I’m glad I’m not the only one who was thinking the square waves sounded cleaner than the other ones. I feel like the alternative ones would create a lot more noise in chords than it does as a single line, the way a whole bunch of people using vibrato sound more out of tune than they would be without vibrato. But I have no easy way to check right now.

I love the minor key, and the baseline. Thanks for sharing!

In the classic fantasy category, you’re probably already familiar with Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, but if not, both are good for escaping reality. Jones has a fairly consistent style, so pick anything by her. Pratchett varies a little depending on the genre he’s satirizing, so YMMV on specific books, but I think he offers something for any fantasy fan. Don’t worry too much about reading the books in sequence for either Jones or Pratchett, especially Pratchett. For sci fi, William Gibson is required reading if you like cyberpunk and don’t mind weak female characters, and I find his prose absorbing. Don’t worry about sequence for his stuff, either, backstory is not a major component in most of his books.

For more recent stuff, Kate Elliott’s Court of Fives books are absolutely riveting. I wouldn’t call them pure escapism from an emotional standpoint, since there’s a lot of social realism (particularly in the areas of racism, sexism, and class divisions), but the world-building is second to none, and good triumphs over evil most of the time.

IKR?! I personally don’t bother arguing with game designers unless they seem sincerely interested in feedback, because a game with unreadable text isn’t fun for me, and I try not to waste my time playing or discussing games that aren’t fun. If the designer wants to limit their userbase to people who are willing to read cutesy fonts, that’s their problem, not mine. And I suspect it can be a problem when they already have a small userbase, and they make a design decision that alienates some of the very small number of people who have heard of their game.

But in education, or with user manuals, or any number of other products that are hard to replace… yeah, graphic designers should not get the final say when their opinion is that aesthetics are more important than accessibility. If I can’t read the user manual, website, or whatever, I am going to call customer service, but not everyone has the time or comfort level with phones for that workaround.

Thanks for the link! Looks like a great summary of current events. I am (sadly) aware of the stakeholders behind a lot of these discriminatory laws, and their inadequate and offensive excuses for passing them. But Florida seems to have a special flavor of toxicity. A friend of mine who grew up there says most of the state has been a garbage fire for decades.

tl;Dr, it is quite possible that T will be an option for you, with adequate medical supervision.

Personally, no (I am FtM binary with fairly standard plumbing) but I have a friend who has PCOS and takes T, so it’s definitely an option for some people. You would want to make sure you were working with a trans-friendly gynecologist, and you might also want to be seeing an endocrinologist to make sure you didn’t run into issues not related to reproductive health. My understanding is that taking T tends to suppress production of estrogen and progesterone, so starting T might actually calm everything down for you, but it’s also the kind of thing where your specific needs may be unrelated to anyone else’s experience.

Also, I talked to a gynecological surgeon who works with a lot of transmasc people about the long-term effects of T on my ovaries, and she said that it was really no big deal, and it would probably reduce my risk of ovarian cancer. (Apparently anything that stops ovulation reduces the risk of ovarian cancer). It may be a different situation with PCOS, and I didn’t ask about fertility, but it sounded like the ovaries don’t care about T. She said there are some genital tissues that can respond poorly to being deprived of estrogen in the long run, but in a “this is uncomfortable” way, not a “this is bad for your overall health” way, and that can be treated with topical estrogen (which doesn’t affect overall hormone levels).

However, there are reasons why microdosing T might not be what you want, even if you really don’t want a huge amount of masculinization. My endocrinologist told me that everyone needs a minimal level of either estrogen or testosterone to maintain bone density, and transmasc people will do fine with either as the dominant hormone, but if the dose of T is too low, it will suppress estrogen production without replacing its benefits for bone health. That creates approximately the osteoporosis risk of a postmenopausal cis woman. I know microdosing is considered appropriate by some doctors, but I personally trust my endocrinologist on this one. He has a lot of trans patients, but he also deals with endocrine conditions specifically related to bone density, among other things, so I think he is qualified to know what is necessary for bone health, and to make a good call on whether it’s worth adjusting HRT for that reason. He is the most chill about gender-affirming care of any doctor I have ever had, so I don’t think he’s just saying it because he doesn’t understand trans care. The range that’s appropriate for bone density also goes pretty low, and it’s possible to target that zone (at least, with injections it is; I don’t know how other delivery systems are customized).

And you might not actually need to keep the lowest possible level to achieve your goals. I think people tend to overestimate the speed and suddenness of masculinization on T. It’s like cis-male puberty, in that it takes time, and you pass through intermediate stages. (I have never heard of anyone going to bed one night with peach fuzz and waking up with a full beard, for example). It was at least a year before I personally got to the point where I could no longer easily present female, and a lot longer before it became actually impossible to hide the fact that I take T. And a lot of my friends have been taking T at a higher dose than I do for many years without getting the level of results I have. So if your goal is to have increased masculinization without going all the way to looking like a cis guy, taking a standard dose for just a year or two and then stopping might be your best bet, rather than microdosing for an extended period and risking bone issues later on. My understanding is that loss of bone density can sometimes be reversed, but it’s difficult, and there is generally a lot of pain and inconvenience involved in diagnosis and treatment. It can be monitored with bone scans, and probably would be with microdosing T, but still, I personally would think really hard about whether the advantages of microdosing outweighed the risks. If you really hate a standard dose, microdosing might be worth it, but it’s not the kind of thing you would know in advance. You may find you actually like the high end of the range best.

A doctor is the person to tell you what your options are, of course, so take all that with a grain of salt. But if it were me, I would look into T before committing to therapy to get your existing equipment to do it’s job, since I think the two types of hormone therapy would be mutually exclusive. (If you are taking T, you want to be outside the recommended hormone levels for cis women, so taking treatments meant for cis women would be undesirable).

I think this is a pretty common approach to “free speech” by people who don’t really understand what censorship is, and/or are not capable of empathizing with others. It just never occurs to them that when you claim free speech as a basic right, that means that other people also get to speak. It would be funny if it didn’t create so much harm.

The court’s decision is good news, but what the ever-loving fork is wrong with Florida? Other than RdS, of course, but I kinda doubt he could do this all by himself.

Ektoplazm used to be great for trance-y stuff, but they haven’t updated their site in ages. Last time I checked, there was still some good stuff available to download from there, though.

It’s always fun to revisit old favorites!