My homie, you can be an ally the same way us cishetero folks can. You just support trans folks however and whenever you can. How you choose to self label is 100% independent of that, even when that self label is no label at all.

Just don’t use the pronoun labeling at all, you’ll be fine. I don’t think I’ve run across anything where you’re required to have it. There might be, but I haven’t run across it.

Your self, your sense of identity is just as valid as anyone else’s.

The only places there that haven’t changed are the tiny game subs, to my limited willingness to use the site. I have checked the niche subs I used to moderate, and all but one is swamped with bullshit. Even that one has changed some. The only ones of those unchanged are the ones I had set to private ages before spez threw his little hissy-fit. The ones that were public are either dead, botted, or just unchecked insanity with bad moderation. Spam everywhere.

Fuck that noise, grow it out and rock a skullet like a beast

It’s neither beneficial nor an inherent detriment.

It doesn’t provide enough padding to matter for anything, and the dangers of it bring grabbed are vastly exaggerated (been doing martial arts and grappling in one form or another since jr high, if you count a little wresting then, so over thirty years with breaks here and there, and bearded the entire adult time).

At best, blows will slide more and cut less, but not enough to really matter. At worst, having it grabbed hurts, which can be a bad distraction, but it isn’t so sturdy as to not be easy to escape. It either pulls loose if their grip is bad, pulls out if their grip is good enough, or makes sure their hands are easy to reach, and allows you an easy access inside their reach.

Every little pro has a con, and vice versa, with none of it being a deciding factor.

A ponytail is worse, and a braid worse than that.

Besides, anyone with a beard that isn’t just full mountain man is going to be oiling or otherwise treating their beard. This makes bare handed grips next to useless on them. And if you’re in a full contact sparring session, you’ll have other options to keep it from being a horrible thing.

Seriously. I have never once been tapped out because of my beard. I’ve never had any idiot during my years as a bouncer be successful in using it against me. Now, I have had to trim or shave it back because of having wads of it snatched out, but that’s still a very minor issue compared to the other things that can happen in a fight.

If anything, the fact that people tend to have this weird reaction to a big, bearded guy compared to just a big guy, you get in less fights in my experience outside of training or a job. Going places with a full beard, even drunks wouldn’t fuck with me the way they would other big guys. There’s a bit of some kind of reaction where people think a beard = tough sometimes. No clue why, just that it’s often enough to have noticed.

The system is still broken

Man, I truly appreciate the effort and passion you put out there. That’s some beautiful humanity inside you.

The only thing I can say that doesn’t insult what you put out is that, as wonderful as it would be for your hopes to come true, I simply don’t believe it is possible without tearing down the country built on slavery, oligarchy, and sheer hubris, and starting fresh. The system isn’t just broken, it was never whole.

Again, I am so glad to see someone put that much thought into a response to my sheer disgust at the world, and bring hope into the subject. I can’t debate the fine points of it without dishonoring the intent there. So I’ll just say thank you.

And people went the fuck home

I would say that any time a group is targeted, deprived of freedom and moved into brutal conditions, comparisons about exactly how bad a given version of a concentration camp is kinda ignores the point that they’re fucking wrong by nature. They are a stain on humanity, period.

And I actually include prisons in the United States as morally equivalent since there’s a disproportionate amount of minorities targeted the be put in there. But at least they had the pretence of due process, so it isn’t the same thing.

And make no mistake, the “holding” facilities were indeed intended to treat humans like filth. And they’re designed in a way that has led to rampant death.

The only reason that deaths haven’t reached genocide levels is no active killing, it’s all passive so that people can ignore or and pretend they aren’t responsible for each and every death that does occur. Any citizen of the United States bears the onus of what w.e did to the Japanese citizens in ww2, and we bear the onus of what has happened, and is still happening to our fellow human beings in this hellholes currently.

What I’m doing here is expressing my disgust with so-called activists and militants that claim to want serious change, but will not risk anything to do it. And yes, it is impossible to do alone, it takes feet on the ground, willing to take any action necessary, and that’s risky. Every attempt to organize a serious effort that I could find failed because nobody was willing to take action. They wanted to fuck around, have a little circle jerk about how bad it was, and go home.

We, as a population, have stood by while our fellow man have been treated worse than we treat animals. Which is pretty bad, if you’ve ever seen industrial farming.

One million, one thousand, one hundred, even one is too many.

You know, I was tempted to just give you a bit of a troll and tell you to blow me, but damn dude.

Pull down everyone in power and rebuild a nation. That’s what revolution is

Man, you can’t even get people to do anything about actual concentration camps. Like, some people tried to organize raids on the places where humans were being held because they dared to cross a border, in horrible conditions, including children. Nobody did a gods damned thing. A lot of fucking noise about how “somebody” should do something, but they couldn’t.

Yet another black man was murdered by police a few years ago, and people did rise up a little, but didn’t have the will or stamina to do the job all the way to the finish.

Truth? The people that think they’re all progressive and good are fucking complacent. They really think that they can fix the system from the inside without any sacrifice.

Fuck, you can’t even get far left radicals to actually do something concrete.

Meanwhile, the far right has ridden on the coat tails of racism and hate until they’ve been taken over completely by the racists and fascists, but they’re united enough via identity politics that they’ll never, ever let go of what they’ve gained without an actual, real fight.

It does get stuck in there. Just don’t make the mistake of going out in public until it fades lol.

I had an NPC during a table top rpg session that was my excuse to do my foghorn leghorn voice. Spent all afternoon doing that voice, and couldn’t stop when I made a beverage and snack run.

I already have a southern accent (technically a mountain accent, but that’s quibbling), so hamming it up can get absurd lol

You gotta get some foghorn leghorn in there to make it really work :)

I say, I say, you need to seize the means of production, boy.

Eh, they don’t suck as much now.

They’re on par with any of the shitty chains tbh. Crust is okay, but not much more than that even with the various options for it. Sauce is acceptable, cheese is good, some of the toppings even can be called good to great for a chain pizza. Still not my top pick of the chains, but not as bad as Caesar’s at all lol. Better than freezer pizzas at least, though digiorno does a good enough stuffed crust if that’s your bag.

There was a time dominoes was worse than Caesar’s. By a big margin, depending on the store.

It was a cider, but thank you :)

No bullshit.

Hey man, you remember that time we went to vegas and had that shootout with some mob goons, banged fifteen hookers, and rescued dogs from a fighting ring?

Great weekend! We gotta do it again sometime

Yeah, even the big names tend to not care much as long as nobody else is profiting off of their work. Agents and publishers, they tend to get right snippy about piracy lol.

Mind you, there is a segment of working authors that do suffer in their ability to go from a part time, almost hobbyist situation into a proper career of it. They tend to see the lack of sales as more of a problem, but they tend to be younger and didn’t ever see how impossible breaking in to traditional publishing was. It’s easy to look at your self published income and think “oh, if people had to buy these, I’d be making a living at this instead of it being barely enough to cover expenses for writing”. But, most of the time, back before self publishing was actually a valid and useful route, they wouldn’t have been selling anything, they’d be hoping for an agent to get their first sale for them.

And I’ll never tell anyone that they can’t profit from their own ideas and labor, and expect anyone consuming it to pay up. Authors that object, that’s fine by me (and I actually don’t pirate their stuff). But like you said, most writers would rather someone read and enjoy for free rather than not read at all.

As a published (if hilariously unsuccessful) author; no, no it isn’t.

Ffs dude, you are bonkers