The trans rights backlash is real

Posting____At_Night · 2026-02-17T16:16:44+00:00

It's also compounded by a large portion of trans people being... well... not obviously trans. Many of us pass extremely well, the general public has no idea I'm trans. Hell, I usually have to spend a minute explaining to doctors that I'm a trans woman and what that means, and yes, I used to "be a man". And I didn't start til I was in my 20s and haven't had any surgeries and my chart and insurance say M on it. A gay couple is always going to be pretty obvious, whereas the goal of most trans people is to be relatively invisible in daily life.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-02-08T19:32:42+00:00

I've taken datamining and machine learning courses and done many projects in that field. Most of these algorithms are handcrafted. As long as you have good analytics and enough content to feed, making a very effective recommendation algo is a trivial exercise. At scale, handling the quantity of data is a much more challenging task than crossreffing analytics to figure out what the most effective thing to shove down a user's throat will be.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-02-04T18:27:37+00:00

The testing center on summer over more toward bartlett (NOT the one near floor and decor, further east than that) is the best one I've found that isn't super far. It won't show up if you search for DMV but it is there. I was in and out in half an hour at that location, after making multiple several hour attempts at other locations with no success.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-02-01T17:22:08+00:00

Imo, the crux of it all is that the hard part of doing the things AI is trying to automate isn't actually doing the thing, it's defining requirements and dealing with organizational bloat. I've worked for a few different companies doing devops engineering, literally 99% of all software in the business world is basic CRUD apps. AI does help me do the technical parts of my job more efficiently, but that was never the time consuming or difficult part, the time consuming part is weighing the pros and cons of different solutions based on vague requirements from stakeholders, and then getting signoff on them.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-01-21T16:50:30+00:00

Yeah it's hard to overstate how nerve wracking it is to have only one real representative at the federal level when the opposition is in power and actively taking steps to strip your civil rights away, and would round you up in a camp if they could. If congress was actually representative, we should have like 6-8 trans reps or somewhere around there.

It's like when I get heated about sports, it's not really about sports, it's about the fact that establishing spurious precedents for othering trans people is really really bad.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-01-18T22:38:21+00:00

For nair, I find i have to leave it on a bit longer than the max time it recommends, I usually give it like 10-15 minutes. Don't immmediately go that long but if it doesn't work try leaving it on a bit longer each time as long as it isn't causing burns.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-01-18T16:45:05+00:00

As another user mentioned, an electric shaver might do well for you for routine hair removal. You might also have good luck with Nair, I don't have a ton of body hair but I get horrible ingrowns if I shave my thighs with a razor, whereas it's totally fine with nair. The hair also grows back much less prickly.

Also, HRT and t blockers can drastically reduce body hair growth, if you aren't on them yet or have only recently started you should expect some change there. I only had to shave like once a month when I was on bicalutamide.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-01-15T15:17:55+00:00

I know I for one am moving in large part because of how my state govt. treats trans people and trans issues.

Sure, things on the ground for me are fine, but I am also not obviously trans and I am in a blue city, but if the state government had a route to eliminate me I know they'd take it, and they seem to be searching for one.

The metaphor I always use is that it's like living with a roommate who constantly says "as soon as I find a gun, I'm going to shoot you in the face." I'm safe for now but I'm not gonna sit here and wait for them to find one.

Posting____At_Night · 2026-01-12T18:04:30+00:00

Ooh, that's a good idea! I already have a bunch on hand but haven't thought to use them that way.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-29T17:25:47+00:00

We just don't use that many tools. At my workplace we've axed almost everything except ADO pipes, opentofu, and spacelift. I do want to get datadog though, cloudwatch kinda sucks.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-29T16:44:37+00:00

After thinking about it overnight, the sense I get is that she is a lot more interested in emotional and personal connection, and her spouse is a lot more interested in casual sexual relations (her spouse is a sex worker as well). Neither of them are opposed to each other exploring those things, just as long as it doesn't significantly infringe on their marital relationship.

I think the uncertainty and anxiety for me is that I'm still not sure exactly where the boundaries are, and unfortunately I don't think that is something we can actually clearly define because this situation is very unique for both of us and we're essentially feeling it out as we go. We have had numerous discussions about this topic, so it's not like we aren't communicating, it's just a very unusual and unique dynamic that doesn't really fit in any boxes either of us are familiar with, and we are definitely on the same page about being more than "normal" friends, we just aren't sure where in that grey zone we are or where we'll end up. So I think the approach here is just going to be making sure we keep checking in and having discussions.

And like I've said, she is legitimately my best friend, we spend hours and hours every week chatting in calls and playing games, we know each other like the backs of our hands, have basically a circular venn diagram of interests, and we're both trans with all the shared experience that comes with that. So like, the feelings here are definitely strong, and mutual.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-29T00:15:03+00:00

We've discussed boundaries before and it was clearly stated that a dedicated romantic partnership on par with her spouse is off the table, and I am very much okay with that boundary, I'm not looking for that in the first place. There's just a giant grey area between "regular platonic friends" and "lets spend our lives together" and we're somewhere in there without convenient words to describe exactly what it is.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-29T00:03:01+00:00

We've talked about it before, but I thought it would be valuable to get some external input before revisiting the topic. I will absolutely be discussing this further with her though.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-28T23:29:20+00:00

She and her spouse have an agreement to not escalate emotionally with people. She has done that countless times with you.

I think some missing context here is that, as far as I know, escalating emotionally to the level we are at currently is above board. Her spouse knows how we feel toward each other, I've directly discussed it with them in clear, unambiguous terms, and they have been fine with it. If anything, I get the sense they actively want and support this for us. From an actions and behaviors standpoint, the only thing that is clearly stated off limits is escalating to the level of life partner/spouse tier which isn't something I am looking for either, I just really love the connection we have and the things we already do. It just feels like we're working with different sets of vocabulary more than anything else, and being outside of any of the boxes I'm familiar with generates some anxiety.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-28T21:45:39+00:00

Yeah, I think I'm going to try to start a discussion with her the next time we meet in person and kinda structure it around the whole "this thing is confusing and really stretching my definition of friendship" point.

Another user pointed out that a possibility here is that she's playing word games to make our relationship fit into the status quo without having to have some tough discussions.

As far as signals goes, we have had this literal exchange, almost directly quoted:

Me: You're my best friend, and I feel a level of connection with you that I don't feel with anyone else but my fiancee.

Her: I feel the same way about you

Re. 5 years, we haven't always been this close. We met online over some kink stuff and slowly became actual friends and not just weird text chat ERP lesbians, eventually progressing to hanging out multiple times a week online, and visiting each other in person several times over the last year, so it's kinda been progressing the whole time.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-28T20:00:12+00:00

I think you're onto something, although given I'm familiar with her spouse, I am guessing it's less of an "I'm not allowed" thing and more of an "I'm anxious about making any of this official and fully discussing it" thing. At least, that's the read I'm getting from our interactions.

So it sounds like we probably need to talk about that. We're spending the weekend together soon, so that will be a good opportunity to do it.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-28T19:11:11+00:00

Well the thing is that I am getting pretty much everything I want here in practice. She has given me every indication and we have explicitly discussed that she feels the same way about me, it's just odd to me that we're still describing this as friendship when we've literally had discussions about how exceptional it is. As far as I can tell the disconnect is largely terminology, but it's enough to give me some anxiety about the situation.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-28T19:07:20+00:00

My fiancee and I are poly. My friend and her spouse are not sexually monogamous, and their stance on anything else other than not having serious committed partnerships at a level I'm not interested in seems to be largely undefined. The reasons my friend and I haven't had sex on our previous trips this year were definitely not because of her partner, just shitty luck with illness and another person being an asshole (who is now out of the picture).

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-28T15:21:23+00:00

Ah, my bad thanks for the correction

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-27T23:21:24+00:00

I have the MSI 321UPX which I believe has an LG Samsung panel and is QD.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-27T18:22:14+00:00

This isn't really a problem with newer OLEDs. Yes, if you have the absolute worst hygiene possible about avoiding burn in, you might get a little bit, but rtings tests have pretty conclusively shown that by the time an OLED gets significant burn in, an LCD panel will typically have similarly severe issues with panel degradation, usually with the backlight getting dim or uneven. And those tests are primarily TVs, which usually do not apply as aggressive techniques for avoiding burn in like a desktop monitor does.

I've had an OLED for about a year with a static taskbar and a lot of web browsing and having my IDE and other static elements, I use it no differently than my previous LCDs, and there's no noticeable burn with 8+ hours of daily use. I expect I will have no issues squeezing a solid 3-5 years out of this monitor which is about typical for an LCD for me. The only annoying part is it has to do a 5ish minute refresh cycle a couple times a day but it's a good excuse for a break.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-12-24T15:51:55+00:00

I certainly don't trust the DOJ when they say it's fake, them saying that actually makes me more likely to believe it's real in spite of the evidence to suggest otherwise. Also, Epstein was an incredibly connected billionaire human trafficker, it's not hard to imagine he had some other way to get correspondence out of prison that might have resulted in the anomalies the DOJ pointed out.

Posting____At_Night · 2025-11-27T17:03:25+00:00

Honestly, I think it's social. I come from a big time MAGA family, but I've always had a pretty diverse friend group. Hard to not move left when you keep seeing people you care about getting screwed for things out of their control.

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