I know I've seen a bunch of people say they want more positive posts here in ~lgbt, and happily I have the opportunity now!

I live in Germany and here top surgery needs to be individually approved by your insurance provider for them to cover it. I got a letter back from them on Monday agreeing to cover it, and as of today the hospital scheduled my surgery for late March! I was expecting a lot more delay between getting the approval from my insurance and when the surgery could be scheduled (especially after the months it took to gather all the paperwork I had to send my insurance!), so I'm super hype.

My work will give me all the time I need off, and I live with my wife who should be able to take over any tasks I can't do during recovery. As much as I complain about how trans healthcare works in Germany atm, I wouldn't have been able to get this surgery back home in the US for cost reasons. So I'm feeling really lucky right now -- my transmasc friend in college had to save up for years to afford their surgery.

I'd love any recommendations anyone has for how to make my recovery as easy and comfortable as possible. I've got transmasc friends who have got top surgery, but most of what I've got from them has been "take more time off work than I did" and "drains suck". The surgery is in only a little over a month, so longer-term stuff like "get to a healthy weight" and "gain pectoral muscle to get a better aesthetic" are probably off the table, but I welcome anyone's practical recommendations! Obviously I'll get instructions from the doctor but I figure there are likely people here with personal experience who might have suggestions that a doctor wouldn't think to mention.

Also, I'm getting double-incision (only real option at my size) and atm I'm erring on the side of not getting nipple grafts. Not a huge fan of my nipples and I want to avoid any potential complications or dissatisfaction with them. I figure if I regret it I can always get nipple tattoos, whereas if I get the grafts and regret it there's not a ton of options. If anybody here has personal experience one way or the other, I'd really love to hear your perspective.

But most importantly, I'm just so excited that things are finally moving forward at a brisk pace! It's like finally getting the opportunity to stop and take a sharp rock out of the inside of my shoe.

EDIT TO ADD: oh god I just realized how am I going to keep my cats from lying on my chest

Hey folks - I've been wanting to go whole hog on automating my home, I read through this smart home automation - tips and tricks thread started by @Merry and had a lot of useful information.

Some of the things I took away from it:

• Home assistant is pretty great (if you don't mind tinkering)
• Getting something that will boot back up after a power failure is great
• Use smart plugs / switches vs bulbs
• Maintain it's usefulness if there is an internet outage

Like I mentioned I'd really like for this to be privacy focused and mostly self contained. Sure I'd love to be able to control stuff from my phone while I'm home and also recognize that I'm home or away.

I just am a bit smooth brained when it comes to even seeing "would something like this work with the wiring / circuity that I have in my home already?"

If there are any good guides to follow or really specific advice / steps I could follow to begin this process I'd really appreciate it.

Let's hear about religious and spiritual (maybe philosophical?) beliefs not considered "mainstream" in the modern West.

The percentage of people who identify as "spiritual", "other", or "none" is rising at the expense of larger "organized" religions.

Disclaimer: it's hard if not impossible to draw hard lines around what is considered a "religion" verses a philosophy, culture, or mere ritual or traditional practice. If you aren't sure if what you believe fits the prompt, err on the side of sharing.

Things that probably fit the prompt:

• Minority religions
• Native beliefs/cultures
• Highly syncretic beliefs
• Non-western religions or beliefs
• "Pagan" beliefs
• Esoteric or occult beliefs or practices

Things that might not fit the prompt

• Mainstream Christian beliefs or traditions
• Naturalism or a lack of belief in any particular religious or spiritual tradition

I don't exclude these two categories because they aren't important, but because they are incredibly important, and most of what we think about religious or spiritual beliefs exist in frameworks created by the above two groups. I want to use this opportunity to learn about others, and I feel that I already know a good bit more about atheism and mainstream Christian theism than most other perspectives.

This is a sensitive subject that is tied deeply to people's sense of meaning; please treat your fellow commentor's beliefs, cultures, and values with respect. Thank you in advance for your input and perspective.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

February 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

When I think of bows, my mind auto points to Sailor Moon, but there must be more variety I've never noticed. In Sailor Moon, each of the girls had a bow that reflected their personality and matched the rest of their outfit. As a set, they're pretty iconic, and the bows were functional (for transformation, ofc). Arguably, Kiki's bow from Kiki's delivery service is lively, but I'd also say the magic comes from the Miyazaki's animation. Would a big bow even move like that? I like the costuming details on the Sailor Moon bows, but the volume in Kiki's is undeniably cuter.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I've been slowly fiddling around with setting up a little homelab and media server for the last few months. As a web developer, I've always wanted to learn a bit more of the infrastructure side of things, hence the homelab part. The deteriorating quality of major streaming services finally pushed me to set up a media server as well.

Right now, my setup is very basic. I've been using an old repurposed office laptop. It's a simple dell latitude 5540 I got ridiculously cheap due to it's barely usable crusty keyboard, but since I mainly SSH into it that's not really an issue. I formatted it, doubled the ram, and installed the latest stable Debian release. (Headless)

After that, I chose to install yams which was recommended here. Definitely saved a lot of time there! Finally, I added an old unisex raspberry pi I had lying around. The idea is that it's the only part of the setup that is on 24/7, since it has an almost negligible footprint. Whenever I want the main server running, I SSH into the raspberry and use wakeonLAN to start the main server. I'm probably gonna make a tiny web interface for that soon.

Now on to the part I need advice for. The laptop and attached HD are quickly running out of space. I know just slapping on extra hard drives has a limit, and am vaguely aware of things like unraid existing, but am a bit overwhelmed right now with all the information and options in this space.

Does anyone have some advice on something I can tackle for a reasonable amount of work/budget? Something basic, but with the possibility of expansion in the future?

Any other tips on where to go next in general are of course also appreciated. (On that note, I'm right now not opening up the server to ingress from outside. I only interact with it on the home network, as I primarily work from home)