Stepos Venzny

An adult dressing like an adult feels completely appropriate to me.

Imagine the world as we know it is a work of speculative fiction: you’re reading a book about a world that has harnessed the power of electricity to achieve all kinds of incredible things. Electric power’s not just magic, though, right? This is hard sci-fi, there are technical limitations on how this fantastical technology works. There are ways to generate electricity enough for everyone to use but to actually use it they need the electricity to travel long distances from its source to their location and the route is required to be more or less contiguous.

Now electricity, according to this wild sci-fi premise, is a force that kind of wants to travel; it is possible for it to move, then it will. And I said “more or less contiguous” up there because it can actually cross small gaps as long as the rest of the route remains valid. And one thing it is possible for it to move through is a human body, which can be nightmarishly harmful to the human it travels through. Indeed, there is a history of intentionally placing humans into that route in order to execute them. And living creatures aren’t the only thing it can harm: electricity traveling through a flammable medium can start fires and, if misdirected in some way, can even destroy the very technology it’s being harnessed to power.

Even setting aside the destruction it can cause should it end up traveling where they don’t want it to travel, there is also the fact that if it fails to travel along the desired route then electrical technology that people have built their lives around will simply stop functioning. There are ways to generate one’s own limited supply of electricity as a stopgap until the main course is reestablished but most people in the setting don’t have that and it’s a temporary measure even if they do. And I don’t just mean stuff like their business failing to function, I mean that even the basic day to day operations of their lives will fail. They have stores of food kept safely cold by electrical technology that will spoil if the electricity stops, they have kitchens that run on electricity to cook that food even if the ingredients are still good, and most of them never learned how to do these kinds of basic things the old fashioned way and if they want to learn how then their primary source for information is itself a technology that requires electricity to function.

So you’re talking to a friend about this book you’ve been reading about this electrical world. And your friend asks you about these “routes” you told them the electricity travels along:

“How do they move this super dangerous yet super integral substance across such long distances that even people in the middle of nowhere have access to it?”

“For the millionth time, it’s not a substance.”

“Whatever it is, how do they get it from A to B?”

“Well… mostly they the put wires that conduct it on top of thirty foot tall wooden posts.”

“Wouldn’t those just fall down whenever there’s bad weather?”

“Yeah, ‘power outages’ as they call them are not entirely infrequent.”

“So these wooden posts that if they fall over could start fires or kill bystanders or, like, melt stuff. They keep all that away from where people are at least?”

“Well, okay, I was simplifying. There’s these bigger and sturdier metal constructions for carrying wire the longest distances and they build those in the middle of nowhere. These wooden posts that fall down easily are mostly situated around where people are, like roadsides. They were first on my mind because they’re more what’s present where the story takes place.”

“Didn’t you say earlier they’ve all got these individually operated vehicles on the roads that are measured in the strength of dozens of horses, thousands of pounds of metal that move faster than jungle cats? Wouldn’t they just hit the poles by accident and, like, demolish them?”

“Yeah that happens sometimes.”

“…I guess I’m being uncharitable. If I were in this scenario I’d probably be more excited and not thinking as clearly as I do from this distance. It makes sense that such a radical new technology would have some unforeseen negative consequences.”

“Actually it’s not new. Electrical power’s been commonplace for something like a century as of when the story takes place. The characters don’t remember a world without it.”

“And they’re still just… putting it on sticks?”

The pockets are nets.

Shower curtain with pockets. Never again will you knock bottles off of those inadequate shelves.

It’s not unusual to say something less controversial than what you wish you could say, so it tracks that someone who wants to say “I’m a boy” would say “I’m a girl who isn’t girly” in a time where the truth is presented as less of an option than it is today. It’s not that trans guys and tomboys are the same thing, it’s that the same label can be either true or a euphemism when applied to different people.

What gets me about the original post is it looks like it’s saying I as an unambiguously masculine man could wear a dress and be called ma’am by a stranger and when I respond “I get why you’d say that but I’m actually a man wearing a dress” then there’s an expectation the stranger might respond “don’t be ridiculous, that’s not a real thing. You’re obviously a trans woman.” I just don’t see this kind of scenario playing out.

It is possible to crossdress/be gender non-conforming without being trans

I’ve never heard anyone suggest otherwise. Who are you having this argument with?

Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?

The three main perspectives it follows take place at different points in and over different amounts of time but each one is internally completely linear and then they all end the season at the same point as each other. Basically, the less you’re making an effort to follow the plot the easier it is to follow because keeping track of the interconnectedness distracts you from the straightforward character stories.

This isn’t me trying to convince you to go back, to be clear, I’m just hoping this will give you some closure.

There are a bunch of adorable space critters that you’ll think are that when you’re watching the movie, and they certainly were marketed and merchandised like crazy, but they’re actually there due to the unwanted presence of adorable Earth critters during filming. They couldn’t shoot the scenes without including these birds that lived where they were shooting so the solution they came up with was CGI-ing weird faces on them and including some close-ups to make them look deliberate.

I’m comfortably above average but comfortably below genius, not entirely sure whether that fits your personal definition of high so it felt worth clarifying.

In school, it meant that learning was something I could do with no actual effort. Without studying and without doing homework aside from what I did at my desk to pass the time before class started, I had as strong a grasp on the subject as the students who did and comfortable grades. Then when I started college, that passivity suddenly didn’t work anymore and I had no idea how to cope with it. I never actually learned how to learn, formally speaking.

Emotionally speaking, that whole thing was awful. It sucked when it was easy because I was so bored, it sucked when it was hard because I was so frustrated. I actually failed out of high school due to low attendance at the very end, then tested into the local college without a diploma because I still knew the material even with the problematic attendance, then got suspended from college due to now-for-the-opposite-reason low attendance and never went back. There was also unrelated shit going on, to be clear, but this that I’m describing was not a small part of my overall psychological state.

As an adult, it doesn’t mean much of anything. While it’s a bit easier for me to learn things than it is for the average person, the ease with which I learn things doesn’t matter anymore because it’s largely happening without other people’s direct involvement or on any kind of schedule. On the occasion there needs to be an actual work training lesson I attend, it’s something that only happens for a day and enduring a single day of tedious education is so very achievable compared to it being my entire life.

The biggest impact these days is that it makes me hate Aaron Sorkin.

Force Awakens: I can’t recommend it but if it were already on I wouldn’t turn it off. Pretty much just repeatedly yelling “Hey, remember when you liked Star Wars? This is kinda like that!” But it’s inoffensive as nostalgia bait goes, a fairly well-made toy commercial.

Last Jedi: It has themes and character development and adds depth to the setting. Uniquely among the trilogy, it is an actual movie made by actual adults. There are some pacing issues but it’s pretty solid on balance. Not amazing or anything but I’d say it’s worth the average Star Wars fan’s time.

Rise of Skywalker: People were very upset that Last Jedi had been an actual movie, so this reversed course on that decision and HARD. There is literally nothing there at all behind the jingling of its keys in your face and it jingles them very aggressively.

Seems like a him thing. I wouldn’t look into it unless it starts happening a lot with different people.

I’m gonna have to side against Doc Brown on this one, as much as it pains me to say.

If so, they haven’t told me.

They’re not pretending to be your friend, they’re trying to be your friend. They’re prolonging your interactions, sharing their thoughts and feelings with you. They want to spend this time not feeling lonely.

The extent to which this is age related is that they probably don’t have as much energy to split between their work life and their social life as you do. If that ever becomes a struggle for you, that cliche of old people playing a lot of card games and board games exists for a reason. Organizing regular games gives you people to hang out with without always having to figure out when and how.

As for the rest of it, the struggle with change and the arrogance, all I can say is to try to be humble but then that’s good advice at any age. It’ll even help you cope with annoying coworkers right now.

Only the one that I’m actively using, except on rare occasion where I want to go back and forth as reference material.

Nice yes, listening no.

I will never be judged for or attacked by the things I tell her but ten seconds later those things have been overwritten in her mind by different things that she also won’t judge for or attack with.

It made for a complicated childhood.

Pantomime drinking and then shrug.

It’s not complex enough to have intentions of any kind, so the only danger is that people will do incredibly stupid things with it.

Imagine duct-taping a sharp knife to a Roomba. The Roomba has no concept of what ankles or stabbing even are. It will roll around the floor as it always does, devoid of either malice or compassion, and any ankle-stabbing that ensues can only really be described as your fault.

I caused that with a refrigerator magnet, then also fixed it with a refrigerator magnet. Then entertained myself more in the next couple weeks by fucking with my screen with magnets than any actual TV shows or video games.

Why is curliness relevant to shampooing?