I keep a small list titled "illegal heroes", and these hackers are on that list. It's bullshit that they're being hounded like this.

I really appreciate iFixit and how they help bring the discussion of repairability to the forefront.

"Some DOGE staffers [...] fear that [this shitstorm] could leave them vulnerable to political retribution and damage their future job prospects"

I wanted to make a sarcastic comment about how so many of them are super young, and so this must sting especially. However, I couldn't figure out a way to say this in a sufficiently mocking tone. Fuck 'em

I think he is basically saying "I think that black people are bad. I also think that some billionaires are bad, but it's #notallbillionaires . The innate badness that black people have and the bad billionaires have are the same, so I am going to call the bad billionaires black". In other words, racist bullshit

Ah, gravity, my arch nemesis (I have a disability that makes me fall over a lot. I also have boobs)

In school, when I was 13, one of my friends was "dating" a 19 year old. I vividly remember how cool we all thought this was. Reflecting on it makes me feel sick.

My periods are super irregular, and tracking is how I try to make sense of it. My last three periods were 2 months ago, 8 months ago and 9 months ago. It's possible that this irregularity is an indicator of poor health, so my doctor advised me to track stuff and come back if it's more than 6 months.

Many tracking apps also include the option for tracking how heavy the flow is. The copper coil/IUD often causes heavier flow and more period pains, but for some people, this settles down after a few months. Tracking can be a useful tool in evaluating whether you're happy with a contraception method (excessive side effects may mean needing to try a different method, like the hormonal coil).

Also, it's not uncommon for there to be some level of bleeding at times when someone isn't on their period. Nothing much, just light spotting. I don't think this is super widespread, but it's also not super rare either. It can be linked to one's contraception. Periods are annoying enough as it is, but at least they don't last long. Irregular spotting may happen when you thought you were safe from bleeding, but some tracking can help spot patterns.

In terms of anticipating patterns and planning around stuff, that's definitely a thing that people do. Sometimes it's as trivial as not wearing nice underwear when you're due to be starting your period. Sometimes it might involve scheduling a date or holiday to avoid overlapping with the period due date. I think perhaps some people who take certain varieties of the contraceptive pill can actually delay their period (I think it's something like taking week 4 of the medication when you're on week 3, or something like that). I have a friend whose only contraception method with her partner are condoms (due to health issues around all the long term methods like the coil), and she uses period tracking to ease anxiety around unexpected pregnancy.

Speaking of planning around one's cycle, I am more likely to make ill-advised horny decisions when I'm ovulating (in a 28 day cycle, ovulation typically happens around 2 weeks after the period starts). I have heard that I'm not the only one who experiences this. It's not a huge effect, but if I'm pondering whether to get off with someone, it can be useful to know if there are background factors affecting that decision.

In short, there are loads of reasons why someone might benefit from this data. These are far from exhaustive examples. Having things on a separate calendar can be useful if apps make it easier to track things like heaviness of flow. It's also nice to not have this stuff on your regular calendar (which may be shared with other people).

^ what are they gonna do, randomly punch you in the face in front of a crowd of people?

They might do. They might also:

• wait until closing time and then follow you home, sparking a months long campaign of stalking and harassment
• spike your drink and steer you away from safety when they get a chance Amongst other things.

"I bet the person would walk away willingly"

A reasonable person would, but the danger here is that the prevalence of unreasonable people who would respond poorly to being rejected is high enough that it is necessary for women to build systems like this to keep each other safe. You're right, that this system is to compensate for a lack of social skills, but it's compensating on behalf of petulant men who refuse to take no for an answer.

If this sounds absurd to you, congratulations, you're probably a reasonable person who would respond rationally to being rejected, but most women I know have had bad experiences like this. If your instinct is that this sounds like an unreasonable amount of effort to go to to avoid confrontation, consider what level of conflict has led to the formation of these practices - they don't just come from nowhere

Fucking twat.

This is fucking stochastic terrorism

This is super tangential, but I knew someone who had a miscarriage which caused a mental health crisis. Or perhaps more accurately, the crisis was caused by severe isolation and implicit stigma around her grief. She told me that after the crisis, she was surrounded by people who had experienced miscarriages too. She was baffled because this sure would have been helpful before the mental breakdown.

People are expected to be so strong that ultimately it just weakens us at the community and the individual level

I really loved how she was recognised pretty unanimously as the badass that she is. Society has a lot of deeply rooted problematic beliefs around sexual assault, but Gisèle Pélicot's bravery was a definite step towards unravelling those icky attitudes.

Neurotypicals often feel like they're not being listened to if a person doesn't make eye-contact. I sympathise with their anxiety, but I would like them to understand that if I am forcing myself to make eye contact (or to appear like I am), that takes me so much focus that I'm less likely to be following what they're saying.

This one is more of an ADHD thing for me, but a similar one is that I would like them to understand that if I am fiddling with something with my hands, this is actually an indicator that I am listening to them (for me, tasks like crochet, embroidery or origami are things that I do to occupy my hands and the part of my brain that gets distracted).

Those are a couple of examples, but more broadly, I'd just like for neurotypical people to understand that their experiences aren't universal. Furthermore, I believe that clinging to a sense of normality is harmful because of how it flattens the variety of human experience — even if we're comparing neurotypicals to neurotypicals: "Normal" is a box that I have caused myself severe harm trying to fit in, but I see that same kind of harm being caused to neurotypicals who can contort themselves enough to force themselves into the box. Just because someone can fit in doesn't mean they will be comfortable or happy in that mould — it sometimes makes me glad that I'm autistic, because I get to explore who I am beyond that box of prescriptive normality.

I have always struggled with sleep onset insomnia. In an ideal world, I'd probably sleep from around 5 am until noon, and my best working hours are from 7pm until 11pm, without fail. Even when I am exhausted from forcing myself to get up early for an extended period, I'll still perk up in the late evening, and struggle to sleep before 3am. This combined awfully with school.

I remember once that I was so exhausted, I literally fell asleep while walking, and I didn't wake up when I hit the floor. What's striking in hindsight is how little sympathy there was. I wasn't accused of being a drug user, but there were plenty of comments about laziness, which is absurd given that I was obviously severely exhausted.

A friend was the primary carer for a disabled relative, and this required her to get up at 5am each day, and to get up during the night to administer medication. She would often fall asleep in class, and she frequently got detention for this (which she would then often need to skip, to ensure she could get home in time to pick up siblings from school). Speaking with her years later, she lamented that if teachers had been more sympathetic and actually tried to understand what was going on here, it might've led to there being formal support to care for her relative. The amount of work she was doing was absurd for anyone, let alone a 13 year old, but she didn't know this, let alone that there were support channels to help young carers like her.

To be fair, in many cases, the observable behaviour of things is different at scale. A single water molecule has different properties to a cup of water, in much the same way that a high density crowd of people (greater than 4 people per square meter) starts to behave as a fluid.

I study biochemistry and I'll never stop finding it neat how when you get down to the teensy tiny level, all the rules change. That's basically what quantum physics is, a different ruleset which is always "true", so to speak, but it's only relevant when you're at the nano scale

I suppose what I'm saying is that I agree with you, that fathoming scope is difficult, but I'm suggesting that this is a property of the world inherently getting being a bit fucky at different scales, rather than a problem with human perception.

It's a term from gaming which, in the broadest sense, means how they paint the sky to make it look authentic. Imagine being inside a cardboard box - the sides are painted to look like rolling mountains and hills, and the top face is painted to look like a cloudy sky, and if it's done well, all of these should connect up and give the impression that you're lookint at a real sky.

I have a favourite rock

There's a curfew? Fucking hell.

There's a guy on YouTube who removed hornet nests and at the end of videos, he feeds the hornet larvae to his chickens.

If I was in this meeting, and had previously never leaked anything, I would want to leak this, because this is funny as hell

As someone with chronic pain, this is actually pretty good