behappybeusefulbekind

[behappybeusefulbekind]

the number of spacecraft failures recently has been absolutely insane and it all comes down to tech bros barging into the industry going "it's not that hard wtf is nasa so bad" and then completely skipping out on any testing

[behappybeusefulbekind]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[behappybeusefulbekind]

i had the idea for this last tdov but it didnt come together until now 🥖🍷 though i'm not religious, this quote is beloved to me

[behappybeusefulbekind]

"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

[behappybeusefulbekind]

i hate to be that guy, but the idea that gender, sex, and sexuality are ontologically pure concepts that can be rigidly defined if we simply police our language enough (our english language, because of course) is—i cannot stress this enough—a total waste of time. you may as well spend your afternoons teaching a brick how to swim

[behappybeusefulbekind]

Another gem from my latest ROM visit that filled me with immeasurable glee:

Look at that little owl!! He's so goofy and cute and so dear to me and so so very clearly a LITTLE OWL (Athena Noctua) which is, of course, the species of owl that represents Athena

Look at how small that little guy is:

Athena holding a helmet and a spear, with an owl. Attributed to the Brygos Painter (c. 490–480 BC). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. And, look at these incredible further examples cute little owls in pottery:

Armed owl. Attic red-figure Anthesteria oinochoe, ca. 410–390 BC

Skypho with Owl between two branches of olive wood. Attic red-figure pottery. Archaeological National Museum of Spain.

Attic red-figure kylix, owl between two olive branches. Found in the Mengíbar Necropolis. Archaeological National Museum of Spain.

Owl skyphos. From Most na SočI, end of the 5th century BC. Tolmin Museum.

Owl skyphos. Attic, mid-5th century BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Terracotta rim fragment of a kylix. Attic, dating 480–470 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I just wanted to share these because they also always make me smile. One of my favourite things about going to the museum has always been looking at sculptures and pottery.

[behappybeusefulbekind]

I know I've said it before but every rewatch I do cements this thought further - elijah wood's performance in LOTR is absolutely insane, they really had a character whose name means "wise by experience", hired an 18-year-old to do it, and he delivered so much that not only is it a beautiful and moving role on its own, it's a performance equal to those of the absolute powerhouses he played side by side with like ian holm and ian mckellen. to name just a few

[behappybeusefulbekind]

Consider:

Victorian England: 1837-1901

American Old West: 1803-1912

Meiji Restoration: 1868-1912

French privateering in the Gulf of Mexico: ended circa 1830

Conclusion: an adventuring party consisting of a Victorian gentleman thief, an Old West gunslinger, a disgraced former samurai, and an elderly French pirate is actually 100% historically plausible.

[behappybeusefulbekind]

This scientist crafts stunning visual art through chemistry.

[behappybeusefulbekind]

[behappybeusefulbekind]

There is one particular scene in Monstrous Regiment that I love that isn't being talked about enough so I figured...maybe I should talk about it.

'Then go!', shouted Polly. 'Desert! We won't stop you, because I'm sick of your...your bullshit! But you make up your mind, right now, understand? Because when we meet the enemy I don't want to think you're there to stab me in the back!'

The words flew out before she could stop them, and there was no power in the world that could snatch them back.

Tonker went pale, and a certain life drained out of her face like water from a funnel. 'What was that you said?'

The words 'You heard me!' lined up to spring from Polly's tongue, but she hesitated. She told herself: it doesn't have to go this way. You don't have to let a pair of socks do the talking.

'Words that were stupid', she said. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.'

It is such an incredibly powerful scene. I've read the book dozens of times and every time I low-key expect there to be a fight even though I know there won't be because that's how it goes, right? But Pterry is showing us, it doesn't have to. Right here, right now it's in your hands. You can choose not to. You can back down when you are wrong or even when you're right. Polly has good reason to be mad at Tonker but so does Tonker for her actions and Polly chooses not to escalate. They're in this together. Fighting amongst themselves accomplishes nothing and backing down doesn't make her weak. On the contrary, it's a strength because anger is easy. Polly isn't wrong to be angry, but there is a time and a place and she has the wisdom to recognise that this isn't it.

You're allowed to be angry! But you don't have to get swept up by it, you can choose a different path. And hell, that just goes right to the most important thing Discworld taught me. Through Vimes and Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany and occasionally even Rincewind.

Being good isn't something you are, it's something you do. It's something you have to choose to be, over and over again, every single day, every single decision. And it's hard. It's not some nebulous quality you either possess or you don't it's something you have to decide to be and work at hard at all your life but it's up to you. You can always choose to do better, to be kinder, to apologise, to say something, to not say anything, to do the right thing even when it's hard or unpleasant or inconvenient for you. Your anger isn't wrong or misplaced and sometimes being angry is the only right reaction to have, but it's a weapon too and you decide where you aim it.

You don't have to let a pair of socks do the talking.

[behappybeusefulbekind]

Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson

[behappybeusefulbekind]

i love the -with mama trend but sometimes i get sad because that is clearly papa and he aint getting any credit raising those darn kids...

[behappybeusefulbekind]

Some PTerry quotes that feel especially salient at the moment:

"He asked you to shoot at people who weren’t shooting back,” growled Vimes, striding forward, “That makes him insane, wouldn’t you say?”

“They are throwing stones, Sarge,” said Colon.

“So? Stay out of range. They’ll get tired before we do."

- Night Watch

Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.

- Jingo

It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

- Snuff

The poor devils. They thought a king would make them free.

- Feet of Clay

Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say “we’re the good guys” and do bad-guy things. Sometimes the watching watchman inside every good copper’s head could use an extra pair of eyes.

- Thud!

[behappybeusefulbekind]