eupraxia

This is definitely part of it, parking is pretty hard to find in a lot of downtown. Depending on where you are, traffic can be really bad too, especially over some of the bridges. It’s a very hilly, coastal city limited by its geography in some ways. this video’s a cool explainer on it. The city only has flat land because it burnt down, was regraded, and built back up on top of the old city.

Seattle also just has a pretty good public light rail and bus system. It’s not perfect, but in places where coverage is good it’s great. The city should be leaning into it more, but it’s also very possible to move here and get by without a car. I also suspect (just from my own observation) more people move to Seattle who don’t own a car in the first place.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?

This, 100%. For some reason people imagine vegans as an ideologically aligned group rather than a bunch of people making their own varied decisions for their own varied reasons. Then when inconsistencies come up between vegans they’ll decry it all as performative. Meanwhile, vegans themselves tend to just be happy to see others making their own best effort and the hair-splitting over what is vegan matters a lot less than generally resisting animal product consumption in any capacity.

Setting a unifying standard for a broad group of people that they’ll never meet and then reacting to the shock of them failing to meet that standard is a common rhetorical tactic in other contexts, no surprises it turns up here too.

This tracks for how a lot of people use the app, but depending on where you are you can also have some fairly normal (for a dating site) conversations with people as well. I spent a couple months on Grindr despite not being interested in hookups, since it’s a decent way to meet other trans folk in my area. My inbox was mostly dick pics but I also met some amazing people I’m still with several years later!

forreal, people have such low opinion of what kids can understand (because they think kids have all their own same biases automatically)

My partner teaches preschool, sometimes the kids ask her if she’s a boy. She says she used to be but she’s a girl now, the kids say “ohhh” and immediately move on. It only ever gets weird and confusing for the kids when the parents feel the need to argue that point.

Everyone’s gonna have different needs, but I’ve benefited a lot from having the option to sleep separately. Having a second bed set up means it can happen whenever we need, or accommodate if more people need to stay over.

Sometimes I’ll need to stretch out in a weird way or I’ll get muscle spasms that would keep us both up, so it’s a no brainer to sleep separately. Sometimes mentally I need the space too, but otherwise I really do like falling asleep with someone. So it’s like a 50/50 if it will work for me on any given night. My nesting partner tends to fall asleep a lot faster so usually I’ll cuddle her to sleep and then get back up, bumble around a little bit then go sleep in my bed. It works out great for the both of us!

congrats on nearly 2 years, that’s a huge accomplishment!!

you’re right on, imo “iron wills” are not an ideal approach to addiction management and it seems way better to come to understand the default behavior first and implement alternatives so you can incrementally resist more when triggers happen. I’m not a smoker but I see this point made in research into food, gambling, and porn addiction and it makes sense - you’re setting yourself up to take control of the behavior which is a very empowering feeling even if it’s partial control in the short term.

I crunched like hell in my mid 20s on a live service game that I enjoyed playing, was well loved and consistently played by a few fans, and had a few unique ideas in its niche. I gave up a lot of life for that game to see the light of day, under extremely tight timelines and wavering support from a flakey publisher.

It lasted less than a year in release because of a few mistakes in early access and it inhabited a saturated market that seems near impossible to penetrate now. The console ports that caused the worst months of the crunch never even saw a release.

Me and the rest of the devs would love to just play the game again, but the game’s kinda just rotting somewhere in storage of a publisher that long ago tried to pivot toward NFT/metaverse bullshit, to predictable results. Outside of a few early playtest builds a few people have (and definitely aren’t supposed to) we have basically no way of playing it ourselves, much less letting others play it. We couldn’t even get much approved to show in a portfolio once the studio closed and the assets went to the publisher. It makes me really sad and I’m no longer in game dev / tech at large professionally for that reason. This story is not unique, this is pretty much just how the industry works and devs near-universally feel screwed over by it.

In the age of early access viral hits, optimization is just something no publisher wants to put resources into before they know the game’s a success or not.

True story, a game I worked on at my last job shipped on Xbox One and PS4, the PS4 version was not even built until a month before shipping.

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It’s a culture issue, it takes time and advocacy to improve…

It’s true! And one of the most effective forms of advocacy for this sort of thing is integration. Being in public spaces, doing the same things cis people do, respecting norms that ensure everyone’s safety there, is one of the most direct ways for us to be understood as pretty much like anyone else. Not an exception, but a peer and an equal member of a community. If you construct spaces to protect people from being uncomfortable at our mere presence, you deprive them of the exact experience that is most effective at alleviating their concerns.

“Bullshit” is shorthand for “bigoted, based on inaccurate assumptions, and very possible to overcome with exposure to the group these opinions are targeted at.” I say this with love and respect for my younger self that held many of the same “bullshit” opinions. And a mild frustration and willingness to draw clear lines in the sand now that I know better. Thanks for hearing me out while I vent a bit regardless. ✌️

I understand there’s no solution here that doesn’t result in discomfort for someone, it will always be a balance, but I’m pretty opposed to declaring spaces off limits for trans people for cis people’s comfort. That does nothing but push the discomfort off into the future and deny us access to public spaces simply due to the fact that people don’t feel like seeing our bodies. Would it be appropriate to enforce acceptable BMI ranges, or require patrons to have all their limbs, or require them to have a particular skin color? All these things make some uncomfortable too, for bullshit reasons, and we wouldn’t allow for discrimination on those grounds - why are trans bodies the exception?

Not going after you in particular, this is a pretty common hangup. But it just irks me given that going to a spa every now and then is extremely important to my health due to chronic pain. If this was the norm for spas within reasonable distance of me, I’d have nowhere to go to meet that need. Denying services in this manner is not trivial or harmless.

I guess I’m of the mind that if you’re showing up to be nude in a spa around other nude people, does it actually tangibly matter which genitals are present, so long as all other norms of the space are respected? Bodies are just bodies. The rules of engagement (read: “don’t”) are still the same. Trans women are not coming into women’s spaces to harass cis women, in fact we’re a lot more likely to be harassed ourselves if we’re required to use mens-only facilities instead.

This is a spa in with locations in Tacoma/Lynnwood WA, relatively near there is a nude beach that seems to handle this just fine.

I mean, are trans people who haven’t had bottom surgery not supposed to use gender-separated locker rooms? Which one should we use? I go to a spa where I can change in the women’s locker room and it’s just very normal. I’m not concerning anyone with my dick and nobody’s concerning themselves with mine. Granted, it seems patrons of this spa remain nude while using the facilities, but it’s still a comparable example. If harassment / unwanted sexual advances are one’s concern, then unfortunately that is just possible anyway and needs to be mitigated regardless of genital configuration. They could at least let her wear a swim skirt or something y’know?

This was one of the more baffling experiences in coming out - seeing some of the most scientifically minded, media literate people I know suddenly shut off all of those instincts when they encountered “the trans debate.” Like someone with a healthy amount of skepticism around statistics linking me bullshit “average number of sexual partners” figures from a conversion therapy lobbying group. Or someone with an active dislike of sports suddenly deciding that the sanctity of women’s sports is more important than their relationship with their daughter.

The best explanation I’ve been able to come up with is that gender is regimented by complex trauma, often when we are children, and these are the types of cognitive distortions that occur when we’re in fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses. Flashbacks are often thought of as vivid sensory experiences i.e. re-experiencing the traumatic event, but it’s a spectrum of responses. Many are more subtle and feel extremely normal in the moment, while our ability to reason is actually overtaken by our need to feel safe in the face of a perceived threat.

I think this kind of statistics vomit can sometimes be a “flight” response to a perceived threat of someone being trans in proximity to them. Flight responses are characterized as attempting to avoid a threat by throwing oneself into action not to overcome, but escape the threat. Perhaps a wall of text with nuanced-and-reasoned set dressing and lots of links and numbers feels like a wall between them and “the problem.”

I feel there’s some parallels here with fat shaming. (and addiction shaming in general) People exposed to judgemental attitudes about their weight are measurably more likely to become obese, no matter their initial weight. Shaming can make one more fixated on their desire for food, and when that desire is in the front of one’s mind, it raises the psychological effort required to resist the urge for comfort in food. That effort is not infinite and will eventually run out, which is why white-knuckling through a diet tends to not lead to permanent results.

Misinformed sex education teaches us to feel shame for sexual urges most everyone has, and in a similar capacity could make one more fixated on that urge. If one instead has a positive view toward their sexuality, they do not have to cope with insecurities that remind them of temptation toward something they’re not supposed to do but would be immensely pleasurable. They just do it from time to time and it doesn’t bleed into the rest of their life.

idk a bit personal but, I find accepting all parts of my sexuality (especially the parts that make me feel icky) has made me much less prone to risky behavior. shame makes it difficult to make good decisions. I’m a lot more clearheaded now and can just enjoy physical affection with someone I love. I can communicate what I’d enjoy and set appropriate boundaries. fantasy and reality are more well separated now. importantly, I am more satisfied at a baseline and therefore seeking out sex less on the whole.

Body and sex positivity works extremely well as a means of coping with primal urges, not only because it makes us feel better about parts of us that will never go away, but also because accepting them actually leads to better self-control and decisionmaking.

in fact they come from the same Latin roots! “trans-” = “on the other side of”, “cis-” = “on the same side of.” Useful to know as some will use the word “transgender” and take offense to being labeled “cisgender” - if one word is valid, they both are.

definitely seconding this - I used it the most when I was using Unreal Engine at work and was struggling to use their very incomplete artist/designer-focused documentation. I’d give it a problem I was having, it’d spit out some symbol that seems related, I’d search it in source to find out what it actually does and how to use it. Sometimes I’d get a hilariously convenient hallucinated answer like “oh yeah just call SolveMyProblem()!” but most of the time it’d give me a good place to start looking. it wouldn’t be necessary if UE had proper internal documentation, but I’m sure Epic would just get GPT to write it anyway.

definitely helps to bow out instead of talking down to a beginner. “it seems you’re having an issue with X, I would recommend reading up on Y and Z because [how they relate to your problem]” is helpful, a very natural stopping point, is useful to people who search and find the thread in the future.

probably the only thing that’ll bring me back to professional game dev. especially cool to see after how brutal of a year it’s been for the industry. hope this works out for them!!