hit up my main @iamthelowercase instead || general "dumping ground" sideblog || the theory goes that I put stuff here instead of using my drafts as a bookmarks folder
I love you. Take care of yourself. I'm sure this isn't surprising to hear coming from someone on the mental illness website, but I empathize very strongly with depression brain making all the good stuff feel fake and all the bad stuff to feel real. We'll keep up with the memes for you while you take your break. Thanks for being one of my favorite persons who says thoughts on the internets, and for being my favorite unpaid intern for a coffee (and tea!) subscription company who gives its profits to charity.
Thanks for all the kind words as I battle depression. I am doing the stuff I need to do in consultation with a great mental health team. This is the worst, but as I said in my video today, despair is a lie. No simple story can ever be fully true, and there is no simpler story than, “Nothing means anything.”
So let’s keep deriving and making meaning together. I’ll be gone from these parts for a probable month or so, but I hope to return in August.
And if not, well, tumblr has survived without me before. :)
Alright *cracks knuckles* time for Professor Salsa to step in and use my degree to help explain these kinds of posts. Here is a link to the NPR article mentioned above. Now, onto the lesson.
HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is the virus that causes AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). And before y'all start, HIV/AIDS IS NOT A GAY DISEASE! Anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation, can get infected with HIV. HIV's structure looks like this:
Under a microscope
and as a simple cartoon for your viewing pleasure.
When you get right down to it, any virus is just genetic material (DNA or RNA) inside of a protein shell (maybe with an added envelope). The virus' DNA or RNA is just genetic instructions for making more of the virus. HIV's genetic instructions are encased inside of a protein shell called the Capsid. Source
When a virus infects a cell, it really just inserts its genetic instructions into the cell and uses them to make more copies of the parts that make up the virus. This is known as the virus life cycle. Its like the virus hijacks the cell and uses it as a "virus factory" which is quite rude. In HIV's case, the Capsid has to break open to release the genetic instructions. Source
The tweet above is about a drug called Lencapavir (trade name Sunlenca) which has been on the market since 2022. Lencapavir is a treatment (not a cure) for HIV and it works by targeting the HIV Capsid.
This diagram looks complicated af but the gist of it is Lencapavir (LEN) binds to the viral Capsid and prevents it from breaking open and dumping the viral instructions into your cells. The Capsid is really important for getting HIV's instructions into the cell to make more of its hellish progeny. No instructions= No new viruses= no spread of infection. Source. Source.
On December 12, 2024 The Journal of Science declared that Lencapavir is the Breakthrough Drug of 2024 because not only does it work as a treatment for patients with HIV but it protects patients without HIV. Lencapavir could be used as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Source
You might have seen ads for PrEP but don't know what it is. PrEP is a medicine taken by people without HIV so that it can prevent them from getting infected by someone who has HIV. Its not a vaccine but its very still very helpful- if people take them. Source
Most PrEP medications are taken orally as a pill. Not everyone sticks to their treatment schedule. Not everyone can afford it. Not everyone can use it without stigma or social pressures. But Lencapavir could be taken as an injection twice a year which is an easier regimen for some people to stick to.
The data seems very VERY hopeful but the work still continues. I'm not advocating violence but I do support a social pressure to keep drugs affordable. The deal that Gilead is making at least shows us that people are listening. These kinds of scientific breakthroughs mean nothing if healthcare access isn't made for all.
We don't bust our asses and loose sleep to make a breakthrough drug that no one can afford.
TL;DR Dr. Salsa bores Tumblr users to death with another fucking essay about science but its about a new breakthrough in HIV/AIDS treatment so maybe you should interrupt your doom scrolling and read it.
Remember everyone -- more important than understanding what processes led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany, is asserting our moral superiority by correctly identifying which people are the Bad Guys. And rest assured that when fascism rises again, we'll be right there tut tutting and shaking our heads with the best of them.
lots of supposedly very smart commentary on history is along the lines of, "um, why should we care about why people did bad things?" idk man why do we care about why wars happen and how they happen. why do we care what the economy was like 100 years ago. why care about anything? nothing happened before us and nobody existed in any important way.
These arguments feel like they miss the point of this quote being about people who refuse to condemn or even defend participation in the holocaust based on "well not all of them actually believed in it, some were just opportunistic about it, or let fear push them to participate" as if that makes it morally okay to participate in genocide. "We need to understand history to not repeat it" and "genocide is always bad even if you don't actually hate the targeted groups" are both true statements and the responses here feel like they argue about the wrong one of these statements.
tldr; not only is "Terrorism" a harder charge to "prove" in NY compared to "murder", this charge would make it easier to present the elements that made Luigi a folk hero to the jury.
It's funny when you realize, like, that there are specific genres of music that only exist in your personal world.
I just referred to Electric Blue by Icehouse as a "pool song," and then realized that this specific genre as I understand it only exists … like… to my family.
Because those are "songs which were popular in the summer on the East Coast of the US between 1980 and 1988, when we spent pretty much our entire summers at the pool, and before ClearChannel took over, so the songs that were popular in the summers where I grew up are very different from what my wife grew up hearing."
so the generation X name isnt really about the later, it's "x" like "xed out"
The book's title came not from Billy Idol's band, as many supposed, but from the final chapter of a funny sociological book on American class structure titled Class, by Paul Fussell. In his final chapter, Fussell named an "X" category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence.[23][19]
which makes "gen z" a very lazy name! all the other ones had like...interesting content! they commented on the nature of the generation!
we only got "lost, silent, greatest, baby boomers, X" before we ran out of names with content? "millenial" just means a year, it doesnt actually say anything about the generation. it looks like "gen alpha" is sticking and 1) alpha doesnt "come after" z, 2) this says NOTHING you had to go out of your way to not say anything!
wikipedia lists 1987 as the year both 'generation X' and 'millennial' were coined to refer to the given generations (not in the same book or whatever, it happened separately). the oldest millennials at that point were, like, just starting primary school. what are you possibly going to able say about them that is contentful?
if we want generation names to be contentful we should stop deciding on them when they don't have any distinguishing characteristics except 'being the generation after the last one'
(also generations are basically contentless anyway so it's fine if their names are too)
