trinicorn [comrade/them]

I’ve had the opposite experience tbqh. So far just about all the most principled communists I’ve met in real life are not vegan, some even a little bit hostile to the idea. I don’t know how to feel about that but it’s what happened. I thought there would be more. I guess I haven’t asked everyone, but it has come up with many of them

no zyn pouches down under?

I see those fuckers everywhere now. I’ve seen piles of them in a fuckin urinal

people used to be able to book passage on freighters

still a thing though I think it costs more than it used to. Much like long distance train travel in the US, it takes so long that you end up paying more than the flight would have been (but it comes with lodging, meals and a unique experience)

with the amount of care and feeding that people demand as compared to cargo, and considering the gnarly fuels often used in ships, I wonder how much better it really is. of course it’s better pound for pound for shipping cargo, but when you add up all the amenities multiplied by the days/weeks spent aboard, I feel like it probably isn’t that great.

just because you’re white doesn’t mean you’re a boer

also damn south african anti-colonial slogans go hard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Settler,_One_Bullet

porkbun is the one yeah. There are other options but they all kinda suck and so far I haven’t seen anything bad with porkbun

don’t use the big 3 cloud providers (aws, google, azure), they’re ridiculously overpriced for what you need.

There are ways you could do it from your home internet connection, but it makes it slightly more complex especially if you want to be at all anonymous. Cloudflare, if you’re cool with using them, does offer this capability I believe. But of course you’ll be limited by the quality of your internet connection, stability of your power, and keeping your computer on at all times. But there’s advantages too (you could have full disk encryption, cost is lower, you’ll likely have a more powerful PC at home than the server you would rent, etc)

yeah I just don’t see going offline as a total solution at all (I assume you don’t either)

I mean yes it’s a good thing to do but you still exist in the built environment with all the things I mentioned and more all surveilling you, and you don’t even get to reap the benefits of modern communications. I think you need community buy in on some level to deal with some of these. mass shaming and defacing of cameras would go a long way. We are at a point where not having a phone or taking even mild precautions makes people think you’re a drug dealer. That level of penetration of society means cops can just look for anyone they can’t track rather than find a needle in a haystack. or at least I fear we’re there.

Yeah I don’t think there’s a reason for an aboveground political org to put a target on its back to explicitly support this guy but you’re 100% correct. Anecdotally I’ve also heard of infiltration, in both anarchist direct action groups and more tame socialist groups. And with DSA in particular I constantly see people behaving like wreckers, though it’s hard to distinguish kids getting into petty drama and taking it too far from fed wreckers sometimes.

Opsec concerns… it’s going to be hard. Every other door has a goddamn ring camera on it. Almost everyone carries a smartphone everywhere. Traffic lights all have cameras. And you can’t erase the past, if you’re already on a list from being related to DSA or food not bombs or doing local mutual aid, are you just inviting further scrutiny on your org by being involved? I guess the idea is to blend in. But it’s hard to not end up on the radar of local cops if you’re doing anything remotely cool, and already being on their radar seems like a mighty fine way to get popped when doing any more serious actions. We need mass mobilization I guess, it can’t just be the same old activists doing everything.

I will say though, it’s at a point where its probably more important to do something than to not get caught (though both is ofc the goal)

Yeah honestly the mental health angle is my biggest concern. If these fluctuations are going to destabilize your mental health or otherwise interfere with your day that’s bad and not a worthwhile risk to take just for grapefruit, but I don’t thiiiink most people are that dialed into their levels hour-by-hour. I’m seemingly not, anyhow, but its worth considering

This inspired me to do some more digging on spiro! (might do other AAs later but got work to do unfortunately). What I’m finding is that spiro itself is not metabolized by CYP3A4, but one of its active metabolites is, at least in part. However, everything I can find seems to suggest if this interaction is significant at all, it isn’t dangerous. Spiro is actually listed here as a safe alternative to eplerenone, which is chemically similar but does have dangerous interactions with grapefruit/other cyp3a4 inhibiting substances.

I also found out during this that the active ingredient in one kind of dandruff shampoo is also a potent cyp3a4 blocker (but thankfully its not absorbed into the bloodstream really when used topically). Its actually crazy how many different things are affected by this metabolism pathway and/or inhibit or enhance its effect. hundreds of drugs easily

Also I have eaten two entire grapefruits since finding all this out and its very exciting for me

I finally did some reading on grapefruit medication interactions as it pertains to estrogen! the primary mechanism of interaction is at the “gut wall” (I was surprised to see scientific papers use this term), where the grapefruit can inhibit an enzyme that works to break down and metabolize many oral medications including estrogen. So with oral estrogen grapefruit will definitely screw with your levels and cause them to spike.

My main curiosity was injectable estrogen though. Many drugs taken by injection are unaffected by grapefruit, so I thought estrogen might be fine! As ever with biology though, apparently it’s not that simple. Even with purely endogenous (body-produced) estrogen, grapefruit consumption increases levels (though more modestly than the extreme/dangerous effects seen with oral medications, the study I saw cited a peak 26% increase in cis women 8hrs after consuming grapefruit). I didn’t see a ton of specific research on the mechanism of action here, but I expect it’s related to the fact that the exact same enzyme responsible for breaking down medications in the gut is also present in the liver and helps break down and eliminate various substances from the bloodstream there. The study noted that average levels remained the same with whole grapefruit consumption, it was just a temporary fluctuations.

So my conclusion for my own personal consumption (please don’t take this as gospel/medical advice, I’m pretty dumb) is that grapefruit intake doesn’t appear to be much more dangerous than it is for cis women if you’re doing injections (the reason for the study was elevated cancer risk associated with high estrogen levels so there may be some long term risks there).

It does affect levels, which is good to be aware of, and is a valid reason to be cautious, and there may be nuances I’m missing here (please tell me if you see any), but much like how preferred HRT dosage and levels vary widely by person, and even in cis women, vary drastically throughout hormonal cycles, the variance caused by grapefruit interaction is probably not harmful in any immediate way.

I guess if I was using a shorter lived ester with sharper peaks in levels and I was really worried about levels, I might be more concerned about not having grapefruit around those peak times? still probably not acutely dangerous though, IMO