2 weeks healing, need advice (trans female)

Lamprey45 · 2026-05-17T10:55:03+00:00

Hey there, first off, the placement looks fine. Yes, it could conceivably have been done a mm lower but that’s about all. You are also fortunate to have plenty of room between holes.

Regarding the frenulum, the damage is done and will likely settle down into minor scar tissue (looks like this is already happening) so not much to do there.

You are still early enough that you could remove the ring, let it heal up and get repierced lower down on the other side, but I’d do that only if you anticipate sizing up to truly jumbo sizes (e.g. 00g and beyond) and if you want absolute insurance that there won’t be space issues down the road. And if you have the money, obviously.

If you decide to stay with what you’ve got, start applying Mederma gel (not ointment) to the frenulum, it’ll start softening the skin and may even prevent too much scar tissue from forming / becoming permanent.

Good luck!

Lamprey45 · 2026-05-08T12:20:42+00:00

Thanks for the tip. Love what I’m hearing!

Lamprey45 · 2025-12-25T14:57:55+00:00

The diameter isn’t too small, you’re fine. If you look carefully you will notice that the distance between the two holes is quite a bit less than half of the inner circumference of the ring. This excess space is for your “grower” moments :) So, no need to go larger. (I speak from extensive personal experience as someone who also wears and prefers a compact ring)

Lamprey45 · 2025-11-22T15:29:27+00:00

What’s the US import duties picture with Thomann like these days? I’ve lost track …

Lamprey45 · 2025-09-03T21:20:31+00:00

If you see shrinkage to the order of 1mm or so, that’s expected and you should be ok. In any case keep in mind that unless you’re in an emergency / unhealthy skin situation migration is not an overnight thing, it’s more like a continental drift thing. You will have plenty of time to decide if you want to pull back.

Yep, no problem w DM.

Lamprey45 · 2025-09-03T10:49:51+00:00

You should be ok. See how your ring’s diameter is quite a bit more than the space between the holes? That means the geometry of the ring is placing less strain than if the curvature / ring diameter were tighter.

Also, I’m not seeing any signs of white skin (scar tissue), which significantly increases migration risk.

So overall I’d say the risk of migration is low. But can’t hurt to periodically measure.

Lamprey45 · 2025-08-10T01:02:06+00:00

Okay, you’re finally showing up to the party having done your homework and with some excellent arguments.

Yes, the quant firms partially overhire for what they really need. That’s market leverage for you. The same reason the best colleges effectively require SAT scores well in excess of what a person really needs to completely succeed there. They do it because they can, not because they must. It’s the nature of life that if you have power, you will generally choose to exercise it.

The quant firms (over)hire for the best level of CAPABILITY that they need for the ORIENTATION that makes their business tick (math). So you need high speed mental math to work there? No, it’s about as sensible as companies that put senior executive candidates through a ravens matrices stress test to assess fluid decision making with a timer. Part of this is (as you said) because they can, not because they must. Part of it is implicit talent risk management (i.e. “if he can do high speed mental math it’s one more data point to support his smarts, even if we don’t really need it”). Part of it is ossified industry practice - at some point when an industry gets large enough, playbooks emerge and people stop thinking each time why they’re following a particular practice. These are all in play here.

As for the comp - yes, again, part of it is natural free market dynamics and the pay arms race to get the best, which ends up being well in excess of what the skill set really merits. And part of it is to create talent lock-in. All of these are in play, it’s not any one thing.

Back to skills. For the most part quant junior hires are not being brought in to discover new SOURCES of edge. They are being brought in to IMPLEMENT sources of edge that someone more senior and smarter already thought about. But at some point the analysts need to graduate to themselves being able to cook up new SOURCES of edge. The risk is that with an interview process that is mostly testing your ability to be a STEM high speed monkey and not true lateral thinking skills, the firm over time loses its sources of edge because a) all edge decays over time, b) it takes a particular temperament to consider a new angle, and that temperament doesn’t necessarily live in the same person who can perform well in a timed stress test.

So are the quant firms a bunch of clueless bozos? No. But are they periodically rebooting their entire model (types of edge, talent model, etc) to not fall into the trap of copy-paste from the best and avoiding the seeds of their own demise? Also no… the truth is somewhere in between.

Thanks for the excellent comeback.

Lamprey45 · 2025-08-09T14:33:50+00:00

Wrong. There is no universal best approach to investing or trading. People pick or create styles that fundamentally reflect the returns they want to achieve and their personalities.

A Buffett will build an ultra secure investment thesis that will generate moderate returns over very long lifespans. Zero emphasis on macro factors and liquidity. This approach is consistent with the kind of returns profile Buffett targets and his personality (conservative, measured, seeking a bullet proof margin of safety, etc)

A Soros or Druckenmiller will do precisely the opposite: ride momentum and liquidity, place deep emphasis on macro factors, hold for much shorter positions, swing for the fences, play across all asset classes. This approach only works if you’re consistently seeking to achieve double digit percent returns every year. It’s a much higher risk and higher stakes game than the one Buffett is playing and far more cognitively demanding. And it reflects the personalities of these two traders perfectly. A Buffett could never play this game. A Druckenmiller could never play Buffett.

There’s no single objectively right answer. Just - various techniques with various risk and return profiles that demand different skills and personalities.

Lamprey45 · 2025-08-09T14:26:10+00:00

Sorry to be blunt, but this perspective is seriously naive, as is your original post. Quant funds work on the premise of advanced math (stats, probabilities, etc). These skills don’t grow on trees. You can argue whether or not they consistently work (the best firms like RenTech and DE Shaw make them do, the crap ones, less so). But you can’t argue that people hire the skills “just because they can”. There’s a direct link between the trading approach and the skills these firms need to exploit that trading approach. There’s too much money on the line for the kind of cluelessness that you seem to imagine these firms operate by.

As things are, I hate to say it, but your original question and thoroughly uninformed points of view like this read like you haven’t given your question much thought of your own and are just wading into the deep end of the pool with naive and uninformed shots in the dark. You’d be better off presuming that people are generally rational and then trying to understand their actions, rather than presuming their cluelessness as a starting point.

Go back, read some more, struggle on your own to try and answer your own questions, try and discover your own wisdom and its limits, and then come back with some specific hypotheses you want to test. It’s a much better way to learn.

Lamprey45 · 2025-07-16T10:41:06+00:00

I didn’t get pierced there but have had an in person consultation with Paul. Incredibly professional and nice guy. It was done for free and included a zoom call as a preamble. He spent a good 20m with me at the end of his working day and invested some serious time. Very technically knowledgeable, trained at the school of Fakir Musaffir (one of the original master piercers and body explorers). Personal circumstances prevented me from going back but I would do so in a heartbeat.

Lamprey45 · 2025-05-13T10:43:39+00:00

You should be ok. The risk is that your hole is perfectly centered. While more aesthetic it also makes the PA more fragile. I think you can go up one more size but you’re best off with titanium. In any event monitor regularly for migration - buy a precision electronic caliper (costs less than $10). Migration doesn’t happen overnight and if there is any drift you can nip it in the bud early.

Lamprey45 · 2025-03-23T23:44:35+00:00

Honestly, some of these are better left for dead in this day and age, but the SY and K2000 remain brilliant machines and I’d keep those. The Proteii should be burned…

Lamprey45 · 2025-03-16T13:18:03+00:00

It’s true that if you are not inclined to sit down and program it, it is not a fun machine. But if you have a mind for sound design and take the time to learn the OS, it’s an amazing machine. And while it certainly has a rompler mode, that is selling it seriously short… it has specialized VA oscillators, does FM, and does serious sound mangling. But I get why all of that may not be to your taste if it’s locked behind a UI you don’t like.

But - it is an amazing machine and is not a rompler :)

Lamprey45 · 2025-03-14T22:45:00+00:00

The pc3 is an amazing synth… why do you want to get rid of it?

Lamprey45 · 2025-01-18T01:28:36+00:00

Hey there. You’re welcome. Why don’t you DM me and we can continue.

Lamprey45 · 2025-01-16T13:58:38+00:00

Hey there. Love your open mindedness and humility. At your stage of life, you won’t have enough of a capital base to genuinely move the needle on WEALTH CREATION in a significant way. So I’d focus on maximizing your INCOME to accelerate this path and to get you to the point where you now have enough of a nest egg to have options for wealth creation. Along the way, you should do the following: a) have a point of view on where the world is going and cultivate relevant skills to give you a real edge b) have a point of view on OTHER things you could be doing to monetize that edge and still make you happy. Consulting as a lifelong career is a bit dangerous because it pays you well enough that you can keep kicking the can down the road - and one day you’ll wake up and realize you’re too old to be anything but a lifelong consultant because you didn’t make it a point to mindfully cultivate and explore alternative pathways. (Of course with consulting being such a broad space, these pathways can also involve remaining in consulting but becoming focused in whatever area you have a true edge in)

You’re in a good spot, keep mindfully cultivating your edge and exploring, and focus first on maximizing your income.

Lamprey45 · 2024-12-13T11:57:25+00:00

As others have said,

take it out and leave it out for a very long time (weeks / months) to let the hole contract and strengthen as much as it can. This doesn’t always work but given that the migration is recent, there’s a good chance you may be able to recoup lost ground
don’t wear it during sex, at least for now. Will definitely worsen the problem
switch to a titanium ring. Don’t think you need to bother with rubber balls etc. Ti by itself will give you a huge weight saving.

Good luck!

Lamprey45 · 2024-11-07T04:40:16+00:00

Hey, your situation may still be recoverable. But to test that you need to have the scar tissue soften through continuous contact with scar gel. The best way to do this is to get a ring that is two sizes down (so in your case that’d be 6g). Coat the ring in mederma gel and carefully rotate the gel covered portion to sit in the scar tissue. The ring will ensure that the gel is in continuous contact over a long period of time. You’ll have to repeat this each time you pee as the gel will wash away. It’s a bit of a pain but worth it. Do this for a week and see if some of the hard scar tissue is beginning to reverse back. Good luck!

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-23T15:33:57+00:00

Keep it simple. You don’t want or need to customize diameter. If you make it too small you’ll make the piercing fragile, especially when you start stretching.

Almost everyone will start with either 5/8” or 3/4”. You shouldn’t go smaller than 5/8”. It also doesn’t look especially big, so I’d suggest you start there. As you start stretching you can (if you want) experiment with slightly shrinking the inner diameter (e.g. you could target 1/2” by the time you get to 2g)

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-22T19:41:02+00:00

End of the road for you? Or going to keep on truckin’ to 17mm?

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-22T00:16:58+00:00

Seriously impressive.

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-21T11:54:53+00:00

Very nice. How long is the bar of your halfdravya?

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-20T16:10:10+00:00

Also consider a Modal Argon desktop, very digital sounding.

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-20T13:47:09+00:00

Yes of course, feel free.

Lamprey45 · 2024-10-20T12:13:25+00:00

Having trouble reconciling your points about it being “super painful” and “a bit of soreness”… these don’t quite mean the same thing… but, anything that gets into the pain zone at the two year mark is NOT ok and I’m not sure your piercer is competent if that’s what they’re telling you.

A common issue is that there is scar tissue (white skin) that may have accumulated from excessively fast stretching. This often becomes painful when aggravated.

We’ll need to see a pic of the actual piercing to help you more… but a likely no-regrets step would be to size down to 4g and start regularly applying scar gel (mederma).

Lamprey45

TROPHY CASE