optimism & hope are skills to practice, and they do get easier over time!

on a bad day, i’m optimistic out of sheer spite because i know being pessimistic only helps my enemies & not me, but it’s also a lot easier to practice optimism when regularly meeting with groups of like-minded people.

if you don’t have any groups nearby you (or online) like zine makers / queer sheds / leftist book clubs / privacy activists / maker spaces / community supported agriculture / whatever it is that floats your boat, you might be surprised by how many people are willing to sign up if you get the ball rolling! 💪

we can have a little hate, as a treat! i’d say not “giving yourself over to hatred” is pretty vital, though.

the more we build communities together, the fewer chances fascism has to convert people. it’s a lot harder to convince you (universal you, not you specifically) that immigrants/trans people/disabled people/whomever are terrible, if you’re in community with people like that & have first-hand experience to tell you when someone’s just being a wanker whipping up fear

“destroy fascism” is still a priority of course, no tolerant society should ever tolerate fascism. i do think the main priority should be to build better communities/systems/societies first & foremost, so that we have safety nets in place asap, tho

(i hope this doesn’t come across as argumentative, my intention is more to add on to your point!)

it’s a phonetic (and maybe playful?) spelling of no more

the majority of videos that i see are just people talking about their hobbies & current events, but content with tags like #brainrot etc is certainly there for folks to find too

that’s a beautiful tabby kangaroo! 🤩

you must have a hell of a voice to be able to do all of these! fair play, break a leg & i hope you enjoy the party 🥳

for double reference points, you can go by temba wide-arm 😎

if she wants to, but doesn’t feel safe to, then her decision not to start yet is still valid. there’s also no rush, early twenties is so young & she has decades & decades of her life ahead of her, where her circumstances could change dramatically & she might then feel completely safe to start hormones.

safety is often a factor when trans people choose not to medically transition, or to detransition.

it sucks & of course ideally, we’d all live in a place where these decisions can be freely made without having to consider safety, but ultimately it’s each trans person’s decision to make for themselves, because no one can guarantee safety.

if she chooses to socially transition & never to do anything else, that’s perfectly valid. a lot of trans people choose this route, and it’ll be immensely helpful for her to have a supportive friend like you around.

if she chooses to medically transition as well, on her own timeline that she’s comfortable with, it’ll be immensely helpful for her to have a supportive friend like you around.

basically, you’re already doing what you can by being there for her, whatever happens 🫶

that’s a v legit concern, i think any trans people in the u.s. should be looking into stock-piling prescriptions if they can, and/or look into diy hrt.

there are plenty of guides online for diy hrt, like this one: https://slrpnk.net/post/16002807

it sounds intimidating & clandestine & everything, but you can get pharmaceutical-grade hrt from places where they’re more widely available, if where she lives isn’t providing her with enough options.

the first year of hormones often doesn’t involve really dramatic changes (although everyone is different & dosages etc matter too ofc), so she could probably go on hormones while in her hometown & be stealthy for perhaps longer than she’s expecting

when people see you every day, they don’t really notice those gradual changes. for example: my family never seemed to notice me being on testosterone & after i got top surgery, their only reaction was to ask how i “lost weight”. 🤭

if you’re living somewhere like the u.s., i can see why transitioning would be extra worrying these days. she has already socially transitioned, though, so she’s already fighting back against the fascists’ plan to intimidate people into detransitioning or never transitioning at all. fair play to her, i wish her the best & happiest life, whatever she decides to do! 🙌🫶

they’ll spend money on anything except fixing the housing crisis or cost of living crisis, it seems.

which is something that in turn would cut down on “keyboard warriors” as they put it, because when people aren’t priced out of living their lives, they have other things to do!

i really worry about what spaces kids online are going to be pushed into, with all these bans. so many people my age were groomed on internet forums when we were kids; i imagine social media bans are going to push kids into spaces like that, where it’s not technically considered a social media site, and there’ll be little to no adult supervision from anyone who’s not in the inner circle of the forum.

The social battery is at -69%

-nice 😭

more cute li’l black cats for the rest of us! 🥳

the two i’ve had are both the sweetest softest babies. 🤩

i never said you said that either; i was just attempting to tie the conversation back to the research there, apologies for my clunky writing!

i’d be fine if the researchers had asked the nonbinary people in their study whether they consider themselves trans or not, then the researchers would have learned new things about transness & what it means to individual people! 💚 but disappointingly, the researchers seem to have excluded them from transness by default, without asking. 🥀😮‍💨

i’d definitely recommend having these conversations in person (or over video- or voice-chat if they’re long-distance friends), so you both can have a better idea of each other’s tone & how you’re each feeling in the moment

if you have the capacity for it, let your friend know that they can vent to you about things along these lines, if they start to feel like that again. and/or that you’ll be on hand for distractions.

you seem to be placing a lot of blame on yourself, but ultimately, you can’t force someone to want to stick around. what you do have control over, is whether you made sure your friends know they can reach out to you for support, then actually show them examples of that over time.

The printer running out

are they willing to talk about it / can you talk to them about what you’ve been going through?

it might feel like something you’re burdening/guilting them with, or “making it about you” or something, but speaking as someone who’s lost others to suicide & made some attempts myself, it’s all too easy when in that SI headspace to forget or dismiss the knock-on effects that happen to everyone else after someone kills themselves.

it might be useful for them to know that they would be missed, that people care deeply about them, that the world’s not better off without them, and to hear about the ways that that near miss is affecting you.

idk, i think we tend to be very afraid to talk about mental health & we want to leave it up to the mental health professionals etc, but healing happens in community first & foremost, imo

i agree that people can call themselves whatever they want, they know themselves best!

these researchers don’t have the right to make that decision for others, though.

french sign language is one that a lot of other sign languages drew from, so it might be a good starting point for finding similarities / etymologies of signs.

that said, you’ll still need to learn those different sign languages from different places, in order to communicate with people there, just like with any spoken languages.

sign languages are typically very localised, due to Deaf communities often being fairly isolated. (Deaf people here in ireland have historically had difficulties communicating with one another, because signs would end up evolving differently between the girls’ schools & boys’ schools, for example)