From the US, for context. I have a Chevy Bolt EUV. The main draws for me were the affordability and the fact that the climate control is all physical buttons. The cabin feels like a regular vehicle and not like some technocrat’s imagined all screen cockpit of the future. I commute every day with it no problem.

The ride is smooth, seats are comfortable (on the 2023 model, at least), and the sound system is decent. The one downside is the DC fast charging caps out at 50kW. It makes planning road trips a little more involved due to the wait time to charge from 20-80%.

My commute is roughly 50 miles round trip, which leaves me with a little over 3/4 battery capacity when I get home. I just plug the car into a regular wall outlet and charge overnight.

Hard disagree. If you won’t take the time out of your day to explain to a curious passerby something about your identity that puts you in a minority, you are making an active choice to passively perpetuate prejudice.

It’s not even about the information. As a member of a group, whenever you encounter someone not from your group you unwittingly become an ambassador for your group to that person. Whether you like it or not, that person’s opinion of your group is directly influenced by how you respond.

If you politely educate, people will come away with a more positive opinion of your group than if you dismiss or demean them. And if their curiosity is taking up too much of your time and energy, you have the advantageous ability to refer them to resources that you know and trust.

The general population, in my experience, puts more stock in anecdotal evidence than research. Add onto that all the pop culture and pseudoscience articles and the advent of AI like ChatGPT, you’re putting blind faith and trust in someone else’s ability to learn about something that is a part of your daily life.

Now, some people who struggle with social interactions should be given the patience and grace they need. But denying your role as an ambassador of your group because you see it as ‘not your responsibility’ negatively impacts your community. It’s an incredibly selfish, shortsighted act that causes harm through follow-on interactions.

UCMJ Article 2 lists who the UCMJ applies to. Subsection a4 states:

Retired members of a regular component of the armed forces who are entitled to pay.

If he is retired from the military and collecting a pension, he is still subject to the UCMJ.

Ah, I see. I thought the problem was a matter of labels and identity in the broader sense. Thanks for the clarification!

To preface, I’m a straight white cis male living in the west and I understand I’m speaking from both a position of privilege and from outside the community.

I absolutely see your point, but I offer an alternate perspective. I think a lot of people, especially in smaller communities, need labels to identify one another so that they can form networks of solidarity. There’s a yearning for a sense of belonging and labels make it easier to make connections with similarly ostracized or persecuted peoples.

There are some other critiques of labels, as well. Instead of a trans person being just a singular group, there are subgroups. There are trans-masc and trans-fem people. There are people within those groups who have their own sexual orientations, political ideologies, and other identities. I’m not critiquing the existence of these identities or labels. Rather, that can further sectionalize people into smaller and more insular communities where everyone is the same.

But the opposite is true, too. A portion of someone’s identity can connect them to a larger community just as much as other portions of their identity can isolate them.

The point is not to find those exactly like you in identity, but to connect with people with shared experiences, to compare and contrast oneself with others. When people choose to identify with only those people who share their exact niche, that’s when the problems of ideological echo chambers crop up.

I dream of a world where people can just be people regardless of who they are and how they came to be that person. But there are bad actors who seek to disenfranchise those who are different from them. You’re absolutely right: those bad actors wield the labels as a weapon, using them as slurs and epithets to dehumanize others.

Personally, I don’t think using the term “trans people” is the problem. It’s a tool of language, and it can be swung like a sword or used to plow a field.

So, again, I agree with you, but the use of labels is a lot more nuanced then urging people to stop using them. Continue to combat hateful people for violating the social contract. Keep ostracizing those who seek to only hurt people different from themselves. Make those who dehumanize “others” fear the people’s solidarity and strength. Shame them for being bad actors, make them confront their shittiness. Purge the hatefulness from society.

When everything is all said and done, maybe labels can be dissolved as a concept. Or, maybe labels can finally be used by everyone without any preconceived notions of oppression.

Trans rights are human rights.

Shazbot!

IPA: Isopropyl alcohol, not Indian Pale Ale

Unless this is a woosh moment for me and you were making that joke all along. Sarcasm on the Internet is weird 🫠

Probably nuclear powered fast attack submarines, not submarines armed with nuclear weapons, which — for the US — are also nuclear powered.

Ganondorf’s canonical last name is Dragmire.