This is a tumblr or something @penrosesun - Tumblr Blog

Do you both:

a) hate cancer, and

b) live in any of the following countries?

United States of America, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Taiwan (R.O.C.), Thailand, The Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, or Uruguay

If you answered yes to both of the above, then congratulations, you may be able to save the life of one of my close friends who has leukemia!

How, I hear you ask?

By signing up for the bone marrow donor registry at bethematch.org

(for outside of the US, use this link instead).

But wait, I hear you say – bone marrow donation? That sounds scary and complicated!

Not so – it’s incredibly easy to get added to the registry, and the process of donating if you match is easy and relatively painless as well.

When you sign up on the website, you will be asked a series of screener questions to determine whether you are disqualified from being in the registry due to age or health conditions. You will then be mailed a free testing kit in the mail. The test consists of a cheek swab, which you do and then mail back to the registry.

And... that’s it! That’s literally all you need to do to sign up!

If you match a patient in need, you will be contacted by the registry, and given the option to donate to that person. If you agree to donate, the process is similar to giving blood with a few extra steps: Prior to donation, you will receive a shot once a day for five days. This is to help your body produce more stem cells. During these days you may experience some symptoms like a mild cold. On the day of the donation, they will take the blood out of your vein like for a normal blood donation. Unlike a normal blood donation, however, the blood you donate will be run through a specialized machine to separate and collect the stem cells, and then the blood itself will be returned to you. This process will take about four hours, and once it’s complete, you can go home and shouldn’t have any symptoms after.

But what if I don’t have healthcare and can’t afford medical procedures?

You don’t have to pay for any of this. The test kit is free, and comes with a free return label. And depending on your location, if you match with someone and decide to donate, you may even get free transportation and other accommodations to help with the process!

But what if I’m LGBTQ+? Aren’t I banned from donating?

Being a member of the LGBTQ+ community does NOT bar you from donating bone marrow, even if you are barred from donating blood. If you have always wanted to save lives by giving blood, but haven’t been able to due to homophobic regulations, this is your chance to make a difference.

Well, I’ve been meaning to join the registry, but just have never gotten around to it...

This is your sign to do so. Even though the process of donating marrow is more like a blood donation, bone marrow donors and recipients need to closely match, much like for organ transplants. Every single additional name on the registry increases the chances that those with leukemia will find a match. You could literally be the only hope for someone else’s life and not even realize it.

Please: join the registry, and potentially save a life. Potentially save my friend.

harpieisthecarpie

wyf-of-bathe

My favorite part of this World Cup is watching state governments fuck with FIFA. Oh, you're going to price gouge us explicitly because Americans are expected to pay exorbitant prices for sports events? Fuck you, quadruple state probe into your sales practices. It's hysterical. Watching Texas - led by Ken "Indicted And Impeached For Bribery And Abuse of Office" join California, New York, and New Jersey open a probe into FIFA's ticket prices is just. Chef's kiss. I hope they get everything they want from their investigations and sue FIFA into oblivion.

pagecommando

Europeans especially but frankly anyone else lecturing us about being mean to fucking FIFA (a corrupt cartel) and how FIFA is being hard done by is music to my fucking ears.

They allowed Qatar to host and did THIS Shit and ANYONE wants to lecture us for having fucking standards? Our federal government is fucking awful, a bunch of our state governments are fucking awful and they don't come CLOSE to the sheer venality and entitlement of FIFA and the people carrying water for them to get their kickball game.

Vinod Kumar of India and Anish Adhikari of Nepal are among the many migrant workers who helped build the stadiums. Adhikari says he was misl

afurioushawk

The fact that AOC is still very unenthusiastic on Platner and is coming at it from an "Anything to win the Senate" angle versus the straight-up gaslighting we're getting from some of the Senators, I think she knows something really bad is coming. Her complete lack of support for a Bernie candidate is probably one of the biggest red flags (aside from things Platner himself has said and done).

maryfitzroy

I can’t stop saying “what are we dOing? What’s GoingOn?” in the voice of jeremy culhane as tucker carlson

maryfitzroy

that’s the rule. that’s the goal now.

prunsel

if you've ever pet more than a few dogs you'd Know what dog residue is

computationalcalculator

nothingmancy

This is not an internet choice question that is super relevant to the way I engage with fiction personally but notably this poll presupposes that “going canon” cannot include What Happened to Queliot. There are ways in which the monkey paw can curl that many aren’t aware of unless they were in a specific place in 2019

the-semicolonoscopy

#the magicians #lol

unidentifiablelifeform

Chicago Public Library and CPS announced the expansion of The 81 Club, building on a pilot launched in 2022 to give students access to the l

decepticonsensual

Not to be all "the children have forgotten the sacred texts!" but I just saw someone refer to a ship between two people who are good friends in canon as a crackship.

Hon. No. Crackship doesn't just mean "not canon". It's difficult to imagine two people who spend significant canon time together as a crackship. Crackship is when you write Galactus getting fucked by Tony the Tiger.

decepticonsensual

The notes are starting to be all, "Yeah, crackship means there's no chemistry! Even canon ships can be crackships!" and I must STRENUOUSLY disagree.

A crackship isn't just any ship that makes you go, "Eh, I don't see it." A crackship is absolutely WILD in concept. A crackship is the one that makes your friends look at you with the beginnings of existential horror. It's the one where they wave a circle round you thrice and close their eyes in holy dread, for you on honeydew hath fed and drunk the milk of paradise.

anyway I said it as a joke but if anyone wants to join my Tony the Tiger/Galactus Discord -

afurioushawk

It only blew up in their faces because Mainers tuned into the early primary and the podcast class said rape victim-blaming was no big deal.

God forbid we ever assumed Maine Democratic voters had actual standards. We won't make that mistake again. Next time we won't forget your state is 93% white for a reason.

studentofetherium

"having sex with your friends is basically incest" is a take of all time

studentofetherium

this deserves to go in the takes hall of fame

loud-triangle-thoughts

Reblog if you have incestuous desires about your friends

thehmn

No but like before I watched Project Hail Mary I’d occasionally see fanart and it made me wonder when the dude with long black hair was going to show up and why were people shipping him with Grace but he didn’t show up and I was very confused and yesterday it finally dawned on me it was Markiplier all along you fucks!?

#project hail mary

headspace-hotel

I read a scientific paper that was so, so bad and I've been pissed off about it for hours

title "Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain" but the sample size was 20 people and each diet was followed for 2 weeks.

but the thing that pissed me off about it was, it doesn't define what "ultra-processed food" is. Having an operational definition of the thing you're studying is a basic requirement in science!!!!!!!!

Even worse, it makes some vague suggestions about what "ultra-processed food" might be, but the foods actually used in the study as "ultra-processed" don't even match those descriptions

You have to download the supplemental materials to see, but there's photos and descriptions of the meals the participants in the study ate, and in the "ultra-processed" group there's stuff like. canned fruits and vegetables. Like there was canned sweet corn in the "ultra-processed" group vs. frozen sweet corn in the "unprocessed" group.

Since the study had participants follow two specific, pre-defined meal plans, it's not even saying anything about "types of diets," just those two specific, pre-defined meal plans.

headspace-hotel

The study was so small and over such a short period of time, and was so different from normal conditions where people choose what they eat (like, the subjects' meals were being chosen for them, they were only choosing how much to eat) that I think the conclusions are meaningless.

It's a rigorous study in the sense that they collected many different types of data including biological data and subjective questionnaires, but I think it doesn't demonstrate anything at all about "ultra-processed food" because it doesn't define what that is.

In the introduction, there are two different parts that might describe what "ultra-processed food" is, this:

an increasingly industrialized food system (Stuckler et al., 2012) characterized by large-scale production of high-yield, inexpensive, agricultural “inputs” (primarily corn, soy, and wheat) that are refined and processed to generate an abundance of “added value” foods (Blatt, 2008; Roberts, 2008).

and a reference to the NOVA classification of food processing, which you can read about on Wikipedia here. This is a quote from the Wikipedia article (itself a direct quote from a publication) which might help:

Ultra-processed foods are operationally distinguishable from processed foods by the presence of food substances of no culinary use (varieties of sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, 'fruit juice concentrates', invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose and lactose; modified starches; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and 'mechanically separated meat') or of additives with cosmetic functions (flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents) in their list of ingredients

The NOVA system seems to be trying to capture the idea of foods that are created using industrial processes, out of ingredients that were broken down and extracted by industrial processes. It's pretty vague and flawed in some ways: "Flavors and flavor enhancers" could mean anything, including any seasoning at all.

But, NOVA classification at least gives a potential operational definition of "ultra-processed food."

Trouble is, the "ultra-processed" diets in the study don't even follow that definition.

If you download the supplementary materials, you can scroll down to where it shows photographs and descriptions of every meal the participants in the study ate.

Like, the ultra-processed diet includes...whole milk?? How on earth is whole milk "ultra-processed?" It's milk! Canned corn definitely isn't ultra-processed according to the NOVA definition. It's corn...in a can. Ditto with the green beans and peaches.

The Wikipedia for the NOVA classification explicitly says that the following foods fall under category 3, "processed," NOT "ultra-processed:

Examples include cheese, canned vegetables, salted nuts, fruits in syrup, and dried or canned fish. Breads, pastries, cakes, biscuits, snacks, and some meat products fall into this group when they are made predominantly from group 1 foods with the addition of group 2 ingredients.

There is no explanation of whether or how the foods selected for the "ultra-processed" group fit into the NOVA system, but at a glance, it seems like the "ultra-processed" diet includes a lot of things that aren't ultra-processed.

The "unprocessed" diet also includes items that (as per the NOVA classification) are not unprocessed, such as yogurt, spaghetti, and penne pasta. Like I get that it would be hard to make a meal out of only unprocessed foods but spaghetti noodles have been through some industrial processes. They don't grow out of the fucking ground like that.

I don't know, maybe it wasn't the point that every item in the meals fit the definitions, but if they don't all have to fit, it's kind of arbitrary, isn't it?

I appreciate how this paper shows how much more expensive the "unprocessed" diet is, and looking at the pictures you can get a sense of the kind of privilege you would need to eat that way: year-round access to fresh, perishable fruits and vegetables, and lots of time to cook and prepare meals. Whereas the "ultra-processed" meals are mostly easily prepared and shelf-stable.

The creator of the NOVA classification was analyzing "ultra-processed food" in relationship to class, but the authors of this study aren't.

Limiting consumption of ultra-processed foods may be an effective strategy for obesity prevention and treatment.

They're just interested in how making the Wrong individual choices makes people fat.

fandomsandfeminism

This may be the best Pride merch I've seen from a major corporation.

Levi's said yes, actually. Assless chaps and a biker vest. Happy Pride.

And the assless chaps sold out on June 1.

aetherograph

They also specifically contacted members of the leather community, used them as models iirc, and donated $100k to Outright International. They talked the talk and walked the walk and put their money on it too. I don't really care that I can't afford and don't want this merch, I love to see my community getting the respect it deserves. Levi's said, "We make jeans which gays wear lots of jeans? Oh leather daddies? Let's call them."

fandomsandfeminism

I think Levi's donates to Outreach International every year too, as well as sponsoring pride events and other community support. They were offering Same Sex domestic partner benefits to employees in the 90s, and have been very public about their support for pro-lgbt legislation all through the 2000s.

So, you know, a giant corporation that walks the walk pretty consistently.

intimate-mirror

maimonideznuts

So the US military no longer recognises Mormons as Christian, which makes a lot of sense really... Even if this is a move based in cementing Christian hegemony.

Like, as far as it's been explained to me, the official Mormon position is that God is an extraterrestrial from Kolob, and he had literal PIV sex with Mary, Joseph was a cuckold, and Jesus was implanted with a Spirit that was specially chosen to be the God of Earth... Mormons aim to be good little boys and girls so that they can have planets of their own someday.

So Mormons are polytheistic?

If history is anything to go by, if any of that was suggested in the big Christian communities it would cause some kind of war.

Ex-mormons, did I miss anything or get anything wrong?

penrosesun

This is… extremely off base, lol, holy shit

It’s true that Mormonism is non-trinitarian, but as non-trinitarian theologies go, its godhead is honestly way less batshit than most “this is how this random WASP lady who has gone to a mainstream Protestant church her entire life sees it” takes that I’ve encountered over the years

The short version of Mormon theology is that all of God’s children were created as essentially angelic beings, without either bodies or free will. Because they lacked the free will, they also lacked the capacity to ascend to the higher state of being of God himself… but if they were granted free will, then they would inevitably fall into sin. Therefore God, in his infinite benevolence, concocted a plan which would allow his children to ascend: humanity would be given bodies and free will, and would inevitably fall into sin, but one of his children would become part of the godhead before ever being born, manifest his will on earth as a mortal human, and die for the sins of all humanity. The soul which volunteered for this was Jesus, and thereafter his soul became part of a newly formed godhead, which was a single entity composed of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. This is essentially a combination of the trinitarian heresy of Arianism and the trinitarian heresy of Partialism, and does have some theological advantages for purposes of squaring the whole “the trinity is somehow monotheistic” thing that both lack independently. All souls are born into the physical world via conception, but existed in a pre-mortal state before being incarnated in the physical world – Jesus, as a virgin birth, was the exception to this, being incarnated into a physical body that was itself miraculously formed without Mary having sex. God the Father was also once flesh and blood, but that’s something of a separate issue – the line is “As Man is now, God once was; as now God is, Man may be”… and make of that what you will (it’s certainly heresy as far as Judaism and Islam are concerned) but I don’t think that it’s strictly incompatible with monotheism in the way that an actual triumvirate of separate deities is, and I’m not even sure it qualifies as Audianism from a Catholic perspective.

There are two wrinkles to this, which push things further into polytheism territory – and before I even state them, I do want to be clear that as far as I’m concerned the normal Catholic Trinity is already way deeper into polytheistic territory than Hinduism is, so let’s be clear that we’re quibbling over degree well passed any reasonable polytheistic red line, and I don’t want to see any other flavors of Christian getting high and mighty over them:

The first wrinkle is the Adam-God doctrine, which is the belief that Adam – as in, Adam haRishon, that Adam – was literally God the Father, taken human form. This doctrine was first introduced by Brigham Young, and it’s right up there with Blood Atonement on the list of things that Brigham Young introduced that were broadly considered to be Some Weird Bullshit. The LDS rejected the Adam-God doctrine, and the RLDS/Community of Christ of course never accepted it to begin with. Relevantly, however, the FLDS does hold by it, as does the AUB, and probably some other fundamentalist groups that I know less about. This is a Mormon belief, but it’s far from a mainstream one.

The other wrinkle is that there’s a persistent belief in some Mormon circles – a belief not formally endorsed by either the LDS or any other group to my knowledge, but not generally disclaimed by them either – that God the Holy Father did not create the souls of humanity asexually, but rather created them with a Holy Mother. This Holy Mother is sometimes syncretized with Mary, making the whole thing a form of Collyridianism, but more often she’s just kind of conjectured. How seriously should we take it? Er, hard to say – how seriously should we take the random WASPy ladies who accidentally spout off about believing what is unambiguously Marcionism while genuinely considering what they are saying to be in line with literally any Christian doctrine?

Anyway, tl;dr: OP, I’m really not used to defending Mormons about just about anything, but this was embarrassing and a really bad look. Please take the time to do even cursory research before spouting off at the mouth about someone else’s religion. I hate seeing a fellow Jew show their entire ass like this; you honestly ought to know better.

wowbright

Glossary:

LDS - the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints - this is the one that people usually mean when they talk about Mormons. It's the one that sends out all those young college-aged missionaries in pairs of two and is based in salt lake City. The last prophet forbid followers from using the term "Mormons" to describe themselves (less than a decade after the same church created the 'I'm a Mormon" campaign and a movie called "meet the Mormons", go figure), but they still sometimes sue people they don't like for using the term "Mormon."

Rlds - reorganized Church of latter Day saints, now called The community of Christ. This is basically a mainline Protestant denomination with a twist; recognizes the book of Mormon as scripture and maintains some organizational structures created by Joseph Smith, the discoverer - translator - author (depending on your point of view) of the book of Mormon and the first modern prophet of both this denomination and the others mentioned here.

Flds - fundamentalists. Can be used as a broad term to refer to all fundamentalist Mormons or as a specific reference to the specific denomination. These folks tend to adhere strongly to the teachings of Brigham young, the second prophet in the LDS/FLDS prophetic lineage (Brigham Young is not recognized by the rlds as a prophet).

AUB - apostolic United brethren - a fundamentalist denomination

Agreeing with most of what @penrosesun says except for the part about Heavenly Mother. Heavenly Mother is very much a normal part of mainstream LDS belief; it's just that she's kind of tangential and not talked about much by most people and not a central part of the faith. She does not appear in any of the main scriptures (bible, book of mormon, pearl great price, doctrine and covenants) but does appear in hymns and conference talks, which are part of the canon. Her existence and holiness has been affirmed by recent prophets/presidents and apostles of the church. She *is* Heavenly Father's wife, but is not considered part of the godhead and, according to current teachings, is not supposed to be prayed to. As penrosesun said, the sex stuff is all conjecture.

Elaboration on other stuff: Kolob is described in the scriptures as a star, and Heavenly Father is said in the same scriptures to come from that star. I'm not sure how many people take that literally these days. I mean, little Christian kids think of heaven as being in the sky and God is being in the sky, but how many Christian adults think God is literally living in the sky?

Everyone having their own planets: another thing that can be supported by a literal interpretation of scripture, but a much less common literal belief now than it was in, say, the 1970s.

I'm not sure what the reference in the original post is with regard to Jesus being implanted with a spirit? The holy spirit is part of the Mormon godhead just like it is part of the trinitarian godhead, and in both cases Jesus and the holy Spirit are different persons.

In any case, from an academic point of view, Mormonism is no more polytheistic than trinitarianism. One big difference is that in trinitarianism, all three parts of the godhead are considered equal, whereas in mormonism, Heavenly Father ranks the highest and Jesus and the holy Spirit are subordinate to him.

Finally, the US military not counting Mormons as Christians is bad. The government should not be defining the limits of Christian orthodoxy. If they're going to say that Mormons are polytheists (or whatever) because they're not trinitarians, that also means they would need to deny the right of Christian scientists, many pentecostals, etc etc to put Christian on their dog tags. It's shitty and gross.

penrosesun

Interesting to hear about the Heavenly Mother! I was aware that she featured in some hymns, but wasn’t aware that those were considered doctrinal, to say nothing of canonical. For reference, most Jewish hymns (piyyutim) are neither canonical nor doctrinal – the furthest our tradition goes is that one is allowed to maintain a tradition of reciting them religious contexts. I’ve also spoken to some people (all older and all men) who were kind of cagey about the entire topic, perhaps out of concern that it seemed a little more pantheon-adjacent than a straight trinity, perhaps out of some lingering sexism in relation to what an openly venerated Heavenly Mother might indicate about movements towards gender equality within the church.

Regarding Jesus being implanted with a spirit, it sounds to me like a bastardization of the Mormon doctrine of pre-mortal existence. Arguably Mormons believe that all humans are imbued with a spirit which existed before the body did… and that’s called a soul.

I’m going to push back a little on one thing: from an academic point of view some sects of Mormonism are not more polytheistic than trinitarianism. I think it’s important to be very clear that the FLDS, AUB, and many other fundamentalist groups are Mormons, as clearly and unambiguously as Protestants are Christians. The LDS (and to a lesser extent, the Community of Christ) have a tendency to discount Mormon fundamentalism completely, but the argument that being out of communion with Rome Salt Lake City strips you of your right to claim to be a member of the religion founded by Joseph Smith falls apart completely once you consider the actual history of the church following the succession crisis kicked off by Joseph Smith’s death. Crucially, the LDS and Community of Christ have been out of communion since the beginning, and amazingly enough, the person who arguably had the strongest claim to be Joseph Smith’s legitimate successor founded neither of them, and instead started a schism that simply died and remerged into the larger and more established churches. And I think there’s a pretty strong case that the Adam-God doctrine is very non-monotheistic, even for a Christian doctrine.

That said, I want to emphasize the importance of the point about there being many other non-trinitarian Christian denominations. I think it’s worth pointing out that Unitarians are about as monotheistic as it is possible to be while still believing in Jesus: Jesus is separate from God, subordinate to God, and crucially, not the thing you are praying to when you pray to God. However, Unitarianism is just a non-trinitarian as outright polytheism is! Trinitarianism is a very narrow category, and there is literally nothing besides Catholic propaganda that positions it as being on the far most monotheistic end of all of the various non-trinitarian heresies. I think this is especially important to remember for those of us who hold that Trinitarianism is essentially just polytheism with extra steps – as far as Trinitarian Christianity is concerned, actual Jewish and Islamic monotheism is on the “non-Trinitarian” side of the important divide, right alongside both the mainstream Mormon godhead and the wacky fundamentalist Adam-God doctrine.

obviously-im-a-boyo

if you have "cishet men dni" in your bio i, a trans man, will not touch you with a 10 foot pole. i should not be forced to out myself as a trans man just to interact with you. on top of that, cishet men are not inherently evil. stop trying to reinvent bioessentialism with your "girl good, boy bad!" mentality.

gender-gaming-and-gears

if you have "cishet men dni" in your bio, I, a trans woman, will not touch your blog with a 10 foot pole either. based on your assumptions that cishet men are "evil," I assume that I will have to prove my transfemininity to you (stupid), and I distrust that you will even trust my womanhood in the first place (ooh i have a penis im scaryyyy). and again, cishet men are not inherrently evil, stop trying to reinvent bioessentialism.

ADDITIONALLY. if your standard of evil masculinity is based off of cis vs trans men, you're defining trans men by them "being women." full stop. don't do that! please!!

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