just horny and sex positive works too 😉

the fediverse is designed to guard against the same kind of enshitification that reddit went into by keeping the same discourse alive everywhere regardless whether you use mastodon or lemmy or any other social media platform.

social media tribalism guarantees eventual enshitification of some kind, so keeping your options open makes sense should you ever decide to set sail on the fediverse sea after the people on your platform island have burned it all down due to the local culture war they insisted on fighting until its pointless end.

i’ve been switching from one social media platform to another since the 1990’s because of enshitification and that’s taught me that the platforms with investors behind it enshitify the in the worse ways possible (eg reddit, facebook, bluesky, etc.). so i think that the fediverse has the biggest and likeliest chance to survive all enshitification because of how it’s designed to keep the discourse alive no matter how many power tripping mods or majority conversation shaping admins there are. (at least for now).

i’ve started this series on youtube named "The Anti Imperialism of Star Trek Deep Space Nine" and i learned that, once you subscribe and like a leftist channel & video that the algorithms start bombarding you with leftist videos and youtubers.

i feel like a alaskan bear during a salmon run trying to catch all the salmon it can before they all die off in mass a few days they’ve mated as i try to identify which youtuber to subscribe to and which video to click like button on as the algorithms keep showing me multiple new ones. lol

also: i find that melding (word play intended) in the little bits of theory that i can get from youtube alongside a life long passion; like i did for myself with star trek; makes me more eager to finish it and makes it kinda fun.

that’s in interesting perspective since i’m seeing the opposite with responses to all the questions.

i go through asklemmy every morning while i’m caffeinating at the start of each day because the questions usually wake me up with a WTF or a TIL.

i must be on their blocked list. lol

also: i wonder at how it weighs on your soul & outlook to feel like you have to curate such a list in a safe space.

it’s a lot of work for me; but it can work great if you don’t automatically and accidentally kill plants like i do. lol

i go with edibles to get around the impacts of smoking it and i make it myself to ensure that it’s nothing but flower in the baked/steeped edible.

i also grow the flower myself to make sure that there’s nothing else in it and it’s a pain in the ass with my black thumbs.

BRILLIANT!

The situations are always the same so this should work fine. Thank you

colorado felt like another silicon-valley-ish niche to me so this makes sense, but i’m surprised to hear about the work perspective because the people i worked with in colorado tended to have more socially conservative views than my californian colleagues complete w an early-to-bed-early-to-rise work ethic.

the denver-boulder area, in person, is hard to distinguish from places like austin if not for the climate and geography; the general attitudes of strangers towards me made that place no different than anywhere in texas for me.

i did for halloween and that’s the only holiday i celebrate. i throw in dia de los muertos just to extend it a few more days and i take vacation days off for it as well.

when it’s halloween: i put costumes on my pets; decorate my home with renter friendly decor; and then redecorate again one day 1 of dia de los muertos with a shrine to the people i’ve loved in the past with pictures and keepsakes that were once theirs and then add prayer candles similar to these with lgbt & other notable figures like devine, mlk jr, james baldwin, malcom x, marsha p johnston, matthew shepherd, harvey milk, etc. and i put the star trek delta or idic instead of the crucifix, but i keep the statuette of the lady of guadalupe.

I use xfce and this looks great.

The last time I was a team lead, I would sit in on meetings and whenever this one admin assistant was present she would complain about an analyst’s appearance saying things like he looked disheveled because his shirt had some wrinkles; but he was very much silicon-valley/california-shabby-chic fashioned for the time.

We got bought out by a bank complete with stereotypical old fashioned management and dinosaur sensibilities from the East Coast. She brought up the analyst again during one of our meetings that included the new management and the analyst was fired the next day.

during the hiv/aids crisis; people who had spare bedrooms; or could afford to cook extra meals; or took it upon themselves to distribute those extra meals; or volunteer basic healthcare services for free (ie candy stripers); etc. would put up “help offered” posters in gay safe spaces with contact information on them. the posters where mostly hand made back then, but i’ve seen a more modern day version of it with home printers and the bottom section of the paper scored off so that people can rip off and take the contact information with them and i’ve seen a newer version of that with the mutual aid community in hexbear: https://hexbear.net/c/mutual_aid

any leftist safe space, both virtual and real. will have something like this; seek them out and you can ask someone in person what you can do to help that’s tailored to you circumstances. (and to set your expectations: it’s probably going to suck a lot; that’s why they need the help)

the last time i was in a position like yours i almost learned the hard way to make documentation to protect yourself.

the next time you and your boss have a conversation on security things like that windows 7 computer; tell him that you’re going to send an email at the end of the conversation restating what he told you to do; then send that email; and then use your smartphone to take a picture of the email. (time stamps are important so make sure that the phone’s picture metadata is enabled and they’re usually on by default or make sure that the picture includes something with the date & time on it like a calendar on your computer).

do this for anything security related like passwords or administrator access. if you have a good boss, they’ll realize that you feel like you need to protect yourself and they’ll start making changes.

my neuro-divergence sometimes causes people to think that i’m an asshole and if i can’t speak the local language to explain that; i won’t be able to explain away the autism induced faux pas that i created and that can sometimes lead to sticky situations.

i’ll technically be “ex-patting” too since i’m an american and like most other americans i never gone past the periphery of the american empire. lol

a japanophile colleague made a similar recommendation in the past and my past discussions since then with japanese people in this country who also co-occupied my lgbt spaces with me, gives me the impression that the mainstream gay community barely exists at all in japan compared to other places like latin america or south asia; but it does have relatively well represented niches of its own that are unique to japan and mostly unknown to the rest of the world like my niches are mostly unknown to the world outside of the american imperial core.

also: my similar discussions with scandinavian expats in this country over the decades paints a fantastic and vibrant picture for lgbtq within the confines of their own american-allied imperial-core walled-gardens. they have everything that the american empire has for lgbtq plus more and it’s all a bit different with seemingly endless onion-y layers of niches. my intention of traveling is to leave the american imperial core, so i think that scandinavia would defeat that purpose considering that it’s all part of the nato now.

I don’t think this concern is justified in most cases, but I’m not really in position to argue. If this were a common problem, I think I’d have heard about it, but outside of the occasional sensationalist news piece or Hollywood/TV thriller, I haven’t.

the cases i had in mind were in the reports from federal inquiries investigating the aftermath of the iraqi invasion for non-existent wmd’s after 2008: they detailed HORRIFIC accounts of sometimes weeks long episodes of iraqi lbtq slowly bieng tortured to death while everyone did their best to pretended not to see it happening in front of their eyes. my strong accent already immediately outs me as an american and that’s taught me that the people who live in the periphery of the american empire’s core can all recognize i’m american easily and that’s resulted in experiences like me paying higher prices as a tourist at the most common and inconsequential end of a spectrum of experiences that also includes the iraqi-lgbq-torture example at the other more extreme & uncommon end of that same spectrum.

my experiences in talking to refugees & people of privilege from/in the middle east; south asia; & europe paints a picture of lgbtq communities that resemble the ones in latin america and living in this country as a member to niche several groups within the lgbtq umbrella teaches me that some of my identities have little to no communities at all outside the imperial core like it is in latin america and in large parts of the core itself. i think that my experiences as a gay cis american have turned me into a treat monster and not planning accordingly when traveling outside the imperial core seems like a bad idea if i can’t atleast speak the language to mitigate the social faux paus caused by my neuro-divergence.

i also now wonder if the fact that i learned about the iraqi-lgbtq example from gay subreddits is another manifestation of my identities being used as a virtue signal dog whistle in the dnc’s failed attempt to bank on the presidential election and left us with the genocide, facism and an impending country wide abortion ban among a FAR rightward lurch and i wonder how that’s going to impact the MLK jr timetable.

the numbers of the casualties from the gaza genocide rival those of the hiv/aids crisis per year back in the 1980’s and i think that it’s fitting that it the controversy back then also came at another time where my government also did little more than public displays of support while they strategically allowed thousands to needless die in service to the MLK jr timetable; but this time gaza’s impact is open-secretly-couched as harris not “separating” herself enough from biden as en explanation for the presidency & senate losses rather than plainly admitting that the voter turnout pushes with beyonce et al. succeeded in distracting from the losses of voters abstaining from the election over the genocide.

“a treat monster” is sort of like “tankie” in reverse; it describes the kind of american consumerist that is placated/bribed away from revolutionary thought with treats like big suv’s & social privileges and they’re monsters because they support genocides.

Most people around the world know how to distinguish between America the empire and a civilian American spending money into the local economy.

this is the reason why i ask this question.

my strong american accent makes it clear that i’m a clueless american and that gates my efforts to travel to places outside the core that don’t speak english or spanish. to me; all of the cultures that speak both languages belong to the same hegemony as the american empire and i’m aware that my nature will result in harm coming to me if i can’t atleast speak the language of where i’m visiting.

i’ll restate my question: where can i travel to oustide the american empire where my treat monster american nature won’t get me arrested, imprisoned, punished, hate crimed, etc.?

what would be your recommendation for an american reddit leftist like me who has started plans on traveling to satisfy a desire to travel outside the american empire?

i can’t figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t imperil me because of the those same vulnerability minority identities that the dnc failed to leverage as a cover for the genocide and virtue signal to shut out dissent from among their ranks and costed the whole country in this election.

i have an idea of what life is like for the people at the periphery of the core in north america and i want to know how much worse it is fully outside the core. it now makes sense that why the people want to hold imperialist friendly mexican judges accountable via the ballot box in a system that’s completely captured by the american empire to social engineer the masses like it does when it makes a voter in tempe, arizona wait in line for hours to go vote.

why do we need the karma?