If you wish to simulate a cycle, you can do pretty well by combining estradiol enanthate with estradiol valerate. This is a simulation of such a regimen.

Basically 3.5 mg of each EEn and EV biweekly. Take the EV dose first, the EEn dose 6 days and then repeat both every two weeks.

This isn't a perfect reproduction of the natural cycle, but it's pretty good while still being pretty achievable with readily obtainable estrogen esters. I've been thinking about trying this out myself.

Unhelpful.

Warm summer? Pfft. It's the coolest summer for the rest of our lives!

I want some judge to publicly state, "I will refuse to marry anyone that is a member of an anti-Queer Christian denomination. I consider such people to be fake Christians, and devil-worshipers who sold their soul to Satan to pursue their hate. Such animals don't deserve to get married."

Even "homebrewing" HRT is just glorified compounding. You don't actually get to synthesize anything. :/

“A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

No. I don't agree. I don't want a wealth tax. I want a wealth CAP. 1000x the median household income should be the maximum allowable fortune. That would be something like $80 million today.

I like that number because 1000x the median income is a good approximation for the largest honest fortune a person can earn by their own work. Imagine you had a married couple:

• Both were brain surgeons and highly paid.
• Both attended school young and worked til old age.
• Both lived like absolute paupers, saved and invested every penny they could.

Even in such an extreme scenario, two people in a couple working highly paid jobs and saving and investing nearly everything they could. Even then, they would struggle to die with a fortune 1000x the median income. The only way you can earn more money than this is if you inherit it or if you arbitrage the labor of others. You need to start a business, be an executive, or have other means of scalping the surplus off of other people's labor.

1000x the median income is the largest honest fortune. It's the largest fortune you can earn through an ordinary salary and prudent individual investing. And it's well below the level where you have so much money you're becoming a threat to society. No one should have an individual fortune so large that they can sway nations through their own wealth. That is just too much power for one individual to have. We don't let people own nuclear bombs. We shouldn't let people be billionaires.

I don't want to tax billionaires. I want to eliminate them entirely. I would make all fortunes over 1000x the median income taxed at 100%. And if you secretly amass a larger fortune? There would be escalating criminal penalties. To the point where having a fortune 10x the legal limit would get you in as much legal trouble as if you tried to acquire your own nuclear bomb.

Please. You don't use exercise to lose weight. That's what bootleg weight loss drugs are for.

Are you familiar with the concept of cultural Judaism? Jewish is unique in describing a religion, an ethnicity, and a cultural group. Someone can be raised in Jewish faith and culture, walk away from the religious aspect, but still retain much of the culture. Someone like Einstein was culturally Jewish. He was open about and identified with his heritage, but he was an atheist in terms of belief.

I would say you're culturally gay. You had your most formative years in the gay community. You may no longer meet the definition of 'gay' as an orientation, but you're still culturally gay. If you spend long enough time in a community, you can retain cultural attachments to that community even if you no longer meet the defining central feature uniting that community.

Eh. It's par for the course. 20 years ago, at the height of the frenzy of outsourcing things to China, I remember saying that this will just result in US companies creating their own competition. Anyone with a brain could see that Chinese companies weren't going to be willing to serve as second-fiddle to their US masters. The idea that you could keep design and management, while sending production overseas, and that you can keep that arrangement stable long-term? Pure fantasy. Of course a country isn't going to be content just doing the grunt work. They want the highly paying design and management jobs, not just the menial labor ones.

Google:

"No need to sue us. Mr Maclsaac was listed in Google search as a sex offender, but wasn't actually on the sex offender registry. But no worry, we've fixed the problem! We have several government records contracts. Our LLM simply corrected the record and added Ashley to the sex offender registry. The error has been resolved."

Let's see, generic trans and trans fem advice. Stream of consciousness, no particular order. A lot of these are assuming you're a binary trans person aiming for a binary transition to female. If passing isn't something you care about, then a lot of this won't apply. A lot of this also discusses things that arise from medical transition such as HRT. If that's not something you want, then some of these won't apply.

1. If passing is your goal, start working on your voice today. Voice is one of the strongest tells there is. Medical transition is an agonizingly slow process, waiting for hormones to have their time to act, waiting for surgical wait times, etc. But voice is one of the few parts of transition that is effort-based and also costs nothing. Start working on it today; there's simply no substitute for putting in the work.

2. EYEBROWS!!!

3. When picking out a wardrobe, be sure to dress your age. If you just want to say, "fuck the world, I don't care what you think!", fair enough. If you want to transition and assimilate into the world as a functioning adult woman, then you need to dress your age. Wearing skirts that are more appropriate on a 14 year old can be a fun exercise in wish fulfillment and making up for lost time, but dressing your age is essential if you actually want to assimilate in to the social role of a late 20s woman.

4. START PEOPLE WATCHING. Seriously. Go to a mall, a farmer's market, or some other location large groups congregate. Look at people. Actually look at them. Observe the subtle differences in behavior between men and women. Body language. Posture. Speech patterns. This is also how you figure out how to dress your age. Don't creep on people. But just subtly observe. Yes, some gender rebels will lament that you shouldn't have to appeal to feminine standards of behavior, and that gender is a social construct. But "construct" does not mean "meaningless." If your goal is to actually transition and live as a woman in this society, you'll need to adopt most of the social norms of the female gender. This doesn't mean that you need to appeal to every stereotype; you can be a tomboy. But if your behaviors fall entirely within society's social construct of the male gender, you will be gendered male. Once you observe these behaviors, start practicing them and changing yours to match.

5. If you are seeking medical transition, you are responsible for your own transition. Not your doctor. You. Really internalize this. Trust but verify everything your doctor tells you. Good trans medicine is the exception, not the rule. If you transition and live for years as trans, you will experience mistreatment in healthcare. You will likely be underdosed. There's a good chance your doctor will tell you your E levels are fine when you're sitting there with levels of a post-menopausal woman. Trust but verify everything your doctor says. After bloodwork, NEVER simply listen to your doctor when they just say, "your levels are fine." Insist on seeing the actual numbers yourself, and know what range you should be aiming for. People routinely lose years of progress because of doctors humoring trans people with criminal underdosing rather than actually prescribing effective doses. If you need to, DIY. It's not as scary as you think it is, trans people DIYing is the rule, not the exception. Learn what trans broken arm syndrome is and be on the lookout for it.

6. If you're looking for name ideas, again, it's a personal approach thing. If you're looking for ideas and just want something that won't stand out, consult the census. At least in the US, the Census publishes a list of the most popular baby names by year, sorted by sex. Go and look up the most popular baby names FOR THE YEAR YOU WERE BORN. Often times trans people will chose a name that is popular today, as in a popular name for babies being born today. This is how you end up with someone in their twenties having a name that seems more appropriate for someone in kindergarten. Names vary in popularity with time. If you choose a name that doesn't match you age, it will stick out. Same thing if you pick a name from anime or from a culture you're not a member of. Again, if you don't care about sticking out, fair enough. But imagine yourself at 60 with your name. That's the kind of timeframe you need to be thinking about.

7. If doing medical transition and HRT, stockpile stockpile stockpile. Supply disruptions are common, and restarting care can be difficult each time you move.

8. Be prepared for your position in the world to change. Say goodbye to male privilege. (Though trans people rarely get the full privilege level of their birth sex.) Be prepared to change how you physically navigate the world. People will treat you differently. It will become much less safe to walk out alone at night. You may get catcalled. People will expect you to act in a feminine social role. And if you don't, you will be judged for it. You will get talked over. Your ideas will go unheard. Sticking up for yourself will get you labeled as "difficult" or "aggressive." Basically you get all the crap that gets piled on cis women, plus the crap that gets piled on trans people.

9. Really talk with your partner. Are they really up for this? Most cis people really don't understand just how much transition can change. Cis people tend to think of transition as a very cosmetic thing; most don't even know what hormones do. They think breast implants and genital surgery. That is what transition means to them. They really fail to understand that if you go on HRT, you are very literally altering your sex at a fundamental level. They're not anticipating the entire smell and pheromone profile of their partner changing. They're not anticipating the changes in body hair, muscle and fat distribution, genital changes, etc that come with hormones, or even just the change in behavior that often comes with transition. And it's very common for partners to want to make the relationship work. They'll say, "I'll love you no matter what," and they will actually mean it. But you can't control what you're attracted to. If someone is attracted to masculine bodies, they're attracted to male secondary sex characteristics. They can't help it. They can't change it any more than a gay person can choose to be straight. But because cis people think transition is cosmetic, they often feel that as long as they're not bigoted, they can still love their partner and be with them. Then their partner's secondary sex characteristics completely flip, and they lose all sexual attraction to them. Personally, if I was in this situation, unless my partner had a clear history of bisexuality - having actually slept with both men and women prior to me transitioning - I would assume the relationship to be doomed. Sometimes people can make it work. But transition in many ways fundamentally changes your sex. You are becoming a woman. If your partner isn't attracted to cis women, they probably won't remain attracted to you. You can still remain close lifelong friends, but realistically, the vast majority of relationships that are "straight" at the time one partner comes out end up not working out long term.

10. Learn to dress to your strengths. If you're like most trans women, you probably have wider shoulders than you would prefer. Certain clothes look good on different body types. Learn how to dress yours.

Sorry for the info dump. This wasn't meant to be a coherent thing, just a collection of tips and things to think about. I may add others later as well. For background, I'm a trans gal myself. 15 years HRT and living out, 13 post FFS and SRS. I have extensive experience both with the transition process and navigating the world as a newly transitioned woman. Feel free to ask any questions you might have.

Yeah, people seem to forget history. Often institutions become so sclerotic that the only way forward is to work outside of them. Look what it took to defeat slavery in the US. Slaveholders had co-opted both major parties. Abolitionists tried for decades to work within the existing two party system, voting "lesser evil" election after election. In the end, this strategy failed at ending slavery. It took the founding of a new party, the Republican Party, to really make progress on abolition. It ended up leading to the Civil War, but slavery would have continued for another generation at least if abolitionists had just kept voting defensively election after election.

Also. I have a brilliant idea to stop ivory poaching. Let's take those machine guns from a Ukrainian ground drone:

Then mount them on some large saddle that can be fitted on an elephant's back. Then rig up some mechanism for the elephant to control the gun. Perhaps some sort of large eyepiece.

We won't need to actively track down poachers. The elephants will be more than capable of dealing with the poachers themselves! With modern technology, we could literally give machine guns to elephants!

Long term, I predict a violent revolution of the young overthrowing the tyranny of the old.

Aging societies tend to divert resources from the young to the old. People vote for their own interests. When retirees outnumber parents, more money goes to retirees and less to kids. This lowers the birth rate even more and continues the spiral. In increasingly aging societies, young people face the prospect of having to pay a lifetime of ruinously high taxes (far higher than their elders did) to pay for the retirements of the old that outnumber them. And they'll do this knowing that they themselves will never have a retirement of anywhere near the quality of the retirements they're being taxed to death to fund.

Long term, we're entering a very dangerous situation in developed countries. We have a trifecta of three dangerous conditions:

1. The young will be ruinously taxed to fund retirements of existing elderly, a retirement far more generous than they will ever receive.
2. The young will be completely shut out of political power due to being outnumbered by the old.
3. The young are the only ones actually capable of fighting in a war.

These are the conditions that historically brew revolutions. People take up arms typically when they see no hope for the future or feel they have nothing to lose. The young may not be able to outvote the old. But they certainly can outshoot the old.

I'm working to set up my new workshop. We moved into a new house a few months ago, and I'm finally getting to setting up the shop in earnest.

I'm setting up the shop in a 3 car garage. The garage has a one car bay and a two car bay. I want to be able to actually park a car in the one car bay. So I built a large wall separating the two bays. The wall covers probably 2/3 of the width. The rest will be covered by a curtain. The two car bay will be the actual woodshop area. The one car bay will be a place to park a car and will serve as a finishing space. The wall and curtain will keep sawdust contained within the two car bay. The wall also serves as a tool wall. Here's what the wall currently looks like:

From the other side:

The wall is about 10' wide and 12' high.

In my old shop I had even more on the wall. But I'm trying out moving most of my bladed tools into a tool chest. I was going to build one, but I found this old steamer trunk by the side of the road. From the manifest glued to the back it looks like it was used by an air force airman in the 1980s to ship things home from Japan. I'll be using it as a tool chest. I wanted to put wheels on it. But as it's a bit of an artifact I didn't want to actually modify the trunk itself or drill into. Instead I built a little cart for it to roll around on.

After I finish here, the last big step in setting up the shop will be installing the dust collection system. And I went overboard on this. This is very much a dream shop setup I'm building out. Currently in a bunch of boxes strewn about the shop is an entire Oneida Dust Gorilla and a network of piping to service the various machines.

If we're sharing things on walls. I'm in the process of setting up my new workshop. This is the current state of the tool wall. I had to first build the wall then start hanging things on it.

I'm going to enjoy torturing my 14-year-old self. My 14-year-old self was a shithead. But I was raised in a conservative Catholic house, and at that age I firmly embraced the version of reality common among the Fox News set. I was that annoying conservative high schooler. Sure I was repping hard, but I was still an idiot.

Now I'm a late-30s trans woman, about to celebrate 8 years of marriage to my wonderful husband.

The things I can say. I'm going to haunt this kid's dreams.

For a lot of creators it may not even be about the money they earn directly from it. I have a small educational YouTube channel. It brings in about 20 bucks per month in ad revenue, more in the past when I was more active. But really it's a nice feather in my cap and something neat on my resume. A modest YouTube channel won't pay enough by itself to make the effort worthwhile. But if that channel gets you over the top on a new high paying job? Then it's worth it. In this context, a YouTube channel functions as a kind of personal brand/promotional material.

We can do better than that if we want to abuse a time machine to forge Lovecraftian horror!

I would use my time machine to steal Neil Armstrong's corpse from his funeral and then dump it right at the landing site of Apollo 11. First thing Neil sees when he hops onto the lunar surface? His own aged corpse.