Most of all, lonely. My situation is rough. I’m a trans woman (some passing privilege), almost 40, and staying with center-right family in East Texas because I haven’t been able to work in two years due to mental illness. I have a very difficult time making and keep friends and the family I’m staying with doesn’t understand why I’m upset, doesn’t care, and think I’m overreacting (They are superficially supportive about me being trans, but also voted for this). I was going to therapy for a while, but I had to discontinue it because I couldn’t afford it any more. The only thing keeping me going is that for the last few years I’ve been able to feel more comfortable in my own skin, thanks to HRT.

I really don’t want to go through whatever the Republicans have in store for trans people in red states alone. The thing I am most afraid of is them banning HRT for adults (it’s already banned for kids). I’ve been on e since 2018. If everything were going great for me losing access to my medication would be a horrifying and soul crushing ordeal, I doubt I’ll survive it with how my life is now.

This last week I’ve been almost completely non-functional. I’ve been alternating between uncontrollable sobbing, hours long panic attacks, furious rage, and making half-crazed, poorly thought out Lemmy and Reddit comments.

tl;dr: not great.

It is! Or at least what a previous therapist thought.

Boredom is a lot more dangerous and potentially disastrous than most people realize, but it’s definitely not my only problem. I struggle with some mental health issues that make most things a lot harder for me than many other people.

I was tested as a child and had an iq of 164 at 10 years old. For my entire childhood every adult treated me like I was smarter than them and in most cases I was. I was in gifted and accelerated classes and excelled.

I know I’m not smart because from the headstart in life I got I went on to barely graduate from high school, drop out of community college twice, never hold a job for longer than 18 months, and have more gaps on my resume than experience.

In real terms, we still have a lot left to lose before things get so bad it’s time to take up arms. The left is losing because it has spent all of its time responding to what the right has been doing and not enough time working towards the things their constituents want.

It is time to organize and get directly involved if you care about keeping things from getting worse. I can’t say this with any authority but there are three problems we have to solve:

1. How can we reestablish a common reality with our neighbors? (Mis- and disinformation)
2. How can we pull our neighbors back from the influence of fascists?
3. How can we ensure that our children inherit better than what we have now and are about to go through?

The fight will come later, and it will come. Right now we have to prioritize supporting each other. We’re on our own for at least the next two years, we need to get creative and find ways to thrive in spite of the bullshit.

We’re in kind of a mess right now. The best way we can get out of it is if all of us little people stick together. I’m not a conservative but by Lemmy standards my politics and world view are alien. We all need to figure out a way to coexist and work together if we are ever going to have a chance to deprogram our MAGA neighbors and find a way forward together.

It seems productive to try to share my weird ass views and try to find common ground.

Any innocent death is unacceptable. If under Trump every single Palestinian in Gaza would be killed and under Kamala a single old man would die, I still would make the same choice.

That old man has just as much right to live as anyone else, just because he is the only casualty that doesn’t make his life any less valuable or gives someone any more right to kill him.

I am truly sorry this is the outcome we have gotten and that my actions have played a small part in how things have unfolded. But I do not regret my choice not to vote.

I accept my responsibility in how things have turned out. I would feel absolutely horrible and would be wrought with guilt for my entire life if it had come down to a single vote, but I would not have voted for either Kamala or Trump even if I had gone to the polls.

I understand that makes me responsible in a very small way for Trump winning and I don’t like it, but I accept that. It was a risk I was willing to take in February when I decided not to vote.

Gaza wasn’t why I decided not to vote at all, the disconnect between voter and politician and the way queer issues were completely abandoned this election were why I didn’t vote. If Kamala had said she would end our alliance with Israel if they didn’t stop killing civilians she still wouldn’t have gotten my vote because I wasn’t casting one to begin with.

To be fair he hadn’t outed himself as a racist asshat in 2016. He was just a narcissist I thought was funnier than Trump.

As to your point about my inaction contributing to more dead in Gaza, I am indifferent. Any blood on our hands in Gaza is unacceptable. Had Kamala been chosen in a primary I might have considered voting for her as a compromise candidate, but having her foisted on us after the other compromise candidate was too stubborn to step down before he got in the way is bullshit.

Gaza was what OP asked about, but it’s definitely not the only thing I care about at the polls. The main reason I decided not to vote at all is because the will of the people is not reflected by any politicians. There are a dozen issues most Americans agree on (legal weed, minimum wage) that our current politicians won’t address because they are at odds with donors. I decided it wasn’t worth participating in the political system again until our elected officials do what we want instead of their donors.

If the oligarchy wants to take over officially I can’t stop them, but I don’t have to participate either.

To the dead Palestinian children they are.

Do you feel like your inaction is fine because either way, the genocide doesn’t end?

Pretty much. Less genocide is not a compelling argument. The children who died with Kamala in the White House would be just as dead with Trump.

I can’t speak for others, but I can tell you why I didn’t vote for Harris.

I am a lifelong independent voter. In 2016 I wrote in Kanye West, in 2020 I wrote in Nobody, this year I didn’t even vote. (I also voted Bush in '04, Ron Paul in '08, and Obama in '12) I go to the polls even if I am planning to writing in a presidential pick because there are usually ballot issues or other races I care about.

I decided not to vote when the DNC opted to not hold a primary even though absolutely no one wanted a Biden second term and the deal was elect Biden in 2020 and they’d find someone good for '24. After Biden’s disastrous debate and he dropped out, I was angry because everyone said no to Kamala already in 2020, but they still ran her.

On the issues, Kamala is too centrist for me and Gaza is a deal breaker. Most Palestinian casualties have been civilians and waaaaay too many children. Using my tax dollars to kill foreign children is not acceptable. I don’t care that Israel is our ally or they they provide us an important strategic resource in the region. I honestly don’t care if Israel wants to do a genocide or if Palestine wants to do a bunch or terrorism, that’s on them. But we don’t have to support it and I won’t vote for anyone who will.

New Zealand I’ve never been and know little about the day to day life of a new zealander, but it looks so beautiful and quiet there.

I set my mom (62) up an old laptop running Ubuntu last year when her laptop was stolen out of my sister’s car. She’s adjusted fairly well to it. She needed a lot of hands on support at first and any time she uses her printer, but she has figured out how to do a lot of things on it on her own.

She makes papercraft activities in inkscape for a weekly storytime she hosts at a bookstore and has gotten very proficient, but still needs some hand holding when printing errors crop up.

I couldn’t tell you specifically why, but I would question the value of such a project. Project 2025 undermines the foundations of the United States and moves the US towards authoritarianism.

Red versus Blue was an entertaining web series, but not an effective system of governance. Things like project 2025 are symptoms of a deeper sickness in the United States. Democrats shouldn’t be playing the same game as fascists, once you play by their rules, you’ve already lost.

The United States is an Oligarchy, the will of the people is almost entirely eclipsed by the interests of capital. Democrats don’t need their own project 2025, the people need representation in government regardless of what color flag their elected officials fly.

For some women that would be a turn off for a romantic partner, yes. You don’t have to plan a future with everyone you have sex with. There are plenty of women who want something casual and low attachment and would not be bothered at all by anything you mentioned.

Women are not a monolith. Each one of us is different and have different wants, needs, and desires. Don’t let the bullsh!t about you not being desirable stop you from trying. Rejection sucks, but never trying is much worse.

I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s not true. All you’re missing is self-confidence and self-worth. It may not feel like it, but you are worthy of love and validation. Love yourself because you are alive and trying.

It’s not easy, especially if you’ve built up a lot of myths about how you’re broken or unlovable. Find the things you like about yourself and go from there. All you have to do is keep trying.

The sensations of sex vary significantly between individuals. I could tell you what my experience of sex is like, but depending on your specific body, it might feel wholly different. The only way you’re going to be able to satisfy that curiosity is to engage in the activity yourself.

Don’t give up on finding out for yourself if it’s important to you. I didn’t have sex with someone else until I was 29 and then spent my early 30’s making up for lost time.

For me, I was my own worst enemy. I believe that I was unlovable and unattractive (and also had some queer identify related complicating factors). I thought that sex and intimacy were transactional and that in order to find someone interested in having sex with me required me to be a person I was not. The error in my thinking was that sex was a goal, rather than a side effect of building meaningful connections with other humans.

Your mileage may vary though.

Those are some thick, juicy crabby patties.

Protonmail is great, it comes with cloud storage, a really good password manager, and a very fast VPN. The linux experience is mid for their apps, but great on MacOS or Windows.