Gaywallet's recent activity

  1. Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Yes but we live today, not twenty years in the future, let alone fifty. I think it's perfectly reasonable to see what the world is today and see how in many ways it's not getting better and in...

    Yes but we live today, not twenty years in the future, let alone fifty. I think it's perfectly reasonable to see what the world is today and see how in many ways it's not getting better and in some ways we might be quite close to the end of humanity. It's okay to look at that and think 'it's not moral to bring new life into this'. I certainly don't think it's moral because I know how tough my life has been and how fucked up humanity can be.

  2. Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    In more homogenous societies it's typically replaced by a social marker rather than a physical one; caste systems are a good example of this.

    That function would just be replaced by some other identifiable physical marker. Eye color, height, ear size, whatever.

    In more homogenous societies it's typically replaced by a social marker rather than a physical one; caste systems are a good example of this.

    12 votes

  3. Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Why even entertain an idea so divorced from reality as to be akin to trying to imagine a universe without gravity? It's not going to happen in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of anyone soon should...

    Would you feel differently about this if you knew your kid was going to have a happy, stress-free life without any of this garbage?

    Why even entertain an idea so divorced from reality as to be akin to trying to imagine a universe without gravity? It's not going to happen in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of anyone soon should our species manage to not entirely wipe itself out through the destruction of our planet or through war.

    5 votes

  4. Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I understand what you're saying and I'm happy for you, but I really don't like when people frame non-monogamy as a relationship in which you can't cheat. You absolutely can cheat! Cheating is...

    I understand what you're saying and I'm happy for you, but I really don't like when people frame non-monogamy as a relationship in which you can't cheat. You absolutely can cheat! Cheating is about dishonesty. Even poly folks can cheat.

    17 votes

  5. Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I'm sexually attracted to plenty of people I will never have sex with. Attraction isn't the only part of the equation here. I also really don't like...

    I think it's a bit more complicated than that. I'm sexually attracted to plenty of people I will never have sex with. Attraction isn't the only part of the equation here. I also really don't like the idea of "identifying" people at a young age - this kind of mentality is how racist, sexist, and other bigotry has been justified for ages. We "identified" that natives in America were "uncivilized" and forced them to adhere to our mindset. I could absolutely see any sort of child identification program being used as a shield to commit bigoted acts towards individuals because of their characteristics (ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, etc). I also think that a child is much more malleable than they are given credit for here and the idea that being a pedophile is deterministic in some fashion is just not something that sits right with me.

    23 votes

  6. Comment on What was it like choosing your own name? in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Just gonna chime in that going by Sparky is dope and you should do it. But of course I say that as someone who is very attracted to the idea of having a name that breaks typical human norms as a...

    Just gonna chime in that going by Sparky is dope and you should do it. But of course I say that as someone who is very attracted to the idea of having a name that breaks typical human norms as a way to make people rethink what a name even is and be more playful.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on What was it like choosing your own name? in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link
    My deadname is extremely common. Even before I knew I wanted a new name, I always hated it for that reason. The number of times I've heard my prior name called in public places was an annoyance,...

    My deadname is extremely common. Even before I knew I wanted a new name, I always hated it for that reason. The number of times I've heard my prior name called in public places was an annoyance, but also it meant it was a semi-regular name - characters in movies, names in songs, etc. I never enjoyed that.

    When I came to the realization that I wanted to change my name, it was influenced by a few factors. First and foremost, I wanted my name to be short. Part of that was that I knew short names were easier for people to remember, and part of that is there's literally research on this which shows you get promoted more, paid more, etc. Past that point I knew that I wanted my name to be cute. So I started looking through websites and books and papers for lists of names - baby names, adult names, I didn't particularly care. I started a list of all the short/cute names that spoke to me. Most didn't, but at some point I had a list of about 10-15 names, with the thought that I would eventually be going through this list to try/choose one. But one day I ran across my name, Sigi, in a book and just knew immediately that it was the name. It was short and cute, different/rare enough to avoid confusion and something that's easy to pronounce in a lot of languages (although people often get confused as to whether it's pronounced like ziggy or sidgi, which I really don't understand - for the record it's a German name and closer to the former). It also happened to be a shortening of both a masculine and a feminine name (Siegfried and Sieglinde) which fit the agender/non-binary mold as a little bonus.

    However, for basically the entire time I've been going by Sigi I've also socially been going by Bunny. It took a few years of being called both for me to realize that Bunny is the name I prefer. So in the last two or so years I've been work-shopping a bunch of different variations on my name to include Bunny in my name. I've realized that introducing myself as Bunny and pushing people socially towards that name seems to resolve a lot of it, so I might just make that my last name. But I also like the idea of being more playful with my name, and breaking the mold of names by naming myself something like "Bunny Bun Bun" because the idea of challenging norms even in my name is a really fun space that I enjoy. I also just find it really amusing because I'm on a few papers and regularly get published and having a silly legal name means there will be hard science with a silly name on it.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on California says restaurants must bake all of their add-on fees into menu prices in ~finance

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    A lot of it is city or state mandated. Not to shift blame off corporations for tacking on fees like processing fees (looking at you online ticket sales), but it's pretty hard to fight when the...

    A lot of it is city or state mandated. Not to shift blame off corporations for tacking on fees like processing fees (looking at you online ticket sales), but it's pretty hard to fight when the government is mandating it - it's easy to make the claim that hey look, the government mandates fees like this, why can't we do things the same way?

    2 votes

  10. Comment on A variety of beginner home server questions in ~comp

    Gaywallet
    Link
    To address your questions: You can configure your router to use your pihole as the DNS server. This will block the majority of ads to your devices, but likely not all of them. This is because some...

    To address your questions:

    1. You can configure your router to use your pihole as the DNS server. This will block the majority of ads to your devices, but likely not all of them. This is because some devices will send outbound requests on port 53 to defined DNS servers and bypassing your defined network DNS. The parts you're seeing online about needing to set up your device between the internet and your devices are methods to block outbound port 53 requests. The right router and custom firmware can stop this if you care enough about it. You could have your NAS do this, but I would highly suggest you do not put your NAS direct to the internet and instead have a router manage this.
    2. Synology will likely have plenty of out of the box tools to help with this. If they don't, someone's likely dockerized whatever software you need and you can run a container on your NAS or server to accomplish this and you don't need to really understand networking.
    3. Wifi + hdmi sticks is your solution here. Firestick, chromecast, roku, whatever will serve your media to your display easily. To do this you need to run plex (or another media server) on your NAS/server but it's pretty easy to set up, as it's basically just another docker container that you configure/run.
    2 votes

  13. Comment on The tech baron seeking to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco in ~life

    Gaywallet
    Link
    Reds, blues, and grays? Gray pride parade? This boy is absolutely unhinged. What is it with tech moguls and being 13 year old boys at heart? I mean I know a lot of it is having access to way too...

    Reds, blues, and grays? Gray pride parade? This boy is absolutely unhinged. What is it with tech moguls and being 13 year old boys at heart? I mean I know a lot of it is having access to way too much capital and being surrounded by yes men, but is there more to it than that? Is it because tech is so populated by bros and heavily insulated? Even as someone who lives in SF and has spent most of their life in silicon valley it confuses me.

    27 votes

  15. Comment on How GM tricked millions of drivers into being spied on (including me) (gifted link) in ~transport

    Gaywallet
    Link
    We are so overdue for some basic regulation on what information can be bought or sold about people, or at the very least a consumer-readable notice or warning which describes all the information...

    We are so overdue for some basic regulation on what information can be bought or sold about people, or at the very least a consumer-readable notice or warning which describes all the information that's being collected and allowing the consumer to opt-out of the collection of specific elements at any point in time. The ability to have them delete information they have collected about you or to refuse to let them share that information with anyone else would be nice too. You know, basic GDPR kind of stuff.

    10 votes

  16. Comment on I don't think I'm 'grokking' how the fediverse works. (Or at least, how following federated accounts works) in ~tech

    Gaywallet
    Link
    Lemmy and Mastodon both use activity pub in the back end, but are very different platforms. The former is basically a stand-in reddit replacement and the latter a twitter one. Following a lemmy...

    Lemmy and Mastodon both use activity pub in the back end, but are very different platforms. The former is basically a stand-in reddit replacement and the latter a twitter one. Following a lemmy community on mastodon won't work as nicely as you might expect, as the platforms don't use exactly the same pieces of information in exactly the same ways - since functionality is different some pieces of information get lost or ignored.

    16 votes

  17. Comment on Detransition is gender liberation, too - Here's to never being satisfied and forever changing in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Hello friend 😄💜 It took me a long time to adopt the labels that I have, and a lot had to do with the lack of representation I saw. Agender is a pretty rare label, and I ran into a vanishingly...

    Hello friend 😄💜

    It took me a long time to adopt the labels that I have, and a lot had to do with the lack of representation I saw. Agender is a pretty rare label, and I ran into a vanishingly small number of people who used the label so it was really hard for me to know what it was meant to represent! I agree that sharing our perspectives are freeing and important to others, which this article made me think a bit about. Regardless of how difficult it may be for others to understand or accept my lived experience, it might also help others like myself, years ago, who are looking to understand themselves or find representation out there that matches, at least on some level, their own experience.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Detransition is gender liberation, too - Here's to never being satisfied and forever changing in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Thank you so much for sharing this experience. I really wish stories like yours weren't so hard for so many others to hear, because they are important stories, especially for people who might be...

    Thank you so much for sharing this experience. I really wish stories like yours weren't so hard for so many others to hear, because they are important stories, especially for people who might be going through similar doubts or issues.

    6 votes

  19. Comment on Detransition is gender liberation, too - Here's to never being satisfied and forever changing in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link
    I work for an academic medical center that's fairly well known both locally and in the world. However, we haven't been known for stellar queer health. In fact, I'd say we've been lacking, quite a...

    I work for an academic medical center that's fairly well known both locally and in the world. However, we haven't been known for stellar queer health. In fact, I'd say we've been lacking, quite a bit. Recently the school put on a talk about the medical needs of people who have detransitioned and even featured a speaker who had themselves detransitioned. It was an absolutely fascinating talk, which highlighted some of the trends they have been seeing, talked about the many reasons that people tend to detransition (mostly social pressures, as described by Devon in the piece) and talked rather frankly about the kind of online harassment these individuals had experienced for detransitioning. It was really sad to hear about the harassment, although unfortunately not something that surprised me.

    Having been in plenty of online trans spaces, it's been clear to me that there are a lot of people out there struggling and many of them can lash out at others for plenty of extremely valid reasons. Being trans means you're constantly under attack - people invalidate your experience which prompts defense, but perhaps more importantly one often has to fight tooth and nail and expend significant resources in order to get access to medical care which in many cases can be life saving. People often convince themselves that access is more prevalent if they fall into certain boxes. Trans medicalism is one such example, a viewpoint in which advocates distill transgenderism into a very medical definition. It's entirely an issue of nature, with no nurture component, and it has well defined symptoms and resolutions. Trans medicalism is almost always purely binary and assumes there is an "ideal" endpoint of transitioning. What this often means, is that trans medicalists will attack people who don't agree with their viewpoint and make the argument that promoting any other viewpoint or life experiences will result in jeopardizing their access to already limited medical care.

    Trans medicalists causing infighting in the transgender field is just one such example from these trans spaces where infighting (and outsiders attacking) happens and there's some level of harassment. Luckily there's a lot of folks who will back you up if you are attacked by these folks who are often deeply scared and hurting, but there's a lot less support for folks who talk about detransitioning. Detransitioning highlights the fact that there are folks who will undergo some level of transitioning and regret it and reverse course. This makes the idea of transitioning scary to cis folks, and it also gives them a reason to gatekeep it, at least until adulthood, an idea which can be catastrophic given the high suicide rates of trans folks, especially those who are young and watching their body change in ways which cause serious distress. However, the literature reveals that the vast majority of folks who do detransition do so because of social pressures (averaging around 80% of the primary reason and >90% of folks citing it as at least one of the reasons) which reinforces the narrative that social acceptance of trans folks is the most important factor to their success. Regardless, the perceived invalidation of transness (that some people could choose to reverse course) means that folks who try and talk about their experience of detransitioning often get attacked online.

    It would be difficult to talk about the harassment that detransitioning folks get online without also addressing that there's a weirdly large number of people making up personas online as a way to push their political agenda. Having moderated transgender spaces online, I have personally witnessed individuals who come back, time and time again, and spread a false story about detransitioning. I say that it's a false story because some of these individuals have been discovered to post elsewhere on the internet about the this behavior and celebrating the fact that they are sowing discord. In fact, this happens so often, that in many trans spaces I've been in online, they either explicitly ban or more discreetly clean up this kind of noise, likely catching some folks who truly did transition and were not indulging a false persona online.

    This was the first time I had even spotted an academic talk on detransitioning and it really signaled to me the beginning of acceptance and the emergence of a group from the shadows where they have been shoved, and to stumble across an article like this from a well known semi-public trans figure was really amazing for me to see. A lot of the narratives that Devon brought forth in this post highlight a lot of the struggles that trans folks deal with and puts words to some of the tough ideas we'll need to struggle with as a society and as an in-group (a call to action for trans folks to more vocally/actively support detransitioning). It also highlights some more non-traditional paths and viewpoints on gender. As someone who is both non-binary and agender, I personally resonated with a lot that Devon brings to the table here. I don't often talk very vocally about my own experience because I've both experienced and worry about the push back that narratives like mine and Devon's can garner. For example, being agender, I don't experience gender based feelings - gender dysphoria and euphoria are both things I do not experience. Many people might question why I decided to transition in the first place, and my answer might also be wholly unconvincing to many.

    I suspect this subset of individuals is going to be thrust into the limelight (they already have, at times, by journalism and political forces) more presently, especially as we begin to better address their health needs. Mental health, especially given the amount of harassment they receive or the need to conceal their detransitioning, seems to be especially prescient. I'm glad that we have some figures such as Devon speaking out about their experience, and helping to draw attention to all the nuances that go into one's decision to transition and how the experience itself can be a lot messier than the media makes it out to be.

    7 votes