Way to go! I’ve just started working out again too and I absolutely share your pain. I’ve been doing strength training though, I always struggle to get outside to do cardio when it’s this damn cold haha. Good on you for looking after your knees and best of luck when you start doing leg day, I know a lot of people hate it, but personally it’s my favourite.

Either way, keep it up! I hope we both stick to our plans and make amazing progress.

I went to court to appeal my conviction and fine, I was expecting a good behaviour bond but nope! Turns out judges don’t like when cops lock you up for 7 hours when they only needed to get your name and address. So woo, clean record again!

I also got super lucky and a friend of mine was playing a gig at a small town on the way to court, so I got to spend Saturday hanging out with some Aussie folk punk artists at a really cool venue.

My solicitor continues to prove herself a great ally, in the middle of my hearing she started whispering to me about how she’s been doing work with trans rescue, they look like a good group. They help people escape persecution for being trans, they have resources for getting out of the US too.

Overall a good weekend, there were still plenty of challenges but I think I managed everything okay.

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My whole world still feels irreparably broken, but I’m doing a little better every day. I’ll probably go back to work next week, although to be honest I could really do with another week or two so I can finish more stuff that’ll keep my head above water, but I’ll manage I think.

I’m back to working with my collectives already. I’m trying to get my FnB chapter properly organised for once, and I’m trying to set up a WordPress blog for my trans network but self hosting it is a bit annoying.

I started doing a year in pixels thing to track my recovery. I started it on the day I last had to go to hospital, I think I’m progressing well. If I’d started this earlier there’d probably be two weeks of solid red…

Way to go!
I’ve been struggling with the same sort of problems for a while too, sometimes it’s a big win to just get one thing done. Lately for me just making a meal has been a big challenge (I had popcorn for dinner last night). I wish I had any advice that wasn’t keep trying and try not to get too stressed out 😅

hugs I hope things get a little easier soon ❤️

I gotta try electrolysis sometime, I’ve been doing IPL at home because laser was too expensive but I can’t get rid of the last bit of facial hair -3-

Same, I was a couple weeks shy of 1500, I think. Can’t say I really miss it, I wasn’t getting anything out of it except big number.

I have a playlist called “Loud Sleep” I put that on, crank the volume up enough that I can’t hear my thoughts and wait around until I’m so exhausted I either fall asleep or get sleepy enough that I take them off and pass out. I specifically use Skullcandy crushers so I crank the bass waaaaaay up and let it vibrate my skull.

It’s just a bunch of They Might Be Giants’ more aggressive/loud songs and a couple that mean something to me. It’s not really about avoiding feeling stuff, it’s all intended to make me feel more, just without as much thinking. It’s kept me alive on some really bad nights when I felt like all I could do was die.

Imposter syndrome because the people around you beat you to coming out is real and sucks so hard. It happened to me, I watched a couple of my friends go through the exact same thing after I came out and it happened in reverse to an acquaintance when I heard someone angrily complain about said acquaintance coming out after them (it was unbelievably toxic and nothing I’ve seen before or since).

One of the closest people in my life literally hit me with the “just asking for a friend” to see if they’re allowed to be non-binary without taking hormones like I do. Even with all the reassurance in the world it can take a long time. It’s so so hard, being trans often means overcoming an enormous amount of self doubt and all sorts of internalised nasty things.

You’ve done an amazing job navigating everything. I’m so proud of you and it only gets better from here, I promise.

Thank you for existing ❤️

Haha yeah EEAAO was a trip and I barely understand it either

Sorry to nitpick a bit, dark matter isn’t connected to the expansion of space (as far as we’re aware) but dark energy is probably what you meant. My answer to your question is at the end.

Full disclosure: While I have studied this, my expertise was in a tangentially related field. However a buddy of mine has a PhD in measuring this stuff so I’ve got some second hand knowledge.

It’s a confusing hurdle for any student of physics to understand that spacetime doesn’t exist inside another bigger thing into which it can expand, it just kinda exists on its own. Mathematically we don’t even treat the expansion quite like growth, it’s a bit easier to understand it as our rulers getting shorter, the labels we give to distances changes over time. Personally I like the analogy of a sheet of grid ruled paper.

If you choose two points and count the number of squares between them, divide that grid into a smaller one and then count them again, the “distance” has gone up. Those squares look smaller to us so it seems like the true distance is the same, but the universe doesn’t have an external view to make such comparisons from, all we have are the squares and physics obeys them. The point is you can cut squares up forever without running out of squares to cut up, nothing runs out this way.

In spacetime maths (general relativity aka GR) we usually start by defining distances, and when it comes to the expansion of the universe we literally just have a number in that definition that changes over time.

This kind of “our rulers and clocks are dodgy and unreliable” is unfortunately the backbone of this sort of physics. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but it’s cool af if you’re a huge maths nerd.

How does it expand?

🤷

Anyone who can tell you how dark energy works beyond “it has a negative pressure” is full of it. It’s a theoretical idea and has never been observed, we just know that if something with negative pressure existed everywhere then it would cause space to expand. Don’t quote me, but it’s kinda like the opposite of how a black hole squishes spacetime down into a singularity, dark energy pushes out on everything everywhere all at once. (Couldn’t help myself it’s a great movie go watch it)

There are a bunch of possible things that fit the bill, it could just be a number in Einstein’s field equation, it could be a specific type of quantum field that has a constant value everywhere, hell I’ve even seen models where it’s just caused by black holes existing. It’s also possible that Einstein got some stuff wrong and that expansion is just what space do. Either way, I don’t think these things require more stuff to be created, it’s just stuff that’s already there.

If I had to make a mostly uneducated guess, I’d say it’s probably just a feature of quantum gravity, for which we have no proven theories. Loop quantum gravity just demands it exists for the theory to even be useful, I’m sure string theory has it’s own crazy nonsense to explain it too. If we ever do work this out, I fully expect it’s just going to be a thing we have to accept exists without an obvious cause, much like how the universe exists but we have no idea why or why the rules it follows are those specific rules and not some others.

Still doing bad but I’m a bit over depression posting so here’s some wins:

• My singing has improved a lot, I might finally record a full song
• I managed to help a couple of friends when I organised a mental health intervention for myself. Hearing about my stuff made them feel a little less alone and more comfortable to share their trauma.
• I’ve been very motivated to work on myself and I’ve been doing a lot of things to improve my life generally.
• I’m still standing, still growing and still fighting

I’ve got unclockable’s bra buds and they’re pretty good when they work but it’s been hard to find good bras and they can be a pain to keep in place. I’ve come home a few times only to realise they’d completely left the cup without me noticing.

They’re supposedly like implants and tbh they’re pretty convincing when you get them in something good, I really like them I just wish I had more than one bra for them…

Just had my first psych session in a while today, I’d tried to start it a while ago to stop things getting where they are now. Instead I’m just focussing on recovery, it’ll be weird to look back on this one day and realise I feel okay again.

I’ve had a few very scary experiences, a second visit to the ER and lots of revelations about myself. I’ll live, but learning to live with myself is going to take a while. My one lifting thought is that I’ll be a better person for this, but it should never have had to come at such a cost.

If anyone else is going through stuff rn, I’m so sorry. Do what you can to take care of yourself, seek support and most of all try to be kind to yourself. I know how you feel, and I’m sorry.

Wide angle lense go brrrrr

👎

It’s been an absolutely terrible week, I wish I’d worked out what was happening sooner so I didn’t have to face this alone.

That sounds like it was such a hard journey, I’m proud of you for stepping up and taking responsibility for yourself. I definitely understand feeling cursed, I’ve had plenty of nights crying wondering who was controlling me and ruining my life, it’s so hard.

I’ve only once ended up with really intense feelings for someone I wasn’t seeing, and it was pretty rough. I never told them but we’re very close friends now, I’m really glad it worked out, I don’t know what I’d do if I’d been this bad back then.

HRT has definitely felt like I’m redoing my teenage years, everything’s brand new and I’ve no idea how to do so many things anymore. I feel like all the memories of life before HRT belong to someone else, it’s such a bizarre experience and nothing ever prepared me for this.

Thank you for your story, that’s very brave of you to share and it helped me a little.

Oh thanks, that’s a useful insight I didn’t know that about ADHD. I’d read a little saying treating ADHD could relieve BPD but that doesn’t seem to be the case for me haha.

Yeah the AuDHD trans thing is painfully real, it’s me to a T. It’s been really nice having an emotional range that I hadn’t felt since before puberty, but it’s also a big challenge to learn to live this way and to feel so much more vulnerable and fragile.

Thank you for sharing your story, I really appreciate it.

I’m so sorry, the political landscape is absurdly difficult for so many of us right now, we’re all thinking of you down here.

Thank you for sharing and I’m sorry that you’re having such a tough time.