Sasha

Oh sick, I forgot to look this up. I heard a cover of it last year by a ridiculously good highschool punk band.

I have a playlist called "Loud Sleep" I put that on, crank the volume up enough that I can't hear my thoughts and wait around until I'm so exhausted I either fall asleep or get sleepy enough that I take them off and pass out. I specifically use Skullcandy crushers so I crank the bass waaaaaay up and let it vibrate my skull.

It's just a bunch of They Might Be Giants' more aggressive/loud songs and a couple that mean something to me. It's not really about avoiding feeling stuff, it's all intended to make me feel more, just without as much thinking. It's kept me alive on some really bad nights when I felt like all I could do was die.

I'm sure I've seen these before, but so far as I can tell they have been taken over by an educational company, as you said. Shame.

I'm saving this post though, if I spot any of these I'll shoot you a message, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Imposter syndrome because the people around you beat you to coming out is real and sucks so hard. It happened to me, I watched a couple of my friends go through the exact same thing after I came out and it happened in reverse to an acquaintance when I heard someone angrily complain about said acquaintance coming out after them (it was unbelievably toxic and nothing I've seen before or since).

One of the closest people in my life literally hit me with the "just asking for a friend" to see if they're allowed to be non-binary without taking hormones like I do. Even with all the reassurance in the world it can take a long time. It's so so hard, being trans often means overcoming an enormous amount of self doubt and all sorts of other internalised nasty things.

You've done an amazing job navigating everything. I'm so proud of you and it only gets better from here, I promise.

Thank you for existing ❤️

Thanks, I appreciate that a lot ❤️

I'm going through some really awful stuff at the moment, and it's hard to feel proud of anything when I absolutely despise myself, but these are things I managed to convince myself are okay:

• Surviving this. I'm working very hard to get better, I have lots of regrets and getting better isn't for the reason I want it to be, but I will succeed
• I helped start a transgender solidarity network, our first rally was the proudest moment of my life
• That time I tried to stop a coal ship from leaving port (it didn't work but it did do a lot of other important things for the rest of the protest)
• I make a really mean creamed cauliflower and I always feel super proud when I get to make it and hear all these strangers say how good it is (it's the easiest dish in the world, people are just addicted to salt)

Haha yeah EEAAO was a trip and I barely understand it either

Sorry to nitpick a bit, dark matter isn't connected to the expansion of space (as far as we're aware) but dark energy is probably what you meant. My answer to your question is at the end.

Full disclosure: While I have studied this, my expertise was in a tangentially related field. However a buddy of mine has a PhD in measuring this stuff so I've got some second hand knowledge.

It's a confusing hurdle for any student of physics to understand that spacetime doesn't exist inside another bigger thing into which it can expand, it just kinda exists on its own. Mathematically we don't even treat the expansion quite like growth, it's a bit easier to understand it as our rulers getting shorter, the labels we give to distances changes over time. Personally I like the analogy of a sheet of grid ruled paper.

If you choose two points and count the number of squares between them, divide that grid into a smaller one and then count them again, the "distance" has gone up. Those squares look smaller to us so it seems like the true distance is the same, but the universe doesn't have an external view to make such comparisons from, all we have are the squares and physics obeys them. The point is you can cut squares up forever without running out of squares to cut up, nothing runs out this way.

In spacetime maths (general relativity aka GR) we usually start by defining distances, and when it comes to the expansion of the universe we literally just have a number in that definition that changes over time.

This kind of "our rulers and clocks are dodgy and unreliable" is unfortunately the backbone of this sort of physics. It's a huge pain in the ass, but it's cool af if you're a huge maths nerd.

How does it expand?

🤷

Anyone who can tell you how dark energy works beyond "it has a negative pressure" is full of it. It's a theoretical idea and has never been observed, we just know that if something with negative pressure existed everywhere then it would cause space to expand. Don't quote me, but it's kinda like the opposite of how a black hole squishes spacetime down into a singularity, dark energy pushes out on everything everywhere all at once. (Couldn't help myself it's a great movie go watch it)

There are a bunch of possible things that fit the bill, it could just be a number in Einstein's field equation, it could be a specific type of quantum field that has a constant value everywhere, hell I've even seen models where it's just caused by black holes existing. It's also possible that Einstein got some stuff wrong and that expansion is just what space do. Either way, I don't think these things require more stuff to be created, it's just stuff that's already there.

If I had to make a mostly uneducated guess, I'd say it's probably just a feature of quantum gravity, for which we have no proven theories. Loop quantum gravity just demands it exists for the theory to even be useful, I'm sure string theory has it's own crazy nonsense to explain it too. If we ever do work this out, I fully expect it's just going to be a thing we have to accept exists without an obvious cause, much like how the universe exists but we have no idea why or why the rules it follows are those specific rules and not some others.

Still doing bad but I'm a bit over depression posting so here's some wins:

• My singing has improved a lot, I might finally record a full song
• I managed to help a couple of friends when I organised a mental health intervention for myself. Hearing about my stuff made them feel a little less alone and more comfortable to share their trauma.
• I've been very motivated to work on myself and I've been doing a lot of things to improve my life generally.
• I'm still standing, still growing and still fighting

I've got unclockable's bra buds and they're pretty good when they work but it's been hard to find good bras and they can be a pain to keep in place. I've come home a few times only to realise they'd completely left the cup without me noticing.

They're supposedly like implants and tbh they're pretty convincing when you get them in something good, I really like them I just wish I had more than one bra for them...

OP You should watch (or read if you like manga) Fire Force. The hook is that people randomly catch fire and society kinda has to deal with it, it's a fun show.

And yeah it's cooler than funerals, the Fire Force brings along nuns to pray for the person when they need to put them out.

Just had my first psych session in a while today, I'd tried to start it a while ago to stop things getting where they are now. Instead I'm just focussing on recovery, it'll be weird to look back on this one day and realise I feel okay again.

I've had a few very scary experiences, a second visit to the ER and lots of revelations about myself. I'll live, but learning to live with myself is going to take a while. My one lifting thought is that I'll be a better person for this, but it should never have had to come at such a cost.

If anyone else is going through stuff rn, I'm so sorry. Do what you can to take care of yourself, seek support and most of all try to be kind to yourself. I know how you feel, and I'm sorry.