Vast question. Finding out who you are is a lifelong process.

My thought: “male” and “female” are, in fact, abstract ideas, simple labels that each imperfectly, awkwardly covers entire, partially overlapping universes of complexity. And in practical reality, no one is all the way in either universe to the entire exclusion of the other.

So perhaps you are fine in a masculine body enjoying feminine-coded traits and activities. Perhaps the body shape that you would like to see in the mirror fluctuates with time or with your mood. Perhaps you are fine with your genitals but would like to have breasts, or perhaps you are fine with your chest but are thrilled by the idea of a vulva between your legs. Perhaps you would love the way you look and feel in a skirt and high socks. Perhaps you just thrive socializing and belonging in groups of women. Perhaps – likely – none of the above, but something else, something lovely I can’t even begin to imagine. Only you can find out.

Ultimately all labels are, to some extent, bullshit. Each human is a rich multitude that defies naming and containment. I hope you love whatever it is you end up finding out are.

Astounding, isn’t it? That’s publicly traded companies for you. The company’s objective is to keep its stock up and up and up. That means shareholders must want to keep buying the stock, which in turn means that the company must demonstrate that its value will keep growing, so that by buying the stock today the shareholders will get a positive return tomorrow.

Of course, the universe is finite and no growth is forever. The end state for such companies is not bankruptcy, at least in the immediate, but, more or less, the IBM fate: a previously uber-dominant mastodon whose market capitalization is now worth maybe one tenth of its modern competitors. The fact that it’s still turning a profit is only secondary: none of the big tech shops want to be the next IBM. Their executives are, after all, mostly paid in stocks.

And that’s how you end up with companies that are making amounts of revenue you and I can’t even comprehend flail in a panic like they’re on the edge of the precipice whenever the technological landscape shifts.

It’s both fascinating and remarkably dumb.

Interesting deep dive and very much worth a read. I’d say it probably underestimates the weight of finance-related pressures coming from the CFO’s office, though.

I don’t know why you are getting downvoted. This is a very valid and interesting point. Durable improvements are systemic, not individual, and the drive to look for heroes leads to nasty places.

Everypony.

An oft overlooked option that leaves no one indifferent.

Pern!

Although the person who picked the Culture is absolutely on to something.

Correct, AFAIU.

Basic Ikea office chair plus ergonomic butt cushion. No need to spend a ton of money.

Yeah, definitely the vibe has changed. It’s kind of sad.

Could we, like, leave the clickbait headlines to reddit? Thanks. The queer.af admins just decided – wisely – not to renew the domain considering who the fee would go to.

Google has literally been reporting billions of net profit every quarter.

This is about appeasing shareholders. The capitalist class hates that tech employees have been able to command decent salaries and has been striving to push back for a while now.

Maybe read the fucking room, Mal.

No.

The French have started using new typographic conventions to turn nouns and adjectives neutral, or at least dual-gendered. French is a deeply gendered language by default, so for instance the word for author is “auteur” if the author is male and “autrice” if the author is female. If unknown, then… The author is assumed male.

This is of course not great, and so the French people have started using constructions like “auteur.ice” or somesuch in order to include both options in the word. This approach appears to have become reasonably popular.

The French right wing is EXTREMELY upset about this and is seeking to get it outright banned (they may already have succeeded actually).

As far as I understand this museum is the brainchild of the fascist party RN and is entirely about the French language as the right wing thinks it should be spoken, as opposed to how it actually is. So, just yet another instance of taxpayer-funded reactionary crap.

Spoilers. ❤️

But seriously, maybe it just didn’t work for you and that’s okay. Nothing is everything to everyone.

The actor in the picture on that site looks like Richard Harris, not Michael Gambon. -_-

“Today you. Tomorrow me.”

“Read the fucking room Mal” deserves to become a thing.

In a way, I think: Little Miss Sunshine.

A movie wherein everything, everything goes horribly wrong, and yet in the end you’re left feeling absurdly good.

He’s an African actually, look it up.

We’ve got a perfectly good planet right there under our feet and we’re failing rather spectacularly at keeping it functional, so as things currently stand the idea we could go to a dead planet and somehow turn it livable is, at the very best, dubious.

If you are interested in the topic, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith of SMBC fame have a book coming on this very subject: https://www.acityonmars.com/.