• 0 Posts
  • 119 Comments
Joined 27 days ago
cake
Cake day: December 24th, 2025

help-circle

  • Knew this sort of thing would happen eventually, glad I made the switch away a while back.

    When Nova was bought out by Branch, we all knew it couldn’t lead to anything good. But it sucks to switch away, and I know people kept using Nova because they could say “it’s not doing anything sketchy yet.”

    With this news, seems safe to say that “yet” is finally “now.” Tim to switch if you haven’t already. I’m happily using Niagara now.





  • For the more specific example, for any curious, the character Switch from the first movie was originally meant to be trans.

    Switch was intended to be biologically male outside of the Matrix but then be female inside the Matrix, based on the way the system represents people by their self-image.

    The production studio axed that idea, and the actress who was originally intended to only play 1/2 of the character ended up playing them outside the Matrix as well. The best they could do was keep the name and make Switch look androgynous.







  • Oh yeah. Sometimes I entertain those sorts of “what if” scenarios where, if I were to be transported back to some arbitrary historical time and place, what could I do with what I have to kickstart social/scientific progress.

    But underneath every single one of these thought experiments is the ultimate anxiety of “pray you don’t get a bad cut or eat some bad food, then die painfully and horribly of infection or illness.”

    There are just substantially fewer safeguards, so you’re at greater risk of everything. Even thinking about having to go to a hospital at the time of my grandparents’ childhood terrifies me. It’s crazy how much medicine has improved just over the past few decades, and has me wondering just how barbaric our own practices today might seem to others in the future.







  • That was my understanding. Dad wants to make his kid’s dream of being a pop star come true, so he spends tons of money to make it happen, and she became a meme because all the money can’t make up for lack of talent. There was probably also some schadenfreude when held against all of the other artificially boosted Disney pop star kids who were still in the internet’s collective memory at the time.

    I should also say that I have no opinions on Rebecca Black as a person, she could be a really lovely and genuine person for all I know. And apparently she is still out there making music, which is fine if it makes her happy.

    But damn did I hate hearing that song. Still do. It’s just a bad song.


  • Definitely something to be said about how gender isn’t “real,” but people’s perception of it is.

    There’s no pattern of masculine or feminine behavior/style that is consistent across cultures and throughout history. It’s all arbitrary.

    But that binary perception of masculine/feminine is nevertheless all around us, even if it’s not consistently represented.

    I’d like to think that not much would change about my style or mannerisms if I had been born with different parts, and I find it odd how unnecessarily gendered so many aspects of society are. I’m just “me,” what else would I want to be? But I also need to remind myself that I only think that way because I’ve never had to worry about being seen as something other than what I am, even if I don’t feel that strongly about it. It’s easy to overlook just how much of my life experience has been colored by my effortless gender presentation.

    Not everyone gets that by default, and it’s hard to put myself in those shoes because I simply can’t understand what it’s like to be viewed as the opposite gender, or why it might cause discomfort.

    If I were airlifted to some other culture that viewed pants as feminine and skirts as masculine, would I toss all of my jeans to conform? I’d like to think I wouldn’t, because I like the comfort of pants and attributing a gender standard to clothes has always seemed silly to me. But if it affected the way people saw me, I just might.