Jul (they/she)

I’d say change that to treatment rather than cure.

And add the fact that it’s nearly impossible to get regularly due to what is now obviously intentional shortages and the strict controls combined with PBMs restricting the ability to shop around for places with it in stock. So you can’t set up a regular reminder to take it or even actually take it regularly even with a reminder.

Yeah the switchy operas are the best, if rare. I fortunately have recently had bottom surgery, so yeah, I’m glad I don’t need to deal with that anymore. Still recovering so not entirely sure how things are going to go, there. But I also have a lot of trauma, from the typical what it took to get hard and people not understanding it wasn’t directly tied to interest in sex, as well as some things testosterone and male gender role expectations caused me to do (not sure some if it wasn’t actually rape, but just not classified as rape in our culture), as well as some things bad dommes did to me (almost feeling like revenge for being essentially raped their whole lives, but not called rape). I’m hoping this change will allow me to start over in addition to helping with disphoria as well as allowing me access to some femmes who don’t like penises at all for sex and leading to more of that operatic sex that I feel is at least slightly more common when no penises are involved even if I was already at that point in how I had orgasms, but many people were unwilling to treat me that way just because of that hunk of flesh. Lol

It’s not that a friendship is a separate thing, though. And many of my flings or shorter term romantic relationships end up in platonic-only relationships. But it’s the developing of those platonic connections during the other relationships that ends up being valuable later. Something as simple as having a good conversation as you cuddle in the aftermath can trigger a bond.

And topping is definitely a burden in some senses as it requires you to act first, but I usually see it more as pleasing the other person rather than taking pleasure from the other person. Equally, bottoming requires giving over control, but should include more than just receiving the actions of the top. There needs to be some amount of comfort in communicating while in the act so you both are getting your needs met. The bottom is responsible for creating that comfort and opening the communication by responding honestly to the acts of the top. And the top then adapting what they take.

My point being, as a switch myself, I rarely find good tops or bottoms, but with the right person it is actually a dynamic role. I find the best sex is with other switches where we take turns. Of course this requires a more “feminine” type of sex that estrogen made more easy for me to get into where sex is an opera, not a single scene. That’s where building the platonic connections can help a lot. It takes time to write not just an opera, but a good opera.

And yeah I agree. I have a therapist who is also non-binary and neurodivergent like me, and that helps a ton. I never got anything out of therapy until I understood these things existed in me and sought out treatment by those who understand it at least in part. These traits require much different kinds of therapy, IMHO.

And as for what types of men, I’d say, those who are good at communication of their needs as well as listening to mine. Or at least the lack of open communication about emotions and needs is the most common reason I don’t date cis-men.

Yeah, I’m aggressively non-hierarchical in my relationships. I feel like hierarchy breeds resentment, so I don’t have relationships beyond acquaintanceships with people in hierarchical relationships, so anchors don’t generally work well in that. Not that it’s not possible in some senses, but it’s unlikely to manifest in a healthy way IMHO.

Makes it really difficult to find others who have similar views. Plus being AuDHD creates issues with my socializing style.

But it results in more emotionally driven support when you don’t have to prioritize one person when another is in desperate need of something I could otherwise easily offer if I hadn’t spent all of my spoons on an explicit primary or anchor partner. But that’s just what works best for me.

It’s rough when you’re in a needy phase. It may be worth reducing the number of partners so you have some energy to create a real partnership which requires more effort. I like to break relationships into components. Usually acquaintance/platonic, romantic, and sexual. Each relationship can be any combination. Acquaintanceship is just general hanging out without really caring deeply about the other person. The platonic/friendship part replaces that and tends to be the hardest because it’s more about solid connection, really caring what happens to the other person, supporting them and being supported by them when things get difficult as well as enjoying the connection when things are good. This is something I’ve noticed most cis-men don’t have with each other due to societal toxic masculinity.

Romantic is then more about individual acts of romance, planning romantic dates, making out for long periods, that kind of thing. And it requires some level of physical and/or emotional attraction usually and is about fulfilling those kinds of needs over a medium term. It is best when the types of needs of both parties align, so you’re fulfilling theirs at the same time they’re fulfilling yours.

And sexual is obviously more fleeting and is better with physical attraction and matching needs, but mostly is just about fulfilling very immediate needs.

Each relationship has some combination of those things. But I find that I need at least one with strong platonic connection or I get lonely. That requires energy in both directions over the longterm to work, so it’s the most rare. These you really need to nurture as they are the most valuable IMHO, and easiest to lose if you take more than give. Sexual you can find easily in clubs or whatever and can be fleeting, and romantic takes a lot more to find, but tends to be easy and shorter lasting without the platonic.

So dating cis-men tends to lack the platonic part in my experience due to toxic societal norms. So although I’m pan, I also tend not to date cis-men.

Didn’t see mention of it for sure but are you neurodivergent? Seems typical of big city friend making issues for neurodivergent people. I’m AuDHD with very good masking skills, even from myself for most of my life. Getting treatment for the ADHD has helped a lot vs just treatment for generalized anxiety which was just a symptom. But that’s a bigger conversation.

Overall, the best thing for me was finding an extrovert who created groups and latching onto them making sure to put a lot of effort into showing up for their events so I would get invited regularly and eventually become an essential member of the group. I had 3 of them going for a while. I stuck with the group that had been around for a long time and they mostly survived COVID. The other groups, one is coming back, sort of, but timing has been difficult with all that’s going on with my transition.

The one that survived happens to be a Wiccan group. Most are atheists, actually, and so the ceremony is more just a way to bring people together and connect with nature a little rather than the supernatural stuff and is always optional with this group. But Wicca is also very feminist compared to all of the major religions, which is a positive. And this group in particular doesn’t enforce gender roles. They don’t care if a man or woman or enby becomes the ceremonial May Queen or King for example. I’m agender even though I’m transitioning to feminine physical parts due to physical dysphoria issues. So not having strict gender categories helps me a lot.

Anyway, my point is, find a group with a strong extrovert at the center that has regular meetups whether that’s Wiccan sabat holidays or monthly meetings, or whatever, try to find one that is already meeting regularly. It might be harder to make your way into an established group, but it’s more likely to stick around longer term which is more important. Then be very careful to show up for events early on. Plan things so you’re sure to have enough energy for mingling. And most important, make sure you show up if you RSVP. Bring reliable will make you an essential member of the group over time.

As for the group itself, it may take attending several to find one that is accepting of you, but keep trying and don’t get discouraged by the first time. It takes showing up a few times and building familiarity for it to feel more comfortable.

Yep, I didn’t realize I was AuDHD but my friends had assumed I knew. Most of them are some form of neurodivergent.

It was promising for a while, better quality streams, better payments to artists, etc. But they never ended up implementing stuff they promised like better integration with devices or improving their catalog.

It would reduce their short term revenue, but would improve their long-term revenue. Netflix used to have a great product, but they fiddled with it to make people watch only certain content that brings them more revenue. Same with Spotify. This then reduces the number of people willing to pay for the service and since there are few competitors that are better and/or have as much content they “piracy” is the only way to get the content you want for a reasonable price, with a good user experience.

So short term these things improve revenue, but not as much as the revenue lost in the long term as people start to dislike the the poor experience or are unable to afford the higher prices. And people don’t want multiple services to have to check for new content all the time all with different poor Ux.

Love it. If it were me I’d add some silver accessories. Maybe some chains around the boots, or some bracelets or something. Basically to give some contrast to the black. But I do tend towards punk styles.

I have some leftover small plastic cubby shelves you can rearrange that sit next to my laundry. There were enough parts to make 2 cubbies. Works great for me.

Great, unfortunately for the insurance thing, many companies have moved to “employer funded health plans” which are not “health insurance” even if they work exactly the same way just. Basically, an insurance company processes the claims, the employer pays those directly, and they have stop loss insurance in case the amount they need to spend is more than a certain threshold. So in practice it’s the same, but legally it allows employers a wide birth. It’s only covered by the the federal ESRB which is of course poorly funded. But state insurance commissioners or laws have no effect on them. I experienced it a couple of times just this year where they refused to pay for things that my state requires they pay for.

I always think in what you labeled as “bad day”. So everything seems harder than it is and takes more spoons. That’s why I need Adderal and coffee every day.

I have a pretty aggressive ad blocking and reddit, YouTube, etc. Don’t like that. Also, I dumped most of the social media that explicitly spies on you or implemented policies that LGBTQ+ and immigrant hate speech is excluded from their moderation topics and thus allowed. That all was motivation enough for me.

I do still often need to see some posts for information that is only there for the most part. So I use the LibRedirect plugin for Firefox/Ironfox so i don’t have to log in for read-only purposes.

I was undiagnosed as a kid. Right now I have a formal ADHD diagnosis, but I’m 99% sure there’s also autism in there. It runs in my family and my psyc and therapist definitely agree, just it’s very hard to diagnose as an adult and the few doctors who could always have long wait lists. And maybe that’s for the best in case I need to flee the US (I’m trans) and resident visa processes don’t usually take kindly to disabled people. I take Adderal for my ADHD, and that gives me the spoons to deal with the anxiety much more. So I’m more able to mask in public. And I have a friend group that I don’t gave to mask much with.

Point being, I had the opposite treatment. My parents just threw me to the wolves so to speak. I would get panic attacks being force to go to the store myself, especially if I was doing something I knew was wrong, like my step-grandmother would always try to get me to pick up cigarettes for her when I was a child/preteen. Breaking rules always was difficult for me. Or being locked out of the house and told no dinner and no coming back inside until I learned how to ride the bike they got for me. Meeting new people, driving, etc., same issue.

Anyway, although I see the disadvantages to coddling, I think I would have preferred that extreme to the opposite extreme.

Different meds work differently for different people. Or if you aren’t actually ADHD they may be less effective for you. Better I ask a doctor, but Adderal works best for me.

Yep, I used to get panic attacks, and I think the reason I used to hit my head on the wall when I was toddler age was likely related to Autism and ADHD. But it took until my early 40s to figure out that I had ADHD. And likely Autism as well though I didn’t want that on my records if I decide to emigrate or something that is biased against it. And there’s not really treatment available for adults with Autism anyway, but I don’t really care to get rid of Autism. It’s a big part of who I am. Just hard to find friends and jobs that will accommodate your needs or at least be accepting.

It’s an ideological issue. Some people need someone they feel superior to to distract them from how the people who consider themselves to be better than them are abusing them, by saying that some other group is actually responsible for the problems they are actually causing.

Thus the rich, conservatives in charge who are cutting jobs and creating immense inflation by allowing anticompetitive behavior by large corporations they make money from, blame the losses on immigrants. And immigrants have no way to fight back as they have no rights.

Ideological issues are more difficult to use as a distraction these days. It’s just harder to convince people that their inaction in failing to repress or murder people who are just trying to live their life will cause their deity or whatever to be disappointed or disown them and keep them out of paradise or whatever they believe. So, it’s not as effective to just say they’re evil, anymore, they need to invent things those people are doing to them even if they aren’t doing anything in reality. Problem is it’s becoming more and more apparent that trans people aren’t actually a threat, so they need to invent things like statistics saying that 50% of major mass shootings are done by trans people by inventing criteria to make only 8 or 9 of the thousands of mass shootings to be considered “major”, and thus the 4 mass shootings they found that were by trans people become 50%. As long as they keep repeating those numbers and isolating their audience from real statistics, it’s easy to maintain control that way. But the internet makes that difficult these days. Plus the economic issues are much more common among conservatives than having trans children. And trans people aren’t quite as historically repressed as POC who were slaves or immigrants who were running from horrible conditions, so its more difficult to keep them repressed. Same was true of gay, lesbian, and bi people a couple of decades ago. They were repressed, but not as economically repressed as POC and immigrants making them more likely to fight back and easier for conservatives to identify with.

And the US supreme court is about to start hearing some cases that will allow them to declare state laws banning conversion therapy to be unconstitutional. It’s really sad that conservatives will torture and murder children to create an enemy for fascism to bring people together against whether its LGBTQ+ children or immigrant children.

UI should have one menu for global actions and where applicable, one menu or set of buttons or whatever for context specific actions that activate when you select an item(s) to take action on. And that’s it.

As for forms in general, paper or electronic, I agree they often are not specific enough about context to understand what they’re looking for. This is a failing of instructions, either in context or a separate page of them should exist for every single form. There are some where the title is self explanatory in context like “first name” in a selection labeled “patient demographics” is documentation enough, but otherwise there should usually be at least a few words explaining each field or set of fields. Paper and ink is cheap, screen space is cheap, put a few words.

As for tax forms, I think for US taxes it’s fine until you get to business income and expenses which are purposely vague and complex to allow for essentially fraud that’s harder to detect, whereas personal stuff is more specific to make sure they get every cent from people not wealthy enough to write off living and luxury expenses as business expenses. But it’s too complex for the average person without basic logic skills. Like temporarily renting out a property until I could sell it after I had to move was ridiculously complex to figure out what I could and couldn’t deduct. The forms are very generalized and the details are obfuscated by filling in your own descriptions on worksheets that often are not actually filed, only retained for audit, whereas in personal expenses almost every single detail has a place to put it on a form that is actually filed.