First off, thank you for having that flag in the classroom. It does more than you know for showing people that they can be accepted.

As for religion, I suppose my point and the biggest question really goes back to the big bang. Science can explain or at the very least approximate just about everything with the exception of the Big Bang. i.e., why does something exist instead of nothing? And I've heard the perspective — even from people who follow Abrahamic religions — that the only time God interfered was with the Big Bang, and that this was the actual "let there be light" moment. And that since then, we've been left to our own devices. What I find intriguing is that this interpretation does not really contradict anything in science. Personally, I see a striking symmetry between the Big Bang singularity (nigh instantaneous explosion of matter, energy, and information from seemingly nowhere) and the singularity at the center of black holes (nigh infinitely drawn out implosion where matter, energy, and information go seemingly nowhere), making in my mind a very strong case that the two are connected; that perhaps black holes create their own universes and we are but one of those universe offshoots. However, despite being succinct and elegant, this is also improvable and unfalsifiable. Faith in that this is how the universe began is, in my mind, no different than the faith that the Big Bang was started by none other than God.

(One could probably also make some argument about indeterminable quantum phenomena being of divine origin, but that goes even further outside the scope of the initial discussion hahaha).

Tbf if wine were released under regular GNU instead of LGPL, Valve wouldn't have been able to make Proton proprietary, and so their contributions would also be open source. It is unfortunate that this is the situation, but by using the LGPL license WINE basically permitted this, no?

Right now I'm taking things one step at a time. I got my legal name and gender marker changed several months ago and got my name and gender marker amended on my license 2 months ago, after already having it changed on my birth certificate (thankfully it was before Texas made the ban). While there's still tons of other paperwork with different companies and entities I have to individually update (it's such a pain), the only big important document left for this is my passport, and I have everything I need to update it ready except for a new photo. So that's my first step. From there I'm not really sure what to do tbh, money is also an issue which is why I wanted to wait until I have a degree and can get a job (in community college atm). Maybe there's some way to save up and attend uni in Europe but I'm really not sure.

Aww, thank you!

😭

CSS in the context of climate change lmaoo

Damn I wanna be her haha, this is so goood

I feel like I remember hearing bad things about Peyote? Not sure if that's what I'm thinking of. No idea how to grow spores (or really anything for that matter), I suppose I could learn at some point but for now it's not something I have the time nor resources to really sustain.

Ooo, I will keep this in mind!

As someone who used to be in those circles, it wasn't always like that but quickly devolved into it. And I went along with it not even really because I believed everything that was there but because that was where all my friends were, and I tried questioning some of the principles but was then met with cold responses like "why are you questioning us?" And so I kind of just went along with everything. It took me a long time to get de-radicalized, but it's something to keep in mind that a lot of what keeps communities bound like that has nothing to do with the politics and everything to do with maintaining social connections. Which isn't to excuse any of it, but just provide a succinct explanation for how and why they proliferate.

And I said promise?

Literally me the other day when I realized being trans had become the least of the problems in my life xD

except for shaving, that's still an issue and annoying AF

Having a group of transfemme friends to shop with IRL is literally peak