CW

You’re not alone. I do this too, in a slightly different way. I’m too skeptical to be religious or believe in reincarnation, but if any religion were real, I’m drawn to Norse paganism, because some of the ordinary people who don’t die fighting or meet the conditions of other afterlives get to become spirits of the land they live on. The body and soul are separate things in that religion, so it’s said that your soul leaves and you take on a new form after death. And for me, that could be something like a cis body.

I don’t actually believe it, but I do hope I’m wrong about the nothingness of death. When things get really bad, I think a lot about haunting a forest I live near when I die, just existing invisibly, peacefully alone there and sometimes helping people who get lost. Life can be really awful sometimes and I’ve found myself thinking more about what comes next. It’s hard not to these days, with the absolute cosmic unfairness of our circumstances.

I don’t know if that’s healthy either, and my interest in Norse mythology definitely might be an outcropping of really, this is the only life I get? The one where no one understands my womanhood and I’m always under threat for it? I think right now it’s a fun hobby and comforting thoughts during hard times. I don’t see myself ever getting lost in those thoughts or, like, joining some sort of cult that tells me what I want to hear.

So I’m just trying to live my life while I have it. Most people won’t understand me, and peace isn’t something I’ll ever fully get in my lifetime. But I make my own peace in nature hiking in forests, spending time with my wife, living authentically, and anything else that helps me find happiness before I die.

They say the best way not to get addicted is to never start, but for me the experience of smoking a cigar was so bad that I never wanted to smoke again. Worst thing I ever put in my mouth.

Elections have never really turned out my way since I aged into voting in 2016, but…this one hit extra hard. So I get where you’re coming from.

I will absolutely show up for the general, but I’m feeling pretty demoralized and will probably not vote with my heart anymore. Crowley is still a progressive on all the issues other than data centers, but this “reach across the aisle” political style has been proven to fail since the Republican legislature stonewalls the aisle-crosser on day one, which is exactly what happened with Obama. He keeps trying to bring in center-right and Republican voters, but I haven’t seen him to much to bring in progressives, and I’d like that in future campaigning.

He has the resume, the background, and the experience, but it’s hard to get excited about him when he makes the same vague statements over and over. I recently watched an interview where he said that his vision is to take control of Wisconsin “for 8 to 10 years.” I want a leader who is serious about making us a blue state for the foreseeable future like Minnesota and Illinois.

Sorry, rant over. Crowley 2026.

Edit: Okay, it seems like he’s starting to campaign for progressive folks with his weed legalization plan. Hopefully we see more like that in the coming months!

Understandable. The best way to avoid ads on Facebook is to not use Facebook at all.

Sadly, no. I tried to pull sources that had full text, but there were a few where that was not the case.

One of the things I miss most from college was free and universal access to this stuff.

And thank you for challenging me on this. If you’re right, there are definitely possible futures to be prepared for.

Unless companies make bespoke software tools or SaaS programs for different industries that use agentic AI, which I think is likely since there are many industry-specific software tools made externally in B2B contexts, AI and predating AI. There’s already paid AI tools everywhere of debateable levels of value and usefulness.

Non-programmer employees being expected to build agents may happen, but there’s too much of a value proposition for external companies to forgo it. And there’s also a possibility of companies bringing in contract programmers who develop those agents, or using in-house IT departments.

We’re currently in a really awkward early adoption phase where end-users are being given open-ended LLM and agent tools to just play around with, and with or without a crash, I do see the industry shift toward better software integration where the end-users won’t have to adopt this makeshift developer role. And then the adjustment period would be simple as AI tools start to look more like regular software that’s quick to pick up with minimal risk of skills gaps or being left behind.

I could be wrong, of course, but that’s basically my read on the situation.

I’m a big fan of TomboyX. The durability is amazing and I’ve had my pairs for a few years now with no loose treads. They recently put out a new fabric weave that’s way more moisture-wicking that I also love.

I don’t recommend Leolines. All the pairs I’ve owned come apart right where the tuck is within a few months. It’s fixable, but I want a longer lifespan out of my garments before I have to get out my needle and thread.

I do have Leolines’ bikini bottom since I don’t swim often, so I can’t attest to their quality yet. I do like the simple design because you can wear it right underneath whatever swimsuit set you want.

I hope someday a company makes merino wool tucking underwear. Then I can die a happy woman.

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I’d do this if it meant I could finally play Halo 5, but I’d likely unsubscribe immediately after. And I’ve been eyeing Phantom Dust on the Windows Store for a while.

Game Pass doesn’t feel worth installing/dual-booting Windows over, so I appreciate that this project exists. In a roundabout way, I think this could lessen folks’ dependence on Microsoft in the long run.

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I don’t really agree, at least for the people using agentic AI at the end-user level and not programming the models, and think the difficulty of agentic AI gets exaggerated as well. It’s the same concepts on a wider scale. Multistage and automated operations in software predate AI in one way or another and people have adapted fine, to the extent where it will take a relatively small amount of professional development to catch up if needed.

Edit: Sorry, didn’t mean to spam this comment! Having site issues at the moment. Will delete the redundant comments when I can.

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Here you go!

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00779-024-01830-8#Sec12

2.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349711573_The_most_human_bot_Female_gendering_increases_humanness_perceptions_of_bots_and_acceptance_of_AI

3.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385046331_He_or_she_Impact_of_gender’s_well-being_chatbots_on_user_perceptions_and_intentions_a_study_of_agency_communality_and_trust

4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337403025_Gender_Bias_in_Chatbot_Design

5. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-ai-bots-and-voice-assistants-reinforce-gender-bias/

6. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-19212-2#Sec19

7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949882126000757#sec4

8. https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/21003

9.https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S1757581825000131#sec002.4.7

10. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol30/iss2/4/

11. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2444569X25002239

12. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10778012251397966

13. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/dcc80056-89bb-48ae-b45f-975d4aea957f/content

14. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43681-026-01049-8

Yes, exactly! I don’t think AI is very hard to learn; I don’t think people who abstain from it “will fall behind” in their lives and careers. Wow, use a plain-language interface instead of the more complex boolean, then add specificity to the query and hope it doesn’t hallucinate. So hard. So complex. You’re so smart, AI bros. /s

So many people 1) think of AI as their unpaid “personal assistant” and at the same time 2) think of AI chatbots as being women. I really hope AI doesn’t accidentally re-normalize the master/servant dynamic, and it may not, but it’s something to watch out for in the coming years.

I work in a field (technical editing) that may be replaced by AI bosses overvaluing AI, but at the moment, my job is more necessary than ever because all my writers now insist on sending me slop instead of actually doing their jobs.

A lot of Buzzfeed-type articles, of which this article may or may not be a part of, exist to drum up engagement since the business model is to pump out new articles on a daily basis to maximize exposure to ads. So it can be hard to be sure whether a proposed problem is a genuine one felt by a significant part of a marginalized community. Like, there were a handful of queer- and trans-focused think pieces in 2016 HuffPost that would sometimes make me raise an eyebrow, just to provide a personal example. And in many cases the author doesn’t bother to provide hard data or evidence of harm being done beyond one or two interviewees, which was the case here.

The downside of some well-meaning online activism is it can lead to some extremely perfunctory actions like changing one’s profile pics for one week to “support BLM” before resuming their lives as normal, or even radicalize people farther right after mistakenly thinking some odd think piece is what we all uniformly think.

I want to be supportive and open to criticism, and there’s a lot I don’t know, but I’m also skeptical of capitalistic news agencies that can sometimes cause more division than unity. But if someone in my personal life felt I was doing cultural appropriation with my personal aesthetic, I’d want to know so I can stop doing that.

c/feminism on either Beehaw or lemmy.world would be good options if this post happens to get taken down.