Hexagons

I played Control, and apparently it's set in the same universe as the Alan Wake games, which I had never heard of until I googled WTF was up with the Control DLC that deeply confused me. It turns out, it's all references to Alan Wake. Which is why I was so confused. I should play them, I really enjoyed Control.

I can try to square that circle for you. Here's my (I think pretty reasonable) take on scooters:

Right now, with city infrastructure the way it is, they're terrible. There's nowhere to ride them safely, they get left on sidewalks and bike paths, they're just extremely dangerous right now, whether you're riding one or just being around them.

But. They don't have to be like this! Get rid of cars, put racks of scooters next to train stations and bus stations, have a bit of societal education about how to ride them safely, and boom! Great solution to the last mile problem! If there are convenient places to park them people won't leave them on random sidewalks. If streets are full of scooters instead of cars, and if we get some rules of the road engrained in the public consciousness, then they won't be dangerous, either for the rider or surrounding pedestrians and cyclists.

They could be (and should be) a great innovation, but their current implementation is so, so fucking bad, and leads to serious danger and accidents.

Oh yeah? I should probably check it out again then. It most certainly didn't work several years ago when I quit twitch (Ublock origin is still the adblocker I use) (I don't remember exactly when I stopped using twitch, time is a fuck)

Edit: oh you seem to be correct! I just went on twitch for the first time in years, and, uh, no ads? That actually might be pretty bad for me. Because I will watch streams all day if I'm not stopped from doing so somehow. Well, damn, but also, it's objectively good, so I'm torn

Edit again: oh wait no, just saw an ad, and I'm unwilling to figure out exactly why or what I could do to mitigate it, since twitch is bad for me anyway. Ah well, no twitch for me, it's ok!

Hahahaha, this is what made me quit twitch, for good. I'll do the same with YouTube. It'll suck, yes, but it'll ultimately be good for me and my mental health. 3 years from now I won't miss YouTube.

I drive Highway 0/ every morning, road work has been terrible recently!

Fair enough! Girls absolutely did fight, but I was never one to, and I wasn't forced into it the way (most) boys who didn't want to fight were.

Oh you're right of course. I've read the rest of the thread, but still, I couldn't resist trying to pin him down on something. I was mostly curious to see exactly what kind of weasel speak I'd get in response, you know?

Ok, this seems contradictory to me. Democratic centralism isn't your strategy, but it is how you function. Can you please elaborate? What actually are you saying here and how isn't it a contradiction to have something be both "how you function" and yet also "not a part of party strategy"?

Hahaha, having men try to interact with me as a man is so fucking weird! I don't think I'll ever get used to it, even though it's going to keep happening for the rest of my life, because apparently I look like a man, despite being all of 5'0".

Like today a 60-70 year old drunk biker boomer guy at the bar I sometimes go to told me a whole ass story about how he used to get in fights all the time, and I tried my best to respond appropriately, pretending I knew what it was like to get into physical altercations with people, but like, I don't, because I was a girl during prime fighting years, so I have never been anywhere close to being in a physical fight with anyone.

Life is really fucking strange sometimes, you know?

Well alright, that's fine, but then, like, so what? How is it helpful to think about "subconscious sex" if really the idea there is no more than "some people are more comfortable if certain parts of their biology are changed from what their bodies would do without intervention"? What do we gain by saying something like "everyone has a subconscious sex that may or may not match the gender we're assigned at birth and could even have very little to do with what society calls 'sex' "?

Am I underselling the idea somehow?

(Thanks for talking with me, I'm really not trying to be argumentative or contrarian. )

If sex is entirely constructed, than the only reason we have to explain dysphoria is as internalized patriarchal norms.

I think fundamentally this is what I don't agree with. I don't believe I feel better with a testosterone-dominant endocrine system because of societal norms. It's a body thing, not a society thing, at least for me. But, that doesn't necessarily mean "sex" isn't socially constructed. Why does feeling better with testosterone necessitate that I be "subconsciously male"?

Let me say a little more: I had tits once, and I got top surgery to remove them. That choice was purely societal. In a perfect world, I would have kept my tits while being on testosterone. Would you still say I'm "subconsciously male" if my ideal body would have large (they were big and wonderful) boobs, but also facial and body hair? If so, what exactly does "male" mean? If not, what is my "subconscious sex"? Something other than male or female?

(I do actually agree about transsexual being a word that perhaps we should keep. I far, far preferred when my official diagnosis was "transsexualism" rather than "gender identity disorder". I'm trans, but I'm not disordered.)

I don't think Julia Serano is totally and completely right about that. She's great, and Whipping Girl is great, very worth reading, it really helped me flesh out my understanding of gender, but still, I think she's wrong about, at least, the subconscious sex theory she posits.

I'd like to recommend Judith Butler's new book here, but I'll be honest, I can't read Butler, I find them extremely confusing. For an easier time, you could instead watch Philosophy Tube's newest video, because Abby talks a little about this issue, following Butler. If you're interested, I also could see if my sister would be ok with me posting an excerpt of an essay she wrote on this subject, because that's my exposure to Judith Butler, filtered through my sister's writing.