I don’t think you’d be overly doomer to be worried about this. You hit the nail on the head that the scariest part of this is that it lets cops do whatever the fuck they want even more (or allows maga fucks to go extrajudicial). It’s just one more legal way for asshats to discriminate against minorities. If this passes, sure, if you’re trans in WV, you won’t likely be arrested just by going outside, but you bet your ass some cops will probably be willing to assault or arrest you for the smallest shit, or that if anybody assaults you for being trans, they can probably get away with it. If a bill like this passes, it would be wise for all trans people in WV to leave if they can, even if it doesn’t mean that trans people are going to be arrested on sight, necessarily.

Haiku, the Robot is a very fun metroidvania that you can blast through in under 10 hours if you want something in that genre, but also something short and sweet that wont consume two weeks of your life.

That’s pretty much my story, too. I was one of the biggest readers in my class at school growing up and even as a young adult, I still read a lot (probably 10 books a year or so). Somewhere along the way in the last few years, I just fell off. I think part of it is finding a book or genre that really reignites me in that regard. I had a book a few years ago that did do that for a few months, but I need to make it a habit. I want to reduce screen time in my life, in general, and getting back into reading will help so much with that, while still allowing my hyperactive mind to explore cool universes!

I actually just played the Telltale Expanse game yesterday, too, and that was excellent! And yeah, I heard that the books are different enough (and that there are 3 more of them), so that a read-through would likely feel new to me. I’ve actually had the first book on my shelf for 10 years after a friend gave it to me and I never started it, nor knew what it was until I started watching the TV show, ha.

So, the car I was talking about in my story (where the hood is above my roof) is a Jeep Wagoneer and it’s just insane!

With how big cars have gotten, I just don’t feel safe on the road half the time. Tanks like that block line of sight both from me to lanes of traffic if I’m trying to turn and from traffic to me, so I have to be extra careful at nearly every intersection in my car. Nobody needs a car that big and it’s a constant source of annoyance for me.

I also have a hard time catching up with established shows. It sounds like a lot, but it averages to about ten 45 minutes episodes per season, so it’s not so bad. I had to get in the mindset of “nobody cares how long I take to watch it”. I just casually watched an episode or two a night for a few weeks. I recommend watching, it’s awesome! If you do start, I’d say that season 1 is slower than the rest and with lower production value, the show doesn’t really ramp up until season 2, I feel, but then it’s a wild ride the rest of the way.

Work is normally not complete shit, but it certainly is this week. I think the universe knows I’m going on vacation next week and then decided to make this week hell instead of a normal week.

That said, I finished The Expanse (amazing show and I just want more!!!) and I’m hopelessly addicted to Cobalt Core. I’ve completed about 6 runs now and have one more ship and character to unlock, and then I “only” have to beat it about 20 more times to get all the memory logs. It’s a very addicting game!

I’m going to have to find a show or two to occupy me in the next 2 weeks on vacation, though. I like traveling, but I’m skipping it this time to be frugal and I’m just having a staycation. I may drive somewhere for a couple days, but nothing crazy.

I’m also trying to get into the habit of reading more. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point of reading double digits books per year (my adhd riddled brain just needs too many vidya games), but I’m trying to at least read a few days a week. That said, with me growing increasingly frustrated with computers (a thing I’m calling ROBS, rapid onset boomer syndrome), maybe I’ll get more into reading to get away from screens (I work in software, so I really should be using a screen at home as little as possible).

I am not surprised in the slightest. New vehicles, especially in the US, are way too fucking big. I drive a Miata, which is small, but not diminutive, and there are SUVs on the market who’s hood is above THE TOP OF MY FUCKING ROOF, above the roof of my fully functioning car that takes care of 90% of my driving needs. Absolutely nobody needs a car that big, it’s dangerous and wasteful. I hate the trends of modern cars. I also have a 2001 CR-V for when I need to haul shit and I firmly believe that 99% of people don’t need anything any larger than that.

Big cars are dangerous for pedestrian, dangerous for cyclists, dangerous to other drivers, are wasteful, and are just a dumb status symbol. It’s infuriating!

I don’t work in games, but I do work in software and the people you describe are infuriating and have absolutely no idea what it’s like to work on a big piece of software. Thanks for the comment.

America: where 18 years old is old enough to go die in some foreign land because the rulers want oil, but where you’re belittled and called a kid and people argue against your rights because you dared to make your own legal medical decisions that will make you happier and don’t effect anybody else.

It’s utterly disgusting that what is essentially propaganda and lies have convinced so many people here that trans people are some evil instead of just normal people who want the right to be themselves. Fuck conservatism, it’s a poison.

As someone who loves RPGs and Star Wars, it took me about 10 attempts to actually get more than an hour into the game before turning it off. It’s just that dated. I did eventually power through the first few hours and then the non-aged moments (story and writing) became good enough for me to stick around. I can definitely see how most people wouldn’t want to play it for the first time at this point though.

People in the fediverse talking about how much they don’t use reddit anymore reminds me of people that are “totally over” their ex.

I know there are some out there who legitimately believe in the witchcraft they’re performing, spells they cast, crystals, etc., but for me, I do practice wicca, but it’s less about thinking that I’m having a physical effect on the world and more of a way to almost meditate and for sure a way to connect to my spiritual side.

Even though I know that me performing a ritual to bring a friend some good luck or something won’t actually do anything in the real world, it puts me in a space where I can reflect on my friend and what they mean to me, for example.

It certainly can be a bit silly, but many of us practice because we like the state of being and state of mind it can put us into, vs truly believing we’re performing magic.

Surprisingly, Baldur’s Gate 3. I absolutely love D&D, but I tried playing through the Pathfinder video games, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and nothing stuck with me. I just wasn’t a fan of the CRPG genre, despite me playing in-person tabletop RPGs multiple times a week.

I bought BG3 thinking I probably wouldn’t get hooked, but I didn’t want to miss out when literally every one of my friends is playing it. Well, I am absolutely hooked and have 40 hours in the game and will likely do multiple playthroughs, and I kind of “get” the genre now. I know PoE, PF, or DOS2 may not be as good, but I feel a lot more confident at the prospect of playing them now.

So in this case, FOMO helped me a great deal.

You are not only incorrect, but hypocritical and selfish if you want rights for yourself, but not for other LGBT people who absolutely exist, whether you like it or not. Keep in mind that trans people were side by side with gay people at Stonewall and ever since, always fighting for LGBT equality (never just trans equality), and here you are whining that they want equal rights just like you want.

Gender exists, including non-binary genders. I suggest using some modern sources to catch up on LGBT issues, as you seem to have some unhealthy, and frankly bigoted, views on portions of the LGBT community. I’ve seen you completely overblow gender issues in some of your comments with awful and ridiculous “examples” (“transfemme demisexual aromantic oceangender individual” and " transmasculine forestgender cat-boychick") and those shitty “examples” do not represent like any transgender or non-cisgender individuals. That’s just not what’s going on with gender issues at all. Maybe some person online said something like that, but that’s about 0.0001% of trans people.

Exactly zero of the non-cis people I know are anywhere close to your examples. They’re all just normal people who were born where their gender doesn’t match their birth sex.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359295113_The_Biological_Basis_of_Gender_Incongruence

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6748626/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830997/

And like… I kind of get where you were coming from, since certain media does its best to say that trans women are “invading” women’s spaces or that trans women are inherently “unfair” when compared to cis women, so even if you don’t buy into that stuff specifically, it can still be somewhat pervasive, especially since it isn’t always hate-media spreading that. There’s always a sort of background noise about how trans people are bad in some way, so it can be hard to have fully resolved thoughts on the subject.

The only issues I’ve personally seen relating to trans women in women’s spaces is if a terf loses their shit, and usually in that case, the other cis women lose their shit at the terf. At least in my own life, the overwhelming majority of cis women seem to have no problem with trans women existing in women’s spaces (where I am, at least, which is an admittedly progressive area) and I’ve never really seen a trans woman causing issues, personally, even in sport (I know there were some high level cases in the last few years, but that’s like less than 1% of cases, most trans women in sport are just… women… playing sports). I guess that’s why I’m so headstrong and forward on the topic, since media says all this and that about trans people and hardly none of it has been true in my own life. I know others’ personal experiences will be different than mine, but I’m just really sick of seeing hate directed at minorities who just want to exist (you were not directing hate, I mean the FIDE ruling, you were being pretty darn reasonable, even if you initially disagreed with me).

But you don’t understand, she’s an attractive woman and therefore must be an attention seeker and nothing more.

/S

The FIDE’s ruling on trans men shows they “think trans men are men” (they probably don’t actually, but that’s what the ruling implies), yet they then ban trans women from women’s competitions, meaning they don’t think trans women are women, by implication. This ruling isn’t consistent, isn’t fair, nor does it actually accomplish anything besides driving out a minority group who already have a tough enough time just existing in the first place. It’s also not even fair to trans men to strip their titles, as they likely won those titles when they didn’t know they were a man.

The ruling here is in no way reasonable, IMO. It exists to hurt people and does nothing else. Trans women need women’s spaces just as much as cis women do and banning trans women from women’s spaces does not “protect the women” like some people cite for rulings like this, it just further alienates trans people. If someone gets bent out of shape because a trans person exists in the same space as them, they can go fuck themselves, that’s their problem, not a trans person’s problem.

I heavily disagree with you saying “and this at least provides an avenue for trans women to potentially participate” considering before this ruling, trans women could already play in both women’s tournaments and open tournaments and now are banned from women’s tournaments. It’s the opposite of being inclusive. If you’re a trans woman, would you want to go play chess if you’re specifically told that you can’t play in women’s only spaces? No, you probably wouldn’t even start. This new ruling specifically exists to discourage trans women from competing by othering them and saying they aren’t woman enough to go play with the other women.

The best way for the FIDE to be inclusive is to continue just having open and women’s spaces as usual and not fuck with trans people’s ability to exist in spaces consistent with their gender. There were no problems being caused before, this ruling isn’t fixing anything, it’s just hurting people.

I’ve sort of just accepted it. I work in a niche position in a software company that’s in a niche sector and while people do depend on me for their livelyhoods, I wouldn’t say the products I produce are, in the grand scheme of things, meaningful. What I do only exists as a job in the 20th and 21st centuries and humans got on just fine before that.

I instead find meaning in my hobbies and out of work activities. My job, while pretty meaningless in my mind, does pay me enough to allow me to have a good life outside of work. I don’t need my job to be meaningful, I just need it to not suck.

I know it’s probably been done in other games, but the drill charge solves so many issues. In past games, you can maybe get a camper with a grenade, but now it’s almost guaranteed (especially if you also run in to finish them off if it doesn’t get them). It was a brilliant addition to MW2 and I hope it stays in basically all CoD games.