Who are you?
I don’t like to put my name on the internet, but you may call me GB; those are my initials! I’m 24, chronically ill, and gay + trans. I have a girlfriend, three cats, and like to cook and clean when I’m not working on this novel series! I do art as well, although my condition usually prevents me from doing too much. I follow from @tolbachik, and my art blog is @tolbachik-art.
(More about the novels under the cut!)
I'm apparently pretty behind on this bit of medical history, but TIL that in addition everything else King Leopold II of Belgium arguably bears some responsibility for the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic
TL;DR the earliest known blood sample is from Kinshasa (formerly Leopoldville) in 1959, but based on a fairly constant rate of mutation researchers estimate that the virus has been around since the early 20th century; conditions in colonial Congo and Africa more broadly probably contributed to its evolution and spread
It went undetected because, for one thing, people often died young from tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. So it wasn't obvious that some people were dying of a new disease we now know as AIDS. [...]
A year ago, Worobey documented a "signature of HIV migration" from the Congo to Haiti. The virus was carried there, he thinks, by French-speaking teachers and other professionals who had gone to work in the early post-colonial economy.
it makes me think of when i said hillary had slaves in the 1980s, like actual black slaves who were prisoners who had to serve her and her evil ass husband without pay in their mansion, providing free labor for cleaning cooking waiting on them yard work the list goes on, and if they did not comply they would be sent back to prison and risk solitary confinement, and when i said this hundreds of ppl were angry and saying i was attacking a wonderful pure democrat woman who “was fighting for my rights” as a black person…. as if forcing imprisoned black people into slavery and threatening them with cruel retaliation isn’t indicative of who she is as a person
no literally this too hillary “all black people are super predators with unique levels of violence compared to white citizens who need to be jailed or killed for our safety” clinton is not someone i would ever trust 2 uphold leftist values
July 24, 2026 - Anti-imperialist Venezuelan workers took to the streets this week in protest against the government's renewed ties with Israel, which the people condemned as a betrayal of the revolution and the Palestinian people, as well as the continued US occupation of Venezuela.
Since the kidnapping of President Maduro the Venezuelan state has expressed complete subordination to US interests, reopening access to the country's oil for American capitalists, and allowing the IDF to enter the country under the pretext of humanitarian aid. The US is estimated to have already extracted $15bn from Venezuela since the kidnapping of Maduro earlier this year. [video]
so venezuela has become a usamerican colony. like that happened and everything carried on like normal
like i know venezuela is going through a huge humanitarian crisis right now and their political regime is low in the list of priorities when tallinmg about it obviously it's just it shocked me to read trump congratulating his secretary of energy on how well he's running what used to be a sovereign country until a few months back you know
This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles. Perched above public streets, they are birdlike things, weatherproof, and they photograph every passing car and file it in a searchable national database.
Somebody cut two of them in half at Washington Avenue and Westcott in Houston, spray-painted the wreckage, and left an American flag on one of them. Police were notified on the morning of the Fourth of July.
Somebody severed a camera in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The police department posted the photograph itself and collected more than twenty thousand comments. “Not all heroes wear capes.” “Give them a medal.”
Here is what the cameras do when nobody cuts them down. Cops use them to hunt immigrants and to follow ICE targets across state lines and to find women who ended pregnancies in states where that is a crime and to watch exes and to watch women they want, without a warrant and without a judge. A cop types a reason in a box and the box does not check.
A man in Burleson, Texas, told deputies his girlfriend had taken abortion pills. He showed them the photographs, the FedEx envelope, the instructions. Deputies opened a death investigation into a non-viable fetus, and the district attorney told them the state could not charge her, and they searched anyway: 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks, a month of everywhere she had been. The reason they typed was had an abortion, search for female. The search reached Illinois and Washington, where what she did was legal. They found her in Dallas.
She came into the sheriff’s office a week later, and they thought she had come to explain the fetus, and she had come to report that the man who called them had put a gun to her head.
A sheriff in Jerome County, Idaho ran his wife’s plate more than seven hundred times in three months. He typed the same reason every time. Test. The attorney general found nothing to charge him with. He retired in April.
The Institute for Justice counts at least twenty-two officers who used the system to track people they were romantically interested in, and calls that almost certainly an undercount.
And the cameras keep falling.
“Why does this character have to be Black?”
Why shouldn’t they be?
“Why does this character have to be a woman?”
Why shouldn’t she be?
“Why does this character have to be gay?”
Why shouldn’t they be?
“Why does this character have to be trans?”
Why shouldn’t they be?
“Why does this character have to be disabled?”
Why shouldn’t they be?
“Why does this character have to be fat?”
Why shouldn’t they be?
really tired of seeing the idea that women & girls are less likely to be diagnosed with autism because it "presents differently" so widely accepted even in progressive spaces
it is also widely accepted that women get raises less often because they don't ask as much as men. this is objectively not true.
it is also widely accepted that women are more talkative than men. this is objectively not true.
it is also widely accepted that women are taken less seriously when speaking because their speech patterns are associated with a "lack of confidence". this is objectively not true. [1][2][3]
every time we talk about gender discrimination, people look for an explanation that starts with women's behavior.
and every fucking time, actual research shows that across the board, women actually don't behave that differently from men.
women aren't diagnosed less often with autism due to "presenting differently". it's gendered medical neglect, and weaponized diagnoses disproportionately applied to women (e.g. BPD, HPD, bipolar, etc.)
people on here who have been on 10-15+ years like myself...i don't know how they claim that there were never any Black bloggers on here, or that it was always such a white website. trudy gradientlair was on here. thisiswhiteprivilege was on here. there was a feminist citation project sara ahmed was involved in on here. there was someone on here whose username was wretchedoftheearth and that was how i learned who fanon was when i was 12, by googling those words. tumblr was the only place i knew i could go to get accurate & compassionate info about what happened to trayvon martin, when everyone around me irl was rabidly racist. the amount of reportage and scholarship that happened on here before the first big wave of bans was so huge and so much has been lost. where were you when it was happening??? why weren't you paying attention??
it's cause they never engaged with non white bloggers so they never noticed them disappearing. they got the tumblr they wanted, and those of us who aren't liberal/conservative fandom bloggers were robbed of our black and brown friends, and worst of all black and brown bloggers were robbed of a dpace that once was a legitimate vector for talking about black issues. at least some members of staff know what they are doing, it's like the war on drugs in this website the way they crush black people on this website.
I literally published an essay several years ago about how a lot of people stole the intellectual work that Black feminist bloggers on here published regularly to build this website and its reputation as we know it. White people love them some revisionist history.
The reason Tumblr became the bastion of intellectual discourse that it was known for--the reason the term "social justice warrior" even EXISTS as a derogatory descriptor--is because of the work of the Black bloggers who migrated to this site from 2009-2014 from LJ and Jezebel's forums. Myself included.
Centre Lane Partners, a private equity firm, owns Pyrex, Corelle, CorningWare, Snapware, Visions, Chicago Cutlery, Instant Pot, Anchor Hocking, Lenox, Oneida, and Reed & Barton. That is almost all of the surviving legacy American tabletop industry under one roof, and we'll come back to it, because that story is a doozy.
Can't emphasize enough that it's very worth your while to hunt through estate sales, other people's parents' basements, etc. for anything you use in the kitchen or dining room. My stuff -- dishware, pots and pans, food processor, etc. -- is all in good condition and will be forever... because it's mostly pre-1980s. Even my ware from the '90s is better-made than anything 21st-century. My Pyrex measuring cups are all slightly chipped at the edges, but they're my grandmother's, and going strong otherwise; I'm still using fourth-hand Revere Ware because the quality's solid.
What to buy instead: The counter-list in this category runs deeper than any I've covered previously, because cookware is simple enough that stubborn, family-run businesses can still compete. The pattern in who survived is uniform: nobody outside the family has ever been owed a return.
Very good resource if you must buy new!
please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.
you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.
first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.
now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:
in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.
and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.
and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.
it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:
• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.
• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.
• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.
• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.
• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.
• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.
and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.
what i'm asking:
if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.
if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.
india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.
we can still save her. but only loudly.
reblog. share. don't scroll past.
Things that I knew about: that the mass incarceration of people in the USA , particularly black men, has direct ties to/is an extension of slavery.
Things I did not know: this specific shit about Louisiana HOLY FUCK this is evil.
OH MY GOSH????
Grew up next to Angola. It’s much worse than you think
I wonder how many people are imprisoned for weed
I’m from Mississippi and it’s like this in my home town. Enslaved prisoners clean roadways, pick cotton, everything they’ve done since before slavery was supposedly ended. What they teach in schools is nothing but propaganda.
The Anishinabek Nation stands in solidarity with Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, which has experienced devastation from the recent wildfires, displacing all citizens from their homes and community.
In the spirit of Ngo Dwe Waangazid Anishinaabe (One Anishinaabe Family), the Anishinabek Nation is accepting donations on behalf of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation to help the community navigate through this crisis. If you are able to, please donate via e-transfer to: an7gc@anishinabek.ca
Donations can also be made by credit card through PayPal or Canada Helps with further information at https://an7gc.ca/donate/
100% of donations are dedicated to supporting Namaygoosisagagun emergency response and community recovery efforts.
Other ways to help:
(Image ID: A probe passing by an unseen side of a Uranian moon, with Uranus visible in the distance. There is text that reads Commissions, one body $15, two bodies $20, probe $10, and landscape addition $15. There is the logo for this art blog in the bottom right, which is the letters TA curved to fit inside a ringed planet. There are stars surrounding it.)
Hi, all. I have a bigger and better looking commission sheet I still need to finish, but I need to make a little cash here, so here’s a new temporary sheet made with art I did recently. Canvases will be restricted in size, as I tend to get sucked into details & take way longer than I should on them.
DM me for details, and thank you in advanced :)
(Image ID: A probe passing by an unseen side of a Uranian moon, with Uranus visible in the distance. There is text that reads Commissions, one body $15, two bodies $20, probe $10, and landscape addition $15. There is the logo for this art blog in the bottom right, which is the letters TA curved to fit inside a ringed planet. There are stars surrounding it.)
Hi, all. I have a bigger and better looking commission sheet I still need to finish, but I need to make a little cash here, so here’s a new temporary sheet made with art I did recently. Canvases will be restricted in size, as I tend to get sucked into details & take way longer than I should on them.
DM me for details, and thank you in advanced :)
i haven't seen anything about this on my dashboard, so i wanted to share. ICE gestapo killed another human being on tuesday. he leaves behind three sons and his wife, who he has spent the last 35 years building a life with
there is a gofundme supported by the league of united latin american citizens set up to help with funeral costs, legal fees, and supporting his family moving forward.
