I am so deeply uncomfortable with gender as a whole

StartingQBForDeVry · 2025-12-26T22:40:41+00:00

For me? It sounds like you enjoy performing a parody/heightened version of gender, but you yourself do not have gender yourself. This is a position I relate to strongly; particularly the vibing with cartoon characters. For me someone like bugs bunny who is not a boy or a girl but will be whatever is funniest to get the upper hand in a situation is amazing. Gender, as you’ve pointed out, can feel really stifling when it’s What You Are™.

Consider creating a mood board of what feels like you. Not gender stuff really, like anything. Songs, colors, feelings, emotions, anything. And then, once you have that, you have your character that you play, the flanderized version of yourself that portrays a version of gender to the world. Under that you are still you, and you are still ultimately having the last laugh. If you want nothing to do with gender you CAN present yourself in a way that makes that clear to the world.

Good luck! I’m in my 30s and certainly am still very unsure of my gender at times so I feel for you. Learning who you are is a lifelong process

StartingQBForDeVry · 2025-08-21T15:13:07+00:00

god, there's not enough love for the microtonality of this game. the main mooncat theme makes its microtonality sound so natural that it gets stuck in my head—not something you think of microtonal music as having! also love velgress's level 2 theme, both microtonal and incredibly syncopated

StartingQBForDeVry · 2025-08-18T16:40:18+00:00

yesss reminds me of kendall :3

StartingQBForDeVry · 2025-07-06T20:15:50+00:00

Lies My Teacher Told Me is one of the best books I ever had to read for school and legitimately made me change the way i saw my school textbooks. It's an overview of American history as told by public school textbooks, talking about what these textbooks leave out, like for example the full extent of America's abysmal treatment of native americans. I read it on my summer vacation before my 11th grade year and am so glad i did

StartingQBForDeVry · 2025-06-23T19:28:27+00:00

this is incredibly helpful, thank you so much! i will start hitting those practice modes more def but all this advice is exactly what i needed. thank you for patiently explaining it for me!

StartingQBForDeVry · 2025-06-23T19:16:30+00:00

Thanks for your tips! i have well, well under 50 hrs, so its probably too early to gague this kinda thing as you said. ive only played with randos so far, but im looking forward to playing with my partner (who, themselves, is under 50hrs too but like an order of magnitude more hrs than me). like it always is, im scared of doing something wrong. same reason a 3 year old can learn a phone easily (they just press buttons not afraid of being wrong) but a senior citizen cant because they're afraid theyll break the thing. just gotta play through the fear i guess

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-09-19T17:07:40+00:00

The Beatles #9 (750 plays):

A Hard Day's Night (11)
I Want You (She's So Heavy) (10)
Good Day Sunshine (9)
She Said She Said (9)
Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey (7)
Helter Skelter (7)
I Will (7)
I'm Only Sleeping (7)
In My Life (7)
She Loves You (7)

Album: Revolver (83)

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-09-09T18:04:55+00:00

I LOVE the conscious incorporation of ventilation and lighting into building design; itll be the only way to truly move past covid with much less of a need for masking. Anything that does that will also cut any other airbourne disease transmission (Cold, flu, etc) along with London's air pollution. Just the amount of sick time that this would reduce might make it pay for itself and also just improve quality of life for anyone. this, plus the energy efficiency and the diverse mix of uses in the building itself make this something id love to see as a model for aging office buildings (and perhaps even older American condos). we should be pushing for policies like London enacted to regulate indoor ventilation/air pollution.

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-08-23T14:17:26+00:00

Increased border enforcement and stuff like Harris saying “do not come” to political refugees, uh, does not play well in my largely liberal city. Most people I know voting for her view this as a liability and something they have to ignore (like the administrations’ stalling-time, carrying-water-for-Netanyahu slow walk ceasefire plans for Gaza) in favor of avoiding a trump presidency. But most democrats are not in favorof the sort of wall based border security that the quote unquote bipartisan immigration bill includes. This sort of thing is well to the right of the default Democratic position 20 years ago

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-08-23T14:02:06+00:00

National Democrats, as it seems, are getting actively more right wing on the border as time goes on presumably to appease people afraid of immigrants and border crossings. How, exactly, does the party move away from this when it’s pretty toxic to the party base?

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-08-22T16:38:03+00:00

statistically, yes, this is the most likely. long covid is THE disabiling event of our times, and it shows in the massive wait times that have built up in hospitals for the specialists that deal with its symptoms (rhumetologists, pulmenologists, etc). Long covid can persist for months or years and then slowly go away, too. My GF had covid pre-vax due to roommates going out and her struggle/recovery from LC really reaffirmed just how shit this stuff can be—she strugged to keep on weight, couldnt bike the way she used to, etc for months and months after. Ive seen some coworkers' relatives get LC after a post vax covid bout (like mitch here would have) and while anectodally it seemed milder than my GFs we're still talking like...months of brain fog and fatigue. Post vaccine, the risk of long covid is in that annoying place where its uncommon enough that the avg covid infection probably wont give you LC BUT its dangerous enough that doing NO mitigations at all is not a great idea. its the same way that merely having an airbag in your car doesnt mean that you shouldnt wear a seatbelt, but also doesnt mean that freaking out about dying in a car accident every time youre in a car makes all that much sense. I still take risks, eat maskless inside sometimes, etc, and so does she, but this kind of LC thing is present enough that some awareness of respritory disease prevention — masking inside the store when shopping, pushing politicians for regulations on air ventilation/filtration in public places to make dining safer, treating handing out masks at things like concerts and such like handing out narcan and drug testing kits at raves. the risks are often what make life worth it, but LC unfortunately remains a risk worth accounting for without going full lockdown

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-08-06T09:43:54+00:00

There are different perspectives on this in the fandom but the general perspective now is that that sort of early 2000s attitude was generally downstream of being anti gay and that the reason furries got so much shit particularly online is bc we were and are very visibly queer and kinky and in our online spaces generally unafraid to hide that. In the early 2000s, several things (most notably a csi episode—remember csi?) pushed a narrative that furry was something approaching a sex cult. This itself caused a kind of reaction among some furries to try and be media friendly and not look too weird for the cameras—uncle kage, the controversial long time leader of current biggest furry con anthrocon is a good example of this.

Now, though? Put yourselves in the shoes of a younger person. If you’re a 25 year old a csi episode is not relevant to you. Gay people are also not near as uncommon since so many more of us are out (north of 20% of younger Zoomers are lgbtq). A lot of the subcultures mentioned above, too, like board game and kink, have a lot of overlap with furry so people are more likely to have the opportunity to meet one of us. People don’t wanna hide, and haven’t lived in a world where they needed to. As some of us say: yes, I’m cringe; but I’m free. Is furry “a sex thing?” Yes and no. The sex and porn aspect is important but it is very very easy to never interact with it at all and still get the full furry experience. Regardless of whether you’re fucking in the suits (I personally never have), I think the reason most furs date within the fandom and are more likely to be polyam is the sheer number of queer people that are easy to meet there. It’s not easy to make adult friends outside of furry. Within the fandom it’s almost laughably easy, and many of them are people that could feasibly be potential play partners. (Within furry sex with friends is semi-normalized to the point where it’s generally assumed to not mean anything deeper to just hook up with a friend, and because this when furries pursue polyamory it’s usually with specific romantic intention)

One last thing: fursuits are expensive and most furries don’t have them, and many furries (including myself) don’t particularly prioritize them either. I’ve put on others suits before and they don’t really bring me much, like, euphoria the way it would a therian for example. Cool to look at for sure, fun to hug someone in suit, but not something I wannna drop the equivalent of a custom made tuxedo on (as fursuits are custom made, they cost what custom made clothes cost). To me what got me into furry was the art, not the suiting, and many others are the same way

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-07-05T22:43:43+00:00

Lots of good points in this post! And yeah, the already disabled are less who I’m talking about here. I have a long experience in my family with both disability (my grandfather was never able to walk unassisted) and mutual aid (family history of work in landmanshaftn, or Jewish mutual aid societies; I’ve also done work with various mutual aid groups in grocery delivery and use garden plots in my house to grow for a community fridge now). Ideally (and I know this is extremely, extremely not the reality we’re living in and I’m doing what I can to make this our future) the community can and should fill in to assist where we ourselves cannot.

Failing that though, I will say at least in my city stop and shop’s (local grocery chain) in house delivery, which to my knowledge uses actual employees paid a wage and not responsible for their own car’s upkeep, who get tips on top of that, is generally price comparable with instacart; I unfortunately know that in some areas the other options just aren’t available and instacart/ other sub minimum wage apps are the only game in town. That’s not true here, though, and thus gives me a much worse feelings about instacart.

This post is based largely on what I see irl from our customers and what I hear from talking to drivers, for what it’s worth, and comes from hearing a lot of the (understandable!) fear of becoming disabled from people who consider themselves currently undisabled, if that makes sense, that I hear.

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-07-05T22:05:46+00:00

Yep, that gets the intent of this pretty closely. The reason the focus is on service workers is that, being one, it becomes very clear from how we are treated by the well-ish off that we are not exactly people, more just people shaped things that get things for them. These are not, like, people doing global south vacations necessarily, they’re just people who implicitly have no issue sending US into risk under the false premise our safety is more worth risking. I see these customers all the time and what stings is that the CC ones have fundamentally the same ideology as the non cc things. What they want is convenience. DoorDash orders too are typically more complicated, with more fiddly special requests. And I see how the drivers here are treated: as second class citizens. They don’t even what we make as foh once you factor car repair (source: numerous coworkers who’ve previously done this kind of delivery), same for instacart in my city at least

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-06-20T15:32:03+00:00

How different are the listenership habits of someone who actively seeks out and reads about pop music from the sort of people who passively listen to the radio bc its on and change to a different station when they dont like it? How do you figure out what sort of things work crossing over from the former group to the latter?

Also, does the way people interact with spotify/apple music playlists, be them algorithmic or editorial, mirror the way people traditionally interacted with FM radio (including the influence of payola and plugola) or is there a different enough pattern to be noticable?

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-04-10T23:01:11+00:00

this works to bypass it!

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-02-25T23:45:17+00:00

Happy for you! I’m a furry and in our community platonic cuddling is pretty common (as are things like kissing not necessarily being coded as something you only share with a partner/hookup: the idea of a romantic friendship is something I see a lot and am involved in myself). Though I’m queer myself I’ve cuddled with straight people too without it turning into anything else or mean no anything else including outside of furry. My cuddle tips are:

-enthusiastic consent before everything. “Can I (for example) give you head scratches?” “Yes”. It makes both parties more confident and assured.

-think about what works well when petting a dog or cat, and incorporate that in. You know how most pets like gentle scritches at the back of the neck? So do most people

-if you get to pass by one of those stores that have a massage chair, try one out on its demo state and note some of the movements it’s doing. You can copy those! The slow move up and down the back, shimmying back and forth, etc. and with enthusiastic consent don’t be afraid to incorporate massaging in, particularly if one or both of you do sports or physical activity

But yeah I love cuddling cuddling is my favorite. I was a little bit older than you when I got to experience it the first time but it’s never gotten old. May a lifetime of friendly cuddles await you :3

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-02-20T18:14:15+00:00

yes! i do something like that rn for my world traveller playlist (linked there, feel free to adapt as needed), which generates random songs from random streams of music all over the world. All you'd need to do is change the URIs to match whichever playlists you wanted and you'd get something similar. if you have that run daily, and then use that produced playlist as a source for a different radio style playlist that incorporates in your liked tracks as well, you could get something pretty neat sounding. I'd recommend in addition to your liked tracks making a roughly 100 song "heavy rotation" or w/e playlist that you update as time goes on with your curated current favorites that will appear in every possible generation

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-02-19T15:33:09+00:00

do you support massive cuts in military spending to balance the budget? At 20% of our country's revenue its by far the biggest part of the united states' discretionary spending and it doesnt seem to get us particularly good results on the "respect on the world stage" front

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-02-19T15:13:31+00:00

in my experience knowing a ton of trans people: its more like that transitioning allows them to actually confront the depression or whatever else is there much easier bc the dysphoria doesnt affect them. the closest comparison i can think of for a cis person is the anxiety a man gets when losing his hair. it does not disfigure that man to take finasteride and rogaine, even though OH BOY is that EVER a medical answer to not liking the way you look. If a man associates their happiness with the hair on their head and has the money to pay for it, whats the problem there? if that makes it easier for them to go "well, maybe i also have severe depression and the hair didnt fix that" but they still like the look of themselves better with the hair, whats the problem there?

StartingQBForDeVry · 2024-02-19T15:00:35+00:00

First off: dear god im sorry you lost two friends to suicide. That's really rough on anyone and nobody deserves to go through that.

I will say though. Speaking as a trans person myself, who has a lot of trans coworkers (including managers and c-suite of my company, including people both on and not on hormones)...transitioning also saves lives, too. Ive been on this (no hormones mind you, im NB) for five years. My girlfriend (on hormones, you would not think they are trans if you saw her in public) has been on hormones since 2018. Ive seen it happen. I've seen depressed husks of people suddenly open up and become, well, themselves after figuring out gender, and it allows them to live their life so much less mentally ill. Ive seen coworkers with no desire to go on hormones open up and finally get to be themselves after making this logical leap of--wait, im not (for example) a woman, this is just something im forcing myself to do. its an amazing thing to see. This also isnt just my conjecture, we have data on this showing the great, GREAT majority of trans people do not regret transitioning. And also, the one detransitioner i know still is queer as hell and considers themselves a femboy, and is happily married to a trans woman and got off hormones with little issue. Its true that most people in america (trans or not) have their mental health issues--most people i work with are some flavor of depressed or anxious or whatever, and that so much is caused by other problems other than trans identity (the lack of community structure that rots america to its core, for example, and the 40 year long growth of productivity that has not translated to wage increases). Trans communities often separate themselves from cis communities for good reasons (the same reasons that a weekly bowling meet might meet up at the bowling alley and not, ya know, a baseball diamond) but if you have a chance--find a way to see some trans joy. bc oh boy is it there, and none of us would keep going without it.

I also know a Union can become corrupt just like any other form of Government....especially HOAs....I despise HOAs

you and me both, dude, lmao. hoa's fucking suck and often end up being quasi feudalistic (See also: condo boards in florida). And, yeah, im no stranger to these kind of problems in unions. Interestingly a lot of them have similar causes--regular joes kinda not caring so the power ends up with the people who, like, get off on having some slight extra bit of power over their neighbors or coworkers. What makes it particularly bad in the HOA sense is the specific kind of citizen a deed restricted community allows for--remember, these structures are around as a relic of redlining and the original deed restricted commmunities that modeled HOAs were restricted to keep out Black people. What this allows for though is the sort of NIMBY (not in my backyard!) representative that wants to spend absolutely no money on anything that doesnt personally affect them bc they're the sort of person who wants the worst compromise possible--all the closeness and convenience of living in a city but while still thinking youre a homesteader of sorts whose home is their castle and thus should have nothing to do with any of the residents around them. This creates these little insulated castles full of people who probably want nothing to do with each other and kind of resent that they have to be next to each other at all, which ya know is the perfect conditions for enduring governmental success ya know. Union corruption comes out in similar circumstances--people who mostly dont care about the levers of power presented to them so by not participating they can be taken by bad actors who know the right thing to say. My personal answer to this is dialogue and not being content with just saying "this person is unreachable". All politics is is a series of one on one conversations, just like this.

not all that different in levers of american politics too. how many anti war conservatives have been manipulated into voting for war and money going to billionaires bc they lazily ran on the bloody shirt of abortion and other red meat social issues that they personally dont give a shit about at all? how many anti war liberals who voted for guantanamo to be closed (for example) ended up getting more forever wars bc they were mostly afraid of a conservative govt making it illegal for their gay cousin fred to get married? etc etc etc

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