klinki

[klinki]

Even in the midst of the new year’s excitement, I genuinely can’t stop being haunted by thoughts of Palestine. We have the privilege of celebrating the new year, making resolutions, looking forward to the blessings in the year ahead—but many Palestinian children didn’t get that privilege. Hundreds upon hundreds of children far younger than me have died in the past 3 months; won’t get the luxury of sharing in this flurry of excitement and joy. Many more are biding their time, not knowing when their last day is. Tonight will mark a new beginning, but I hope it also heralds a year of far more people advocating for Palestine, sharing the atrocities that have been committed in Palestine, boycotting brands supporting Palestinian genocide, and just all around finally coming to terms with the fact that Palestinian genocide SHOULD be their concern—even if they’re not being directly affected by it. More people need to be aware that educating themselves on this should not be a choice, but a responsibility and a must.

#palestine

[klinki]

I think we need to get more comfortable with the idea that sometimes shitty, racist, homophobic, bigoted people are still incredibly talented.

I feel like every time I see a post addressing someone’s shitty behavior the post also takes the time to mention that they’re not even good at [x] anyway. And that’s just not always true? Equating being good at a skill as being morally good is just not necessary. Someone can be a fantastic writer, can have a beautiful singing voice, can create breathtaking artwork, and still be a horrible person.

I know part of this is probably just the instinct to dislike everything about a person when you dislike them, but I also think this mindset leads to people defending creatives way past where they should, because if bad people create bad art, then if this person creates art that I like and resonates with me, then they can’t be a bad person!

And you know. That’s just not true. Those two things are simply completely unconnected and I think it’d be healthier if we all started disconnecting them in our heads.

[klinki]

[klinki]

Hey guys

There's a post going around about something called the "Invertebrate Studies Institute" needing help. A few comments made on the post made me curious, so I checked it out and it seems sketchy to me.

The institute is a startup and the owner has displayed misogynistic behavior. He made a company and received "$1.3 million in research grants from the USDA and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" in 2011, but there aren't any research papers listed on the ISI website more recent than 2012 (sources: ISI website, People Behind the Science podcast transcript, All Things Bugs LLC webpage). It's possible his research is still a work in progress, but I would expect to see some genome sequencing work at the least since that seems to be a major focus.

Also, it's possible to ship frozen specimens in dry ice and have them be fine. Even stuff for molecular work and genome sequencing. So the inability to get help from other research groups, to where they're asking for a local freezer plug-in, is a bit weird to me.

Some screenshots below the cut, didn't screenshot everything since it's mostly just text, but I did cite the sources if you wanna read them yourself.

Not sure what the overall point is of this post is besides "seems sketch to me" but I saw a lot of people worrying on the initial post so I wanted to at least mention this stuff.

Comments from the tumblr post which sparked my initial concerns.

Screenshots from the LinkedIn link, with the initial contact and follow-up legal threat.

Screenshot from the ISI website talking about their facility and "initiative" (I noticed a lot of the wording on the website sounded like they hadn't done significant research, which also gave me pause).

And, for fun, the CDC guide on shipping frozen specimens.

#omg niche stem drama

[klinki]

always re-read those posts that are using “kill the cop in your head” and “wrong and gross things/kinks” in the same paragraph because I shit you not it will ALWAYS be in protection of predators in the lgbt community but under the guise of “protecting” victims by saying some shit like it’s bad to say kill all pedos because “it could be innocent people”

#its abuse apologia dogwhistles

[klinki]

btw did you guys see how the hannah arendt prize committee tried to revoke masha gessen's prize after gessen, a jewish journalist, wrote an essay about how zionists and zionist-sympathizing gentiles, particularly in germany, wield accusations of antisemitism to shut down anti-zionist jews... an essay in which they specifically quoted hannah arendt several times

#holocaust #genocide #palestine

[klinki]

While i cannot stop consenting adults from engaging in things like raceplay or fauxcest, i can still judge you pretty hard after knowing you do. And i can judge you especially hard if you put these things in the same category of "freak sex" as common LGBT fetishes like leather. You sound a little like conservatives saying that legalizing gay marriage will lead to marriage with animals or some shit. That's what it makes me think of. There's not a single topic of discussion in this world that is 100% black or white. No sex between consenting adults should be Outlawed. But if you can only cum while roleplaying as a slave owner, or as someone sexually abusing their family member, prepare to accept that some people are gonna find that shit repellant, and it's is not equivalent to sodomy being outlawed until 2003 in some states, and still being outlawed in many countries.

#incest #raceplay #literally like no im not calling the fucking cops on you but im gonna judge you

[klinki]

When I'm liking your vent post just know that I'm kneeling with my sword to offer you support.

[klinki]

my sister was watching saltburn but couldn't get thru it not even for the supposedly "disturbing" bits but from intense second hand embarrassment which is so funny to me

#the psychosexualism seems tame ngl.... #watch a brandon cronenberg film and get back 2 me...

[klinki]

my sister got top surgery recently and is like 2 weeks post op and healing well and was planning to go to a new years eve concert w/ friends to see a band they all really like. but now his friends are being weird and hostile at the idea of potentially leaving early in case my sister gets tired (bc recovering from surgery lol) and i feel so bad for him bc hes basically getting ableism microaggressed. the bands they like are fucking OPENERS they dont even like the headliner so it shouldnt be that big of a deal to leave early but now they're trying to gaslight him about it all and making it seem like he's being unreasonable :(

#im like #maybe the two of us need to be meaner about these things bc this is ridiculous #vent

[klinki]

The main reaction to me criticizing transandrophobia theory has been calling me a radfem. And I have been rambling on about the misuse of words like "radfem/terf" before, but like come on. It happened like thrice now, in different conversations and at this point I might make it an instant block condition.

If you are going to call trans women "radfems", I suggest that you first define your terms. Like answer the following: what do you think radical feminism is, what separates it from other forms of feminism, why do you think it's bad, and what exactly has this trans woman said that marks her as a radfem?

I suspect basically none of them can do it. That's because their definition of "terf" has more to do with 70s era reactionary caricatures of feminists as evil hairy man-hating lesbians than their actual beliefs. (This site's definition of "baeddel" is that caricature, except transfem.) And whatever understanding there is poisoned by a general unacknowledged antifeminism, so talking about basic feminist concepts like patriarchy, male privilege and misogyny is terfy/radfem.

What marks a radfem as distinct from other forms of feminism is not to talk about male privilege and misogyny, but to understand those terms in bioessentialist and biodeterminist terms, as "sex-based oppression." Not that bioessentialism or transmisogyny among feminists is unique to radfems, but their ideology is uniquely defined by it.

I've seen transfeminists accused of being "trans-inclusive radical feminists", of taking radfem ideas and removing the bioessentialism so trans women are counted as women. But that's another thinly disguised antifeminist argument, because what is supposedly left that is distinctly radfemism without its bioessentialism and how is that distinct from general feminism? The idea that we live in a patriarchy in which men have privilege and women are oppressed are pretty foundational to all of feminism.

Both trans women's claim to womanhood and the intersectional concept of transmisogyny is directly opposed to radfem's bioessentialism, so maybe be smarter about labelling transfems talking about transmisogyny "radfems."

#transmisogyny #lgbtq

[klinki]

Dogwhistle

I would love for more people to understand what a dogwhistle actually is. Sometimes when a dogwhistle is pointed out, others will defend it, saying "but the statement is correct as written; it doesn't mean that other thing".

And, that's the point; that's why it's a dogwhistle. If it weren't an intrinsically defensible statement, it wouldn't be a dogwhistle, it'd just be... a whistle, I guess, for everyone to hear and recognize as such.

When someone says "Lesbians should be able to have places free from men", that is in and of itself a very reasonable statement. Yes, yes we should.

But who's saying it, and by "men" do they actually mean "trans women"? Because there is about a 50% chance of that, if not more, because someone who's not deliberately using a transmisogynistic dogwhistle would be more likely to make that explicitly clear. Over on another website, I help admin a club called "Lesbian Lounge" which excludes men. The description, which was by the way written by a lesbian who is not transfem, goes:

We're making this place for members of the sapphic community to chill with our own ❤️🧡🤍💖💜 • Lesbians? Aye ✅  • Bi/pan gals and non-binary pals? Aye ✅ • Trans editions of the above? Aye ✅ • Men? This one ain't for you, fellas ❌

Thus, same statement included, but no dogwhistle this time.

When someone says "There are small groups of powerful people controlling the United States", that's a very reasonable statement too. Because yes, yes there are. But Jews or anyone friends with Jews are already bristling here because they know there's at least an 80% chance the writer was restraining themself from writing "(((powerful people)))" and opted for a marginally subtler antisemitic dogwhistle instead.

Writing "a handful of billionaires like Musk, Bezos, and Gates" or something would avoid the dogwhistle.

Writing "a few old-money political families like the Clintons and the Bushes" or something would avoid the dogwhistle.

Writing "a few media moguls like Chambers, Murdoch, and Kennedy" would avoid the dogwhistle.

Dogwhistles leave room for plausible deniability. That is how they work. "Oh I didn't mean..." but already, the dogs have been whistled.

Note: people without bad intentions sometimes (often!) use a dogwhistle, just repeating what they've heard. That doesn't make it not a dogwhistle.

If you see a nice shiny whistle and blow it, it will get all the dogs' attention, regardless of whether that was your intention or not. The consequences will still occur. It was still a dogwhistle and you not knowing it won't change that.

"But the non-dogwhistle versions are longer, that's too much work"—if it's too much work to avoid using a dogwhistle, then your allyship was weakly performative at best.

[klinki]

Things I've learned from getting covid for the first time in 2023

I wear an N95 in public spaces and I've managed to dodge it for a long time, but I finally got covid for the first time (to my knowledge) in mid-late November 2023. It was a weird experience especially because I feel like it used to be something everyone was talking about and sharing info on, so getting it for the first time now (when people generally seem averse to talking about covid) I found I needed to seek out a lot of info because I wasn't sure what to do. I put so much effort into prevention, I knew less about what to do when you have it. I'm experiencing a rebound right now so I'm currently isolating. So, I'm making a post in the hopes that if you get covid (it's pretty goddamn hard to avoid right now) this info will be helpful for you. It's a couple things I already knew and several things I learned. One part of it is based on my experience in Minnesota but some other states may have similar programs.

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The World Health Organization states you should isolate for 10 days from first having symptoms plus 3 days after the end of symptoms.

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At the time of my writing this post, in Minnesota, we have a test to treat program where you can call, report the result of your rapid test (no photo necessary) and be prescribed paxlovid over the phone to pick up from your pharmacy or have delivered to you. It is free and you do not need to have insurance. I found it by googling "Minnesota Test to Treat Covid"

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Paxlovid decreases the risk of hospitalization and death, but it's also been shown to decrease the risk of Long Covid. Long Covid can occur even from mild or asymptomatic infections.

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Covid rebound commonly occurs 2-8 days after apparent recovery. While many people associate Paxlovid with covid rebound, researchers say there is no strong evidence that Paxlovid causes covid rebound, and rebounds occur in infections that were not treated with Paxlovid as well. I knew rebounds could happen but did not know it could take 8 days. I had mine on day 7 and was completely surprised by it.

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If you start experiencing new symptoms or test positive again, the CDC states that you should start your isolation period again at day zero. Covid rebound is still contagious. Personally I'd suggest wearing a high quality respirator around folks for an additional 8-9 days after you start to test negative in case of a rebound.

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Positive results on a rapid test can be very faint, but even a very faint line is positive result. Make sure to look at your rapid test result under strong lighting. Also, false negatives are not uncommon. If you have symptoms but test negative taking multiple tests and trying different brands if you have them are not bad ideas. My ihealth tests picked up my covid, my binax now tests did not.

EDIT: Just remembered another helpful resource for I used and should add, The People's CDC had a link to this directory for the National Alliance on Mental Health Warmline - it's like a confidential hotline for emotional support, so you can call if you're in emotional/mental distress. Can vouch that the person I talked to on the MN warmline was lovely. Can be particularly helpful if you're in isolation and need support.

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I know that there is so much we can't control as individuals right now, and that's frightening. All we can do is try our best to reduce harm and to care for each other. I hope this info will be able to help folks.

#covid #ref

[klinki]

Taiba Taiba for Burberry (2021)

hairstylist Taiba Taiba implementing the iconic Nova Check pattern into three different hair types.

#fashion

[klinki]

ginhijigin <- fans trying to push against one-dimmensional fanon tropes on bottoming being a built in personality

ginhijiginhijiginhijiginhijiginhijiginhijiginhijiginhijiginhi <- the guys were fighting over who tops then ended up falling down a long flight of stairs in each other's arms

#idk gintama bur this is pretty funny

[klinki]

I’m just here to remind everyone once again that we can’t stop protesting and boycotting and spreading the word for Palestine, even if it’s been a while. The people in power (mainly the Israeli and US governments) are relying on us losing steam.

And I do want to mention that a small bit of hope to be found among all of this is that things aren’t losing steam. I still see dozens of posts about Palestine every day, I see footage of protests almost every day, and the boycotts are working. I just want to encourage everyone that we just need to keep it up! I’ve seen so many social issues fade out over time, a week of outrage and then things settle down, but that isn’t the case here and I really respect everyone who’s still posting and protesting and seeking out information to end this once and for all. Focus on that hope, and use it to keep going :)

[klinki]

does everyone understand that op probably sees all the tags on their posts. are we comprehending this. like i can fully see that tag idk why you thought it was necessary to speak about that. but its in my notifcations nevertheless