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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I feel like listening to your gut is a big component of this. There have been times when I notice that the way someone talks bothers me for a reason I can’t put my finger on and I decide to give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming I’m being shallow or unreasonable, but then a few months or even years later their behavior lines up with my initial discomfort and I realize I had spotted something being off from the start. Sometimes it’s better to listen to the general feeling you’re getting from the less verbal and analytical parts of yourself than to wait until you have a real explanation.

    Of course, there may be people who are just anxious or a little eccentric and that’s what you’re spotting, but usually it’s worth at least sniffing it out from a distance rather than fully ignoring those feelings until you can articulate the reason for them.



  • This is the problem with spending millions of dollars on games and focusing on profitability over actual quality or expression. Video games are fundamentally an art medium. You can choose to make some uninspired cash grabbing trash, and can even make a whole company built around that and make profit. But are you going to make a great game that way? Probably not.

    You’d be better off with half a dozen people with passion and a comparatively minuscule budget. You might have to scale back from ultra realistic graphics and massive explorable areas with dozens of voice actors, but I don’t really think that makes games any better anyway. A little 2d rpg with really basic pixel graphics can put a big project to shame if it’s made with passion and emotion.


  • I kinda like it. It’s better for some shows than others, but like, look at Curb Your Enthusiasm. It would pop up every now and then, only to fade back into the aether for a few years, then come around again. It never felt forced, or like it wasn’t within its own continuity when it came back. Some time just passed, and that was alright. I feel the same way about Red Dwarf. It comes, it goes, it comes back again. We love it.

    You can’t force it. It’s one thing if delays are because of studios or rights holders blocking creators from getting their work out, but if it’s part of the natural process? The process is the product, and sometimes good work needs time to percolate, or ferment, or whatever metaphor you want.

    Don’t try!


  • It seems like a pretty good survival strategy for a species to routinely produce a number of different sorts of constituent organisms in order to have the tools ready to be more adaptable to varying circumstances. Considering how much humans specialize their routine behaviors and the way in which we work together both consciously and through larger interconnected systems, it isn’t surprising to see a variety of strategies to process information, make decisions, and communicate with one another. Thinking outside the status quo creates opportunities that can independently either succeed or fail of their own applicability and ability to be executed. If everyone is looking for the same things, they’re likely to miss a lot. Even if many of those arrangements don’t produce the desired result, they can be a valuable exploration for new resources and strategies.

    It seems an extremely dire mistake in these circumstances to label one particular mode of thought the ideal and reject all contradiction as dysfunctional or useless.




  • I literally don’t set up my voicemail, and I typically don’t listen to recorded audio that gets messaged to me. Texting is functional and doesn’t leave me some anxiety-provoking message that I have to sit through and digest without saying anything. If a conversation needs to happen in voice, text to say that and see if it’s a good time.

    Wild that people just ring a personal phone number unprompted in 2024 without that being an established routine.

    That said, I also remember when it wasn’t at all weird to show up to someone’s house and knock on their door. Things have really changed.



  • Stopping or stalling development in the second or third tanner stage isn’t uncommon. There’s woefully little study of how different medication combinations affect our bodies, but Powers suggests progesterone (p2) when attempting to continue breast development if you’ve stalled. But you’re doing that.

    It may make sense to ramp up estrogen to a method with more bioavailability. I don’t know what the bioavailability of patches is, but I know that sublingual is more effective than oral, and that intramuscular estradiol valerate has the highest bioavailability. I jumped straight to injections, but I’d probably ramp up from a lower dose and availability if i were starting again, to mimic typical puberty.

    We have informed consent in Massachusetts, so we have a lot of options if you find a cooperative doctor.

    I also use bicalutamide to reduce testosterone rather than more common AAs, because it isn’t a diuretic.

    Obviously you’d have to talk to your doctor, but that’s some of what I gathered in the course of my own transition.




  • Taking a quick look at some population density maps, it’s not hard to see why this might be the case. The US is very spread out in comparison to the world’s denser population centers, and even in comparison to Europe. Buses and trains connecting cities and towns not only have further to go, but the funding for them is more spread out. We’ve got pretty robust subway and bus systems in many of our metro areas, with New York and Boston being particularly notable, but if you want to leave the city you need a car. That means that we’re going to have to cater to that kind of transportation to a greater degree than a smaller country that can easily connect most of its populace with public transportation.

    In a lot of the US, if you don’t have access to some sort of personal vehicle or a taxi service, you’re not going anywhere without a major hike. There are some cases where this could be improved, like extending commuter rails further, but it’s not a fix for everywhere.

    Also, in the case of states with low population density they both lack the funding and the public support for increased public services like robust transportation. Some of these payee states that can’t cover the cost of their own roads anyway are skeptical of supporting public services, and their conservative legislature seems to like it that way.

    We can definitely do better, but sometimes I feel like the folks who say we should just get rid of cars and all take public transport have never been out in the sticks.