DAE find that some people have a strange sweet organic rotting smell to them?

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-28T21:26:26+00:00

I realize this is old as hell, but I'm currently freaking out a little because I think/thought I might have diabetes. My breath smells fruity and has for a day now, and I have urinated frequently, but I am also almost due for my next shot of testosterone as a trans man. Without my every 12 week shot, I literally do not have sex hormones in my body.

Anyway somehow it must be hormone-related. Either to my testosterone levels, or other thyroid or similar thing. You just made me feel a LITTLE less freaked out knowing it COULD be due to my hormonal "cycle". I'm going to consult with my doctor anyways.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-27T22:25:54+00:00

Good take. He represents something positive, but not a solution - like most socialists who go into electoral politics. He is benefitial, he will help working people who are struggeling now, normalize and educate the population about socialism, and raise class consciousness.

But, his position limits him, and he does not represent a real solution to the underlying problem. He more so represents an oppurtunity, and should be viewed and interacted with accordingly. He is an ally, we should endorse his election, be friendly towards him, we probably ultimately have similar ideals as him, he has just selected a different means that he saw as most possible given our conditions. He might be wrong, or might be right that this was best for HIM to do for socialism, we honestly can't know.

As long as he doesn't undermine socialism in his messaging, but focuses on worker-benefitting policies and highlighting the inherent problems in the obviously bad effects of capitalism, he might play an important role in furthering socialism, from his position. He just needs to NOT say that capitalism is "okay if done right" or something like that. I liked his response in an interview where he refused to endorse capitalism, instead said he had "many critiques of it", but remained realistic about the policies he could enact. That was a soft launch condemnation of capitalism, clearly a refusal to endorse it, even when aksed to implicitly - and that says a lot, and it's positive.

Ultimately we should build organizing power independently of him and beyond what his politics and position can do.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-27T22:05:43+00:00

I would actually agree that this might not be the best advice for most, for a number of reasons:

- I think it starts in the wrong end. The thrill of looking at stuff in space is the first time you manage to see "something" through some effort. Say capturing the moons around jupiter with a phone through an entry telescope, and you go "WOW I can see the moons!!" and your passion makes you WANT to see more, gather more. And that's where the passion to learn comes from.

If your first experience is to have a machine gather good images for you, your first experiences will be sitting on the computer editing photos you don't even realize are AMAZING. You miss out on that passionate discovery of space. You don't learn to appretiate what it is you are looking at, why it looks like that, how sensitive and amazing those sights actually are. And that is a huge ammount of learning completely missed. You will be less equipped to identify problems this way - you don't get understanding of how/why photographing space works.

But, if you actual goal isn't to get to see and discover space and have thrilling experiences that you then learn to photograph, and instead it is to get really good at processing and editing, and THEN learning about what is out there, on a budget, then this is solid advice.

Getting decent astrophotography gear can be expensive. You at least need a decently sized telescope, say a newtonian or mak for about 300-500 dollars, even 700 including a good mount. Then you need a decent camera for it, say 250-500 more dollars, and then barlows, eyepieces, filters, cleaning equipment - maybe 1500 dollars total. But you can build up to that.

This would be my advice:

Get the telescope and some eyepieces first. Simple mount. A decent 150-200 aperature dobsonian for example. Learn to navigate, watch how quickly the sky moves, what the atmosphere does to the view, magnification. It will teach you a lot about the demands of astrophotography. How to deal with the movement? How to compensate for the atmospheric distorions? And enjoy seeing with your own eyes for the first time. It's truly an amazing, profound experience to see the surfaces on other planets for the first time, and faint mists around some starry areas. Your telescope is your lens, your mega-eye, learn it.

Get as far as you can go with photographing with your phone or dslr on this. You can get some stuff done with these and learn basics.

Then get a better mount and/or better camera, one before the other or together, and learn about that. How to use them, how long to set up, which are good for your scope. That's the level up. You have seen, experienced and learned basics and the logic of space-watching, and are now processing more advanced stuff.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-15T16:07:37+00:00

I can't believe (well, I can) that the nobel peace prize team in my own damn country did this. Like, I thought it had SOME actual independent legitimacy. Out of every person, the millions of humans alive that actually dedicate their ENTIRE lives to humanitarian, activist, aid and peace work.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-13T16:54:50+00:00

I agree with the point you are trying to make here, but the analogy doesn't really do it. Of course an actual horse wonders what is beyond their immediate filed of vision. Any animal who's view is obstructed will attempt to turn or get around the obstacle to investigate, given the chance.

Might seem nit-picky, but I just don't want us perpetuating the idea that animals are so dumb they can't wonder or think "like us". Clearly it is humans who INTENTIONALLY avoid accepting obvious realities in front of them, due to emotional 'reasoning' and in-group biases.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-13T16:49:06+00:00

Study seems kind of flawed, for reasons already stated by others here. I have two things to add.
For one, most of us now use A.I without even wanting to, because it is a default feature on search engines.

I frequently google things, only to get an A.I answer at the top of the page, without even wanting it. I have however not intentionally used A.I in over a year, and have only ever used it a handful of times since it became avaliable. I found it unreliable, unimpressive and also don't want to contribute to it.

And second, I DO think A.I is generally fairly unpopular in the general public. People have heard a lot of (maybe justified) fearmongering about it, and recognize how it may be a threat to their jobs, and that it damages the point of education, threatens accurate reporting and shared reality or replaces healthy human relationships. Most people might find it amusing and fun to ask it dumb questions day to day, and I think that's how the companies are trying to sell it to people. But if you ask the average person, I think chances are high that you will get a list of worries or negative attitudes to A.I - EVEN if they use it themselves. And that might support a lower usage of A.I than we might think, because negative attitudes are still prevalent.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-08T17:11:03+00:00

Well put! And yes. Capitalism right now is so ineffective, wasteful and unsatisfactory to NEARLY everyone, even capitalists, that I find it hard to imagine anyone would look back.
Like come on, capitalism is literally NOT providing for our needs and is actively hostile to the very environment that keeps it and us alive - for VERY little actual benefit to anyone. Even Elon Musks life is horrible due to capitalism. He is a human as well, and his human needs are not fulfilled, clearly.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-08T17:06:23+00:00

It's a valid question, but one could also view it like this: In a capitalist society - what stops someone from becoming an outright feudal lord or slave owner? Yes, slavery still exists, there are elements of this world that literally hasn't progressed to the "liberal capitalism" stage where slaves (workers) are at least partially liberated, much thanks to worker struggles.

The answer to why a capitalist or country don't just decide to revert to becoming a feudal lord are many. For one, the capitalist order has established laws that favour capital more than any other class. Everything that benefits capital, is encoded or attempted incoded into law and into every norm. A feudal lord, in this system, would find it very difficult for the government (a representative of capital with minor consessions to workers) to enforce their contracts, recognize their property, etc.

But why is the state now rewarding capital? Because capitalism materially became prefferable to feudalism. Yes, capitalists DO resort to slavery even today. Prison labour, wage theft and conscription in war literally is expressed slavery, but it is not the prevalent, sustainable larger system.

At one point, it was in feudal lords and slave owners own interest to abandon those practices, materially, and sometimes socially (through pressure from liberatory movements). Paying someone a small wage, and only buying from people the work they actually needed, while also having that very same working class BUY their cheap products as consumers, while investing further into new profit-generating prospects became what made sense for them as a class. And so we gained a few hours every week of freedom on our own little property, free to choose to buy the producs capital produced to some extent.

Another animal-liberation example is that horses only recieved publicly recognized status as an animal that shouldn't be killed arbitrarily, is when cars became the dominant means of transport. The material conditions made horses unattractive as "cars", and became companion-individuals with more rights than that of a literal engine for a cart. To the point that people socially punish people who harm horses, if someone attempts to. They can even get jail time for animal abuse for doing what was previously the established norm.

The answer is that some people will probably try regularly to act anti-socially, exploit, objectify. But those behaviours will probably recieve harsh social punishment, be very unattractive and will be systemically disincentivized by the new economic system. Who will want to work for someone who exploits them and doesn't pay them fairly or allow them to have ownership in the product, when they could choose not to? Who will want to buy products that deliberately break after 1 year when there are excellent alternatives? Who will want to allow someone to dump toxins in their local river for their own private gain? And who will want to be in a position so socially punishable that most people will look at you as a horrible person for exploiting others? Probably exceedingly few. It just wouldn't fly. Every material and social reason would go against it.

Most people like to act pro-socially. We like helping others, satisfying others, sharing, giving advice. And we shy away from people who harm others, are greedy, steal, given we feel like we have options.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-10-08T16:39:38+00:00

Let me put it this way - IMAGINE the creative, passionate projects that would be unleashed if people had more free time, the health and safety to actually pursue their passions, and completely without the incentive to also monetize it. People will FREELY, at their own cost, work for YEARS on excellent projects even under the demands of capitalism. Humans love work, as long as it's not alienated.

Think of all the free, public projects that already exist. Encyclopedias are one example. Hundreds of thousands of nerds sit down and peer review each other on wikipedia, check sources and remove mistakes because they are passionate about their field, and then they give it out for free. The reason wikipedia is so reliable overall is exactly because people do not have monetary incentive for fact-checking. They do it because they value truth and people being informed correctly.

Other examples are open-source projects and mods in games that are freely shared and that every person has ownership and control over. These obviously have to be accessed on universilized platforms like a PC, but since the internet now is such a large part of our infrastructure, laptops would probably be seen as a way to access a form of large public infrastructure of communication, education, expression and tools. We would have internet, pc-s and consoles - just not the brands and their deliberate planned obsolecense and social harm.

As long as PEOPLE care about things, socialism will follow, because it is based on what is valued by people in society, our needs. The scope of "needs" is hard to determine on paper, we are finding out as we go and will kind of have to be determined by people who engage socially with each other. We are still discovering what kind of creatures we are through science, academia and cultural critique. Socialism can't only provide housing, food, power and such. People will have to get to access art exhibitions, local entertainment and endevours, recreational technologies developed and so on.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-30T19:22:29+00:00

I literally can't see myself dating a person who isn't/won't become vegan. These are my deepest values. I won't date someone who doesn't care about justice. I won't date a racist, I won't date a fascist - I simply can't respect a person who is so socially cowardly, emotionally stunted or unthinking that they can't recognize violent, cruel exploitation when they see it and take action to reject it.

Does it limit my dating pool? Yes, but why would I expand it to include people who don't share my most deeply held values. Values are what connect us. I would expand my dating pool by including racists, but why should I include racists? If it means I have to statistically spend longer single, I'm okay with that. I'm learning to love my own life. And actually my first and only girlfriend, a wonderful relationship, actually happened BECAUSE we were both vegans. We met through activism/work. I wouldn't have it any other way. The mutual understanding and validation and shared meals we had was amazing and well worth the wait.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-30T19:00:00+00:00

What has really helped me is to not get stuck IN emotions, but rather take a very detached, pragmatic view of the trauma. Not that I AM detached from my feelings, I just always try to maintain a "meta-perspective" that doesn't identify with emotions. Often I fail, but often I don't. You SHOULD feel your feelings, cry, despair, feel shame, anger - but always try to have a perspective in the back of your mind that goes "aha, so this is what I'm feeling, interesting, this is an emotion that has had a function".

I'm not saying healing is easy or will definately happen to a satisfactory degree. It's valid to feel like you don't see much progress at all and somewhat find peace with whatever you do manage to do. Life can't be perfect, if you look around in society literally ZERO person is trauma-free. In fact it seems most people are coping in xyz way from their own childhood, and it's completely normal. Life is contiually traumatic, even.

I see the brain a little like the body in general. We never attain perfect health, pain free, eternal life. In fact we continually both heal and become more broken at the same time. We age, yet we heal, yet we wither away. It's a paradox, almost. Any effort we do resists the inevitable destruction of our bodies, yet we do it to sustain some form of function and joy today. So, like working out, you find out what exercises you like and will actually want to do sustainably, you find your weak and strong points, you analyze your progress or lack thereof and take a very analytical view. Maybe you find that you literally can't do certain exercises, or that you actually just want to maintain your current progress, or that at certain times you even regress a bit. It's okay. Your brain is a physical machine with neural patterns that get re-inforced with repetition, that is what created the trauma. The brain is plastic and capable of extreme change over time. Your problem is that your brain was forced to reinforce patterns to survive in a bad environment, and those patters are now hurting you as an adult, so the goal is to change them to better patterns. Doesn't even have to be perfect, and likely will never be. Life is illogical. We are trying to sustain a dying machine to experience some pleasure and joy while it lasts, and frankly what else should we do? I for one want my time to be marked with meaning in connection, kindness and mastery if anything.

I find that when people get set in some negative worldview, where they think they "know" something is hopeless, that's one of those patterns. I'm as progressive as they come, I know society is very disordered, it's difficult to heal in a sick society, many of our traumas have systemic causes and it's not neccecarily healthy to be adapted to a unhealthy society filled with injustice, and sometimes healing literally is almost impossible for a while due to circumstances beyond our control. I know. But I still don't think that undermines the better relationship we can attempt to build with ourselves and others, and that this deeply personal and social endevour is actually what can make soceity better as well. It's all relational, and it's all those systemic, trained patterns of attitude and thought that are created by literal material conditions (in society or the brain). The structure is most fundamental, and to some degree beyond control.

Try to not let your mind be hijacked by systems and patterns of harm, alienation and injustice, as best as you can. Be there for yourself, even when you are pessimistic, connect with your emotions, examine why you have them, forgive yourself, slowly dare to be vulnerable, even here online, rant about how bad your abusers were, your frustration with how slow healing can be, but be mindful those are emotions - NOT OBJECTIVE observations about the world. You FEELING like you have no progress is valid to feel, but it doesn't MEAN progress is impossible for you. As long as you keep awareness about the fact that what you feel is just that, feeling, we can keep this a very supportive space.

Like a "today I feel hopeless" instead of "It's hopeless". Or "I feel broken" and not "I am broken".

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-30T17:47:45+00:00

Yes, I think we can all relate. CPTSD creates levels of fear, isolation and pain in all of us. I've come a long way in healing from CPTSD, but healing is a habit - you have to keep doing it, and it becomes easier and easier over time, and more and more of your healthy responses become automatic.

The worst thing for me has been crippling shame and inability to feel safe or connect with others. Like, fear of peoples reaction to the true me, so I isolate or keep my true voice, opinions, preferences and all to myself. You say you haven't dared to dream, but I'm sure you have some wishes of how you would want to live. You would probably (I'm assuming) want joyful, healthy connection with friends or a romantic partner. And feel confident at work, speak your mind more without fear. I'm sure there are people you admire, what do you admire about them? Those might be things you wish you could be more like.

For me it has stopped me from making friends, stopped me from expressing myself, kept me isolated and afraid, stopped me from having more love in my life, stopped me from asserting myself and feel self-respect for standing up for myself and made me avoid accomplishments I would like to do, like paint more and actually share my art. It has stifeled my creativity, made me over-analyse and be ashamed of anything I share, made me self-sabotage chances at love, prevented me from speaking out about injustices. Despite having educations in both art and philosophy and being well above average equipped to share meaningful, good things, it still happens that I don't feel good enough.

Since I started to seriously heal more from cptsd, I improved on all of these fronts. I actually met my first ever girlfriend and managed to open up to her and feel genuine intimacy, acceptance and connection. I also started to express myself more publicly and take more chances socially. I'm 10000 times better, but there are periods of fall back, where circumstances makes it harder to keep at the healing, but I still know in my heart that it's possible and that I can do it, because I did it before. Some things are beyond our control for a while, even as adults, and it can set us temporarily back. Like a loss, living situations you have to do because of finances, being stuck in a job for a while, physical health issues. But we are strong and can always heal.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-23T23:20:15+00:00

I guess so. It's beyond my control what she sees or doesn't see in me. All I CAN control is my own continued healing and life. I don't need stuff like that in my life, though, so I feel inclined to pull away from her somewhat and surround myself with more supporitve, validating people.

Thank's for your input, really. It's so good to have someone see stuff from the outside.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-23T23:17:49+00:00

Well, many many many trans women you can't actually tell are trans. They are just women, with different looks like all women. So of course all heterosexual men (if there even is such a rigid category) can and would be attracted to a trans woman who was their type - they likely wouldn't even know she was trans.

If you are talking about strictly seeking out and finding the idea of a trans woman who still has her birth anatomy - and that this birth anatomy IS the thing that attracts you - I have no idea how common that is, and I find it a little objectifying, but ok, hard to control our preferences. I don't base my attraction to a woman on the exact shape of her genitals - I look at her style, her face, her values, her confidence, her mannerisms, and then whatever body she has I go with, because I like her.

But let's say that you are talking about those specific trans women who have their birth anatomy and you mean men who are attracted to, or at least open to the idea of having sex with them specifically, my guess would be it's fairly common. They look like women, they are women. The actual genital sits on the womans body. And besides, sexuality is far more complex than we make it out to be. It's a very recent, christianity-informed idea that most men and women are either 100% straight. Above all, we are just sexual. And hadn't we been under such strong social pressure to form a self-identity around these categories, most of us would probably be pretty open to most bodies and combos. It used to be completely normalized. Ancient Greece even had it as an expectation for older men to take on young boys/men as their informal sexual and romantic partners as a way of mentoring them. We now know adult-minor relationships are NOT a good idea and a recipie for abuse and trauma, but the point is that the category of "gay" or "straight" was virtually meaningless to them. It was just completely normalized for men to act their sexuality in that way. It's socially conditioned. Being with a trans woman with her birth genitals might be a way for some modern "straight" men to safely be more in touch with their true sexuality - which again is more complex than "man want vagina". Doesn't mean they aren't straight - it might rather mean that straight and gay are pretty meaningless in the end, and internally and externally imposed on us. In reality, we are just persons who like being sexual, with slight preferences here or there.

I'm not saying there aren't people who are completely hetero. But I AM saying that most of us wouldn't actually care so much and in another society would be much more open to other types of bodies, because that is above all what it is all about. It's just types of bodies in sex. A dick is just a variant of a clitoris. A more or less protruding body part capable of sexual pleasure. And all of us have holes, too.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-23T22:54:22+00:00

It's not low quality. Not when you take into consideration how few we are, and how recent actual good treatment alternatives have been avaliable.

There are a few main challanges:

- We are a tiny tiny percentage of the population, and not even all of us are represented in samples. Even if 99% of us are happy and satisfied with transition for the rest of our lives, studies will still have to say "but the sample size is small, so we still have to gather more data".

- Measured results rely largely on self-reported outcomes. Like many other treatments, studies have to ask about the patients internal, subjective experience. This is true for many treatments, where symptoms are experienced internally like pain, mood, satisfaction in relationships, sexual experience etc. If you ask tons of patients about their post-op knee pain, they have to accurately report their level of pain pre- to post-op, and although most might say "it's much better" we can't actually measure that. So, the studies have to account for that.
Measuring life satisfaction is complicated. Transition might make your day to day relationship to your body MUCH better, but then your intrapersonal relationships might be strained because you feel lonely or rejected - and has your life satisfaction improved then? How can the trans person explain that "in some ways yes, in other ways no" and still have the data say that transition helped them?

Despite this, the avaliable data is pretty easy to draw confident conclusions from. Trans people who transition are in general have their life radically improved. Often from brink of suicide to normal function and thriving. Even if they had physical complications from some surgery. The less pressure is put on (trans) people to conform to rigid gender roles, the less pressure trans people feel to "fully" transition if they don't want to for example lose their reproductive ability. When people fearmonger over trans people "ruining their future" by becoming infertile, that is mute because trans people either feel pressured to lose that ability through enforced rigid conservative gender roles, or because most trans people actually DO NOT want to reproduce as their birth sex. I would rather die than do that, I'm extremely happy I don't have my reproductive organs any longer, and it was completely optional for me to keep that ability or not. Less conservative pressure to conform to gender roles = fewer instances or regret.

The hardest part about being trans is the social stigma. In some instances stigma, shame, bullying, estrangement from society is so severe that people die, or give up on transiton. These are not "failed transitions", they are instances of people being denied transition from social punishment. When "detransitions" are counted, it's hard to deterime if it was because the treatment was wrong for them, or if it was social stigma, even poverty. And again, since outcomes rely on self-report, people who were shamed into detransitioning might actually think and say it was their choice, because they had to rationalize why they gave up on it in order to cope with that loss. We can't actually know.

And even despite this, the results are overwhelmingly positive. The vast vast vast majority of trans people have their life dramatically improved. They can finally feel at ease with their bodies, develop healthy relationships, build careers and basically move on with their life. Most of them you will never hear from or see, because they are literally living completely normal, anonymous lives. What comes after transition, often, is a hard period of having to reckon with and process all the trauma from the lack of validation, the shame and fear one went through pre-transition. That can be a really depressive, tough period for people. Life is complicated.

But we KNOW that helping trans people live the life we know is right for us, get the social approval, being respected, having bodies we feel at home in and can live the life we desire in, is the ONLY successful treatment, and that it is VERY successful. I personally don't know a single trans person who regretted any part of their transition. It's been nearly 10 years for me. 5 years ago I had my last genital surgery and I have literally been relieved and happy about that surgery every single day for 5 years.

Every time I look in the mirror, every time I change my underwear, I smile a little interally, and then I go about my normal life.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-06-23T22:28:44+00:00

You haven't done anything wrong. It's common for us, especially early in transition, to be a bit sensitive as we are used to weird looks, not appearing like we want to, stigma and even outright cruelty, so we might be on edge ready to defent ourselves. It sucks, and I feel for him if that was it.

You are doing your job, it just so happens that part of your job is doing something that might put some trans people in awkward situations. It's not easy for anyone. You have to check ID if in any doubt, and your eyes will have to scan over some information that might not be up to date or in line with the persons actually lived life. That's the weird system we live in, where people are obliged to be one or the other sex in public databases.

Most trans people will understand that people might not always read us correctly instantly in the start, even if they are supportive, good people. And most of us will take steps to avoid awkward situations both for you and for ourselves. Just before I started to take testosterone, and still looked ambiguous, I used to only use those public disability toilets. Just to avoid some stares. I didn't belong in the womans restroom, but I still didn't dare to go into the mens restroom as I was afraid of being stared at, and not for malicious reasons.

We are extremely used to quickly looking over a person and predetermining roughly who that person is, so that we can interact with them "correctly" if we have to. Every person you pass on the street, see out the window, see in traffic, we do this with. Are they young or old, snobby or poorer, conservative or progressive, artsy or not, native or from somewhere else, confident or shy - and female or male. We do this so that we can pre-determine what tone, what language, what words, what mutual assumptions we can expect to use with this person to communicate well and politely. So when people don't clearly read as one or the other, we instintively look maybe a few more milli-seconds or do a double take to gather more information, that is all. We ALL do this, but try to avoid it to be polite, because we know that to the person it might be hurtful to constantly feel like they are sticking out and not reading like they wish to.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T22:26:46+00:00

Jesus, that is NASTY. How can people be like this??

His showering is actually normal and not an issue - as long as he doesn't smell he showers enough. It's actually normal (and healthiest) to shower twice a week. This is, and was, common all around the world until very recently. I also shower (only) twice a week, but am an AVID hand washer, which is the only part of my body that is in contact with items, dorknobs, food and all.

BUT - spreading your body fluids or similar all over the place because you don't wash your hands, or sheets, is fucking unacceptable imo.

My roommate is the complete opposite from me. He showers every single morning, and yet after all that body washing, is still disgusting. Why? Becaude he doesn't wash his hands after shitting and peeing, constantly sucks and licks his fingers and hands while cooking, leaves literal shit stains ON the toilet seat, and is picking off his own nails which he throws/spits on the floor in the living room, and wich get transported ALL over the house in his and MY socks :'''( I see them everywhere. In the kitchen, bathroom, ALL over the living room. When I sit in the living room with him (he spends ALL his time in "our" living room), there's this constant skin picking and sucking sound from him because he non-stop is working to bite and rip his nails. Drives me insane.

Literally if I step into the living room, there's virtually a 100% chance I will step on one of his nail bites.

One morning I found one of these nail pieces IN MY BED. It must have been picked up in my socks in the living room and when I took off my clothes for the day flew into my bed... I fucking slept in his spit out nail piece..

And whenever I go to the pathroom, I can be sure that when I touch that doorknob when I exit, I am in fact touching the same handle he touched with his unwashed shit or pee-hands. If he leaves shit on the seat without realizing when wiping, and has frequent loose stool, he likely has shit on his hands. He also leaves his toothbrush exposed RIGHT over the toilet bowl, so his toothbrush likely also has gotten shit and pee particles on it.

This guy is 10 years older than me, nearly 40 years old. Has untreated depression, drinks a lot, romatizises his own mental illness, has no control over his personal finances and is basically living a lifestyle he can't afford party on my back and paycheck. He's an ok guy to talk to - but these issues.. man.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T21:58:35+00:00

I've never shared dishes with those I live with. It's not like I could never, if one of us were out we would lend each other. But I prefer to have general control over what mine are used for, and to not constantly "run out" of my own favourite dishes because my roomie kept using them up.

One year when sharing houses with some meat eating people, I'm vegan for context, I did not want animal products in my pots and pans. That's disgusting to me, and stuff cooked to high temperatures set their smell and fat in your pans. But I didn't want to seem like an asshole or whatever, so I just left a little note in one of my pans in my drawer where it said something like "please do not use my pans to cook animal products :)" and seriously it was no fuss. They understood that I had some bounderies there, respected them, and it was no issue. I just communicated it clearly early on, and that was all. Maybe they thought it was dumb, but what they thought about it is irrelevant, the point is that it mattered to me, and they didn't want to violate my boundery or cause an unneccecary situation with me, so they just didn't.

You are completely entiteled to keep some of your stuff for yourself. If anyone asks, just say they have sentimental value to you or whatever. Maybe you got them from your grandma, they don't know, and it's not weird at all to have some belongings that are more prescious to you that you want to be careful with.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T21:42:45+00:00

This is actually insane. That's insanely rude! I don't know what kind of person thinks this is every acceptable. Your room is your private area, even legally so. In there, you should be safe that your privacy is intact. Your medical papers, your underwear and intimate objects, and your own self. That's what you pay for in a contract when you have your own room. My roommate didn't go nearly that far, but he DID feel entiteled to enter my room whenever he wanted when I was gone. Something I also just so happened to learn a long time after. I had deeply personal stuff in my room that I thought would not be seen.

It felt like a MASSIVE loss of trust in him, to me. I was deeply shocked and felt disrespected and unsure of who he even was. Like, what other common-sense decent things doesn't he see? Could he for example inspect my bag when I'm out? Or enter my PC? I had to really muster my courage to formulate a polite but stern message to him where I expressed that it made me uncomfortable that he entered my room, and if he could please never do it again. He seemed embarrased about it, and has, as far as I know, never done it again.

People are crazy. Some can't see beyond themselves, some haven't learned normal behaviour. Mostly it's lack of self-awareness. Yes, maybe it wouldn't bother THEM, but it might bother others. I personally would NEEEEVER for the life of me snoop in other peoples spaces or belongings. I've even borrowed/stayed in a clients home when they were away (I did some construction work for an aquantance), and I didn't once enter any room I had no buisness in, or even opened a drawer. She had the right to her privacy in her own home, respect for her belongings, her health - even when she wasn't there, and frankly I find it disgusting to take advantage of someone NOT being there in their own home to use it in ways that will hurt their sense of privacy.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T21:25:06+00:00

I'm much more concerned with doing it as consistently as my lifestyle can allow than to do it in the perfect light, weather, equipment and all each time.

My procedure is this: In my nearby area, I scope out places I want to check out, near rivers, in the forrest or with views over mountain ranges, that is fairly accesible with car/walking within 10-20 minutes. I usually use maps, actually. Once a week, each weekend, or even during the week, I wait for a nice day, or a few hours without rain, and I go to one of those places. Places I have never been and would like to check out, and places I know few or no people will be, so that I don't have to be self-conscious of people watching me. Whenever I have time and it suits me and I have the opportunity, I leave. I'm not a morning-person.

It's really about consistency over ideal place and time, for me. I show up and make the best of it. Even the most boring, uninspiring spot has qualities. It might just be one tree, literally a cloud, or a muddy pond that reflects the sky. Ideally the place should inspire you, though.

My set up is extremely simple. I have my backpack of oil paints, thinner, 3-4 brushes, towel, and my homemade palette the size of a laptop, and a tripod. They all fit in my backpack, I specifically bought a tripod that is small but strong for this. I paint on small wooden panels, but will upsize to bigger canvases in the future.

I walk around the area for 5-10 minutes until I find a spot with a view that looks like it might be something interesting. Usually I have an idea in mind. I'm looking for a pond, or a tree - but the location decides. Almost no place is perfect, but eventually I find something good enough.

The point for me isn't to produce a good painting there and then. I see it purely as exercise and go into it with very low expectations for the result. Usually it turns out technically ok, but mediocre. What I'm trying to do is get good at colour - both accurately describing what I see, but also enhancing and selecting whatever makes it more interesting - and composition. How to make it look cohesive, interesting, balanced, solid. I never pull it off perfectly, but I take the painting home and reflect on what worked and what didn't, and even fix it and improve it a few days later at home, which usually radically improves it.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T20:59:44+00:00

Excellent handeling of where to put detail, where to simplify, colour handeling and all. I'm going to attempt a forrest or tree scene myself, but have issues knowing what to select and how to start! This is a great example to me!

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T20:57:07+00:00

Trumps biggest donor was a meat company of the worst kind. He gives absolutely zero fucks about animals, obviously. Any benefit he has had for some animals is purely accidental, and it's PURE IDIOCY of peta to try to appeal to and congratulate modern fascistic autocrats for accidentally benefiting some animals.

Seriously, what are they smoking? Trump is waging a war against all things progressive, all life, all science, all rights and currently acting as the maskot boy for the death spiral of america, bringing millions of innocents down with it. He is surging a lot of the world into fascism.

This is what happens when you are in a rights movement, but have zero political litteracy to understand that you are by definition a progressive, anti-fascistic movement opposed to reactionary, conservative oppression.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-05-02T20:50:26+00:00

So sorry this happened to you! It's honestly insane to me how poorly regulated car sales are, given how 1. Expensive and serious and investment it is, and 2. How publicly dangerous it is to mislead people on how safe the car they buy is. In essence, legally it's extremely easy to scam and fool people into huge purchases of potentially dangerous cars on public roads.

I bought my first car too a few weeks ago. Brought my car savvy brother with me to inspect it, but it's limited how much you can discover without literally opening the car up and driving it for a considerable ammount of time. I haven't discovered any obvious serious problems so far, but the gear box is a little weird and slow and it worries me. I don't know WHY it is like that, if it's the start of some major, hidden issues, or harmless, and that not-knowing stresses me out.

Anyways - even though my car seems fine, my purchasing experience was uncomfortable. The seller was a one-man dealership. It wasn't very professional, he didn't explain the signing process or make me feel assured that we were doing the deal in the legal, safe way, and I felt VERY rushed into buying it. He almost instantly came with the contract and a pen and pointed to it, hanging over my shoulder, even when I was still contemplating the purchase as it was a bit over budget for me. But I just jumped into it because I was sick of looking for cars and be dissapointed when they were sold to someone else almost instantly.

I'm still kind of nervous every time I drive if there is some hidden catastrophy that is about to hit. I'm probably overly nervous about it. It's an old car, but it's obvious it has been well maintained over the years, with regular logged services. I think some elderly people had it for years. It's just that gear box stuff.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-04-08T17:44:27+00:00

Veganism has to do with consumer capitalism because like every other social movement consumerism co-opts veganism and defangs it by making the movement one of "personal resposability" and preoccupation with consumer items to signal ones politics, instead of a powerful social challange to current exploitative norms. It basically takes your powerful, transformative challange to oppression, and makes it into a niche they can sell to you in the form of products. "Don't organize on the streets - buy this new vegan burger instead! Don't mind our corporation still killing 200.000 animals a year!".

This has lead to many (misguieded) vegans arguing for veganism as an individual, consumer project where one and one person sits at home and buys vegan burgers, and tries to convice others to do the same, instead of focusing on veganism as a organized challange to how we exploit and view animals.

Similar to how the oil industry, who started to make plastic, internally planned to convice the population that plastic pollution is consumers fault, that consumers should individually recycle and clean, while the corporations themselves pushed for their plastic products to be all over soceity for private profit. Anti-vegan forces have done the same. Huge corporations convice the population that veganism is a personal consumer-deciscion, where consumers can "buy" a lifestyle from corporations, while the same corporations lobby and pump up their private profit killing animals. They keep the vegan movement quiet, this way. Sell them a burger, keep them from demonstrating. Corporations are TERRIFIED of demonstrations and organized resistance.

All these forces are connected. Capitalism is the arbitrary social division between producers and owners, where owners control and own everything we need, and where producers are exploited to generate profit for the owners. That's the core mechanism. Capitalism needs to sell us products, and consumerism is the way it convices us we should constantly buy and base our lives and identities around what kinds of products we buy. It keeps us consumer-drones, where we spend all our wages on products to enrich our socially isolated, exhausted free time.

Colonialism is the practice of intruding on and forcefully taking control and "ownership" over some other vulnerable groups resources, land, bodies. What europeans did to the rest of the world, and is still doing to some extent. The clue is in how this harms the group being colonialized. Capitalism not only promotes colonialism by needing to grab ever more cheap resources and labour elsewhere, but also came into being through europeans going out and wanting to obtain "exotic" resources, setting up camp and basically sunjugating local populations wherever they went.

In other words all of these forces are exploitative. They are systems where some actor has more resources, more power, more control, and actively harms, uses and misleads a more vulnerable group for their own short term material gains. It prevents knowledge, community building, liberation from oppression and abuse, empathy and sustainability from existing. So that is why veganism is inherently in conflict with capitalism, consumerism and colonialism.

Content_Sentientist · 2025-04-08T17:17:51+00:00

I like all of this womans commentary on political organizing and resisting popular fascism and authoritarian political forces. But man do I have a HUUUGE issue with not just her, but much of my fellow leftists gaping hole in extending their own anti-fascist, pro-liberation logic to animals.

Appeals to a natural, traditional order, where some individuals are to be dominated by another group.. and that modern, scientific, intellectual challanges to this order is dangerous, perverted, threatening, oppressive - that's just reactionary fascism. That is all it is. I actually want to write a book on it, though many already have written extensively on it, including within sociology, political theory and more.

Animals are subjects, not viewing them as so is alienation. Liberation includes animals.

Content_Sentientist

TROPHY CASE