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.

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

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?

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!

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)

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?

I’m thinking about social relations in society a lot lately. How the mobile phone is filling all of the lulls in daily life, and how we don’t feel compelled to start random conversations with random people anymore. Let alone hit on other people IRL.

I’m curious about your experience: do you start conversations with random people in the street, at a bar, in a line, on a plane, on a train, etc?

And do you feel more comfortable with a particular gender, your gender, the opposite gender?

How do the people you talk to react? What were your goals if any in starting the conversation? Does it ever lead to anything beyond the initial chat?

I just opened YouTube on my iPhone and realized there was no UI at all for seeing my subscriptions. I had to relaunch the app and notice right when it opens they show a subscriptions link at the top but it auto-hides. So what you need to do is tap on the screen and then tap on the subscriptions link. There’s no other reference to subscriptions anywhere. It’s almost completely hidden now.

I have “watch history” disabled, which turns YouTube from a wannabe TikTok into its former self. You get no algorithmic suggestions and you can’t watch shorts (unless linked to them directly or through subscriptions). So now the YouTube app essentially has no content unless you dig through hidden UI. This is crazy.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.