FOSS works on the premise of an angry engineer, that someone finally got pissed off about a problem enough to write a solution.

This so tracks.

All we need is for the communist government to say we like what you’re trying to do. Here’s an allowance for expenses!

A yawn is a signal to regain some alertness, so when you yawn in order to become more awake, it signals your fellow life forms they might want to be alert too. 🥱

I’ve realized that IRL there are no character traits we want a man to have but not a woman, and vice versa. This is the train of thought that leads me to gender abolition, at least for myself.

Masculinity no longer means anything positive, and the popular folk who assert that it means something insist that it means things that I find objectionable, and who behave in ways that are objectionable, themselves.

I’m reminded of the redaction that was a page of black lines with a single word, approximately center-page, that was still legible:

research

Enby or NB (non-binary) is just a catch-all category for those of us who are genderqueer, whether two spirited, neither, alternating, both, third-gender or whatever, it all falls under enby.

You know, all of the twenty first century so far in the US could be someone mucking around with a monkey paw.

…Or a time machine.

I’ve deliberated at length at what masculinity means to me, which I explain here – sorry about the sloppy link.

tl;dr: My early perspectives of manhood come from the cold war: the capacity to hold onto immense (⚛☢) amounts of power and not use it inappropriately, and never in aggression. In time it became taking care of business; to man up is to pony up and pay bills and make sure adult stuff is managed. But in the 1990s that became adulting and was expected of everyone who was of majority.

Now, manhood is about using grandfathered presumptions of masculinity to preserve old power structures and oppress women and minorities, and I want nothing to do with any of it.

I hope I’ll just be the same, only happier and with sexual interests (or lack thereof) that match my circumstances. As I mention elsewhere, I really don’t want to turn into my dad, who is a full MAGA disciple and football fanatic who loves Trump with all his heart.

Considering the men on my mother’s side of the family tree all usually lose their hair in their thirties, I may also lose mine, and I’m not thrilled with the idea.

There’s a strong possibility my major depression is related. I was a very late bloomer, and was antagonized by school sports teams and their coaches when in primary school. (It was the eighties). My body hair has always been thin. Only in my fifties have I been able to grow a moustache, and then with no small amount of cultivation. I have a full head of hair at 58 even though the men on mom’s side of the family go bald in their thirties.

I’ve also been a meek, gentle soul, all my life, and for multiple partners, was able to be the one who didn’t rampage with lost tempers. My passivity may have to do more with ASD and not having the impetus to assert my soft boundaries.

Curiously, I was conservative in my early twenties, which was all undone as the premises my ideology was founded on were demonstrated to be false. Actual facts and studies pushed me to the left with the rise of the internet and access to more factual information. I research out of habit.

ETA Questions about low T rose in my fifties when my libido bottomed out leading to the end of my relationship of twelve years (it wasn’t the only factor but it was a factor). Now I look at porn and my brain doesn’t understand what the curves mean but knows they’re important. Now I have yearnings for some kind of ambiguous contact maybe more than cuddling… though I’m also touch starved right now, so that’s a factor. I’m not yet at the garlic-bread threshold and wish my brain would make up its mind.

I can’t speak to how hormones affect people generally, but looking at how my father behaves (and is a MAGA disciple and Trump worshipper) I’m terrified of becoming more like him.

Every person is different, and based on my heritage, I have some scary ideas of who I might have been via small nudges of destiny or biology.

For most of my life I was a gender abolitionist. I just didn’t care, really, about my masculinity. I’d still be down for GA except I recognize that trans folk get so much out of being their true gender. It makes them really happy, so there’s obviously something there.

I’d identify purely as enby (undefined) except I’ve become repulsed at how maleness is represented in society. With examples of masculinity like Donald J. Trump, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan, I’ve given up on maleness, and have proverbially burned my man card.

(Oh, I recently learned my levels of T are atypically low and probably have been all my life. I am seeing an endocrinologist in December to see if I’m a candidate for hormone replacement. I’ll try it so long as I don’t become a sex pest or a Republican or violent. I may be sad if I lose my hair.)

So now I’m Enby (undefined, but absolutely not a man).

That’s an example of genderqueer.

ETA I’ve deliberated at length at what masculinity looks like, and expressed my sentiments here – sorry about the messy link.

To be fair, Clinton won the majority in 2016. Trump won because the EC fucked America. Again, as per the last time a Republican was elected without being an incumbent.

If we don’t fix the Electoral College, I anticipate more Republicans will be unexpectedly elected in upcoming general elections.

A hill I will die on: Marie Antoinette deserved better.

Source: The You’re Wrong About episode about her. (on buzzsprout)

I use my context menu key as the chording key to control any keyboard macro profiles, so that I can terminate, reload, summon for editing or summon a help file as needed.

There are VPNs that operate in stealth mode so they don’t look like VPN traffic as they’re being used.

Still illegal, but not detectable. No riskier than being a political activist antagonistic to the state.

Middle-ages cloistered monks really had a lot of time on their hands and no other entertainment, so yeah, crazy art of whatever comes to mind.

I remember there was an end-goal of a communist state to ultimately disband bureaus. Marx explained how to get things started, less the ultimate goals, so I might be thinking of a dubdivision of communist theory. Soviet communism (lower case, like soviet – referring to committees) still had public officials in its provisional state that had more power than the common citizen, at least within the purview of their office, but officials trusted with power is regarded as a necessary evil.

Participatory democracy (in which everyone votes on every little thing – at least every thing to which they’re a stakeholder) is another model that works similarly, but again, without some amazing databasing tools and personal platform customization, it’s not possible to do this effectively even if we master internet voting: We’d need to find a balance between reducing constituent administrative burden and providing enough time and means so that everyone is sufficiently participating in their civic duties, and voting as suits their personal best interests (and not on any superfluous issues that don’t concern them).

Communism and democracy are multiple models aiming for the same outcome, but again, we expect to get closer without ever reaching absolute perfection of even distribution of power… Well, we expect to get closer when a society actually strives towards doing so, contrasting allowing a select few elites secure political power for themselves.

A witchier version of the same sentiment.

I’d argue they don’t care because they aren’t issued the resources necessary to care. Our workers also don’t have enough time / energy to parent or to engage in their civic duties of working out what is in their best interests and voting accordingly. Let alone the impetus to imagine a better world and strive for it.

It’s difficult to say if this was intentional all along, or just a happy(?) accident of overworking our labor force out of sheer greed,¹ but it belies the drift of abusive systems towards greater dysfunction, which is why we need ironclad protections against labor abuse.

Not that we’re going to get it necessarily without blood…or with blood for that matter. It’s why violent revolution is on the table since the masses can’t afford the time and energy to conduct non-violent protest.

I’d credit our oppressors for being thorough, but they really aren’t all that bright, so I no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.

¹ We now have studies that show a well-treated labor force is worth the extra expense, from sheer productivity increase alone. Our upper management is just too short-sighted, too divisionist and too paranoid to bother to make their companies worth putting the effort in for, even though optimizing for profit is their job description.

As a note, communism involves some ideas that are impossible or nearly so.

Imagine a society in which every person has exactly the same sociopolitical power as every other person; representatives and officials do not have additional power; that’s a property of a truly communist society. We don’t believe that can be done IRL.

Imagine a society in which everyone’s needs are met for an extreme body of needs (say as defined by the UN Universal Declaration of Human RIghts). The only transients that exist either are in a short line to be issued a dwelling, or don’t want one. Everyone is fed. Everyone has their own stuff. This isn’t impossible, but is difficult as heck to reach.

Communism is a goal that a society tries to reach similar to a zero homicide rate We don’t expect to get there, but we do want our society to ever get closer, as we discover new means to approach that limit.

We reach for the ideal of a communist society. We never expect to actually get there.