Boring boomer humor.

I’ve recently been working longer hours than usual away from home. My dog has been much more physically affectionate when I’m around because he misses me (cries). For example, at night he sleeps against my leg so that he’ll know if I get up. Things have been tough recently but knowing that this furry monster that lives in my house loves me has been helping.

Extreme wealth and a love of authoritarianism, name a more iconic duo.

Why would you hurt me like this?

I’m surprised not to see more people mention From Software games. Going all the way back to demon’s souls they consistently teach you how to understand the tools at your disposal, the challenge that you currently face, and how to use the former to overcome the latter. I learned how to “read” opponents to find and exploit vulnerabilities while playing dark souls way back, and that general approach is consistently useful in all sorts of other games. There are lots of other translatable skills involved, of course, like timing and resource management.

I’m sorry to inform you that satire is dead.

This but unironically.

I genuinely can’t tell if this is a rhetorical question or not.

Being beautiful is a superpower, disregarding gender. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of “cis” people who are not conventionally attractive would choose to take this deal purely for the social benefits.

Oh hey it’s me eleven years ago

For real. Each sentence made me want to throw up in my mouth. This misogyny combined with wealth worship and zero-sum outlook on life is an unforgivable character flaw. What a vapid, worthless existence.

I will never understand how the cruise industry still exists. I cannot fathom the appeal, nor how the companies survived Covid.

It’s always disappointing to see people who think themselves reasonable delighting in the usage of slurs when given the opportunity to tear down someone they perceive as disliked by their community. It is much more damning to them than the object of their ire.

Greene is a symptom of the cancer metastasized on our civilization, but deploying gendered slurs against her is counterproductive and pitiful.

I’m no causal, so I decided to play life on hard mode.

Human cognition/consciousness is not special. There have likely been many now-extinct intelligent species whose evolutionary niche did not encourage the indefinite expansion and subsequent habitat destruction that we are currently experiencing. Moreover, other intelligent species will likely evolve after we are extinct. There is also no reason to believe that consciousness is unique to biological creatures, although mechanical sapience will most likely look very different from ours.

I reacted to what I now recognize as dysphoria with avoidance for most of my life. A lot of others have recounted similar symptoms - disliking the way I look in pictures, hating shaving, and generalized depression that I unconsciously avoided addressing. I was never invested in conventionally masculine interests as a child. I got way into video games, which I now recognize gave me a way to roleplay female identities through feminine avatars without directly addressing the source of my discomfort in meat space. Unfortunately, my body trended masculine as I aged - thick beard, taller than average, prominent facial features, etc.

I leaned in during my twenties and got into strength sports as a defense mechanism, because I was afraid of being seen as a target to cis men. This actually helped, as I became friends with several very strong cis women who helped me to decouple “physical prowess = masculine, frailty = feminine” in my mind. I recognize now that I had several misogynistic ideas imprinted from my childhood that I had to unlearn.

As a result of all this, I am now visually very masculine presenting. I am tall, have a large beard, and am visibly muscular. I sometimes view my body as something other than myself, like a trusted bodyguard rather than my own form. This is probably not healthy, but it is better than my earlier state of generalized nonspecific depression.

I’ve been making an effort to be visibly queer at work in attempt to make something positive of what I’ve done with my body. I wear skirts and dresses, use they/them pronouns, and introduce myself as nonbinary. My goal is to “tank” negative attention away from other GNC folks and normalize free expression in the workplace, which I am primed to do both as someone who has accumulated some prestige and power and as someone whose physicality tends to illicit deference in others. Paradoxically, I feel that presenting as a “muscular dude in a dress” is received more positively than if I were to attempt to pass as a cis woman, although that is speculation on my part.

I dunno how sustainable this posture is, as I often find myself envious of trans women who are brave enough to abandon masculinity all together. However, I am still afraid of losing the protection and privilege that comes from walking around in a physically intimidating body.

What an unworthy life. What a depressing existence.

I mean, I am a nonbinary person who does experience dysphoria. I just suspect that a lot of folks, especially those who don’t understand the consequences, would take the deal purely for perceived social benefits. Would they regret it? Possibly, yeah.

Partitioning our entire population on the basis of the role its members could potentially play in reproduction makes no sense at all to me, but apparently I’m the strange one for pointing that out?

I sincerely cannot imagine what was going through their minds. In addition to the ableism there’s an incredible lack of self awareness on display here.