Week 2 has begun!

• Post your current bingo cards.
• Continue updating us on your games!

If you did not participate in Week 1 but want to start this week, that's fine!
Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion

Week 1 Recap

8 participants played 8 bingo cards and moved 18 games out of their backlogs!
There were 0 bingo wins

• The games played spanned a period of 33 years: from Ecco the Dolphin (1992) to Mohrta (2025)

Game List:

• Chameleon Twist
• Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure
• Death Crimson OX
• Ecco the Dolphin
• Heading Out
• Mohrta
• No, I’m Not Human
• Okami HD
• Otome * Domain
• P.N.03
• Portal 2
• REDDER
• Shadow Tower: Abyss
• Superliminal
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
• Tower of Mask
• Unpacking
• Whiplash/Fatal Racing

Previous discussion about five gallons here

Sorry for the somewhat clickbaity title, but it's got relevance:

Ever since I hit five gallons last year, I've been donating away, excitedly working towards that ten gallon milestone. I do whole blood donations every eight weeks, and I try to do platelets once a month.

I literally had ONE donation left to get myself to ten gallons when I got a call that nobody, especially no gay man, ever wants to get: the blood tests from my last donation came back as potentially reactive for HIV antibodies.

To say I was tilted would be an understatement. I know that the prognosis for HIV is significantly better than it used to be, but as someone who grew up in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, I still had a significant gut reaction. It hit me hard.

After I had time to calm down, however, I was better able to process the information. First, the results were preliminary and not a confirmation. Second, I do not engage in any practices that would risk HIV transmission. My husband and I are mutually monogamous and have been so for the better part of two decades. And the only time I deal with blood is when it's my own and I'm donating. Also, the donation site I use is meticulous about cleanliness and sanitation, so there's no way it could have been from them not following proper protocol.

As such, it was significantly more likely that the test was a false positive than an actual one.

I immediately got myself tested and, sure enough, it came back negative. The Red Cross also did confirmation testing on my blood, which also came back negative. In digging around to find some actual data on this, I found this graph from this page which, if I'm reading it right, shows that they have a 96.2% false positive rate. Pretty high! But, it makes sense: apparently the tests they use are VERY sensitive. They do not want HIV entering the blood supply like it did back during the 80s, so better to trigger more false positives than allow any actual positives to get through.

I got a letter from the Red Cross confirming my negative results, along with bolded text that clearly states:

The Red Cross cannot accept blood from donors who have reactive test results for any infectious disease. This means you are no longer allowed to donate blood for others.

Again, I was devastated. I waited my whole lifetime to be able to donate blood because, as a gay man, I was considered a high risk for HIV and therefore not allowed to. And now, once they finally changed the rules and I finally got the chance to actually do it, I was cut off right as I was just getting the ball rolling -- all because of an incorrect preliminary test result for that very same HIV.

I called the Red Cross to discuss the results and learned that, thankfully, the moratorium is not a lifetime one but only for 6 months (this is mentioned nowhere in the letter, by the way). After that, I'm eligible for re-entry testing, upon which a negative result will clear me and I'll be able to donate again.

Given the incubation time of HIV it is technically a possibility that I do actually have it and it's just not triggering the confirmatory tests yet. However, as previously mentioned, I do literally nothing that would put me at risk for it, so I feel comfortable in saying this was, definitively, a false positive.

The person at the Red Cross did mention that allergies can trigger it, and my previous donation I had done shortly after getting my monthly allergy shots, so it's possible that was why the blood test flagged in the first place.

Unfortunately, this means that instead of hitting my 10 gallon goal this year like I was hoping to, I have to sit on the sidelines for a while and wait it out. A bit of a bummer, but genuinely better than either finding out I actually did have HIV and/or that I was ineligible to ever donate again.

Could be a movie, could be a game, and for whatever reason: Cool explosions, fights, disasters, CGI, you name it. Hell, maybe it managed to tie the action in question into the story or setting unusually well. That counts too. Links to view the scenes are obviously appreciated, but if you can't find one, don't sweat it!

I got inspired to ask this one in part because I've been rewatching some of my favorites from movies recently, and in part because I'm a huge fan of games that focus on having as many giant explosions as they can muster. So I figured a good way to find some more stuff like this might be to post about it! And it gives me an excuse to share my own favorites, which I have trouble not talking about, truth be told. (I'll save that for a top-level comment, though)

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like cybertruck, jensen huang and voting. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was intrigued.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Timasomo 2026 is now officially complete!

Over the next few days, participants will be posting their creations and efforts in this topic to showcase their work to the community.

Comments and feedback are both welcome and encouraged.

Let these creators know what an awesome job they've done!

Creators: In posting your showcase:

• Give your project a title, and use the # markdown to make it stand out in the showcase thread!
• Link to your project in whatever way works best for it.
• If you like, give a "creator statement" that contextualizes what your project is.
• Add anything else you consider relevant! The showcase is yours!
• If you need examples, take a look at last year’s showcase.

Also, I strongly encourage you to make your own topics showcasing your work in their respective tildes (e.g. ~life, ~tech, etc.). This showcase is only visible to those subscribed to ~creative.timasomo, but the wider Tildes audience will undoubtedly appreciate your efforts as well.

Community:

• Treat this thread like a walk through an art gallery or a museum where you get to see different works on display.
• Simple appreciations for the creators are not noise—they are valuable community support!
• Make sure any feedback you give is constructive and meant to help.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

The goal of the monthly Digital Detox topic is:

to evaluate and potentially address toxic or controlling aspects of tech in ways are meaningful for you

Please make this topic what you want it to be. There's no right or wrong way to post in it.

All people posting in this topic will be automatically added to the Digital Detox notification list. If you do NOT want to be added to the list, please let me know in your comment.

Monthly Discussion Starter: What media (books, podcasts, videos, etc.) do you recommend that portray problems with modern technology and/or solutions to them?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?