#I just am fascinated by this stuff

[diabeticlichen-thropy]

OK SO this is like 60% the topic of my dissertation

(which I submitted like 2 days ago go me!!!)

BUT as @fallenangelvictorious said UVC are disinfecting wavelengths between about 200-300 nm and are really not a good time. Here is an article from 2008 where a bunch of medical students experienced serious side effects after exposure to a surgical disinfection lamp (254 nm) after only an hour!!. Now, recent studies have been looking into something called far-UVC which are wavelengths between 200 and 230 nm which seem to be non-toxic while still being antimicrobial. HOWEVER these are being marketed for use in events like these BUT some aren't filtered properly!! One study in people found that a lamp already on the market was inducing serious pre-carcinogenic markers which they thought was probably due to poor filtering of the light produced.

Now, the UV lights used here may well be these lamps, something like the SterilRay that the study I talked about before looked into. And, because these are events and whatnot and not scientists, they haven't got optical filters because those are not yet commercially available.

Anyway, all this to say, this is insane and something various people have been warning about for a while and something I have spent many hours ranting to my supervisor about because it felt like a matter of time. None of this is the attendees fault, and probably not even the event organisers because a lot of these companies say that this stuff is safe, and then don't make the research behind that accessible (even with university level access to paywall journals).

Please wear sunscreen and be so so so careful around UV, especially if anyone starts talking about UVC sterilisation - just get out of there, most sunscreens don't protect against UVC because it doesn't come through the atmosphere.

stay safe and I hope these people recover quickly because this is insane and they could probably sue.

So... a bunch of NFT grifters threw a party in Hong Kong this weekend and reportedly a bunch of attendees are now at risk of permanent eyesight damage because the promoters used unsafe lighting, and people are going to the ER...

[ravencromwell]

Rereading Dickens Christmas Carol for the first time in a long time. And the more I reread, the more it strikes me how seamlessly a queer reading could slip within these pages. Not an especially twee reading, wherein all Scrooge's troubles start and end with grief over Jacob Marley's death. For we know that Scrooge was a "Tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" And we know that he and Marley were "two kindred spirits"

And perhaps that very fact makes the similarities to queer life, unintended as they most likely were by Mr. Dickens, achingly poignant to me. Scrooge is, we're told, "secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster." How much that resonates, for so many of us who shield our innermost selves but from a select group of friends. And we know that Scrooge and Marley were, at the very least, certainly that for one another. Scrooge is Marley's sole mourner; his sole executor and beneficiary; and even Dickens notes, "friend." How reminiscent is that of queer couples across history, estranged from their families?

Scrooge lives in a set of chambers that once belonged to Marley—clearly Dickens wanted us to believe Scrooge gave up his own dwellings after Marley's death to economize. But with only a flicker of change, those chambers become _their chambers, rented by Marley as the senior member of the couple. The place is so desolate Dickens notes "one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again." The perfect abode for two queer misers who wanted no one prying into their business.

Marley's name is still above the door of Scrooge's counting-house: a mark by which, no doubt, Dickens meant to convey Scrooge such a penny-pincher he couldn't bother to have it changed. But a thing can be both! mark of frugality to ludicrous excess and! mark of mourning. "sometimes," Dickens opines, "People new to the

business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him."

This is why "death of the author" matters so much, in expanding our interpretations of texts. It is vastly far from the lens Dickens would have intended. But, the idea of a ghost of queerness, so taboo in the society it could barely be glanced at sidewise in this tale that is all about the inexplicable and yet that lingers over everything becomes an astonishing lens through which to read this book. Thinking of Scrooge as a queer man, his "melancholy dinner at his usual melancholy tavern" becomes a eerie prefiguring of the hollowness of days spent by Isherwood's A Single Man. In this universe, little wonder Scrooge doubly hates mention of time with family, marriage, etc. when the precise nature of his grief is both unacknowledged and unacknowledgable.

And readings like this are vital, because the uncomfortable truth is, discrimination doesn't "discriminate between sinners and saints", to borrow a Miranda phrase. It is easy, in my liberal circles, to fight for queer people who hold "the good sorts of politics". But what about men like Michael Hess, culpable for supporting Reagan even as his contemptuous homophobia let the aids epidemic run rampant? How much harder is it to remember Michael had a partner? That he deserves empathy and compassion for being practically tarred and feathered out of the party upon his own aids diagnosis?

Expanding our imaginative universes to include queerness, not as redemptive panacea, but merely as one aspect of identity, personality, often in vicious conflict with others. Even! as we consider those stories equally worthy of being told feels vital if we're ever to truly express the complexity of what queer humanity looks like.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[butchjesus]

ok but for real now. since tiktok has so throughly disappointed on this trend. who is your strangest hear me out / most bizarre crush? freaks and headscratchers only edition

[silliestgirlintheworld]

Detox just to Retox - The Dan and Phil Hiatus

Dan and Phil x Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes - Fall Out Boy

Image credits under cut:

Why I Quit Youtube - Daniel Howell (1, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21)

Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes - Fall Out Boy (2, 5, 8, 10, 16, 20)

DIL'S FAMILY WINTERFEST - Dan and Phil Play: Sims 4 #63 - DanAndPhilGAMES (3, 11)

Phil is not on fire 10 - AmazingPhil (4)

DAN AND PHIL MASSIVE PIZZA MUKBANG 2 - DanAndPhilGAMES (6)

Daniel Howell, Twitter 04/01/2019 (12)

Daniel Howell, Instagram 06/18/2021 (19)

WE'RE ALL DOOMED! - Daniel Howell (22)

[simaraknows]

i see your "'does he want to lick my boots or chop off my hands' is a Nicki reference" and raise you "what if Armand's relationship with sex is so fucked that his two modi are total submission and 'don't touch me or I'll chop off your hands' and Louis is still clowning on his trauma" in this essay I will

[fulcrums501st]

not a Silco defender but a Silco understander

[bogkeep]

it fascinates me how often a choice of first or - gasp - second person storytelling can create so much derision and discourse. having preferences is fine obviously, and as a writing choice it Does matter, because all writing choices matter. i don't really... notice?? anymore??? or like, i DO notice, but more in a "what information will the narrative give me access to" kind of way.

i know second person especially can be jarring if you're not used to it, because it's "he would not fucking say that" but for yourself. but it's also like... so many song lyrics have "you" and "i" and to me they're just. a story that exists separate from me. (to the degree lyrics exist to me at all as something other than Sounds that are part of a music piece, but that's the audio processing disorder/'did not grow up with english as a first language and never bothered to decode lyrics' of it all speaking)

i suspect a lot of derision towards first person narratives comes from a derision towards the genres in which it is a staple, rather than that it's somehow uniquely bad. there's really not much difference between a first person perspective and limited third person perspective??

[navree]

refusing to be undone.

Atia Balba, niece to Julius Caesar, died only a year after his assassination, and was survived by her two children, Octavia the Younger and Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus, who she had named Gaius Octavius at birth. Both her son and daughter would outlive her by several years.

[shorlinesorrows]

okay, a couple things on alien stage/ivantill that I think some folks maybe need to consider and internalize.

Till does not "need" to return Ivan's feelings in the slightest if he doesn't feel that way. It's heart wrenching to see Ivan love him and have those feelings unreturned, but please remember that no one is required to return romantic feelings for someone else. You can't make yourself love someone, and you shouldn't. Especially out of guilt or obligation. That's Unhealthy 101, and would only set a relationship up for failure. (I do think Till cared about Ivan, and that he's going to have a Guilt Complex based on the fact that he didn't fully notice Ivan's feelings/care toward him until the guy died, but I've seen a couple of people tear into Till for not noticing/reciprocating Ivan's feelings??? Don't do that??? their situation is shitty, the fact that they didn't get to talk is shitty, but please don't blame Till for things he Can't Control.)

The kiss was not consensual. It wasn't meant to be portrayed as such. It wasn't even really romantic, it was a desperate, selfish act that Ivan used to get Till's attention (in more ways than one) and to give himself some sense of closure before he died. It was him saying everything that he felt at once, with no chance for Till to reciprocate or deny the affection. In a perfect world, they could have talked instead of this, maybe kissed knowing both wanted it, or given Till a chance to refuse. But they're both in the middle of an essential death tournament and one of them is going to be murdered sometime in the next few minutes. Neither of them really wants to live, but Ivan feels he has unfinished business before his sacrifice, so he finishes it. Their situation sucks. That doesn't mean the kiss was consensual. (especially considering the theory/implication that Till was/is being sexually assaulted by aliens, I wouldn't be surprised if this affects him badly in the future, for multiple reasons. Everyone should always get the chance to say "no" and have that fully respected. This also extends to the fact that Ivan died for Till without giving him a chance to stop it, which is probably going to mess with Till's head a lot. Then again, Ivan likely didn't think it would affect Till much because as far as he/we know, the feelings aren't reciprocated in this moment in canon, or are extremely repressed. Ivan might believe that Till simply hates him, or the kiss/subsequent "choking" may have been a way of trying to make Till hate him so that his death wouldn't hurt as much. Of course that thinking is flawed, because it would hurt Till no matter what, but still, it makes me sad)

Ivan... is kinda messed up. I adore him, but we've got to acknowledge that he has little to no emotional and relationship maturity due to the fact that he was quite literally raised as a pet and learned at a young age to do whatever his masters said to keep himself safe and pain-free. His fascination with Till appears to largely stem from Till's sense of rebellion. Ivan's examples of relationship dynamics and what constitutes as "love" is dangerously unbalanced, and he does not know how to build a healthy relationship. (Neither of them do.) This is also built onto the fact that the person he became dependent on only paid attention to him when they were fighting or Ivan was annoying him. Ivan cares about Till desperately, but he is also dangerously reliant on him to the point of self-detriment. Again, in an ideal world, they would be able to get out of this situation and gradually make a healthy relationship/friendship (depending on Till's feelings) over time while starting to undo the dangerous relationship patterns that they fell into when they didn't have any way to know better. But they're in a terrible situation, and Ivan really just doesn't get the chance to grow as a person and realize that his sense of possessiveness and reliance on Till's attention isn't healthy.

Basically, their situation makes me want to sob and its heart wrenching. Their circumstances have set them up for failure. Both of them are in the midst of attempting to survive an abusive situation and massive amounts of dehumanization. I beg, please try not to sanitize their complicated relationship or blame either of them for the pain the other is going through. I've seen some of that going around, and it's making me sad :(

[ciderjacks]

Wip

[electroniccollectiondonut]

I have not been in this fandom long enough to reasonably judge others' takes however. "EPIC fans are so silly to characterize odysseus as feeling guilty for his actions don't you know he's a war criminal" is definitely a wild one. like first of all to each their own so settle down and let people enjoy things ok. and secondly making choices with a bad outcome, even knowingly and deliberately, does not exclude the possibility of feeling bad about it later. in fact it makes for a much more in depth character because then you get to explore what he does or doesn't feel guilt over, and why, and if that guilt ever edges into regret or not.

[blossoms-phan]

my personal life for like the past 3 months has been a never ending doom cycle of “what am i doing with my life/career” so hearing reassurance from dnp that it is literally all good in the podcast was very much needed cheers lads 👍

[cosmos-fudge]

hai I'm a little rambly but I've been looking into T and bottom surgery and like?? theres a book called 'body alchemy: transsexual portraits', and subreddits of that stuff, I've always only heard it talked about and it's so wonderful to have an actual point of reference for what bottom surgeries and tdick look like?? and I never knew I wanted it so bad ohmygod I'm gonna sob again

[cirrus-grey]

Actually, after taking some time to think about it, I'm kind of glad they answered the alt!jmart question so quickly. I'm nervous enough about what they might do with Basira, Helen, Georgie, and the rest without also having to worry about the two former main characters on top of it all.

[to-the-batcomputer]

was watching a video about dick where the guy said dick is "always mature, always responsible, always humble... but also, lying is in his nature. He has an intrinsic calculated coldness that he can't help." i just think that's interesting. especially the use of the word "intrinsic," given that he was kinda raised by batman, the most calculating and manipulative motherfucker to ever live. kinda like a chicken or the egg thing - how much cold calculation was there before bruce brought it out even more?