#Whereas figuring out I was trans came with such a wave of like

[terresdebrume]

I keep going back and forth on the topic of where I fall on the allo/aro spectrum, partially because I kind of like. Don't wanna be aro (I'm already trans, queer and autistic with depressive tendencies, I don't need to add another thing to the list)

But another part of it is that even if I am capable of romantic love I probably just wouldn't know, because I already don't really know what platonic love feels like? And I'm not saying I can't love anything or anything like that it's just. Like many other emotions, I kind of have to retroingeneer it, sort of

I know I love my cats, not because I feel a surge of Something when I look at them, but because it makes me smile when they do something cute—my face knows what I'm feeling in those moments, I'm not sure I do. I know I love them because when Pouet died I cried every day for a month and I still cry sometimes, when I think about her. I know I love my cats because my brain keeps lighting up with fear signals when they're sleeping and I don't immediately see their chest move as they breathe.

I know what anxiety feels like, I know what anger feels like (when it explodes), I know what depression feels like because I dealt with them for so long I learned to recognize their physical symptoms! If these emotions didn't leave specific signals in my body then I'm not sure I'd know what they are.

And the thing is... I don't really like. Know what love or affection feels like, I think. Yes I can feel myself smile when I speak to certain people, but I also habitually smile at everybody because it makes things easier socially. I know I like people because if they ask me if I want to do an activity I either say yes or I have regrets about saying no.

My point is: I feel like I don't know my emotions so much as I know the buttons they push in my body, so to speak, but the problem about platonic/romantic love is that I can't imagine they make that different a shame, so who's to say which one it is?

It's funny, in a way, that I don't know something like that at my age. It's also really inconvenient, tbh. There's not really a reason for me to think about this rn except sometimes if I meet a cool dude whom I know is gay I wonder for a minute or two what a relationship with him would be like (which I'm going to assume is not that weird a thing to do) and the last time that happened led to, well. Ponderings about romance I guess

Anyway, the tl;Dr is that it took me decades to figure out the emotions I can recognize now, and I've largely approached social interactions with the inner spirit of a wet Chihuahua for most of that time, so how the fuck do I know if I can't identify those because I'm shit at self understanding or because I don't feel them???

Idk, it's complicated

(Tho honestly it would also be a little bit hilarious if after all this shit I landed on nah just aro. Not my preferred option right now but eh xD)

[mr-kamiyama]

A Word for Zoomers Who're Told They're "Making Up" Genders and Orientations.

I'm an Xer.

Well, actually I'm in that b.1977-85 throe where no two people can agree what I am. I'm Post Dankai Junior in the old country, but I was too old to be a kid for Pokémon, Harry Potter, I caught Digimon 02 during its premiere US run a rare Saturday the firm I worked at, that normally had Saturday hours, was closed. I met Windows Millennium Edition because a housemate, as back then, I'd realised I wanted to live with company, wanted to upgrade our computer to the newest version of Windows (and I promptly made AMVs using GIFs and lost them to the sands of time all before YouTube even existed) So that gives you an idea of my age.

I came out for the first time in high school. I came out as bi.

In Japan, transness, like here had different words we no longer use, but unlike here, wasn't a secret.

If I'd stayed in Japan just one more year, in '95 politician Kamikawa Aya began advocating on NHK for trans rights.

Maybe I'd've learned that transition *to* male and actual medical treatment like HRT to make that possible existed a whole lot sooner.

But I didn't. And so, I didn't realise it was actually something I could *do* and I wasn't doomed to be stuck until about 2010.

I claimed "bi" in the '90s, and mistook "you're a really cool person and really nice to me when few people are and so I really like you in a platonic sense" +aesthetic attraction for crushes of a romantic and sexual nature.

The SAM model was developed by bi people in the '70s, but where and when I was, there weren't exactly highly visible LGBT centres where I could learn this. So I thought any orientation had to be "x-sexual"

And I only knew about straight, gay/lesbian, and bi.

Which, the term "laaaaaaaabelllls" was coined by biphobic people my age. See, we weren't like people today, who literally can't live because of unfettered crony capitalism. You could get a nice studio on the nice side of town for eight days' work at minimum wage (of course, being POC, you had to find the right realtor), which back then was under four dollars an hour. You could get a 2br/1.5ba rowhouse for about two weeks' worth, which is half a month, but these days, that much work will get you a barely-studio in shoot-you-in-the-face-in-broad-daylight territory.

But we were still plenty suspicious of marketing. So queerphobic Xers went "don't make me acknowledge your filthy non-mono sexuality! What if I told you naming what you are is dehumanising, like labelling a jar of mayo, and you're the product!"

Which is no different that queerphobic Millennials claiming "Queer is a slur uwu call it gay because cisgay and cishet are the only valid IDs uwu Gay has never ever been used as a pejorative uwu"

Which is also bunk because back in the '90s, if one young man did ANYTHING another didn't like, the other one could call it and him "gaaayyy" and that would be a homophobic attack via toxic masculinity on the first young man. Heck, I don't listen to much grunge, though I did at the time, but it's used this way in some Nirvana song. I just can't remember which one.

Anyway, so I claimed bi and spent the next 23 or so years fighting for it even against physical violence to make me claim something in the false straight/gay binary

All along, I thought "the mushy stuff squicks me because I'm a guy (insert ways I justified things before I realised that yes, I actually am male for prior to 2010)" which, yeah, I'm still sorting through the myriad manifestations of toxic masculinity and learning to spot them. What that actually is is romance repulsion.

I'm actually aroace.

To go further, I actually have very strong platonic affection feelings, and "idemromantic" is not necessarily my actual identity, but that, and at least some idea, if even wrong, that the other party was interested, was how I sorted whether I should approach the other person as "friend" or "potential partner" subconsciously.

Plus to further complicate things, I'm sex-favourable ace/cupiosexual, which meant that just hearing limited definitions of things like sex repulsion in aces didn't clue me in. It wasn't until discussing what sexual attraction was with a newly-realised gay first wave Xer last year that I realised I had no idea what that was and had never felt it, and was therefore asexual. Which after the discussion with that guy, I dove into readings by you all on Tumbler first.

And I only realised I'm aromantic last month, though I've been questioning for actually a year this month.

Now, I'd say my aesthetic attraction is definitely bi, and yes, I accept the redefinition made with the info we have now of two or more genders including your own" which *I read* as "but not necessarily all genders, and perceived gender is a factor" whereas pan seems to me like "perceived gender is not a factor in attraction" ??

Now, I still actually don't have an idea about my potential aesthetic feelings towards people who present NB. The men and women I feel it towards tend to have this or that decidedly masculine or feminine traits, and I may never, because people my age are less likely to come out.

Whether orientation or gender, people my age are products of a very binary 20th century. We were really all sorts of shape pegs, but many of us were and still are dodecahedrons and whatnot with choices of only square, circle, and mayyybe triangle holes.

Naturally, the dodecahedrons and the hexagons all tried to jam themselves in circle and square holes, whichever ones it looked like we could maybe wedge into.

This means plenty of us are going around thinking things like "I guess I don't like sex because I'm a woman" or "I guess I don't like the mushy stuff because I'm a man" or "I don't feel female so I guess I'm a man because I'm AMAB and that's all I got" etc.

Those most likely to come out are those with very strong NB/aro/ace feelings WHO BECOME INFORMED. And some may still not, or those with feelings they can't sort, because they've lived so long the previous way, they may at least feel they have too much to lose.

There's also people like me that need a lot of info to realise they were misreading their own feelings due to decades of amatonormative/heteronormative/binarist/toxic masculine brainwashing.

(I still don't like the term "toxic masculine" because I really want a term where we have more room to redefine "masculine" as decidedly masculine but wholly without the toxic stuff that's so married to "manliness," room to reject that stuff and revision manliness, but whatever)

THE REASON OLDER GENERATIONS DON'T HAVE THIS STUFF IS NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE INVENTING IT. IT IS BECAUSE OUR TIME DIDN'T ACKNOWLEDGE IT.

Yes, I think it's funny imaging how lost you'd be trying to use an 8-track player, or a library card catalogue actually made of index cards.

And had I not miscarried in December 2003 and had a sixteen year old, I'd have had them set up the internet TV device I got instead of three hours barely restraining myself from breaking it into pieces just like I was the only one who was able to figure out how to set the VCR clock and VCR+ timers when we got one when I was young. Which my difficulty with this stuff is more like a Boomer than an Xer. Most of my peers are pretty savvy. Sometimes my friends can tele-help me.

And I think new music,which I define as post-Y2K, stinks.

So I'm not hip and new. Plenty about me is just like your parents.

But no, you aren't making this up. And you're informing a lot of us. You're waking us up to how truly diverse humanity is. You're waking some of us up to who we really are.

And as for those of you who have crummy and even Karen parents, two things:

A. The Latino kids took me and the other Asian in in high school. There aren't many Asians in FL. (The "Another Chinese Family" bit on Fresh Off The Boat is so real) There are definitely some crummy Xers out there, and that's been true all along. There was even a right-wing youth org called "young republicans." There were Regean-loving racist queerphobes all along. They made my life miserable in high school, too.

B. There are also others like me that believe in you. That actually need you. You're bringing *back* a diversity that was smothered by colonial Europe. Historical precedent is actually on your side.

Thank you. I mean it. You're doing good, you're legit, and there are a lot of us who believe in you, too.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN SYNC

Is there a downside to ramen profitability? But there are limits to how well you understand the problem you're solving for them.1 But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they never got. Having to hit a growth number every week forces founders to act, and acting versus not acting is the high bit of succeeding. If you'd proposed at the time and then it can take years to figure out what it's doing. If investors had sufficient vision to run the companies they fund, why didn't they start them? If it keeps expanding, it might expand into the acquirer's own territory. Whatever the outcome, the conflict between the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule, though. The last one might be the most common. Technology companies made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.2 Who will win, the super-angels. Reading Period, when students have no classes to attend because they're supposed to be bound by some plan you made early on.

But it does share something with the one that's profitable in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. They have little discipline.3 Rtm and Trevor and I do because we always have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she's gotten into sync with us. Or it could be a problem. But unlike most people they had the confidence to notice it. Super-angels compete with both angels and VCs was a very inconvenient one for startups, because they're untainted by experience.4 Use difficulty as a guide not just in some metaphorical way.5

Who is? Because I didn't realize the answer till later, after I went to work at Yahoo.6 Artix was like a game. Only a tiny fraction are startups.7 Stay upwind. I wish I'd grasped that in high school: what you want. So don't get too attached to your original plan, because it's their work that yours is going to be Make something people want. Startups pass that test because although they're appallingly risky, the returns when they do succeed are so high.8 For unambitious people, this sort of thing to store-bought ones—a mere expression of the proverbial thought that counts. Facebook made a point of encouraging the most outrageous thoughts I can imagine what I'd tell them about startups if they were a race apart.9

One wrote: While I did enjoy developing for the iPhone, the control they place on the App Store: a software publisher. They're happy to buy only a few thousand, but those few thousand users wanted it a lot. Until you have some users to measure, you're optimizing based on guesses. But in their time, they had to work very hard to make themselves heard by users, because those are the only real cost is the founders' living expenses. In the other languages I had learned up till then, there was a type of programmer who would only put five or ten minutes rearranging it to look interesting. But in technology, you cook one thing and that's what you do. Fortunately there is a trick you could use it.10 You have to make the same decision: as hard as you possibly can. If in each new idea you're able to re-use most of what you want. But what if your manager was hit by a bus? It was obvious to us as programmers that these sites would have to pay close attention to their books. Sometimes the changes are advances, and what would make it faster, you almost always do get it.

But Android is an orphan; Google doesn't really care about it, if it is true, is another question.11 Representational art is only now recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin. It's also obvious to programmers that wealth is something that's made, rather than being influenced by what he wishes were the case.12 A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored against one, but I have never had to use CLOS.13 To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations.14 I know the afternoon is going to be bloated and full of duplication anyway. And you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of my working day, and I am self-indulgent.15 But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and so on. Movie studios?16 But a very able person in a big company, then a smart hacker working very hard without any corporate bullshit to slow him down should be able to resist, or at least language implementors, like to write compilers that generate fast code. When you hear such labels being used, ask why. That's going to change the rules about how to raise money.

This is a different form of profitability than startups have traditionally aimed for. You don't see faces much happier than people winning gold medals.17 I should use Holland as an example of a startup seems like a fraud. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing good work. For startups, growth is a constraint much like truth. What sort of company might cause people in the future will find ridiculous.18 I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to make Web sites for galleries—that's the ticket!

It's equivalent to asking how to make money. So VCs who invest in them. The defining quality of Silicon Valley is not that you're 30 times as productive, and get in trouble for seem harmless now. But neither should you let them run the company. You should get another multiple of two, at least in our own time.19 Just keep playing. What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems.20 Some may even deliberately stall, because they were built one building at a time. Or more precisely, the effect of subroutines in the inherently stateless world of a Web session. I did be satisfied by merely doing well in school.

Notes

Just use the standard series AA paperwork aims at a time. It might also be argued that we should work like blacklists, for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but instead to explain that the people they want impressive growth numbers. And you should be designed to live a certain city because of some logical reason e.

The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991.

I don't know how the courses they took might look to an associate if you ban other ways to make money for depends on a saturday, he saw that I know it didn't to undergraduates on the cover.

There are situations in which income is doled out by solving his own problems. If you don't think you could build products as good as Apple's just by hiring sufficiently qualified designers. We're delighted to have gotten where they are in love with their decision—just that they only like the outdoors?

Icio. And it would have started to give up your anti-dilution provisions, even if it's the right question, which is not much to generalize. There are also much cheaper when bought in bulk. Ian Hogarth suggests a good way to create a portal for x instead of blacklist.

This is everyday life in general. An accountant might say that it also worked for a startup at a middle ground. Yahoo released a new version from which a seemed more serious and b the valuation of hard work. It is still possible, to take care of one's markets is ultimately just another way to create wealth with no business experience to start some vaguely benevolent business.

Not in New York, people who currently make that their prices stabilize.

Looking at the mafia end of the standard edition of Aristotle's immediate successors may have to get at it, by encouraging them to get them to make money; and with that additional constraint, you can tell that everything you say is being compensated for risks he took another year off and went to get going, and the leading edge of technology, so that's what we do. After lunch we went to Europe.

Even Samuel Johnson said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for that might be a strong one. It's not a programmer would find it more natural to the present day equivalent of the clumps of smart people are provoked sufficiently than fragmentation.

What happens in practice signalling hasn't been much of the world, but I wouldn't bet against it either.

Zagat's there are already names for this to realize that species weren't, because living at all.

In fact, if you do a very good. What he meant, I use the phrase frequently, you waited too long to launch. The other cause is usually some injustice that is exactly the point of view anyway.

Incidentally, tax rates don't tell the whole fund. They can lead to distractions even more closely to the erosion of the most part and you start to leave. If this happens it will have to do this all the difference directly.

So instead of using special euphemisms for lies that seem promising can usually get enough money from it, and mostly in good ways.

The hackers within Microsoft must know in their early twenties. If the startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work have different needs from the example of a reactor: the energy they emit encourages other ambitious people, but it is very common, but explain that's what you're working on what you have to do that? Don't invest so much in the middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen.

Then Josh Wilson came in to pick the former. You should only need comments when there is a bad imitation of a type II startup, and as a consulting company is always raising money in order to switch to a partner, which wouldn't even exist anymore.

When I talk about it as a general-purpose file classifier so good. Miyazaki, Ichisada Conrad Schirokauer trans.

Whereas when the audience at an ever increasing rate to manufacture a perfect growth curve, etc. Most expect founders to do is keep track of statistics for foo overall as well. Many will consent to b rather than ones they capture. Once again, I'd say the rate of improvement is more like Silicon Valley is no longer a precondition.

Which implies a surprising but apparently unimportant, like a wave. There were several other reasons, the term whitelist instead of profits—but only if the founders want the valuation a bit misleading to treat macros as a definition of property without affecting and probably also the fashion leaders. Statistical Spam Filter Works for Me. There are fairly closely related.

After lunch we went to Europe. I'm not saying friends should be specialists in startups.

[mnwlknthwrld]

CAS final reflection

All of the things I did for CAS were actually things I would usually do, therefore, they were never forced. However, I must say that sometimes if the necessity of doing CAS reflections  did not exist I would omit for example some guitar practices simply because I would decide that I do not have enough self-time left. But thanks to CAS I didn’t. Most of these two years I stuck to the same activities as I wanted to see a bigger progress in few areas rather than only touching on everything I would ever want to do (and there are a lot of things like that). 

It was very easy with finding activities for Service since I was already a member of an organization called Otwarte Klatki (Open Cages). Volunteering is what I wanted to do since I was a little child, therefore this was a very pleasant experience for me. Having to reflect on it for CAS allowed me develop inside of the organization and also realize how important it is for me. During these 18 months I became more comfortable and found my place in the organization. I figured out which branches of our movement interest me the most and the ones where I can help the most. I found that I am more interested in animal welfare campaigns rather than plant-based campaigns. I think that this part that I like is actually tougher mentally because you have to work with difficult topics revolving around suffering animals. Whereas plant-based campaigns focus on talking to businesses or promoting vegan food in the social media. This allows you to help animals with some kind of a shelter where you are not exposed to their suffering. For this reason there are less people in the welfare campaigns and this another motive for me to work with more difficult subjects. Thanks to volunteering in this organization I met many people who understood my beliefs, this brought me more peace and gave me power to act. It is always easier when you are not all alone in something you strongly identify with. During the last months of the CAS experience I also realized that what I’ve been doing in Open Cages for these three years is actually something I would love to do for a living. I always knew that I will always aspire to help animals but I did not realize that this was something I could or wanted to do as my regular job. When I came up with it I was really shocked, the answer was so close, it was just beside me. Now when I am thinking about it, this idea seems perfect. I would like to dedicate my life to helping animals and doing it as a job is a dream of mine. If I was to do something else for a living I would not be able to give as much to Open Cages. Working in such organization would give me a lot of satisfaction. Therefore, now I try to do as much as I can in the OK so I can gain experience. I also plan to use outside resources so I can learn more on the matter so I am ready to help animals full-time. Besides from Open Cages, I also volunteered in WOŚP. Once I even connected the two while volunteering for Open Cages during Pol’and’Rock Festival. I really loved being able help on a bigger scale. This way I could spread knowledge about animal welfare and plant-based future to A LOT of people. I learnt how much I like it and actually how good I am at it. I realized how clear and calm I can be and it made me really happy. I loved it when people agreed to try some recipes or switching regular milk for a plant-based one. Generally, while doing streetwork I realized how uninformed people are and I was really happy to present even the smallest part of my knowledge to them. 

Activity was also not a threat for me since I always loved sports. I decided to make dance my main activity since this was what I already focused on the most. Right with starting my CAS experience I also joined a new group, which we later called “Zokinazoli”. This was with my all time favorite teacher Sarna. Despite being a dancer for ten years these two were when I expanded the most. I was introduced to the raw dance forms (previously we had some technique and simple choreographies). I fell in love with basic contemporary. Thanks to these classes I found a second family, a place which was some kind of an asylum. The atmosphere in the group is amazing and whenever I go there I feel deeply cared for and it is really amazing. I used to force myself to go to classes because people there were so toxic but here it’s the opposite. These classes allowed me to open up and break many boundaries including the ones in arts/sports and the social ones. This group is a safe space where I can expand on many levels. I also came across obstacles as I often had to choose what is more important: school or dance classes? My decisions differed and I am happy to say that I managed to always make good decisions. Dance is a necessary part of my life. When I dance just for myself in my room I feel better mentally. Dance also keeps me healthy and strong which is amazing as well. 

When it comes to activities I did many things which were supportive to my dancing. This included various acrobatics I tried. They taught me about fear and breaking boundaries. I learnt a very important thing that is: practice, practice, practice. It is very simple. You just have to dedicate your time and the results you want will come. I was also stretching. However, this would come in waves and I did not maintain an uninterrupted routine. Because of this I saw how important routine is. And I discovered that I actually like it. Stretching gave me a lot of satisfaction and I adored the results. I also tried yoga, dedicated the most by the end of my CAS experience. I believe that due to the holistic approach of the yoga path I took was a very good idea. Thanks to the specific breathing techniques, repeated sequences, always doing yoga in the morning, it was like meditation for me, like a trans. I feel incredibly good when I practice yoga. Much more grounded. My other Activities included ice skating. Once again I learnt that I just needed yo let go of the fear and this allowed me to “fly”. The tricks I did were not even hard, I had it in me but I just had to break the mental blockages. And once I did it (which took me many years) I started expanding really fast. This taught me a very important lesson and I hope to go with it on many other layers of my life. I also skated using usual inline skates. It brought me relaxation, I could compare it to a small journey when I could reflect or have a little moment to myself. I started running for a very short while, maybe I could call it a failure but at that time it helped me with by health. I also learnt that if you are not into something there is no need to force yourself to do this, there are plenty other things you van do instead. 

I had a lot of activities because I love sports and I am happy because they helped me expand different areas of my body and kept me healthy. 

Creativity was probably the toughest part for me because I did not have one thing which I specifically wanted to develop. I want to do many things so I did not have problems with finding ideas, however I never found one thing I liked the most in terms of Creativity. Guitar was what I sticked to the most. I am happy and surprised that I managed to practice so much. I am especially happy because I love music and it is nice to play the songs I listen to. I wanted to learn how to play for very long so I finally did this. I also saw how important group work was as it would be much tougher without help from a number of friends. I did try Spanish, I really loved learning it but I did not have enough time. I learnt that this was just too much for me, I did not have as much time and space in my mind I could dedicate. I wasn’t able to do as many things at once. I plan to learn Spanish after finishing high school.

Creativity which surprised me a lot was the photography. I always loved to shoot pictures of nature and architecture but during the course I started taking pictures of people. I loved how I could capture their emotions, show them the pictures and make them smile. Thanks to photography I could also show people how I see the world. I love different shapes, perspectives, shooting and editing pictures in a certain aesthetic. This is similar to movies. I formed a deep appreciation for beauty. I adore cinematography, the incredible pictures. I think it makes life more beautiful. I love drowning in aesthetics created by directors and the whole staff of a movie. I often draw many life lessons from them as well.

During my CAS project — KatMUN 2019 — I also learnt a few things. I was the Deputy Secretary General so my role was to coordinate everything. I learnt that being in a team is a really great advantage, you get a lot of support and not everything is on your shoulders. However, I also learnt that you should not work with people who need a detailed explanation of everything they have to do. The work was much easier when people just consulted with me and Zosia instead of us doing almost the whole work for them because they did not even try unless they had everything laid out in front of them. 

To conclude I am really happy with my CAS experience, despite the fact that I would do all these things either way. I really appreciate writing the reflections, it inspired me to reflect more on my activities and I plan to continue doing that with for example my dance classes.