Jul (they/she)

It’s been used as an excuse to lay off people, but not the real reason. They were looking at ways to short term boost stock prices since stock buy backs caused their stock prices to increase, but that boost is fading, they needed another artificial boost to profit to maintain those stock prices.

I mean that applies yo a lot large corporations. They’ve mostly stopped innovating and started cutting costs in order to squeeze out some money from the company before it dies. And I’m sure she knows that. It’s likely that she’s there specifically to destroy the remainder of the company. After all, true information is bad for fascism. Gotta keep the people in a constant state of poverty and lack of services, and then blame all of that on some other small, vulnerable group, so their followers will stay distracted and one-issue voters will vote for things that are bad for them as long as were torturing ,murdering, and/or deporting the people they think are the cause of their problems rather than the ones they voted for.

It’s an ideological issue. Some people need someone they feel superior to to distract them from how the people who consider themselves to be better than them are abusing them, by saying that some other group is actually responsible for the problems they are actually causing.

Thus the rich, conservatives in charge who are cutting jobs and creating immense inflation by allowing anticompetitive behavior by large corporations they make money from, blame the losses on immigrants. And immigrants have no way to fight back as they have no rights.

Ideological issues are more difficult to use as a distraction these days. It’s just harder to convince people that their inaction in failing to repress or murder people who are just trying to live their life will cause their deity or whatever to be disappointed or disown them and keep them out of paradise or whatever they believe. So, it’s not as effective to just say they’re evil, anymore, they need to invent things those people are doing to them even if they aren’t doing anything in reality. Problem is it’s becoming more and more apparent that trans people aren’t actually a threat, so they need to invent things like statistics saying that 50% of major mass shootings are done by trans people by inventing criteria to make only 8 or 9 of the thousands of mass shootings to be considered “major”, and thus the 4 mass shootings they found that were by trans people become 50%. As long as they keep repeating those numbers and isolating their audience from real statistics, it’s easy to maintain control that way. But the internet makes that difficult these days. Plus the economic issues are much more common among conservatives than having trans children. And trans people aren’t quite as historically repressed as POC who were slaves or immigrants who were running from horrible conditions, so its more difficult to keep them repressed. Same was true of gay, lesbian, and bi people a couple of decades ago. They were repressed, but not as economically repressed as POC and immigrants making them more likely to fight back and easier for conservatives to identify with.

And the US supreme court is about to start hearing some cases that will allow them to declare state laws banning conversion therapy to be unconstitutional. It’s really sad that conservatives will torture and murder children to create an enemy for fascism to bring people together against whether its LGBTQ+ children or immigrant children.

Not really my thing. I definitely want to have as natural of a body as close to what it was supposed to be as possible, but with the way the fetus’s life is now given priority over a mother’s, it’s just not worth it to me.

When they absorbed their only real competition and instead of using their advantages, just got rid of them, I knew it was the end of good subs and dubs very soon. I don’t want literal translations I’m subs without explanations or AI voiced dubs with poor acting ability or plain monotonous speech like they used to be a few decades ago. I want people to be there translating more than just j individual words.

Yeah I will say the hormones are easier here. I had thought the clinics also helped them coordinate surgery, but I don’t really know well, just going off of something I read and it’s possible that it was just one clinic that happened to offer that service, too.

For hormones here the hardest part is finding a therapist and/or psychiatrist to write the letters and in some places, finding a doctor willing to prescribe and monitor and fill out a support letter and all the paperwork to get prior authorization for the off-label-use dosage since you need more than a cis-woman which is often all that’s covered by default and often isn’t covered at all by default if your birth gender marker is M. When my plan changed this year I had to start getting the prior auth every 6 months because I exceed the max covered dosage by 3x.

I was lucky to have a primary care doctor that was experienced, though she moved on now. And I found a list of therapists willing to write the support (gate-keeping) letters with only a single, virtual appointment, though I had to pay cash and needed 2 of them (one at least PhD level and one at least MA level) for the surgery. For me the hormones only required one and could be MA level, though. I was on waiting lists for both therapists and psychiatrists at the time, so that list saved me. There’s a shortage of mental health providers around here, too.

And the letters technically are supposed to require the mental health providers to know you well, but a lot of providers know that’s just gate-keeping. And, some insurance still requires the even older WPATH recommendations that you get one that does and one that doesn’t know you. My insurance is only one version behind, though, using version 7, but some use 6 or even 5 still.

It’s not much better in the US and there isn’t a unified “gender clinic” to coordinate things. And travel for surgery and recovery is expensive, especially when most insurance doesn’t pay for that and things are so spread out in the US, so most have no option or if near a major city are stuck with the one or two overbooked options close enough to them that they can get a ride to.

I had to travel to another major city to even get on a waiting list for my first surgery since in the major city where I live, the one clinic that has a surgeon was totally unresponsive on how long their waiting list was after taking my doctor’s referral.

And I had to pay around $4,000 for a month at an AirBnB plus flights, food, and necessities we couldn’t fit in the now strict 50lb weight limits on luggage for me and a care person. I couldn’t bring a carry-on since I wouldn’t be able to carry it on the way home and you can’t put the heavier liquids in there anyway like soaps, shampoos, hair products, lotions, etc. And paid several thousand out of pocket to cover deductibles and coinsurance despite having the most expensive health plan my company offers which costs about $400 every other week from each paycheck despite the fact I work for said insurance company. And that was only one surgery.

Next surgery is a 1 year wait for a consult and no clue how many years before surgery and another one is at least a 3 year wait for consult and at least 4 year wait for surgery after the consult. I can’t afford to travel again for those. Had to take out a home equity loan for the first one. And I still have to pay for the mental heath visits for the gatekeeping WPATH letters each time both for the consult and again for the surgery since they each expire after a year. I really wish there was someone to help coordinate it all. For example, if I end up with the waiting lists ending too close to each other I’ll have to go back on the beginning of the list assuming the surgeon is still scheduling new surgeries because you can’t get too many too close to each other and they’re totally separate offices.

And traveling internationally is too dangerous right now with my passport being forced to be my birth gender and my genitals not matching for the x-ray, so unless things improve it is likely I’ll be too old to get most of the surgeries by the time I get through the lists. I’m already starting later in life due to lack of care. Plus I need other small surgeries for some unrelated issues which I can’t find providers for in my insurance network taking new patients and can’t afford to schedule too far out, just in case I get to the top of the gender care surgery wait lists.

Probably just to try to make Garmin’s product less useful in the short term while the case drags out. Or as a way to get Garmin to acquire them. Strava basically seems to have bought up some competitors that were failing and they have been on the way downhill. So at this stage usually these companies start cost cutting and using any means necessary to increase their perceived value for sale. This gives Garmin an incentive to buy them as that would end the lawsuit and they’d then acquire some additional defensive patents.

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Yeah, software patents in the US especially, have become a way for companies to either kill competition, or make buying up ridiculous patents and suing for infringement their primary source of income.

Primary issue is the patent office has few officers that are technical enough to understand the overlap of the specific industry and software. So, they tend to just allow anything, especially from larger companies that they’re told to assume have the expertise if they don’t since their load is too large to have time to learn new stuff and truly research if something is obvious or not.

Make sure to do a test during peak and a test during trough.

I do that and then average them. They are always significantly different and i use patches which give a more steady dose than injections.

Also, I’m not entirely convinced that the values most doctors who are not specialists use are correct for trans people. If you aren’t seeing an endocrinologist with at least a little specialty in sex hormones, I’d do that and see if they can recommend the right levels for your body rather than the general numbers that were always very conservative, and came from cis women’s levels rather than what trans people need since there’s usually no funding to research trans people.

I was lucky enough to start HRT with a general practitioner with a lot of experience with trans people during her residency and most of her career. But she moved on to another specialty due to the difficulty making ends meet as a good doctor. I’m on the lookout myself for an endo with good experience to consult one of these days.

Then that should be the questions asked, not some arbitrary “sex” question with only some of the possible answers as options.

It should be apparent, especially now, that those things never were never enough to determine these things anyway. There are tons of types of intersex people which are not an insignificant percentage of the population.

So, there are some things that loosely follow AGAB for the majority of people, but the assumptions made based on that, end up causing more trouble for those whose bodies don’t conform. And that’s not a small portion of the population. Basically between intersex people and trans people who have had HRT and/or surgery are at very, very conservative estimates, around 3%, but since there’s no finding and it’s now unsafe to track even in the US and UK and other western countries, it’s likely much higher in reality. These people are poorly served by the current system of AGAB only.

For me, many of my lab tests show abnormal because it should ask what is my body’s primary sex hormone or ask to select for the specific test, what range is normal for my body if they want to get it really right. And honestly, body weight is more impactful on a lot of things anyway, why aren’t we asking that of every person (rhetorical question, but essentially asking if you were born with or the doctors modified your body at birth to have something that looked closer to a penis than a vulva, should be just as uncouth)? Also, insurance won’t pay for gynecology/urology kind of stuff or mammograms or prostate cancer screenings even if you have the right body parts to need it, if your AGAB is wrong without a long and drawn out process each and every time to prove you have the right part. Heck it’s not even good for marketing if you have the wrong one listed because it has to be your AGAB rather than the gender you present as and thus the high profit products you’re most likely to use.

So it really has a low usefulness compared to asking more relevant questions whether for medical or commercial reasons.

Yeah, I have an X on my ID so even though it’s technically valid for air travel, I brought my passport instead which has my AGAB and wore really loose fitting clothes. Fortunately I didn’t have to go through the x-ray that would give away that my body parts don’t match my passport.

I wiped all of my devices in case I was detained, not that I have anything to hide, but I don’t want to out any of my friends as trans for them to get targeted.

And I’ve been staying away from public bathrooms despite having a hard time holding my bladder due to some medical issues retaining salt and water. Considering getting a catheter or something for when I’m in public for more than a few hours because dehydrating myself all the time isn’t good for my health.

It’s really scary right now even living in a fairly progressive leaning state. I won’t even think about traveling to my hometown to visit family where it’s more conservative. I’m really hoping on the flight back I’m able to slip through security again. It’s going to be a lot of paperwork to get my birth certificate changed to what isn’t actually my gender since that’s not an option, but more closely matches my body parts.

It’s sad that just existing means you are classified as a terrorist and have to avoid interacting with society to survive.

Stay away from the US if you can if you are trans, intersex, non-binary, or even cis if you just have some facial traits that make you look a little less like your AGAB. It’s only getting worse every day.

It will go the opposite way. The far right justices already have multiple times shown they don’t care about precedent or the intention of laws, only finding strict literal interpretations that fit their ideological views to take away rights.

Again, adverse effects doesn’t mean death, the fact that the description you posed has that last sentence is the alarmist thing and only applies to certain drugs, of course.

The difference in absorption rates between oral and rectal administration can be as much as double or triple or more in some cases. For example I remember reading a study from the 70s or 80s on methylprednisolone. The absorption rate orally was about 90%, but rectally was only around 35% likely due to bacteria in the rectum decomposing the drug before it could make it into the blood.

So, over the long term the difference in dose could have a significant impact on health. Getting 3 times more or less of any drug, even something relatively safe, will likely mean “adverse effects”. With estradiol this could mean greatly increased side effects for overdose like nipple soreness or mood swings, or greatly decreased effect for underdose meaning testosterone takes over again and hair loss and body hair growth restart. These are “adverse effects”, but are not likely to be deadly, but still considered overdose/underdose.

Possibly, but I don’t see Google doing that either. It’s not about where the app comes from really. The thing they are going to restrict is the developer. A developer can not have their app installed on a certified phone, regardless of where the user got the app, if the developer is not registered.

So, since there are no regulations to allow a user to install apps from any chosen developer, only from any chosen app store, there likely will be no regulatory recourse like Apple is facing as mentioned by the OP.

This is different, by design. Sideloading and alternate app stores are still perfectly fine. It’s just that the developer has to give a bunch of personal into to Google in order for their app not to be rejected by the phone itself. Middleman doesn’t matter which is where most if the regulations are. Problem is that many open source apps don’t have a developer willing to spend the time and money or give up their privacy in order to publish an app they don’t make money on. So it’s designed to kill off FOSS apps.

More evidence that although I love the idea of the MIT license, it is not good when large corporate interests and their money get involved. It’s too easy for the code to get scooped up and relicensed or just hidden away. Copyleft licensed projects are the only ones I’ll work on anymore.

Overdose doesn’t mean die, it means getting a larger dose in your blood than the labeled dosage. Over a long period of time dosing too high, there may be side effects. Sorry if I used medical terminology, but I work in healthcare so it’s common terminology there. I sometimes forget that the media has warped the meaning of some of these terms.