smartasspikachu

[smartasspikachu]

Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)

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Day 3206 Salandit

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Day 3207 Professor Layton

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Day 3208 Kiwi and Miriam

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"The nonbinary afab who goes by she/her, dresses femininely, and uses a push-up bra when I—" when you what? What's wrong with her?

Is she not nonbinary enough for you? Is the way she experiences her queerness and how she presents not perfect enough for you? Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny, right? So why is she the exception? Why does she have to hate herself to appeal to your standards? Why is she any less trans—any less worthy of respect—cause it's "not visible"? Queer solidarity my ass. Don't spout this bullshit on Pride, man.

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happy make a terrible comic day!!! i haven't stopped thinking about this post since i saw it. in 2018 a common merganser was spotted with 76 (SEVENTY SIX!!!) chicks!! that's SOOOO many baby. so much success.

[smartasspikachu]

While the world's eyes are turning towards the escalation of events between Iran and Israel‼️ 🍉

I am now standing on the window. The planes are flying from above me and the sea boat is shooting on the beach and the sound of shells in the east is very loud. Everyone has started to forget Gaza. If you are one of the people who stands with Gaza, I put the link of my campaign here. You can donate now to my campaign because it is deadly slow and I can't save it alone. Prove your loyalty to Gaza with a simple donation from you. This is a lot of a burden.

[smartasspikachu]

Agent 47

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birth by sleep✨

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funny big cat

[smartasspikachu]

‼️ VERY URGENT, NO DONATIONS IN MORE THAN TWO WEEKS, PLEASE DON'T IGNORE ‼️

[pt: very urgent, no donations in more than two weeks, please don't ignore]

i would also like to bring attention to last week's spotlight campaign. mohammed has been fundraising since april of 2024 and has only raised €9,834 of his €100,000 goal.

i donated €10 to this campaign last week. please consider matching my donation or donating any amount.

ID: Screenshot confirming €10 donation to the above campaign. End ID.

if you cannot donate, that's fine, but please consider sharing this post so more people can see it. to my knowledge, mohammed is not on tumblr and therefore is not actively campaigning here. nobody sees his campaign here unless people reblog this post or make their own!

this campaign is featured on the gaza funds website. all campaigns posted here are vetted by the organizers running it.

thank you in advance for your consideration.

5/13: i have donated an additional €5 to this campaign because it went 14 days without any donations.

6/9: i have donated an additional €5 to this campaign because it went 17 days without any donations. to date, i have donated €30 to this campaign. please consider matching my €5 donation or sharing this post so the campaign doesn't stagnate again. i cannot fund this campaign by myself. you don't have to donate if you don't have the means to do so, but please at least share this post.

€10,022 / €100,000

last donation: 16 days ago‼️

[pt: last donation: 16 days ago.]

[smartasspikachu]

this is what unrestricted internet access looks like

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"A cure for HIV could be a step closer after researchers found a new way to force the virus out of hiding inside human cells.

The virus’s ability to conceal itself inside certain white blood cells has been one of the main challenges for scientists looking for a cure. It means there is a reservoir of the HIV in the body, capable of reactivation, that neither the immune system nor drugs can tackle.

Now researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, have demonstrated a way to make the virus visible, paving the way to fully clear it from the body.

It is based on mRNA technology, which came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic when it was used in vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers have shown for the first time that mRNA can be delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding, by encasing it in a tiny, specially formulated fat bubble. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus.

Globally, there are almost 40 million people living with HIV, who must take medication for the rest of their lives in order to suppress the virus and ensure they do not develop symptoms or transmit it. For many it remains deadly, with UNAids figures suggesting one person died of HIV every minute in 2023.

It was “previously thought impossible” to deliver mRNA to the type of white blood cell that is home to HIV, said Dr Paula Cevaal, research fellow at the Doherty Institute and co-first author of the study, because those cells did not take up the fat bubbles, or lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), used to carry it.

The team have developed a new type of LNP that those cells will accept, known as LNP X. She said: “Our hope is that this new nanoparticle design could be a new pathway to an HIV cure.”

When a colleague first presented test results at the lab’s weekly meeting, Cevaal said, they seemed too good to be true.

“We sent her back into the lab to repeat it, and she came back the next week with results that were equally good. So we had to believe it. And of course, since then, we’ve repeated it many, many, many more times.

“We were overwhelmed by how [much of a] night and day difference it was – from not working before, and then all of a sudden it was working. And all of us were just sitting gasping like, ‘wow’.”

Further research will be needed to determine whether revealing the virus is enough to allow the body’s immune system to deal with it, or whether the technology will need to be combined with other therapies to eliminate HIV from the body.

The study is laboratory based and was carried out in cells donated by HIV patients. The path to using the technology as part of a cure for patients is long, and would require successful tests in animals followed by safety trials in humans, likely to take years, before efficacy trials could even begin.

“In the field of biomedicine, many things eventually don’t make it into the clinic – that is the unfortunate truth; I don’t want to paint a prettier picture than what is the reality,” stressed Cevaal. “But in terms of specifically the field of HIV cure, we have never seen anything close to as good as what we are seeing, in terms of how well we are able to reveal this virus.

“So from that point of view, we’re very hopeful that we are also able to see this type of response in an animal, and that we could eventually do this in humans.”

Dr Michael Roche of the University of Melbourne and co-senior author of the research, said the discovery could have broader implications beyond HIV, with the relevant white blood cells also involved in other diseases including cancers.

Dr Jonathan Stoye, a retrovirologist and emeritus scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, who was not involved in the study, said the approach taken by the Melbourne team appeared be a major advance on existing strategies to force the virus out of hiding, but further studies would be needed to determine how best to kill it after that.

He added: “Ultimately, one big unknown remains. Do you need to eliminate the entire reservoir for success or just the major part? If just 10% of the latent reservoir survives will that be sufficient to seed new infection? Only time will tell.

“However, that does not detract from the significance of the current study, which represents a major potential advance in delivery of mRNA for therapeutic purposes to blood cells.”"

-via The Guardian, June 5, 2025

[smartasspikachu]

critically stagnant spotlight campaigns as of today (6/26.)

my posts don’t get much attention. i suspect they’re just background noise for most people at this point. please don’t ignore this, you have the opportunity to throw someone a lifeline and do some real good. even if you don’t have any money, a reblog is free and can help get more eyes on these campaigns. none of them are on tumblr, to my knowledge. nobody sees these campaigns unless people reblog posts about them or make their own posts.

all campaigns are vetted by the organizers of gaza funds

mohammed ahmed: 17 days since last donation

bessan khalaf: 14 days since last donation

ghada and abdulrahman: 11 days since last donation

raghad's family: 10 days since last donation

yasmin's family: 10 days since last donation

hassan abdullah: 8 days since last donation

karem al-kahlout: 7 days since last donation

hossam abo shab: 7 days since last donation

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i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

[smartasspikachu]

⚠️‼️PLEASE DO NOT IGNORE⚠️‼️

We have collected $15,337 raised of $20,000 !🇵🇸

🇵🇸 save family lost their home ,dreams and everything in Gaza 🇵🇸

This is my home before the war and after the war how it became💔💔💔

Before: After:

We have been through many wars before, but this war was not like the ones before it. Our lives were turned upside down. We became displaced from one place to another. We are the Anas family, residents of northern Gaza, specifically in the Shujaiya area. In the first week of the war, we fled our home because everyone considered our home to be in a dangerous area. We moved to the Rimal area, specifically in the middle of Gaza. There, we received the news that our home, which contained all our beautiful memories, was bombed. Suddenly, it was gone!!! Just thinking that your home, which you worked hard on and built from scratch and took a lot of your life, was gone in less than a second ! After a while, we left the sands to the Al-Zawaida area because of the heavy shelling. We stayed there for about two weeks, and then the terrorist army asked us to go to Rafah. We actually fled for the fourth time to Rafah and stayed there for two months, some of the most difficult days of our lives, as there was no way or means to live a normal life. 😔😔 After that, because of the invasion of Rafah, we moved to Deir al-Balah. Now, we are in very difficult and oppressive circumstances.

We are asking you with all shame to support and stand by us in these difficult circumstances that everyone knows because we lost our home, our work and any stable source of income. Thank you all.

🔗 🔗 Gofundme link for donations 👇👇👇👇🔗 🔗

Please, we are in dire need of you and your support. If you cannot donate, you can share☹️❤️🥹

Even $5 will make a big difference and save us!

Verified by : @nabulsi