I mean I could be not attracted to people with a mole on their stomach and not find out about that until later even if I was initially attracted to them. I could also be attracted to someone until I found out they were being targeted by a stalker and then lose my attraction to them because of that.

You're saying that you cannot choose to not be interested in a trans person if they successfully pass and therefore you don't know in advance without that being transphobic, despite a) who you are romantically attracted to is a deeply personal choice and b) being in a relationship with someone means their life heavily effects yours. People avoid others romantically for life difficulties that aren't even their fault all the time (nasty exes, legal or money trouble, etc). Wanting to avoid potential issues associated with being trans, even though none of those are the trans person's fault is the same thing.

I think you're going to have a really hard sell to lay claim to what people are and aren't allowed to feel about potential partners. You might get people to give lip service to it, but I doubt you'll get people to have true buy in to saying they aren't allowed to feel certain things in regards to potential romantic partners. That's a pretty extreme take in my opinion.

I believe that much of the internet's current issues come from constantly shutting down the weird and toxic places. It just causes them to spread into everywhere else. I think containment is a far better strategy and is closest to how our society worked before the Internet as well. Let the weirdos be weird on their own and out of sight from normal people so you don't have 12 year olds mixing with not nut jobs on the same platform. Instead they always shut those places down by force and the roaches scatter.

Legitimately asking here, but is it really considered transphobia to not be interested in dating a trans person?

I don't know, maybe I'm a horrible person, but I've always consider dating preferences to be 100% outside of the whole transphobia, racism, etc spectrum. Those things apply to your ability to treat people like people, be nice and respectful, interact, become friends, etc.

But who you romantically involve yourself with is sacrosanct and you can apply whatever reasoning you want to that. Maybe you won't date anyone that has mismatched eyes or brown hair, or whatever other arbitrary reasoning matters to you, so long as you're otherwise polite and respectful of people, that's your prerogative.

Now the rejected person is also totally allowed to be upset and consider it their loss and vent to others about the experience, but the other person isn't a 'transphobe', assuming they were otherwise not hostile or transphobic to trans people outside of a dating context (and weren't hateful in their rejection either). Or at least that's how I see it, but maybe that just makes me transphobic (and I guess racist because I believe you can apply the same logic to not wanting to date someone based on skin color)

I've done this in some fanfics. I can't handle fics that make Harry Potter a girl and don't bother to change the name.

Post API bullshit Reddit is markedly different as well. It's noticeably dumber, with a much more similar feel at times to Facebook comments and YouTube comments than what it had been known for in the past. The 'spark' that made Reddit worth visiting is now really only found on the much, much smaller subs and even there it's growing more rare by the day.

I think my issue is more how the IPs go to the graveyard not so much the companies. As you said the company hadn't been doing great. But it always seems like publishers just hoard ideas only to do nothing useful with them.

My understanding is that it isn't the Teflon itself that's the problem, that reacts to basically nothing. It's the thing they use to get the Teflon to stick to the pan that comes off sometimes which is the problem.

If you don't like Firefox mobile is there another ad blocking mobile browser that you'd suggest?

I mean I have seen people unironically claim the second scenario. And people seem to forever be attempting to claim 20+ year old women as 'children' whenever they are dating older men as well. Which, sure call the dude out for being gross, but don't try to rob an adult of their own agency. That always came off as weirdly sexist against women to me. Like a grown woman couldn't and shouldn't be trusted to make her own decisions. Which just felt like yet another way to control women, not actually protect them.

I have a pretty comfortable spot in the existing system and I'm even more left now than I was 20 years ago in college.

The middle class isn't a natural state of things. You have to work at it to maintain a middle class.

Most of these people want to move back to a feudal self set up again. Where 'the economy' is just the nobles and rich merchants trading among each other. They don't actually care if that economy is overall less prosperous, so long as they are one of the big fish in the tinier pond.

So right now we're seeing rich people eat other rich people, fighting over who gets to control the dwindling remains of civilization that will remain after their decisions wreck the world.

I always preferred the 'Friendship is Optimal' version. It's a my little pony fanfiction in which a video game based on the franchise featuring AI achieves the singularity and creates a sort of digital afterlife. Humans can be uploaded, but the process is destructive, resulting in their real body's death.

The afterlife created for them is uniquely calibrated to provide maximum contentment. Each space features a small number of other people (some real, some NPCs) following Dunbar's number to ensure our minds can care about them. The people chosen are calibrated to mesh well with your personality.

It features interesting things for us to do, with enough challenges to keep things fresh and engaging, but not so many as to overly frustrate us. Basically it turns our experience into that of an idyllic version of reality.

That's about as close a description of 'eternal bliss' as I can fathom except for the fact that by nature it's not 100% bliss all the time. It's just living in a world where you matter, can surround yourself with loved ones you gel with and can pursue your passions endlessly in ways that are personally rewarding to you. Even then I'm not sure how it'd actually keep working after a few thousand years or so.