If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.
Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.
We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."
The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.
Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.
That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.
Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.
So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.
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“Never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are. Never let the man that you’re against form your opinions. This is the trick that’s played on everyone who’s oppressed: when you have a revolution in a country, the first thing you take over is the radio. Then, you start telling the people that the war is over, so all of them surrender. They believe that thing right there.
And once they take that over, they start telling you where you are and where they are, and you fall right in line — it’s plain thought control.
The majority of the American people aren’t segregationists. The majority of the American people aren’t imperialists. But the government is. The structure is; the power faction is. So, how, then, do all the majority go along with it?
Because those who sit in power over the television, over the radio, and over the press are constantly telling those who are the masses how free they are, how this they are, and how that they are.”
STOP TRYING TO TRACK DOWN PROTESTORS THAT DO 'BADASS STUFF'. STOP POSTING ABOUT IT ONLINE.
PEOPLE FUCKING DIE.
AND IT'S USUALLY SOMEONE MELANATED.
THE GOVERNMENT IS WATCHING YOU FUCKING DUMBASS.
y'all are so stuck on egoistic heroism that every time someone does something 'sick' at a protest you wanna turn them in to the next celebrity to have a parasocial relationship with and then they go missing.
Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the bod
"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.”"
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The goal is to prevent the deportation itself. Stop them from entering the building, stop them from getting to the person, stop them from leaving with the person.
But if that fails, you probably still saved someone else.
Your resistance has delayed the ICE officers - preventing them from abducting others that day - and the frequency of resistance like that means ICE has to commit more officers and security measures to each individual arrest because they might meet strong resistance any time they go in to grab someone. That reduces their capacity a lot.
If you see a police car or a cop with a speaker looking thing on it, FUCKING RUN. It's known as an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), a device that, when activated, can permanently damage your hearing and cause serious harm. If you're too close, you'll be left in a lot of pain and squirming on the ground permanently deaf. Ear plugs do not work. Unless you have one of those shooting range headphones, you do not stand a chance against them. Again, if you see them pull up, RUN. This is what they look like.
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i dont think usamericans rly understand how prevalent their culture is. english is taught in schools. we hear about usa news, watch usa shows and movies, know usa actors, read usa books, listen to usa music, have usa brands. i have a shirt somewhere with some usa flag motive from like 15 years ago. cant remember why i even have it. why were they even selling that in croatia. your books and culture are everywhere, you dominate social media, and then come on here whenever someone gives even a middle criticism and act like spoiled children because someone wants you to open an atlas
Partially related but a lot of usamericans also love to pull the whole "You just don't know how bad things are here. We have food deserts and a shitty education ststem and no opportunities for disadvantaged people and fascism and etc. etc." whenever you criticise them or say that they benefit from imperialism or anything like that.
1. We all know about the problems the US has. You guys dominate political discourse too. You can't take two steps in any political space on the internet without hearing about the socio-economic problems of the US.
2. Many countries have the same problems. Many countries have the same problems but worse. Many countries have the same problems plus a bunch of extra problems on top. In many cases due to something the US has done and continues to do to this day. You are not exceptional.
3. Having socio-economic problems does not stop you from benefiting from imperialism. It does not stop your country from being the imperial core. It does not stop your country from holding a cultural and economic hegemony over most of the planet. It also does not excuse you from thinking Egypt is in Eastern Europe. It does not excuse you from joining the US military or working for Raytheon or Lockheed Martin just because you're queer or whatever else.
Fighting for my life trying to find a phone or tablet with a headphone jack. Fighting for my life trying to find a laptop with a cd rom. Fighting for my life trying to get more than one usb port or, god forbid, an hdmi. Fighting for my life trying to find any electronics that haven't been streamlined into flimsy chastity belts with the structural integrity of a sopping sheet of paper which require me to buy 3 extra devices (each with their own separate charging requirements) all because some silicon valley jackass somewhere decided holes were a bad thing.
Children as young as 6, working 12 hour days digging by hand, receiving $1 a day…think about it before you purchase your next laptop/electric vehicle
Free Congo🇨🇩 & end consumerism and wasteful consumption.
Apple posted this a few days ago -it's about 2 different phone models (for fucking display changes). They have been hyper-exploiting people in the Global South to mine for resources to make their products for YEARS, and I need more people to stop buying (unless necessity requires it -I waited 7-8 years before I had to change my phone, and next time I do it'll be a refurbished one) -until these entire systems are dismantled and made to be be ethical in every aspect of their businesses and not just on paper, boycott them.
I also know that Apple will change one spec and advertise like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, so to speak -and this cult-following just eats this up time and again. If you're not already informed about this inherently violent and corrupt industry -then get to know. And stop supporting these companies.
An international group of qualified mushroom identifiers who do worldwide identification in emergency cases have identified the Shroomers App as a potentially very dangerous system that could kill you if you try to use it to identify edible mushrooms. They use AI to generate almost all of their content, including their identification profiles on their app as well as their books and other materials. Not only is this unethical from a content creation standpoint, it is also extremely dangerous.
DO NOT USE APPS FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES BEYOND SIMPLE CURIOSITY. A MISTAKE WHEN IDENTIFYING AN EDIBLE COULD COST YOU YOUR LIFE. DO NOT EAT ANY FORAGED MUSHROOM YOU CANNOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF BY SIGHT OR HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED IN PERSON BY SOMEONE WHO CAN.
ONLY BUY BOOKS FROM REPUTABLE SOURCES AND AT THIS POINT THAT MEANS ASKING EXPERIENCED PEOPLE WHAT BOOKS THEY USE.
Mushrooms are fun, amazing organisms. Enjoy safely.
I think something people don't understand or often misrepresent about psych wards in the US is that even if you sign yourself in voluntarily, you're often doing so because the alternative is being committed. They tell you you'll be able to leave whenever you want if you go in "voluntarily," but this is very often not true if, once you're admitted, they decide it's "too dangerous" or you're too unstable to let you leave. And then, you're essentially committed anyway. I see posts by people that make it seem like involuntary and voluntary stays are a sort of...binary thing at US hospitals/facilities and it's just not true. Or that voluntary stays are somehow safer or offer people more autonomy. If you go in, they have the final say about when you leave whether you're "voluntary" or not. They can ship you to a state hospital long-term against your will from a "voluntary" stay in a psych ward. I know firsthand. Just...look out for yourselves and your loved ones, folks.
I was flat out told I had to go and I could choose to go voluntary or involuntary.. that's not a meaningful choice but no one listened when I pointed that out
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Bodily autonomy includes the right to do drugs. Yes, even the drugs YOU think are bad and scary and dangerous.
People absolutely deserve access to free, compassionate recovery resources, but ONLY if they want them and find them useful.
You have to understand just how many "rehab" programs are effectively prisons, cults, or both. You have to understand and be compassionate toward the reasons behind self-medication. And above all else, you have to LISTEN to drug users about what is actually effective, useful, and wanted aid.
A little girl died from hunger in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, despite being in the area where aid trucks are distributed. Another family in the north in Gaza city was forced to eat a donkey, which for many in Palestine is inconceivable culturally. Bisan says there isn't even water (clean OR dirty) for them to drink or wash with.
will never forget the parents who lost all 8 of their kids saying "they slept hungry, we were trying to get them a piece of bread but they were killed"
we are witnessing a population run out of food. WFP said a few days ago that half of the population are starving, nine out of 10 are not eating every day.
keep in mind that not having enough food, even when you're not literally starving to death, makes your body heal slower so all these people (who have all sorts of wounds from the bombing and everything else) are all physically healing much more slowly than they would be if they had any food to eat. it also causes you to have difficulty regulating body temperature which means that these people (who had to leave their homes with no winter clothes to speak of) are much more susceptible to the cold than they would be if they just had food.
the current problems every gazan is facing right now all exacerbate each other.