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@cryolyst / cryolyst.tumblr.com

Bird | 22 | they/ey | i block blank blogs ♡ | lemme know if you want me to tag something
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reblogged

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

  • it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).
  • it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

  • upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.
  • enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.
  • enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.
  • accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

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reblogged

give it up for what i didn’t know before by ada limón everyone please clap for what i didn’t know before by ada limón

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thottacelli

Another aspect of the Gaza Genocide that I want to talk about is the complicity of Internet banking and crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe.

I have seen multiple Gazans raise enough money to leave for Egypt, but the banks and the crowdfunding websites freeze their money or cancel their funds for "suspicious activity" or whatever. Every day that passes in Gaza supplies get more scarce, conditions get more deadly, and the price to cross into Egypt gets more expensive. I've seen people, like ghost-90 here on Tumblr, raise the full amount to get their entire family out of Gaza, but their money gets frozen for so long that the original goal is only a fraction of the price now needed to cross the boarder.

These financial institutions should not be allowed to get away with contributing to the death toll in Gaza. They are intentionally keeping people trapped in a kill zone by withholding money that is rightfully theirs.

I'm so pissed and angry that every avenue for relief for Palestinians is being cut of left and right. It is vile that Gazans are being extorted for 10s of thousands of dollars by the Egyptian gov just to save their family's lives, but even when they play by this corrupt game, the world still finds a way to make them suffer.

My heart is with every Palestinian for the rest of time, from river to sea you will all be free. 🇵🇸❤️

Some more information from killy, the organizer of ghost-90's crowdfund, about how fucked the process is for Gazans to actually get paid out by GoFundMe.

And this is just one story from one person who had a little visibility at the time. How many funds have been frozen that no one knows about cuz they don't have any visibility? How many do we not know about cuz the recipient died while waiting for their funds to be released?

These financial institutions have blood on their hands just as much as the bastards dropping the bombs.

And for the people in the notes saying that the banks are just fallowing the law, laws that allow free transfer of money to Western countries but heavily criticizes and restricts money sent to the Middle East (or really any country that isnt part of the West) is racist and imperialist. Fallowing racist laws is still racist. But I think y'all might be understating how much power the banks have in this situation, they are choosing to fallow these "laws" of their own volition.

Don't try to cover for multi-billion dollar organizations that are directly profiting off genocide and people's desire to save their families from brutal death.

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90-ghost

I'm glad for your help and thanks to anyone still helping 🙏❤️

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hi i just created an excel sheet where i can pick a meal and have it autopopulate the ingredients i'll need as a shopping list

i have never felt so smart

OH MY GOD I CAN MAKE THEM DROP DOWN LISTS

THIS IS TRUE POWER

I NEVER HAVE TO DECIDE WHAT TO EAT OR MAKE A GROCERY LIST AGAIN

I CAN MAKE THE MACHINE DO IT FOR ME, AND ALL I HAVE TO DO IS PICK A FOOD FROM A DROPDOWN LIST

OH MY GOD I'M THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE GAME

HI IF YOU WANNA MAKE THIS

I DID IT IN GOOGLE'S EXCEL BC THAT'S WHAT I HAVE ACCESS TO ON MY PERSONAL DEVICE. I IMAGINE EXCEL EXCEL IS PROB SIMILAR.

hi, to make this easier, i made a google account just to make a shareable link for the original i made.

it's viewer only mode, so you can't edit the link itself, but i tested it out, and all you have to do is copy/paste it into a doc of your own, and then you'll be able to edit it no problem.

this way, the only thing you'll need to do is input your own dishes and ingredients and all the formulas will already be good to go.

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