ProfessorYakkington

Once I had to use the internet without and ad blocker ( shiver ). It was horrible. I still have nightmares.

Joking aside. I couldn’t believe how crammed full and chaotic sites were without an ad blocker. I have no evidence to support this other than my experience but I think , for me , ad blockers are good for my mental health. Being constantly exposed to all those messages trying to exploit insecurities can’t be good for people.

Anyways ad blockers are the best.

This seems very obvious to me , not that it isn’t worth highlighting. Particularly in a world with open models and weights , which we should desperately want. The don’t worry water marks will be a thing just seems like an attempt have some response that dampers concerns. I don’t imagine most people working in the AI space actually think this would work. I could be wrong.

Yeah I 100% understand and to a large extent agree with this. I think money should be involved , creators should get paid. I don’t think peertube has become “the answer” yet and there is some combination of market level event and technology/feature set that needs to be in place to create enough moment for people to move off YouTube. It will happen eventually ( I think ) but what exist today isn’t enough of a pull to overcome the momentum YouTube has but that doesn’t mean that “we” should give up.

As much as I like the privacy frontends I think 'we' have to move to alternative platforms sooner than later and pull the bandaid vs. continuing to indirectly be dependent on google as the base platform.

Yeah it is great -- their sales are pretty good but they kind of hide it but I often pick up a bunch of books from there and then host them on my home server so my family can read the books I bought. Also good to support your local book shop if you can , in my opinion.

https://libro.fm/ you can buy audiobooks through independent book store and they are drm free. It’s great. If you want more of an eye patch solution. You could rip audio from YouTube. There tends to be a lot of books uploaded there.

I really wanted this game to be amazing but I’ve heard very mixed things to not good things. Perhaps I will give it a go after the update.

No worries. Honestly , this is a pretty hard question to answer. I've always been NB, but for a long time I didn't have the 'words' or 'desire' to acknowledge it. For me it is very much a combination of 'feeling' and 'philosophy' -- It started as an acknowledgment that I was pretending a lot , mostly to try and fit into gendered social circles. For me I wasn't pretending to be male or female , I was pretending to be either. Once I acknowledge that I was pretending to feel and like or not feel and not like specific things to fit into social structures I started to be more honest with myself and actually be open to who I am. It was and continues to be a Journey. Very similar to you I realized that I "can't be bothered with [socially] constructed masculinity or the version of masculinity my family expected from me and started distancing myself." At first I distanced toward Fem but that didn't work for me either -- it does for a lot of people , many of which are probably here and I am absolutely in love with the fact that it does work for them and inspired to continue figuring out my own truth. Eventually , I was really tired of not 'knowing' where I fit and just decided to not give a F*** and set everything aside and embrace my non-definable-self. This worked for me and was a literal weight off my shoulders. It just feels right for me. I call this NB. Others do it differently.

I feel bad going off topic to NB stuff in this thread/community meant to celebrate and unite TransFem ( I love my chosen family and community ) but also didn't want to not respond to you given all of this stuff is hard and we all need support. Happy to answer more questions in Direct Messages if you want. Hope this is helpful : )

I don’t know you but I am proud of you. I am only out to a few people as NB and the thought of coming out to my coworkers is particularly scary for some reason. Thanks for the inspiration.