Sorry for the downtime
Housing situation has been a pain, still on the temporary server environment and been hitting major resources bottlenecks.
I'm hoping to get a place sooner, but I've hit some roadblocks that very likely will push it drastically further out... in which case I'll need to spend more money on this environment to return things to stable.
Reminder that I'm covering this entirely out of my own pocket and these constraints are because I'm between homes and can't use my own much cheaper hardware. If you appreciate this instance I would very much appreciate a donation.
Vanessa likes this.
Long time no writing here
I started to digging into my latest hobby of #bookbinding (but it's not the only one i assure you)
And made several pamphlet, with also some custom design.
I recently made couple of handmade hardcover journals. One using a custom hero-quest character sheet, the other one is just a lined notebook.
More info for who is interested are available here: ko-fi.com/post/Two-more-bookbi… (don't worry all my posts on #ko-fi are free)
It also gave my a nice surprise of receiveing the first donation ever (even if it will be the last it still made me happy! :) ) Any opinion comment is appreciated.
These are couple of pictures of my latest works:
storage.ko-fi.com/cdn/useruplo…
any comment/critics is appreciated.
NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGE ORDER HAS BEEN SIGNED! WOOOOOO!
... Now for a mountain of other paperwork that's been waiting on that, but all of that at least is quick.
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Now I'm cranky because I had to ban a user for genocide denial bullshit...
How the hell do you come onto a blatantly anti-Zionist server and think you're going to get a chill response at claiming the palestinian genocide isn't real?
Date night tonight with my girlfriend, what do y'all think? #TransEuphoria
(Sorry no image description, if someone else writes one I'll copy it, but I'm useless at describing myself)
I'm an analogue digital hybrid who cares about mental health issues, music, photography and art.
I'm deeply suspicious of ducks (in a less than serious way) and although I exist on Mastodon I'm keen to migrate to Friendica.
Best wishes all.
If you think Harris being a cop is worse than Trump being an aspiring Hitler:
You can go fuck yourself, you're more of a problem than the Nazis - signed, a Jew
A friend's furbaby is suffering and needs care yesterday, please donate if you can: gofundme.com/f/help-giggles-ge…
Donate to Help Giggles Get Urgent Dental Care, organized by Sarah Dearing
As you know I’ve been saving money for giggles dental, but as prices soar and her he… Sarah Dearing needs your support for Help Giggles Get Urgent Dental Caregofundme.com
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Still processing something...
I'm recovering from the trauma of constantly being hyper-vigilant of how I might present as a threat, constantly focused on how to make others feel safe around me...
and now I've traded it for the trauma of being constantly hyper-vigilant of potential threats around me.
It sucks but honestly I prefer it to the intense sense of isolation and loneliness.
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Solidarity with your journey and hopefully dealing with your hyper vigilance and trauma issues.
Shiri Bailem likes this.
Just reaching out for suggestions, it's not often I get people converted to the fediverse but when I do I'm a bit short on suggested instances, especially in variety.
As it stands I've got my own instance, which runs Friendica. But because I'm a nerd who craves all the options at once and will sacrifice some user-friendliness for it, it's good for me not for most users.
Aside from that, I've got lgbtqia.space which is a wonderful Mastodon server I started out on in the fediverse. But obviously leaves me fumbling when helping the rare few friends who aren't in the alphabet.
I'd like suggestions of other open instances (aside from the mega instances like mastodon.social) that I can direct people to, especially of different platforms so they have a little more choice in their experience.
I vote we try to convince conservatives that liberal elites have infected their computer software based on this, see if we can get them to throw everything out and self-isolate.
Mist and fog clouds over this domain. The thoughts of raceme flowers and pinnated ferns hang over my minds eye as I walk with covered pupils. The hard dirt feels rock like, with an occasional trip over roots.
Pulling me down a pathway of cedar and pine, nesting in its canopy, birds orientated skywards to a plateau of limitless sky. Just out of reac- war̓n̼͚͜i̴͈ng,͈͑̌ l͓̀o̩͋ͬw̦͊ b̵̍a̶͋͂t̫tê̾̍r͉̔͠y
O̪͉p͎e̜̽n̡ ỳ̬o̲ur̘̥ e̫͌yē͌ͅs̵͗̿, O̪͉p͎e̜̽n̡ ỳ̬o̲ur̘̥ e̫͌yē͌ͅs̵͗̿, O̪͉p͎e̜̽n̡ ỳ̬o̲ur̘̥ e̫͌yē͌ͅs̵͗̿.
Getting tired of people pretending Jews can't possibly know the difference between Holocaust and "run of the mill" genocide (both are bad, one just is much more orchestrated).
But why should I be surprised? The pajamafication of the holocaust means most people don't even understand a damn thing about it anyways.
I'm so incredibly done with people being on a high-horse shitting on advances in AI for no other reason than to feel better about themselves.
Like if your issue is things like copyright and training data? Sure, go off, it's a philosophical argument there about rights, economy, etc. Likewise for arguments about ecological impact (it can be made reasonable there, the companies just don't want to).
But if you're just posting bullshit like "Hahaha, the language model can't do math" or "Look at how it was baited into saying something stupid" as proof that it's worthless: go fuck yourself.
Let alone the people who try to relate AI development to "NFT Bros"... NFTs literally don't do shit, AI actually has multiple proven and valid uses cases but if you think it's the same thing that just shows you have your head up your ass and refuse to look at the world around you.
All of that before getting to the fact that they have shown incredible usefulness for disability accommodations, but I guess it doesn't count if you prefer to be ableist and think we don't need or deserve accommodations?
So tired of people in general right now...
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@Lea I think you're quibbling over the term "generative" there, a non-generative version would be outputting just variables rather than raw text. Ie. non-generative analysis is just going to be "x% confident, x% aggressive, x% sympathetic..."
- analyzing prose and flagging tone or phrasing problems = like so many anti-ai people you just assume the person using it is somehow unable to read and understand the text. And frankly as I've already said this is a disability accommodation I'm a little bit pissed off at this response. We can understand these things when pointed out, we can understand whether the text it gives is trash, we're not idiots. What it does is consistently give us text that fixes our tonal issues, and we can recognize those fixes after the fact but can't reasonably do them on our own. So maybe get your head out of your ass when talking about a disability accommodation that someone has first hand experience on and has said so up front.
- summarizing reviews - again, you're just trying to throw away a point because you don't understand what "generative" or "large language model" means.
- coding assistant - and again clearly you made one half-assed attempt to make it do more than it's capable of, considered it trash, and then threw the whole thing away. I've used it plenty, I've used it to speed through refactoring a whole project to change database engines out, I've used it to speed through building UIs with a bunch of buttons. Does it create good code when I just ask it to write a whole application for me? Hell no. But it sure as hell can see me writing a list of buttons and go, "Oh, I recognize the pattern of the names I'm going to fill this in 20 more times with all variables names changed to meet the pattern".
@Lea like I said, you're attacking the definition of generative by ignoring the actual definition.
And I'm done with this conversation since all you're doing is looping back on points I've already called out. You've been an ass, just accept it and move on.
Shinryu reshared this.
Seriously, if you're not in the US it's important to recognize how catastrophically fucked everything is. Like I actively need to flee the country bad...
youtu.be/MXQ43yyJvgs?si=sTz4zy…
Trump Is Immune
This is one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever. 📰 Get 40% off of Ground News: https://legaleagle.link/groundnews ⚖️⚖️⚖️ Do you need a great lawyer? I can h...YouTube
@Ritz-Menardi and to be clear, it's not an impulse to flee... it's complete terror because I see the writing on the wall for Hitler 2.0 and it's going to get really really bad before it gets better and if I stick around I'm very unlikely to survive.
Pikuach nefesh, my first duty is to stay alive.
I'm in shock...
An anime I'm watching has a love triangle and then actually had someone say "have you considered polyamory?" (paraphrased)
Oh shit... first period.
That's what they mean by emotional!
I shared this 3 years ago today before my egg even cracked...
And honestly, rereading it is chilling a true. I never experienced dysphoria before transitioning, but I definitely felt that those were not my spaces or my people.
On top of that, when around other women I was incredibly self conscious... in the spaces that felt the most natural, the relationships that felt the most natural, I felt like I was intruding.
I was so intimately aware of the threat of men and because I thought I was one I was so terrified of being threatening and making the women around me feel unsafe... because doing so would mean being feared and ostracized by the people I felt most natural with.
For the longest time I thought this was maybe just because I was autistic, and even then I still couldn't understand why I felt natural around women and those socialized as women... It was a sticking point in my mind constantly because I know I wasn't socialized female and I have a bio-brother who lived through similar circumstances and didn't remotely turn out the same way.
And honestly as I finally found true family... I was low key terrified for the longest time because the people I adopted were almost all women (at least, we thought so at the time... funnily enough most turned out to be trans-masc sometime after adopting them, but that didn't change the terror...)
All this is to say we're not men who decide to become women... we're women who decide to stop pretending to be men. Who grew up being forced to pretend to be someone other than who we are, and being told that the idea of being who we are is impossible, gross, and wrong. And even after we have to live in terror of people accusing us of pretending to somehow abuse other women.
Original Tumblr Post via Archive.org
Tumblr by Opiumbugit’s infinitely more accurate to characterize a trans woman as a woman pretending to be a man than it is to say she’s a man pretending to be a woman
Reply by valkyriethunderbitch
This is such an important point, and it hits at the crucial problem that even when cis people do genuinely try to wrap their brains around trans people, they tend to have trans men and trans women entirely reversed.
When a cis man tries to imagine what it would be like to be trans, invariably that man imagines what it would be like if he “wanted to be woman,” because that’s what many people think trans women are.
Instead, he should be trying to empathize with trans men. He should be thinking about his own childhood and relationship to manhood, and then asking himself how it would have felt if he’d grown up being told he was a girl, forced to wear dresses, never recognized by other boys as a boy, and then experienced the horror of going through the wrong puberty and becoming a giant estrogen factory.
Many cis women, particularly in LGBT spaces, will fall all over themselves trying to empathize and identify with trans men, because the same transmisogyny that tells them that trans women and cis men are connected tells them that cis women and trans men are connected.
Instead, cis women should be asking themselves what it would have been like if they had never been allowed to have their womanhood acknowledged. How would it have felt to grow up being told you were a boy, not allowed to deviate from male stereotypes (often with violent repercussions if you did), always viewed by other women as an icky boy or predatory male, exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around, and had testosterone distort your body irreparably only to have everyone around you use your anatomy and appearance to forever deny your womanhood and where your best possible outcome is to transition and live your life in abject poverty fighting loneliness and dysphoria and surrounded by people who think you’re a disgusting, subhuman monster who should be locked away or put down?
If you want to worry about men pretending to be women, pay more attention to trans men. They are men who are forced to pretend to be women, and while that is immensely fucked up for them to go through, it doesn’t change the fact that they are MEN in WOMEN’S spaces, and many of them take advantage of transmisogynist ideas about gender to stay in those spaces even after coming out and transitioning. Just look at all the trans men at women’s colleges – schools that in most cases will not allow trans women.
Trans women have always been women. Trans women have always been female.
Trans men have always been men. Trans men have always been male.
A trans woman cannot be a “man pretending to be a woman” because by definition we aren’t men and never were.
Reply by thecuckoohaslanded
“exposed to the utter horror that is being a woman in male spaces where they think no women are around”
So many people have no idea how true this is. Almost no statement I have ever read has resonated with me more than this.
One of the arguments certain people (mostly terfs, but dishearteningly often well-meaning feminists who have accidentally been corrupted by terf rhetoric) make about trans women is that we experience “male privilege.” This is a muddy topic, because there are certainly some situations where being socially read as male is a convenience (it is much easier to apply for jobs pre-transition and then transition while employed than it is to apply for jobs during or after the more awkward and difficult parts of transition, as an example).
There can be benefits, here and there. But to call it privilege, especially with the term “male” attached to it, is horribly misleading.
Trans women can, in the earlier parts of our lives, EXIST in male spaces. That does not mean we belong in them. Or feel comfortable anywhere near them. Even if you look outwardly male, being in male spaces is terrifying. Even being in NEUTRAL spaces is terrifying. You are in a constant state of panic around men. And you fear rejection and ostracization from other women – the people you most empathize with and understand, whose personalities and ways of thinking most closely match your own, whose communities you desperately crave to be a part of because that’s where you belong – almost as much as you fear breathing the same air as any man you aren’t comfortably out to, including friends and family. We NEVER feel safe. And we are firsthand witnesses to all the reasons we SHOULDN’T feel safe around men. They’re horrifying. What was so frustrating about the “Locker Room Talk” scandal during the 2016 election, as a trans woman, is that you know from personal experience that it was “anywhere and everywhere outside the earshot of a woman” talk. Dozens of sports teams came forward and said no, we don’t talk like this, we would never say things like this, we would never disrespect women like this. I have never been an athlete. My only experience with locker rooms was required as a high school credit, and made me extraordinarily uncomfortable. I ASSURE you, I have heard talk like this OUTSIDE of the hypermasculine world of sports. The level of total disregard that men have for women’s most basic humanity is STAGGERING. Men don’t see women as less than human. They see women as less than ALIVE, nothing more than usable, disposable objects.
Trans women’s great “privilege” of existing “safely” in male spaces is being exposed to this world and these people up close, alone, (if in a locker room, without most of your clothes, and with all the added shame about your body that comes from that) in a state of absolute terror that ANYTHING about your personality, your mannerisms, your body language, the way you don’t quite fit in with the way they talk, will tip them off that you’re not one of them. Your LIFE depends on whether they notice. That’s not safety. That’s Russian Roulette where you don’t get the option to stop playing, and not only do you not know if or when you might get the bullet, you don’t even know how many bullets are loaded in the first place. Every single interaction with another human being is a trigger being pulled in slow motion, in overwhelming, agonizing detail as you can only wait to find out if you drew a blank.
We spend our lives pretending, often badly, to fit in with these people. Not because we have or want any god damn thing on this earth in common with them, but because the alternative – that they will know we aren’t – fills us constantly with a paralyzing, spine-chilling terror that is almost impossible to describe. Even when real benefits that do come from being read as male (again, this is usually socioeconomic factors), we are constantly, inescapably aware that all of these things come at the expense of our own authenticity. We have to lie to get them. We live in unbearable discomfort with the fact that everything good that happens to us is because other people are making these massively incorrect assumptions or judgments about the kinds of people we are. We live with the fact that everything good could be taken away the second anyone finds out we’re not what they wanted based on our appearance, because often it’s the only way we can survive at all.
Let me rephrase that last part for emphasis, because it’s integral to understanding the core of this issue, and the core of the argument that OP (and the excellent addition) wanted to make. If your takeaway is just ONE part of my addition to this post, let it be this:
Every single interaction we have with another human being is based solely on the value assigned to us based on our physical appearance, and how well we can conform to those expectations, which leaves us feeling suffocatingly, deeply uncomfortable and often terrified for our personal safety and livelihood.
Think about that before you put the words “male privilege” anywhere in a conversation about trans women.
For parts of our lives, we can exist in male spaces. But even in them, we are still always, at our core, women. Everything else is social. Everything else is acting. Trans women pretend to be men until we just can’t take it anymore, and we either live as the women we always were, or one way or another, we die. We can never really be anything other than female.
Womanhood is not the thing trans women have to fake.
#LGBT #LGBTQIA #Trans #TransFemme
Pro Trick I've Learned To Land A Hot Girlfriend: Become A Girl
#trans #TransFemme #LGBT #LGBTQIA
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Hands down the worst most bullshit thing about Friendica...
No notifications for moderation reports. Only way to know if something has been reported? Gotta manually go check the list (oh and no way to clear items from the list, or do anything with them at all...)
Few months ago I had a rude awakening to this, and then apparently it's been a minute since I last checked (I try and check every time I think of it).
Thankfully the only recent report was a remote server but eww... I hate that it took me that long to block that server.
Getting your first cat-call as a trans-femme is such a weird disorienting feeling...
It's honestly super gross... but then... gender euphoria? ... but still creepy and gross.
#HRT #TransFemme #trans #lgbtqia #lgbt
My mood has improved so damn much this past week... I don't know what caused it but I feel more alive and happy.
And that's before kissing a girl and learning I'm 3 inches shorter than I was before HRT...
#lgbt #lgbtqia #trans #TransFemme
Fun fact: I lost 3 inches since starting HRT and am now 5'7" (that's about 170cm for you standardized folk, and around 7.5cm off)
#HRT #Trans #TransFemme #LGBT #LGBTQIA
Feeling gratitude
I'm feeling really grateful today and just wanted to share that feeling.
I'm grateful for...
* Living in a time when HRT is available
* Having easy access to it even though I live in the state of Texas
* Being blessed by the boob fairy (46B after 6-months when most trans-femmes are lucky to hit A-cup after 2 years... insert suspense tone for what that means for later)
* HRT absolutely demolishing body/hair growth and making everything very manageable
* Liking pickles before HRT so it's not as confusing
* HRT feminizing my face enough that I feel comfortable going out without makeup
* My hair, which was just a short mess before... now just magically grew into a cute bob with zero effort (and this is it's maximum length... I do lament not having longer hair though)
* Having an incredibly supportive adoptive family
* Skirts, dear god the skirts I've got now are so damn comfy
* Randomly knowing how to adjust my voice properly so I skipped voice training entirely
* A work from home job that allowed me to easily transition before ever worrying about work
* A Christian boss (also owner of the company) who was baffled at the idea I even had something to worry about with coming out at work... in a traditionally conservative industry
* Being born it Illinois which makes it trivially easy to update my birth certificate (just waiting on the legal name change documents first so I can do both at the same time)
#LGBTQIA #LGBT #TransFemme #Trans #TransWoman #Pride #HRT #AntiCisTamines #TittySkittles #AntiBoyotics #Boobs
* being grey-ace and not phased by the shrinkage
* not really having bottom dysphoria... that shit's expensive AF
You know what's great to learn at 38, right before bedtime one night, after a whole life time of struggle...
That your mother traumatized you with ADHD to the point where actually pushing myself against ADHD is a trigger... making it so no amount of coping skills can help me push myself for any real length of time...
I'd try and do something that requires a push, even a little one... and be crying... and I thought it was just the feeling of hitting my dopamine... but nooooo... now I'm unpacking that it was me getting triggered at the feeling of pushing my reserves at all...
That explains so damn much and makes me feel so damn hurt and angry...
I was forced to push myself so far so often as a kid and she didn't ever relent when I was critically over-extended on dopamine... usually around cleaning. I'm remembering so many times crying and sobbing on the floor because she demanded I clean to an extreme standard and I wasn't allowed to do anything else until I met her approval...
And I've been running my whole life fucking kneecapped by this... I thought I just had it worse than most (with ADHD) on my ability to push myself on tasks... but no... it's because I realize now I can't fucking push myself at all because my fucking brain just jumps straight to that extreme pain and trauma right away...
Now I'm fucking crying when I should be trying to sleep...
#ADHD #Neurodivergent #Trauma
@adhd group @actuallyadhd group
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i spent a sizeable portion of my childhood shut in my room with "you're not coming out until it's clean!" And without guidance on how to clean it.
I push through hard things like this as an adult with the mantra "something is better than nothing" and just chip away at things.
And I sit with my kids when cleaning their room, talk through my process and coach them. That's been really healing, coaching my kids and also my ADHD friends; it's like re-parenting myself!
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