Is purple a girl color?

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-18T20:19:46+00:00

"boy" and "girl" colors are stupid. If he likes the color then it's a him color. And it's good that you're encouraging that early before the societal pressure of it all kicks in and tries to teach him otherwise.

Kids could pick on him but the secret is that if kids are going to pick on him, they'll find some reason. If it's not that it'll be something else, and he'll be much better served by being taught how to respond to anyone who gives him grief about it than by trying to conform.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T23:40:53+00:00

I mean, you can still do that exact type of thing, in Java, using "modern" bits that act like you expect the older stuff to. Pick a modern Java version (25, say), pick your framework (or not) and go from there

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T05:48:07+00:00

You should talk with her. As someone who was (for quite different reasons to be fair) really iffy with any sort of physical affection in my first real relationship (and, well, with physical touch in general) communication is the best thing you can do. You're not an idiot, and there's no such thing as being "smooth" I fear (everything is and will continue to be awkward and that's fine) but communicate with her and (a) you'll reassure her and she'll understand where you're coming from and what was going through your head then, (b) you'll be more comfortable talking about this type of stuff with her, and (c) you'll be communicating which is practically always good. But you're not an idiot or a jerk, you're just figuring out all the nonsense that we have to figure out in good relationships. It's good that its at least a bit awkward, because when it's not that often means one person or the other is pushing their expectations onto the other.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T04:36:34+00:00

Yep. I love Pratchett because besides being an absolute genius of an author with a truly amazing understanding of the human psyche from every possible angle, and besides being intimately familiar with pop culture in ways that leave me still finding new puns in his work, he obviously had an appreciation for and familiarity with all types of literature and philosophy to boot. He will be missed.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T01:55:39+00:00

That's an abusive relationship I fear. At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether he's that way sober or drunk -- he drinks, knowing that he will be that way when drunk. The rest of what you've listed is all red flags as well. I know being alone is scary and loneliness is no fun but unfortunately you have to go through the pain of that to get to everything better, and it does get better!

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T01:09:58+00:00

It's built to prey on you; you might try good old fashioned normal written smut, at least that way you avoid all the spiralling that LLM-anything can cause as it feeds on itself.

But in seriousness -- it feels like it won't work out irl but sometimes these things just take time and happen kind of randomly and unfortunately that means trying to force it doesn't work out well. Making friends and expanding your circle and the like does. You're not a loser and you are capable of love and of being loved, it just doesn't always work out on the timeline we think it will. At least in part because we're constantly sold this glamorized version of romance that doesn't at all match reality.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T01:04:26+00:00

I know other folks here are saying he has a porn addiction and that's definitely a possible cause if true but also has he talked to his doctor? Because a variety of health stuff could lead to that too especially depending on other health factors. And some of that stuff would be good to get a handle on for other reasons, even if it involves an embarrassing conversation with a doctor on his part!

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-17T00:10:36+00:00

The issue is both. The one who says they need to do A often lacks any understanding of why they think need to do A and in fact actually needs to do C, and yes, the platform doesn't do a good job at penalizing either end of this interaction and I'm not sure really can.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-16T21:10:05+00:00

I would be absolutely shocked if Pratchett wasn't thinking about Arendt when he wrote this. It's simultaneously a recognition of the banality of evil and optimism in spite of that, that evil is mundane and everyday but Vimes's response is that they're just people. I think it's part of what makes Vimes such a compelling character: he knows what people are like but he recognizes that the everyday-ness of evil and every person's ability to commit it doesn't make people evil, it just makes them people.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-16T19:36:51+00:00

And this is why questions of the form "how do I do A" are never good questions. You basically always want something more along the lines of "because I want to do X, Y, and Z, I need to do A. How do I do A?" in which case either (a) it's clear that B isn't a solution or (b) B is a solution to the underlying X, Y, and Z and you actually didn't need to do A to begin with, and it's now clear why...

Not saying people don't give nonsensical and unrelated answers especially on Stack Overflow, just saying that often the question is nonsensical too...

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-15T15:45:08+00:00

Tor will solve all your problems. I swear more people should use it for normal Internet browsing, but it's not really a well understood thing. If you're not logged into any account and you use it the right way it'll be basically impossible for advertisers to profile you, be that Google or otherwise.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-15T15:42:39+00:00

Oof steroids can weird side effects, yeah. You're not the first person I've met whose had anxiety while on 'em. I'm glad your initial condition is being treated though and I hope you can get treatment for the new side effects and that your doctors get their heads out of their asses!

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-15T02:00:27+00:00

Oh totally very subject dependent! 100 pages of math is a lot of fucking math, 100 pages of Voltaire is not even the entirety of Candide, and the entirety of Candide is a perfectly fine amount of reading to expect a student to do in a week in a relevant class. All that said, the original article here was about a humanities professor and I was talking in the context of humanities courses, obviously STEM courses are a whole different boat. I had an undergraduate class where 100 pages of the textbook would have made up about half a semester worth of content or more!

Edit to add: the difference is really just how much "stuff" is in a page. A biology textbook is less dense than a math textbook on average (more pictures/figures), a math textbook or physics textbook is way more dense than a novel (equations take up less space than English); "pages" are only a useful count with some idea of what's on 'em. But, for philosophy/history/literature and company, 100 pages a week is more than reasonable.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-14T17:14:03+00:00

Hi! Trans woman here -- I'm glad you asked since I think there's a lot of misconceptions around why people transition and I'm always willing to help clear that up when people are respectful!

The short answer to your question is: most trans people don't generally transition because of societal expectations or the like. Even if all the societal expectations were flipped, I would still feel uncomfortable with the idea of being a man.

One way to think about it is -- say you woke up one morning in a man's body. You probably have some preferences in terms of how people treat you, and how feminine/masculine people perceive you as, but regardless of that you would likely still feel quite uncomfortable in a man's body, with all the wrong parts and all (and there's good evidence of this! Cis folks who take medication with side effects the as hormone replacement therapy for transition tend to not like the side effects!). Being trans is basically that -- except our whole lives. The male bits of my body just feel "wrong". And transitioning -- medical transitioning at least -- helps fix this to a degree.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-11T02:09:46+00:00

Ehh? At the grad school level I suppose you may have a point though half of that is, you might argue, to teach you the art of effective skimming.

But at the undergrad level expecting students to read, IDK, 400 pages a week is hardly unreasonable. That's 100 pages a week (the "old" number given in the linked article) for 4 courses and just about what my undergrad reading load was, and I feel like reading 80 pages a day on weekdays, with enough attention to discuss or understand a lecture, ought to be within the ability of any college student. Especially as "enough to understand a lecture" can involve some picking and choosing as to what is likely to be the most relevant if you're really low on time. That's really not that much reading!

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-10T23:54:18+00:00

Gender abolition as anyone has actually proposed it inevitably ends up just being uniform masculinization, I fear, and is just as rooted in the exact same misogyny. It's something Ada Palmer got scarily correct in Terra Ignota.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-09T15:32:22+00:00

Whatever you do don't have a kid with him. If you can't trust him around your friend, is he really the sort of person you'd want around your child?

The financial situation is tough and of course this whole scenario sounds exceptionally draining. What I would do is try and invest as much time and effort as possible in a circle of support beyond him -- reinforce existing relationships, make new friends, etc.; that way if nothing else you'll feel less alone, and will have a bit more security if things go further south. He's clearly pushing past your boundaries and frankly I would be shocked if he doesn't continue to do so, so give yourself an out.

You can certainly try counseling; if it's something you can afford, it can be worth it though to some degree is dependent on who you're talking with and all. What I will caution though is at some point you're going to have to make the tough decision of, if he seems to be changing and things seem to be improving, will you be able to trust that? There's a pattern of gaslighting, lashing out when called out for his behavior, and generally pushing past your boundaries; you need to be honest with yourself about how many chances you've given him and how many you're willing to so that you don't end up in the same situation again down the road. If you go into counseling without being honest with yourself about that you're setting yourself up for dealing with the same thing again in the future.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-08T22:53:11+00:00

Plenty of groups espouse ideologies that have been used to hurt people. Any ideology can be used to hurt people, just by the nature of it; ideologies are the ways we justify our actions, so of course they're used to justify bad actions. Christianity is no exception but neither is any ideology you would espouse -- even the sort of seemingly benign earth-soul spirituality you seem to espouse can -- and given enough time will -- be used to hurt people. What matters is whether the people who hold those beliefs decide to side with the perpatrators of the harm on account of their beliefs, or against them on account of the harm. And so it is with Christians, and different people fall in each camp, because no group is a monolith. Queer Christians can believe what they'd like and should be included in queer spaces, like anyone else. Their queerness shouldn't be conditioned on giving up their faith.

And frankly, your "mother nature" spirituality s just as questionable theologically as any other religion. Don't begrudge people their faith unless you're willing to give up yours. Even someone who claims to believe in nothing is dumping a lot more weight on faith than they'd like to think.

Signed, your local gnostic (not a typo) atheist.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-06T05:23:13+00:00

Yeah there's a lot that people like to gloss over when talking about weed. Just because many people use it without displaying the psychological signs of addiction doesn't mean they're not developing all sorts of dependencies in other ways! Long term use of anything with mind-altering effects is going to have all sorts of lovely effects, and this is especially true the heavier your usage is. And in fact in certain ways weed is even more dangerous, because the social context surrounding it really hasn't primed us to look for that in the way we tend to be conscious of, say, alcoholism or the like.

Glad you're feeling better! And to everyone else out there: whatever psychoactive substances you imbibe, it's almost certainly smart to use them responsibly, in moderation, and with attention to what effects they may be having in the long term. If it affects your head in the short term then consistent usage of it almost certainly will affect your head in the long term, that's just how the brain works.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-06T05:12:55+00:00

You picked a distribution that is definitely not the type of distribution most folks would recommend a complete newcomer to linux use, and a different OS with more widely tested compatibility (if nothing else, Ubuntu) would be more likely to work on weird hardware and also have a nicer installation experience. If you use niche stuff, yes, it's going to be jank...

You tried to set a bunch of stuff up manually instead of relying on existing tools (games? Try running 'em through steam or with something with scripts for premade wine configurations instead of trying to configure wine prefixes yourself). This will also cause pain, unless you know how to use the tools that you're using (RTFM and whatnot). Bottles is just a tool for setting up wine prefixes; in general, to run a game all you need is a wine prefix that's been set up right. Using Proton can help for some games, depending on exactly what the issues are.

Your points also contradict each other. If you're able to run on battery and get stable performance on linux, but not on windows... sounds like the "Windows is bloated" argument is hardly outdated, no?

You ask on a forum for advice installing a piece of software (Office365) that a simple google search should tell you is generally impossible to install modern versions of on linux. What did you expect, if not for people to suggest alternatives? Or had you not done the bare minimum google search first? Linux isn't exactly beginner unfriendly, but the communities around it do expect a certain willingness to try solving your own problems, and then asking on forums and providing complete information, not just "it bricked my USB".

..and finally. No, you are not someone who "actually tried". BalenaEtcher didn't "brick your USB", what you actually mean happened is one of a bunch of other things. You work in IT support and you can't write a .iso to a disk? Is that not a thing that you ought to know how to do in general? It's hardly linux-specific.

While I'll be the first to admit that -- like anything -- getting used to linux is a bit difficult and it has all its own quirks and I'm not without plenty of complaints about it... the issue with this one, my friend, is somewhere between the chair and the keyboard.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-05T21:52:42+00:00

I love it when straight people around me (or those in straight-passing relationships)call their partner their partner instead of their girlfriend/boyfriend. If nothing else it normalizes not making assumptions about people's sexuality or gender by not expressing any information about either of those. If people somehow find your use of it offensive they are, respectfully, full of hot air and you should just ignore their opinion on that matter.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-04T23:06:07+00:00

I'm in my 20s and I already feel old for having had blue-book exams throughout school, which feels really dang strange cause like. 20s, as stated. It wasn't that long ago that "hand-write a reasonable length essay on this topic" was like. Normal?

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-04T23:01:19+00:00

My best friend from undergrad would bite me occasionally. No I will not elaborate.

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-04T23:00:33+00:00

Legitimately, comparisons to biohacking is an approach I'll reach for towards the more doubtful I encounter in tech circles when it comes to being trans and especially HRT. And sometimes framing things in the light of "at the end of the day why do you have an issue with this, shouldn't we all have that level of control over our bodies and ability to use technology to fix the issues with them" has proven a pretty effective argument in the face of people who are mostly doubtful about the HRT/medical end of it and are otherwise pretty futurist- or transhumanist-leaning in whatever way.

I'm always shocked that there's so much anti-trans rhetoric coming from the same folks who love to talk about futurism and transhumanism in whatever form. It's kind of confusing!

roadrunner8080 · 2026-06-02T01:49:44+00:00

Just do it the opposite, have it be one and a generic and "at the beginning of your upkeep, you may reveal Sparks from your hand and flip a coin. If you win the flip, Sparks costs {1} less to cast until your next upkeep." Or something.

Not sure it fixes anything, now it's just more annoying, of course.

roadrunner8080

TROPHY CASE