harmful/not needed and destroying it. The typical treatments for autoimmune diseases are just tamping the entire immune system down so it can't destroy anything, which leaves a person vulnerable to infection.

The newer method is basically "tricking" the body using a method that... the human body already came up with. Cells flagging the wrong thing apparently happens all the time, so there are multiple defenses against immune disease, and one of them is in the liver. So scientists figured out a way to tell the body "hey, you flagged this wrong" and sent it to the liver and the liver/body recognized this signal.

There is still a lot of work to be done and it sounds like this isn't foolproof (ie: what if the liver is whats broken? unsure, and what if the immune system flags things wrong again?) but this is literally so amazing. i was tearing up reading it, and i hope that everything goes well in clinical trials.

*theres like a lot medical science doesnt know about the immune system

Thank you for this explanation/synthesis of the article! It's important for us to understand that they're still in early development and testing of these methods, but also that they've seen it work in mice and primates (rather than just petri dishes of human cells). I hope this goes well.

Hi! I'm a microbiologist and I've done work in academia, pharma, and clinical trials.

So the most exciting thing about this article is the last paragraph tbh (working on getting the actual paper, it's not up on sci-hub yet).

The company mentioned, Anokion, has four registered clinical trials for both Celiac and MS patients. The trial for Celiac just submitted data from their phase 1 trial (meaning there's good data it is safe) and are recruiting for a Phase 1/2 trial (meaning they are now testing efficacy). After that, the big hurdle is phase 3, which looks at whether or not it is better than a current treatment. The projected completion date is spring 2025. They are also preparing for a Phase 2 trial but are not yet recruiting.

The phase 1 MS trial is currently active, estimated completion in summer 2024.

I checked the company website and it looks like they are in the process of submitting an investigational new drug (IND) application for Type 1 diabetes. This is the first step to starting clinical safety and efficacy trials.

Now clinical trials can get delayed for a variety of reasons, but this is a really good sign! It's way further along than I initially thought when seeing the news. If the treatment does well, we could see new drugs on the market for Celiacs as early at 2030ish and MS as early as 2035.

I literally just burst into tears and woke up my partners.

Holy shit. The idea of not having celiac disease anymore is so completely overwhelming.

Update: I have registered for the trial and if you also have celiac and want to register the link is here.

male filmmaker: *finding every possible gratuitous way to feature skinny naked women in his work* it’s a social commentary on how females are objectified all the time in real life

A1-A2: man, there're so many words I need to know in order to say literally anything

B1-B2: wow, what I know is enough now

C1-C2: man, there're so many weirdly specific words I need to know in order to describe these weirdly specific things I've only seen once in my life. Also I forgot how to say ceiling.

"You deserve my full focus."

could today be the perfect day for you to read a chapter of my visual novel, soul of sovereignty? it could be.

"what's it about?" two unlikely companions seek out the power to recreate their dying world in the all-pervading shadow of the capitalist church state

"that sounds heavy" it's about a mild-mannered wizard dad getting his shit rocked by a sexy clown

"ok, but i've never played a visual novel before. i'm scared." that is o.k. my friend. it's just like reading a regular novel, except it has pretty pictures and also music by my dear friend toby fox.

soulsov could be real... life could be dream...

what say you, traveler...?

Hello! I come with some good news! In the EU, a law has been passed restricting generative AIs (particularly ones that pose a high risk). I hope other areas in the world follow suit, but this is huge! It'll take a while to be applied as well, though this is still a major win for everyone.

What this new law means...

AI will be banned from being used for the following purposes:

'Biometric categorisation systems' using sensitive information scraped from images on the internet and CCTV footage.' This means people can't use AI/scraping to create a catalogue for;

People will gain the right to file complaints regarding AI systems.

AI developers must minimize risk to people, maintain usage logs, ensure transparency, and implement human oversight.

AI models will have to comply with EU copyright law

This means AI devs will HAVE to provide a comprehensive and detailed summary of the data used to train their AI's.

Any AI generated video, image, or audio (including deepfakes) MUST be labelled as such.

This is not in force for at LEAST two years. However it *is* going to become law (with an overwhelming majority of the European Parliament voting in favour, 523 in favour, 46 against, 49 absent.)

This is the first what is likely to be a slew of laws and regulations regarding the usage of AI.

Slight note that this is not "including deepfakes" but rather only deepfakes. However, the definition of deepfake stated by the act* would seemingly include anything AI generated that makes it look like someone did or said something they didn't, which seems like it would include things such as fake twitter screenshots.

It's a pretty broad clause, but it doesn't in any way seem to include AI art, except probably in the case that it's being used to claim someone else made the art when they didn't. (IMO this is a good thing. I don't think legally forced disclosure is necessary for non-deceptive content but that's just my opinion, feel free to disagree)

This is a very good piece of legislature regardless, though, and is most (but definitely not all) of what I'd like to see from regulations on the subject.

*("deep fake" means manipulated or synthetic audio, image or video content that would falsely appear to be authentic or truthful, and which features depictions of persons appearing to say or do things they did not say or do, produced using AI techniques, including machine learning and deep learning;" -quote from the PDF)

need to fall down this rabbit hole immediately.

PLEASE listen to these fucking sounds (credit)

Oh shit that's so fucking cool. Those sounds are the actual "dead satellite" transmissions,

I really don’t feel like we as a society are talking enough about this

TURN THE FUCKING AUDIO ON

PROVIDE SUBTITLES

Fawn: *squeaking adorably throughout the entire video*

Man: I’m not momma, momma’s over there. Hi there little guy. You are teeny-tiny. Here, look at you next to my coffee cup so we can see how little you are. *laughs* You are teeny-teeny-tiny.

Gundam 0079: The War for Earth

Read more...

I made this zine last year to teach Japanese stab binding. It's a technique that every artist should know—with just a few tools, it's so easy to bind your own sketchbook or to make a physical version of your art/writing/etc. Download the PDF version (with bonus photos & tips!)

Happy Stardew Update Day from this unfinished WIP that will haunt me forever 🥲

This is I guess are the looks that I think are "close" to their Canon fits (Emily is in her "uniform" and I am reserving Leah's suspender moment for her art show event) and this is what I think height would be like if they were to stood next each other.

This was absolutely fun to make!!!! I spend a good time looking through Pinterest and I am glad I was finally able to put to good use all that browsing. I am very glad you guys liked my interpretations of each character!!

Emily/Haley, Leah, Maru, Penny, Abigail

✨✨✨✨The boiis are up next!!!!! ✨✨✨✨✨

Shane, Harvey, Sam, Sebastian, Alex, Elliot

Looking forward to do research and drawing them!!!!