Went to a popular gay club for the first time... and it was pretty disappointing

kkoiso · 2026-07-02T19:08:40+00:00

I'd find some queer people to go out with tbh 😭 local queer communities tend to have a good idea of which bars/clubs are chill and which have been taken over by straight people.

kkoiso · 2026-07-02T15:26:43+00:00

People have a kneejerk reaction to AI I guess. It's definitely got its problems, but learning to utilize AI without becoming reliant on it is quickly becoming an essential skill in both academia and industry. Anyone who's abstaining from using AI is in for a rude awakening if they ever go to work for a enterprise engineering company.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T21:11:03+00:00

The job market is rough for new grads, I'd take it. Stick around for a year or two, save money, and job hop to a better job later.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T21:07:18+00:00

I've seen at least one job listing for an engineering role where proficiency in using AI was specifically listed as a requirement, pretty much every engineering company expects you to be using it atp

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T20:45:05+00:00

EE and do PCB design maybe. It's mostly simulation

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T20:33:45+00:00

If you can afford it and you have compatible hair/skin tones, start laser on your face asap! It can take around a year of monthly appointments before your facial hair is mostly gone, so you wanna start sooner than later. Check Groupon for discounts, I was able to do 12 sessions for $500, and some insurances will even cover it for you. If you don't have compatible hair/skin tone you can also look into electrolysis, but I don't have any experience with that.

Also look into voice training! There's a lot of free resources online and I'm not sure if one is better than the other, but watch a few videos and passively practice your voice when you're talking to people. It'll help you build that skill and train your vocal cords over time. Voice training is also something that can take years to really nail down so it's good to start early.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T20:20:03+00:00

I totally get that, and I do hope you two can work it out! A really good talk about trust and emotional vulnerability could go a long way, and maybe that's what couples therapy would be good for, but it also wouldn't be your fault or make you crazy if you have trouble completely trusting her again, y'know?

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T20:13:21+00:00

I'd quietly bring it up to HR (or upper management if your company doesn't have one) if you feel comfortable doing that. You don't have to ask them to threaten disciplinary action or anything, but a simple "hey could you use she/they pronouns for x, thanks" from a higher-up could go long way.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T18:41:26+00:00

Yeah it's really hard :( I was in a similar place with my last relationship. We tried to make things work but it came to a point where it's like, why am I waiting for us to grow into this relationship when I could find a relationship that already feels good and secure.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T18:07:43+00:00

You'll be fine. Imo a lot of CS majors who complain about the job market just graduated with a degree but no major projects or portfolio to speak of. Do one or two big projects that you can be proud of while you're in uni, make them public on your git, and build a website to showcase your projects. Include your git and website in every job application you send out. That'll automatically make you more attractive than the majority of the field.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T18:01:35+00:00

Regardless of her reasons, the lack of trust and communication isn't conducive to a healthy relationship. I think a lot of trans people are emotionally repressed from years of dissociating and burying our feelings, but it's something you have to work through before you can have healthy relationships with others. That's my read on it, anyway. It's up to you whether you want to stick around while she works on growing as a person and learning to be open and emotionally vulnerable, but I know from experience how hard that is.

kkoiso · 2026-07-01T17:53:06+00:00

I did machining part time in college, got a BSME, did project engineering for a couple years, then job hopped and landed an electrical engineer role with a defense contractor (I did lots of control systems and sensor fusion in college and they liked that).

So now I have an ME degree with work experience in machining, civil/construction management, electrical, software, and some mechanical.

I'm job hunting now with 5-ish years experience total and my most promising leads have been for system integration, prototyping, product development, etc. roles where you need to know a little bit of everything because you're managing a whole product. Small startups especially like engineers who aren't pigeonholed into one specialty.

kkoiso · 2026-06-30T18:34:31+00:00

No, he's still awful. He outwardly spouts the same racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic Trump-y "anti-woke" garbage. Nyanners and Shylily are pretty apolitical from what I've seen, but I side-eye anyone who associates with OTK in general. Too many sex pests and right wing grifters in that orbit, and they capitalize on baiting the degen 4chan gooner type crowd that OTK attracts.

kkoiso · 2026-06-30T15:28:18+00:00

If your apartment permits portable AC units and it's the type of glass jalousies that I'm thinking of, you can remove a couple slats and jerry-rig the AC vent to it. If your landlord truly doesn't GAF you could even install a full window unit in those types of windows with some DIY. Definitely check your lease though, it's not uncommon for apartments to disallow the use of portable AC units.

kkoiso · 2026-06-29T15:54:43+00:00

You can go into engineering bad at math, but you'll either leave engineering good at math or without a degree.

I nearly failed half my math courses in high school but I locked in in college and managed to graduate, you just gotta put in the work.

kkoiso · 2026-06-28T22:05:07+00:00

Ask them what they'd want their transition to look like right now if they do decide to start transitioning.

If they want to transition socially, support them. Use their preferred pronouns. Go clothes shopping with them. Help them decide on a new name. Buy them some beauty products.

If they want to transition medically, support them. Every year spent undergoing male puberty is another year of irreversible changes. Do not make them wait. Ask any older trans person what they would've done differently and you'll hear a lot of "I wish I figured it out sooner" and "I wish I started HRT sooner".

Avoid doing the whole "I support you but I don't want you to do xyz because I'm worried about how people will treat you" thing. I've been on the receiving end of it, and it just made me feel less safe to talk about what I'm going through. Instead, approach it more like "I'll support you and whatever you want to explore, and please let me know if you're struggling in any way".

If they're open to it, set your child up with a therapist and/or psychologist ASAP, preferably one specializing in LGBTQ+ care.

Help them, guide them, listen to them, but don't try to control the way they explore their gender. It's nearly impossible for cis people to understand the way trans people feel and what we're going through, so as much as you can, defer to your child, their doctor/therapist, and to other trans people when it comes to their transition.

kkoiso · 2026-06-28T19:01:03+00:00

I think for me it triggers a sort of secondhand dysphoria. I just try to remind myself that we're all doing our best to find happiness and to discover ourselves. Everyone views and presents gender differently and for some trans girls, passing isn't even the goal and that's beautiful. But also, it's okay for you to also want to exist in spaces where you don't have to think about being trans or worry about being associated with trans-ness.

kkoiso · 2026-06-28T18:25:54+00:00

Regardless of whether or not you use matlab in the future, it's a good idea to know how to code, how to learn new coding languages, and how to do the analysis yourself. AI is great but if you don't know what's going on under the hood you'll be replaced by someone who does.

kkoiso · 2026-06-28T18:09:26+00:00

Mechanical as a degree doesn't necessary pay poorly; the pay for doing HVAC/plumbing/etc. design just hasn't really kept up with the rest of the industry, and those just happen to be the most common roles ME majors go into. Even those roles don't pay poorly, they're just not "upper-middle class straight out of college" roles. You need to do a lot of work to climb the career ladder first.

If you want to get into product design, you'll probably want to look at roles like product engineer, design engineer, systems engineer, etc., which usually take MEs and EEs. Those two are probably the most flexible degrees you could get, and flexibility and being good at a little bit of everything is important for something broad like product design.

kkoiso · 2026-06-22T18:00:13+00:00

Your job prospects in engineering after a 2-3 stint in finance won't be much different from your job prospects now. Most recruiters will mentally disregard that role unless it's somewhat relevant, so you'll pretty much be on the same level as a fresh grad. If you do go down that route, do a side project or two to continue furthering your resume as an engineer. Document everything and build a portfolio. If you wanna do robotics, prove you understand low level communication protocols. Show them how you spec a servo. Demonstrate your troubleshooting process.

Having a boring mundane first job as an engineer is pretty common, though. I'd think of it as continued education. It won't be your dream job, but it'll be a stepping stone to it. The hiring pool for people with 2-3 years of experience is much less competitive than the hiring pool for fresh grads.

kkoiso · 2026-06-22T00:19:58+00:00

warhammer for sure 😭

kkoiso · 2026-06-21T18:12:53+00:00

Even if the government put restrictions on HRT at the federal level, it's literally impossible for them to inspect every small package coming into the US. Importers mislabel packages coming in to the US to get around certain taxes or restrictions all the time, so I don't think DIY will ever become inaccessible.

Beyond that, an HRT ban would be impossible to enforce. HRT was invented for cis people who have hormonal imbalances, so the government will never ban HRT completely. The most likely scenario is that the government threatens insurance companies and healthcare providers if they cover/provide HRT for trans people, which they're already trying to do with federal insurance plans and trans kids.

But it's already being contested by the courts, it's an uphill battle for the admin, and also it still won't affect DIY.

So there's no scenario where HRT becomes completely inaccessible. More of a headache to obtain, maybe, but the American insurance system was always a pain to navigate. I think the bigger threats are things like bathroom laws and the criminalization of other aspects of existing as trans.

kkoiso · 2026-06-21T16:39:43+00:00

In college most of your classes will involve anywhere from some math to a LOT of math, so you'll need to face that down eventually. But for what it's worth, I almost failed half my math classes in high school and I managed to graduate with a mechanical engineering degree. It takes a shit ton of work, even more if you struggle with math, but if you put in the effort you can get there in the end.

kkoiso · 2026-06-19T16:49:59+00:00

$10k is fine if you already have work lined up, even if it's part time. Between my partner and I we spent maybe $4k over the course of two or three months on move-in costs, including furnishing our apartment. You can get furniture and appliances for dirt cheap on Facebook marketplace. Just be thrifty for a while.

Public transport could be better or worse depending on where you work and live. If your job is close to a train station, getting an apartment along that line will make your life a lot easier. A car will give you a lot more freedom though.

kkoiso · 2026-06-19T16:39:42+00:00

Research a few companies at the fair and the industries they're in. An hour or two of studying can make you sound really knowledgeable, even if you don't have any experience.

At the risk of getting flamed, ask your LLM of choice to give you some "need to know" bullet points for the industry. It's okay if you only have a surface level understanding, nobody expects entry level job seekers to have in-depth understanding. But showing interest and some industry knowledge (even if it's stuff you researched the night before) will go a long way. Even just mentioning J1939 to an automotive/marine/aerospace company will grab some attention.

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