[elierlick]

In 1988, ACT UP protested the FDA withholding HIV treatment due to requiring unethical double-blind studies of medication they already knew worked.

In 2024, trans activists protested promoters of an NHS-funded report requiring unethical double-blind studies of medication they already knew worked.

[headspace-hotel]

As a society, we need to return to plant symbolism, but not the obscure and arbitrary stuff—a lot of plants' meanings were connected to their medicinal properties or other properties. More of that, and include the ecological roles and values too. More plant symbolism where plants "mean" things because they really do literally mean those things

Red poppies came to symbolize remembrance of fallen soldiers and hope for a peaceful future because they flourished in the fields after WW1 due to the disturbance caused by the bombings, which created the perfect environment for an early-successional-stage plant. Do you see what I'm saying

[aprillikesthings]

“Bamboo is antifungal”

Because it’s rayon

“Eucalyptus fabric is cooling!”

Yeah, because it’s rayon

“We make clothing called seacell out of seaweed!”

Yeah I looked on your website it’s made by the lyocell process, which means-

-wait for it-

It’s fucking rayon!!

Listen. There is a list of actual plant fibers that are directly made into fabric: cotton, linen, ramie, some hemp. I’m sure I’m missing a couple.

But if you’re wondering “huh how did they turn that plant material into fabric,” 99% of the time? It’s RAYON.

All rayon is made by putting plant material in chemical soup, dissolving out everything but the cellulose, and turning the cellulose into filaments/fibers.

The source of the cellulose has zero effect on the eventual fabric.

Rayon made from bamboo or eucalyptus or seaweed is not any better than rayon from any other sources.

Don’t let companies mislead you!

[somarysueme]

Hold on I need to DuckDuckGo something

[somarysueme]

Damn this was supposed to be a joke but turns out it’s hard to get scientifically rigorous comparisons of environmental impact across textile products from a casual search. “It’s all fucking rayon” appears mostly true but also I’m finding plenty of claims that it’s more sustainable than cotton anyway.

But that’s not what this post was actually about anyway so like

it’s all fucking rayon confirmed I guess 👍

[aprillikesthings]

So it's worth separating out two things here:

the qualities of rayon as a fabric, outside of any other consideration

the environmental impacts

This post is mostly about the first thing. A lot of companies are giving rayon many many different names as a way of disguising that It's Just Rayon, and claiming the fabric has special qualities.

But cellulose is cellulose. The process of extruding it into filaments and making those filaments into fibers/yarn/fabric is what gives it different qualities: some rayon is silky, some is fuzzy, etc.

It's all great at absorbing sweat, and it all takes longer to dry, and it insulates okay until it gets damp at which point it's worse than wearing nothing, which is why it's often blended into other things. The really nice tops I have from Uniqlo's Heattech line are a blend of a couple of synthetics and rayon. They're warm for being so thin and stretchy, but don't make me sweaty-feeling at all. (In a conversation among people with ADHD I found out I'm not the only one who wears them nearly daily for 3/4ths of the year lol.)

The irony of how often it's compared to polyester in the notes of this post is that polyester can also be made into a billion different textures. I have polyester that feels like wearing a plastic tarp, but I also own polyester that's light and breezy and totally comfy in boiling heat. I also have some very soft polyester fleece, as many people do. It's all a matter of how the filaments are extruded and how they're made into fabric.

But to get into the environmental stuff:

People get really into which fabrics are more "sustainable."

And rayon currently is made, 99% of the time, via one of two processes: viscose and lyocell (Tencel is a brand name for the lyocell process). Viscose is an older method and far more common, to the point that if a fabric doesn't specify that it's lyocell (or cuproammonium) you can probably assume it's viscose. Viscose is, generally speaking, far more polluting and hazardous to the humans working in the factory as well. Lyocell uses what's called a "closed-loop" method, so it puts out way fewer pollutants. It's also more expensive, generally speaking. There is such a thing as "ecoviscose" but I haven't looked into it.

(Modal just means rayon made from beech trees and afaict doesn't differentiate which process. Cupro is made using a less-common process called "cuproammonium," and I'm not sure how polluting it is, but apparently in China it's sometimes called "ammonia silk" which is wild.)

Rayon does have two definite advantages, despite everything I said up there:

you can make it out of any cellulose source, and that includes things that would otherwise be considered garbage/waste

it biodegrades pretty fast. Like, faster than cotton.

BUT THAT ALL SAID: every fabric requires something shitty, quite frankly. Cotton takes a TON of water and usually pesticides. Silk requires a lot of farming of mulberry and then electricity to warm the places where the silkworms live and also you have to cook the silkworms alive so they don't cut the fibers. Linen requires its own chemical soup to be turned into usable fibers unless you're making it from flax the old fashioned way which requires a lot of time and a shit-ton of effort. (Like seriously there's rippling, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling. And THEN you can spin it into thread.) Wool requires a lot of land etc for sheep, but also any wool item you own that's machine washable has had the barbs melted off the fibers with chemicals, and in many cases is also coated with a resin!

And that's not getting into dying. But if you've ever dyed fabric at home you know that it usually requires careful handling and in many cases goggles. Those chemicals are often toxic as fuck.

If you're trying to be sustainable in your clothing choices, the fact is that the absolute best thing you can do is:

BUY LESS CLOTHES. Period. End of story.

Buy secondhand when you can.

Make those clothes last: use cold water washes and don't put them in the dryer and don't use fabric softener. Repair them when you can, and use them for rags when they wear out.

"What fiber is it made of" just matters way fucking less than buying fewer items of clothing and using them until they wear out.

But most people don't want to do those things. They want to know which brand of clothes is "sustainable."

The sustainable thing is to buy and throw away less clothes. That's it.

[theboozehound]

I love James Baldwin simply because he validates my existence. He already (and more eloquently) thought, said and wrote everything I want to—but with those things having already been thought, written and said, it’s up to those who’ve come after him to work to affect change.

[ritterssport]

“A black gay person who is a sexual conundrum to society is already, long before the question of sexuality comes into it, menaced and marked because he’s black or she’s black. The sexual question comes after the question of color; it’s simply one more aspect of the danger in which all black people live. I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, into a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly. Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to the sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which acrue to white people in a white society. There’s an element, it has always seemed to me, of bewilderment and complaint. Now that may sound very harsh, but the gay world as such is no more prepared to accept black people than anywhere else in society.”

—James Baldwin

[soviet-union-deactivated19911226]

u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me

[max1461]

I think most people would benefit from reflecting on how this might be true for them

[vacuously-true]

Sometimes people bitch about media, both fiction and nonfiction, that they think "humanizes" bad people, especially bigots fascists Nazis et cetera. And I'm just like. Hey. Hey. The problem is. They ARE human. HUMANS did that. Your next door neighbor could do that. Your grandma could do that. You could do that.

"No I'm a good person" why? Because you've gotten lucky and not seen propaganda yet that perfectly hit your buttons? Because you had people to correct you when you fucked up? Idk man I don't think we're all so different from the bad people. We're all just people.

Reminding ourselves of our shared humanity with terrible people does NOT serve to justify their actions. It serves to remind us that the seeds of what happened to them could get into us as well, or might already have. It reminds us to be vigilant and interrogate the hatred inside us.

If you convince yourself that you're just an Inherently Good Person who would never believe hateful things well. Now any little hateful thing that makes its way inside you undetected is never going to be interrogated. It will be left to grow undisturbed.

If you remember that those things can get into anyone, you know to look out for them, and weed them out when they appear, and take the criticism when others point them out in you. So remember, that could have been you. If you forget, maybe it will be.

[stil-lindigo]

I am so sorry to bother you with this stupid question, but Bisan has asked for a complete stop in economic activity. Can I still donate to help Palestinians or is it better to avoid any transactions for the week ? Thank you so much for what you're doing

hello anon. don't apologise, you're a breath of fresh air after the recent visitors in my inbox. I think a slightly more accurate description of Bisan’s ask is to stop or minimise all economic activity not in direct support of Palestine. Now more than ever, I would encourage people to donate to escape funds for Palestinians, to direct aid organisations like CareforGaza and the PCRF, and to buy e-sims as they’re running low.

Below I’ve compiled a list of resources below but this is definitely just a small sample size of what you can do to help during this strike. This post here is an extremely comprehensive resource that I’d recommend you have a look at.

credible organisations that are doing work on the ground in Palestine:

Care for Gaza:non-profit charity that distributes money, food and other resources directly to families in Gaza.They maintain a regular presence on Twitter and Instagram. You can donate to them via Paypal here.

PCRF / Palestine Children's Relief Fund: non-profit organisation that distributes essential food and resources to families in Gaza. Most recently, they delivered 30 tons of vital medicine, and 82,000 pounds of flour.

Medical Aid For Palestinians: deploys medical teams to treat Palestinians suffering under Israel's malicious bombardments.

Donate e-sims to Palestine: massive post with tutorials and relevant links, with discount codes included in the post and in the replies.

help people leave palestine (donate what you can)

Help a Family Evacuate Gaza (GoGetFunding)

Save Sanaa and her Family (Gofundme)

Save Amjad Saher and his family (Gofundme)

Help a family of 13 escape Gaza (Gofundme)

Help a Palestinian children's book illustrator save her family of 12 (Gofundme)

[littleguymart]

This is a great resource! Please consider supporting some of these efforts if you're able to.

[pobopolybius]

Latest reblog reminds me of how much it pisses me the fuck off how every queer person alive has to adapt to the usamerican style of queerness lest we get shunned by the community for being too different. I bring this up a lot but bro that time I got death threats for having ele/dele in my bio bc "by using neopronouns I was making a mockery of REAL trans people" when those are literally just my pronouns in my native language, and when I said that I got hit w the "well you're on the internet so speak english" I HATE GRINGOS I HATE GRINGOS I HATE GRINGOS

[pobopolybius]

I feel the need to miss out a crucial detail I missed out in this post I made out of anger, and no, it doesn't add any silver linings or good context, it honestly only serves to make it worse.

In portuguese, much like spanish, we have no gender neutral pronouns. People who do not use ele/dele and ela/dela (he/him or she/her) all use whatever neopronoun suits them best in portuguese (ie elu/delu, eli/deli) because we have no access to a universal gender neutral pronoun like gringos do. When I brought this up upon them making fun of my "neopronouns", they said to suck it up, and that being foreign does not make neos valid.

In mocking people who use neopronouns in english, you are mocking a very large sum of latin american genderqueer and trans people.

I know various latin language speakers that struggle with their identities in their native tongue due to us not having they/them equivalents, so they are forced to let go of their, in example, brazilian queerness, to appease to anglos who would harass them and call them mockeries of trans people for not sticking to what The Cis want.

When non-anglos tell you the usamerican and british dominance over queer spaces ruins things for them, they mean it. We are forced to repress our identites because you people think they're too "out there and problematic". We are forced to suppress our own queer culture because we don't fit into your neat little boxes of what makes someone gay what makes someone a lesbian what makes someone trans or what makes someone anything else.

You tell us to remember "our queer elders", but do you know of any queer latin american figures? We learn your history, and you refuse to learn ours because you already have "too much on your plate". You disregard us and shame us for not fitting your ideals of queerness and using labels for ourselves you dislike, and try to baby us and tell us the proper way to be gay.

Your culture is not universal.

You are not saving queer people by making jabs at other queer people you don't personally get. Odds are you are harming an entire group of foreign queers you never bothered to consider, because your anglo bubble is too self important.

If you want to do queer people a real favour instead of getting mad at identities that existed long before you were even born, here. Make yourself useful. Donate to queer brazilian housing and support programs. Your beloved dollar is worth a lot more than the Real. Even five dollars help.

Casa Um

Eternamente Sou

Transviver

[pobopolybius]

Hey man reblog this version instead lol

[alienpupy]

i love you polyam i love you t4t i love you queerplatonic relationships i love you gay friendships with and without romantic tension i love you casual intimacy i love you caring deeply about people i love you being in love on purpose i love you love and i love you lovers

[applesauce42069-deactivated2024]

im sorry but if any mention of the Jewish reality is immediately anti Palestinian and any mention of the Palestinian reality is immediately anti Jewish then we are never getting anywhere productive. at all.

[applesauce42069-deactivated2024]

im reading mein kampf for a class and hitler also claimed that jews have no culture/a stolen culture so y'all aren't special

[shofarsogood]

Literally zero percent of that book is original. It's rephrased Protocols of the Elders of Zion shit. It's terribly written. (So I've been told. Obviously I can't read the original German.)

Neonazis praise Hitler while ignoring that the man was too stupid to come up with his own conspiracies. At least David Icke is original!

[notaplaceofhonour]

And David Icke isn’t even original! He just popularized ideas that were already floating out in the Weird Spirituality (theosophy/New Age/Atlantis/UFO) space. He repackaged Rothschild conspiracy theories, blood libel, & the Protocols by taking the serpent symbolism in the Protocols (which comes from the old Christian association of Jews with the Devil, who in Christian mythology is also the Serpent of Eden & the Red Dragon of Revelation) literally, making them literal reptilian shapeshifters—a thing he also didn’t come up with (there’s debate on whether he got them from Rober E. Howard’s “serpent men” which were inspired by Helena Blavatsky’s “dragon men” or Maurice Doreal’s “serpent race”, but it’s generally agreed that he got it from elsewhere).

Antisemites have just been recycling the same 2 or 3 conspiracy theories about Jews for centuries and it shows

[smashingorpassing]

if you are unable to donate financially to help palestine, you can donate your time by protesting, boycotting, and putting up posters!

if all you have is your device and internet access, you can put your clicks to good use on arab.org. they use the advertising revenue generated by your clicks to help good causes.

and i would urge those able to spare a few dollars to donate to one or more of the following organizations:

eSims for Gaza

Direct aid for Gaza

Care for Gaza

Women for Women International

Institute for Middle East Understanding

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children Relief Fund

Muslim Aid USA

Direct Aid for Gaza

Palestinian American Medical Association

Urgent support for medical professionals in Gaza

Emergency Relief for Gaza

Anera

Taawon

[unchartedthelostlegacy]

i love graffiti. "comics and jazz are the only american art forms" you forgot graffiti. did you remember graffiti? That art form birthed in Philly and NYC in the early 70s by poor Black kids. that art form that spread all over the world and influenced so many. that's used without irony in commercials when they're trying to appeal to a "young urban" customer.

did you forget graffiti? that racism broken windows theory victim? that reach the establishment takes claiming that it's exclusively violent gang members throwing up those full-color pieces and wildstyle tags in the middle of the night outsmarting fifty security cameras because the billboard was ugly anyway. as if, even if it was, it wouldn't be impressive as all hell. risking brutality and fall damage so your art can occupy the space a gentrified condo named something like "Coluumna" took away from you. proving that despite only assholes affording to live here anymore there's still a soul beneath it. an animal with dripping stripes and teeth that go clack-clack tsssss

[doberbutts]

Actually turning things over in my brain and yeah, I'd say that's probably my feeling on a lot of these conversations. The wrong thing is getting blamed.

White people do experience racism. The problem is when people hear that they think "people of color have power over white people" and not "under white supremacy, there are white people who are regarded as Not White Enough".

Men are oppressed. The problem is that people tend to think the ending of that sentence is "by women" and not "under the patriarchy, men are forced into a very specific and often harmful role and are heavily punished for any deviance from that role".

And the well has been poisoned by bad actors, so it's hard to get any amount of conversation about this going without either attracting said bad actors to totally derail the whole thing or without having kneejerk suspicion from the getgo due to said bad actors' previous actions.

[thefloralmenace]

Sometimes the answer is to subvert the rule instead of breaking it.

Anarchy post #5 or something - enough of you have been super sweet about being inspired and hopeful in the tags of my other posts that you've encouraged me to share more of my personal ideology.

So there are good and bad rules out there, and I have a personal analysis I go through to make that determination for myself:

Does the rule achieve its intent?

Is the rule enforceable?

Does the rule disproportionately affect certain people?

Does the rule cause people unreasonable/unnecessary stress?

A good rule is "Yes," "Yes," "No," and "No" - any deviation from that suggests the rule should be ignored, modified, or abolished, but you won't always (or often) have the ability/power to do that. If you've encountered a bad rule, you can decide to break it or take the path of trying to convince the relevant authority to amend or remove the rule, but there is a third option! You can subvert the rule.

I'll give you a quick example of a good rule: You need to wear safety goggles when working with power tools in the woodshop. What is the rule trying to achieve? It's trying to keep you safe in the event of an accident. Does wearing safety goggles help protect your eyes? Yes. Is the rule enforceable? Yeah, if you're the woodshop manager, you can easily walk around and see if someone isn't wearing goggles and ask them to either put them on or step out of the shop. Does this rule disproportionately affect certain people? No, anyone who is able to use power tools should also be able to wear safety goggles. They make ones that go over glasses too. Does this cause unreasonable/unnecessary stress? As long as you keep some spares on hand for people to use (which pretty much every woodshop does), no one should be stressed by this. Good rule.

Now here's an example of a rule that I determined to be bad and what I did about it: My college science department has a policy that if you don't show up appropriately dressed for lab (i.e. long pants, lab coat, goggles, and close-toed shoes) and can't change and get back within 20 minutes of the lab start time, you will get a zero for that lab. There are only 10 labs per year, so that's kind of a big deal. Issue: People often just forget they have lab in the afternoon, especially during the hot months and come to lab in shorts. They rarely forget to bring their lab coat and goggles or wear close-toed shoes, but people frequently forget about long pants. What does this rule seek to achieve? Making sure everyone comes dressed properly for lab. Does it achieve this? Nope. You can't disincentivize forgetting, so no matter how extreme the punishment is, students will forget from time to time. You can't punish forgetfulness out of a person. Is the rule enforceable? Yeah, people do get turned away from lab if they're not wearing long pants. Does it disproportionately affect a certain group of people? Yep! Students who live off campus have no hope of getting changed and getting back in 20 minutes, but people living in the dorms across the street can. Does the rule cause unecessary stress?Yep! People used to regularly cry, panic, and beg to trade pants with someone in the big college group chats to avoid getting a zero for lab.

My solution: Take away the rule's power to stress people by accommodating instead of punishing. I got six pairs of pants in sizes XS to 3XL, wrote "Emergency Lab Pants" on the thighs, and established a box for them in the student common area that anyone could borrow from. This helps people get to lab safely dressed and it provides a safety net that removes the stress of making an easy human mistake.

The reason I went that route was because 1) Breaking the rule and getting away with it was basically impossible and also unsafe. 2) I figured arguing with the department about the policy wouldn't get anywhere. They'd just ignore that you literally can't disincentivize forgetting things and go on about people needing to learn to be responsible for themselves or whatever.

And something interesting happened: the department got completely behind this project. They realized it decreased lab absences and provided a change of clothes if someone spilled something on themselves during the lab. Professors put the Emergency Lab Pants box in their syllabi, and the department invested in another set to be kept on hand in the lab offices.

So even though that very harsh rule still exists, it has been divested of its ability to cause people stress and panic - all because somebody analyzed the rule for the first time and determined that it stressed people out while failing to achieve its goal.

[menlove-archive]

like can you imagine if you, as a housed person, said "oh man im really struggling financially right now I can't pay my bills- my electric is going to be cut off, my car might get repossessed, and I definitely can't afford to get a new laptop after mine broke"

and someone who had a lot more money than you said "I can help you!" and you were like"oh my god great thank you so much-" and then they just offered to take you to olive garden. and you say "hey man that's really nice but I'm actually okay on food right now, I really just need to pay some of these bills. I already got food somewhere else (foodstamps, friends, food pantries) and I really just need money. if you can't do it that's fine but I don't need food"

and the rich person said "you must not really need money or be poor then or else you'd take me up on my offer. I bet you were going to use that money on drugs anyway"

that's what yall sound like when you refuse to give homeless people money & just offer to buy them food

food is great! if you need it and that's what you're asking for. unfortunately food doesn't buy clothes, hygiene products, shelter, pay a phone bill, or yes even buy drugs or alcohol if you're going into detox and can't do so safely without literally dying

[xyriath]

but seriously if you are at all blogging about the i/p conflict you NEED to read that standing together article from that post i just reblogged. please. please please please please please. these are the people who are actually doing something about freeing palestine and have been for years. And here's the thing:

IF YOU WANT PEACE IN ISRAEL, IN PALESTINE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IT'S GOING TO COME FROM.

Because yeah. The way this site is spreading around uncritical posts is a huge issue (and a reason I haven't been around since October). Standing Together is doing a hell of a lot more than blogging about it. They're on the ground putting in the work. Nine days before the October 7 attack, they were in Tel Aviv publicly protesting about the systematic oppression of Arabs (not just Palestinians) in Israel.

"The global left has to be synced with what we need." Trust me, the right is. Boy HOWDY is the right synced. I have gotten more support about my Judaism from the far right than the left and it's??? kinda fucked up??? Someone who worked for Pat Robertson should not feel safer than someone dedicated to activism, but here we are. I can feel how easy it would be to be radicalized towards the right, and I'm actively fighting against it. Now imagine that multiplied by millions of people, plenty of whom don't have the same desire to do so, or feel like they don't have the luxury of safety to do so.

Seeing Hamas being portrayed as sympathetic and talked about like they had a right to commit all of the atrocities that they have is making me lose my MIND. They're a group run by corrupt billionaires who actively started this conflict with the intent of silencing the Palestinian people who have been protesting their tyranny. They have been siphoning money from Palestinians for years and this entire attack is them deliberately throwing Palestinians into the path of slaughter to distract from that fact, the same way that Netanyahu absolutely took advantage of the threat and tragedy to try and get himself off the hook for his own corruption.

Also check out the google doc linked in the article. It's not just a good way to learn how to communicate, but a very good resource for finding out if something you're sharing is worthwhile. In fact, it does a really god job of breaking down why I've felt so uncomfortable about a bunch of the posts on my dash. Some excerpts:

This got way longer than I had intended, but hopefully does its job. Go read the article and, yes, if you need to, reevaluate your activism. Because if it's not what people involved actually want or need, then it's just for you. And that's kinda fucked up.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The plantation model, as oil palm historian Jonathan E. Robins points out, is a profound process of creating a “new nature” and “‘delocalizing’ a space by clearing vegetation; evicting human and animal inhabitants; and contouring, draining, and irrigating the landscape until it fits a universal model.” It only occurs within a broader economic landscape of input resources and markets for outputs. The plantation, as a uniquely modern and fundamentally colonial technology, transmutes entangled land and labor into private wealth.

Max Haiven, Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire