Yup! And don’t get too disheartened by how things look down there. You’re just a few days post-op. Everything’s swollen and sore. You’re recovering from a major surgery. The swelling will end and things will look less and less like a horror show with each passing day. Don’t even try to judge things until you’re a few months post-op.

Also, if you do get a bit depressed, that’s also normal. Post-op depression is extremely common for all forms of surgeries. You’re in pain, you’re hopped up on painkillers, you’re sleep deprived, and your body is freaking out because it has a ton of healing to do. It’s natural to feel some level of depression. If anything, maybe your body knows you need to be still and move slowly in order to heal, and what better way to encourage that than to make you a bit depressed?

Anyway, no idea if you’ll experience any kind of post-op malaise, some do, some don’t. But if you do, just remember it’s extremely common. Post-op depression can hit trans people even harder than other surgeries because of all the cultural baggage and judgment that’s attached to bottom surgery. If you’re not mindful, it’s really easy to experience a common surgical after-effect and for your pain-killer addled brain to convince itself that “oh god, this was a mistake, what have I done???!!!” If you experience any depression, just try to keep this in mind, accept it for what it is, and reserve any judgment on the success of the surgery until well after the initial recovery period. If necessary, recognize that in your current state, you simply may not be capable of forming rational opinions on some things. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Not sure if any of this is helpful. Just trying to provide what little advice I can based on my own experience. If it’s totally off base, feel free to ignore it.

Regardless, congrats again. I’m so happy for you! Remember, if nothing else, you have now achieved something that no one can ever take from you. No matter what happens going forward, you will never in your life have to deal with that source of dysphoria and pain ever again. It was this thought that really got me through my initial post-op period. If life went really bad, I could end up homeless, living on the street, denied medication, or even in jail. I didn’t know what the future would hold; I still don’t. But I did know, and I do know, with 100% absolute certainty, that I would NEVER and will NEVER have to face that particular pain ever again. And that is something that no one can ever take from you now. Especially in times as tumultuous as these, as scary as the world now is, I, even now, find some real comfort in that. I’m 12 years post-op, and that still gives me some comfort. I know that no matter what happens, I will never experience bottom dysphoria or face my body remasculinizing ever again. No one can ever take that away from me. They can put me in the ground, but they can never force me back into a masculine box. In this, I am free.

The problem with sanctioning and tariffing everyone around you is that eventually, countries just ignore you all together and start trading with others.

We’re speed running the Confederacy here. The Confederacy thought that King Cotton would save the South. They thought that if the British were cut off from their cotton supply, eventually they would be forced to intervene on the side of the South. Instead, the British eventually just found alternative suppliers in Egypt and India. (They weren’t exactly angels here, this was still colonialism.)

Sanctions and tariffs can work if they are limited and targeted. Are there two or three countries that you truly feel are doing abominable things? Then cut them off from the trade system, and they will feel pressured to change their ways. If you embargo or tariff half the planet however, all those affected countries can still trade with each other. If you embargo or tariff too many countries, eventually you are embargoing yourself.

I’m thoroughly convinced those humanoid robots are just a way to bypass immigration law. The actual AI to run a robot like that in a domestic setting does not exist and will not for decades, if ever. Would you trust ChatGPT to run a robot, in your home, where your family lives? That’s how you end up with your baby in an oven when the damn robot mistakes it for a turkey.

All the tech demos for those robots are actually being live-piloted by human operators wearing haptic suits and VR headsets. They claim this is temporary, but it’s not. We already have doctors doing remote surgeries across the planet. If you can do brain surgery remotely, you can wash dishes remotely.

These robots are not going to be autonomous. They’re going to be deployed in rich countries, remotely piloted by people in poor countries. Workers in poor countries will telecommute to rich countries for menial labor jobs. The rich countries will get the benefits of immigrant labor without providing any of the benefits immigrants normally get. They won’t have a path to citizenship. Their children won’t get citizenship or education. They won’t get healthcare or income assistance benefits.

It seems absurd to go to all this trouble just for some domestic work, but it’s really not. Imagine you can save $10/hour on labor by using one of these robot systems piloted remotely by workers in low wage countries. Even if the robot costs $50k, if you can work them 12 hours per day, that $50k robot will pay for itself in 14 months.

This is also why the robots need to be humanoid. It takes time to train a pilot to remotely operate a robot with a very nonhumanoid shape. But a humanoid robot? You can take someone who never finished the 8th grade, hand them a haptic suit and a VR headset, and they’ll be able to pilot such a robot instantly. But any human without severe neurological illness, regardless of education or background, can safely operate a robot like this. You don’t need to know English or the intricacies of American culture to know that you shouldn’t put a baby in an oven. And if the robot does do something horrible, there’s a human on the other end you can hold responsible for its actions.

This is the critical application of these humanoid robots. We don’t have and may never have the AI to let these things run truly autonomously. Their real killer app is bypassing immigration law, taking advantage of immigrant labor, while offering the immigrants very little benefits beyond a meager wage.

Nah, they’ll just forcibly convert the homeless into involuntary sharecroppers.

Next Trump will propose helping America’s farmers out by ordering all the sparrows killed.

I’ve been through it myself; I know how painful it can be. Just remember that as bad as today might be, it’s the worst pain it’s ever going to be. Each day is a bit better than the one before.

I’m getting a real big “Mao’s backyard furnaces” vibe from this whole situation.

Congrats! And hope for a quick recovery.

I’ve ordered DIY before. I’m an international supply chain and logistics expert!

It will never be more efficient to 3D print a part that can be made via casting or injection molding. An injection mold takes seconds to make a part that would take a 3D printer many hours. It’s the old Swiss army knife problem. A purpose-built tool will always perform a task better than a general-purpose one.

They need to run a former Democratic primary candidate who has the bona fides to truly win over Republican voters. Dems keep trying to appeal to Republicans, but it never works. They need a candidate that the right will finally accept.

Say hello to 2028 Democratic presidential candidate David Duke!

Thanks to sprawling American car-dependent infrastructure, not even Bigfoot can walk to places anymore.

Ultimately any retirement system suffers from these weaknesses. You can have a retirement system based entirely on universal generous state pensions; it won’t matter. When the economy takes a hit, the state is less capable of generating revenue.

Exactly. For middle class folks who still have to rely on the stock market for retirement, the best option is to just buy dumb index funds and hold them til retirement. You aren’t going to be able to outsmart and out time the actual Wall Street traders who have PhDs in mathematics, access to microsecond trading, and a trading bankroll of billions. If you need to rely on the market, buy and hold is the only sane strategy. At least then you minimize the number of trades you make and the chances for the snakes to screw you over.

If you want real investment advice: no. If you’re investing for retirement, and you’re not near retirement age, you have decades ahead of you before you need these funds. You know those people who “lost everything” in the 2008 recession? Sure, some people lost their jobs and were forced to burn their retirement savings just to keep the lights on. But far more lost money because they sold when the market was in the toilet. The market did eventually recover, but the timing of the recovery couldn’t be predicted in advance, so they lost out on much of the recovery. The market went back up, but they still had their 401k sitting in cash. They lost money on the dip, and then they lost money again on the upswing.

Also, keep in mind that Trump’s policies mean that cash savings will be far more vulnerable in this crash than in the 2008 crash. At least in 2008, the inflation rate was basically zero. Cash didn’t lose much value just sitting in your savings account. But Trump is trying to weaken the dollar to make imports more expensive and US exports more appealing to foreign consumers. And Trump’s policies are expected to be rather inflationary. Cash is no safe haven right now. You could try to move your assets to foreign currencies and companies, but this crash is global. The US set itself up as the linchpin of the global economy after WW2. If the US stumbles, everyone stumbles. The only country that won’t be hurt much by this crash will be North Korea. But there really aren’t that many investment opportunities for foreigners in the hermit kingdom.

It sucks, but at this point you should just ride it out. If you still have decades till retirement, just ignore your retirement balance for the next few years. Just ride it out and remember that you’re investing not for today, but for decades in the future. Or consider the parable of Bob, the world’s most unlucky investor.

The “crash it and buy the dip” strategy only works if you’re confident that asset prices will recover after the crash. There is no guarantee that’s the case. Trump is doing damage to the US economy that won’t be easily recovered. Even if free and fair elections happen in 2028. Even if a Democrat manages to win. Even if they reverse every one of Trump’s economic policies. Even if all of this is true, Trump is doing damage that may not be reversible.

Let’s say you’re a company overseas that sells a lot of products in the US. You go to great lengths to make your products compatible with American markets and appealing to American consumers. Think of a company in China that makes products for Walmart stores. Walmart works closely with manufacturers. If you want to sell something at Walmart, you need to go through their processes, make products to their specifications, etc. You have to make custom versions of your product just for Walmart stores. Walmart is such a large market that it is worth it for manufacturers to do this, but it is a long and expensive process.

Imagine you’re such a Chinese manufacturer, producing products specifically to sell at Walmart. Now you get hit with a massive tariff. Suddenly your Walmart sales drop in half or more. You’ve spent millions tailoring your products to the needs and preferences of Walmart, and now that investment is just gone. Poof. Millions lost in an instant.

Now imagine that after 2028, all the tariffs go away completely. Are you going to be so eager to go through the process of interfacing with Walmart again? Would you invest those millions again, knowing that in 2032 another Republican arsonist can roll into office and put the tariffs right back up again? I think you would rather spend your finite resources tailoring your products to the consumers of saner countries.

Or consider US arms manufacturers. They’re losing a fortune on cancelled arms sales in Europe and other allied countries. The US is now showing itself to be an unreliable ally. As long as the US was a rock-solid member of NATO, countries didn’t mind buying F-35s from Lockheed Martin. But if the US’s allegiances can swing wildly with each election, that’s no longer the case. The F-35 is a modern fighter that runs on American software. Ukraine just found out that a lot of American tech can be remotely disabled at the flip of a switch. Even if a Democrat wins in 2028, and they’re the biggest NATO supporter in all of history, would you trust the US? Or would you rather buy something made in Europe that is less risky? If you’re Poland looking to buy a jet fighter, one from France probably looks a lot better than one from the US right now. At least France is unlikely to suddenly decide that Putin is great.

Or the ultimate issue - the US’s status as the world reserve currency. Trump is currently setting fire to the global trade order put in place after WW2. Remember. This system was built by the US. We dictated the terms of it. We built a system that gave us immense profit and benefit. And Trump is slaughtering the goose that laid the golden egg. The US gains huge economic benefits from being the wold reserve currency, and Trump is in the process of ending that. That isn’t something that can just be regained, regardless of who is sitting in the White House in 2029.

This is why I am very skeptical of the narrative that billionaires want Trump to crash the economy so they can buy cheap assets. Buying cheap assets during a crash is only a windfall if the prices of those assets go back up at some point. But Trump is doing a lot of damage to the US economy that simply won’t be easy to repair, regardless of what happens in the next election.

Also, even if you don’t know the answer to this, if you happen to know a better place to ask this question, please let me know.

I would say that you’re a civilian if you aren’t currently serving in the military, regardless of former military service. That’s at least how it works under international law.

That’s the problem with founding a state based on genocide and ethnic cleansing. When you’ve convinced yourself that you’re literally doing the will of God, when are you actually “done” with God’s work? Just how big is the “Jewish homeland” supposed to be? The Torah said that Yahweh gave the ancient Israelites all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. A fundamentalist Zionist can justify, based on a direct religious reference, that Israel can rightfully expand that far based on the direct word of God. And God never said the Israelis couldn’t conquer more land beyond those bounds. It’s a recipe for self-destructive never-ending conflict.

Israel’s MO is pretty obvious at this point:

1. Antagonize your neighbors just over the border until they start attacking you back.
2. When your neighbors retaliate against your harassment and violence, send in the military to secure a “buffer zone,” billed as a demilitarized zone like the Korean DMZ. Say you can’t have Jews and Arabs living right next door to each other, so a buffer is needed.
3. Once the buffer zone is established, let Jewish settlers in to build towns and cities in what was supposed to be an empty safety buffer.
4. After a few years, Jews and Arabs are once again on each other’s doorstep.
5. Start again antagonizing the neighbors (who are usually the same people you displaced a generation ago.)

This has been Israel’s strategy for decades. They’ve seized “buffer zone” after “buffer zone.” They let their people move into the buffer zone, and then suddenly they don’t have a buffer zone anymore. They use their own civilian population as human shields, putting them in a position where they are guaranteed to be attacked by angry people the Israeli government and settler forces are continually antagonizing. Then when they’re inevitably attacked, that can be used to justify expanding the borders even further. Oh, and none of their neighbors can resist this process through direct military action, as Israel has a nuclear arsenal. No one can afford to get in a total war with Israel.

I really don’t know where this ends. At this point I think the best thing for Mideast peace would be the Iranians, Egyptians, or Turks getting a nuclear weapon themselves. The only thing that’s going to stop the never-ending drive for Israeli lebensraum is if they expand until they’re up against someone too tough for them to boss around. And that’s probably going to need to be a country that is themselves a nuclear power.

The other problem with this expansion is that it gets baked into the Israeli society and economy. It’s a bit like what happened with ancient Rome. Their whole economy became dependent on this process of expanding, conquering peoples, subjugating and enslaving them, etc. They had to keep expanding just to keep their economy running. They paid their retired veterans with stolen land. The only way you can keep that model going is by expanding forever. And eventually they expanded beyond what they could manage. The same thing is happening in Israel. They have whole sectors of their economy dependent on this process of expansion and settlement. At this point, even if they wanted to, they can’t just say, “ok, we’ve expanded enough. These are our fixed borders now and forever.” They can’t do that without collapsing the part of their economy that is dependent on selling and developing all the land they take. They can’t have peace without causing a massive recession. They’ve become addicted to stealing land.