While this is true to an extent, from experience this line of thinking has its limits and is very easy to misapply. On the one hand, yes you can tell people their ideas do not gel with the vision of the project, and sometimes that’s the right call. And sometimes doing this a lot is best for the project.

On the other hand, even if a majority of the work is coming from one person, not only does your community learn your project, they also spend time contributing to it, fixing bugs, and helping other people. I feel it’s only to a project’s benefit to honor them and take difficult suggestions seriously, and get to the root of why those suggestions are coming up. Otherwise you risk pissing off your contributors, who I feel have the right to be annoyed at you and maybe post evangelion themed vent blog posts if you consistently shut down contributors’ needs and fail to adapt to what your users actually want out of your software. And forking, while freeing and playing to the idea of freedom of choice, also splits your userbase and contributors and makes both parties worse off. It really depends on the project, but it pays to maintain buy-in and trust from people who care enough to meaningfully contribute to your project.

This is what I came to the comments for! Thanks for the explanation, that’s cool as hell.

It’s something that’s important in personal relationships I think, but the context and human tends to get lost over the internet.

If a friend’s drowning in negativity, one can be present in some ways, but that can’t be fixed by anyone else nor would that even really make sense. They could be in a bad situation, in which case maybe there’s ways to directly help, but oftentimes it’s something only they can work through and we also have to maintain some distance and boundaries and recognize we won’t fix how they feel nor should we try to. And sometimes people just need to vent negativity and shout into the void or break down to a friend.

On the internet, we fire off walls of text under the presumption people will just read it and get it and fuck off and go change their whole worldview. It takes time and the ephemeral nature of communication on the Internet means we’ll never be around for the context or resolution of someone’s difficulties. (nor will they for our own.) So, even more than irl, we have to set boundaries on how invested we’re willing to get. It’s a constant frustration for me though.

ps muse dash looks cute as hell, have fun!!

Yep absolutely!

For me, it felt like my life was quickly progressing away from a youth I was not ready to leave for inexplicable reasons. In the end I ended up taking a nuclear option once I realized how uncomfortable I was with my future, and while it’s not been easy it’s been absolutely worth it.

Even though you may be stuck in the same habits and mistakes, they can be rewritten and you’ll be surprised how quickly life changes once you find what makes you authentically happy. A lot can happen in 3 years and I guarantee you’ll still be young at 24. You can still be young at twice that. There’s a lot of life ahead of you, especially once you take calculated risks to improve your future and make the most of the youth you still have. You may not know what exactly will make you happy, but trust in yourself and your judgement to find it as you go.

Wasn’t really allowed to harbor or express anger as a kid. Now I can’t summon an ounce of rage, even when it’s appropriate and helpful. It’s not ideal, so I spend a lot of time meditating, dropping away other emotions in hopes of finding a spark of something in there. Nothing yet, but I’ve found a number of other useful things in the process.

Mindfulness is a great skill to build to debug issues like this. It’s slow, painful sometimes, and doesn’t always feel worthwhile, but it’s definitely worth taking the time to try meditating to get closer to your base emotions and how they appear.

Worth remembering too that what you’re looking for probably isn’t a huge shift in thinking, at least in the short term. Incremental progress over time is all it takes. Some people are shades of tightly wound and that’s okay. You’re who you are for a reason and it’s worth being kind to yourself when unhelpful thoughts appear. Not to excuse yourself of behavior you don’t want to maintain, but to care for and guide yourself toward a simple step in the right direction.

Outer Wilds, to my estranged family. I think they could use a new religion and that game’s probably a better place to start.

Yeah, I think that’s pretty much all that is generally needed. I’ve had people assume but ask me first, just asking “she/her?” as a question, I respond yes, we go about our business. If you don’t want to assume, you can also pretty much universally use they/them in passing, or if it’s someone you interact with more frequently, people really don’t tend to mind if you ask.

I mean I’m trans, I get around quite a bit in queer spaces, I haven’t met anyone who would get super mad about initially assuming pronouns rather than just saying “hey I prefer XYZ” and moving on. Generally when people react strongly to being misgendered, it’s due to ongoing conflict over their identities, having to deal with people who use pronouns to casually disregard your Identity, familial abandonment, etc. It is often a response to complex trauma from elsewhere. That’s not really your responsibility, but I’ve been there and if you can offer them any grace in those moments, it’s extremely helpful.

the singular use is so old, when it was first introduced, “they” was still spelled with a fucking thorn!

Borderlands?

I love spicier ginger beers and sarsaparilla, they’re so much less sweet and have a lot more flavor

👉👈

His pan pizza recipe is a party go-to for me. I have some trouble getting the dough to rise enough sometimes, but when it works it’s gloriously bready. I like replacing the water in the dough with beer too.