new pinned post, because apparently old-style /about pages are literally unviewable on mobile these days! find all your questions about me answered below
kensyouen_Y
I'm losing my fucking mind I'm like nauseous laughing. Someone posted this clip of their SunoAI vocalist randomly being shot to death in the middle of their song. And then it starts playing sad music. This is literally some creepypasta shit I'm kind of inconsolable.
Bedford Quarry House, Westchester County, NY, USA,
Steven Harris Architects,
Interiors: Rees Roberts and Partners
another thing about setting hamlet at christmas is that it reflects the beautiful human experience of having a long holiday stay at your parents’ house that makes you feel like you are going insane
large bastard is out of town for work, my work is a miserable tire fire, i want to kill everything, i got a big check to reimburse a purchase I made for work on my personal card, i should go buy an alternator today at lunch.
When you're having a bad time mentally and have been spending too much time on a computer one of the best things that you can do is find something dirty and physical and difficult to attack. Even if I don't go buy an alternator at lunch I should pull the old one out of my car because A) I need to do something to keep from having a mental breakdown and B) then i can get the core return refund when I go pick up the actual part and C) then I will know how the new alternator goes in once I've got it and D) it's not like the car's driving anyway.
My therapist recently described me as sensory-seeking which clicked pretty significantly and what I'm realizing is that I want to go work on my piece of shit car and get bruised and scrape up my knuckles and have to use lava soap to get car gunk off my hands because i feel bad and there's not a mosh pit handy to make me feel better.
oh shit!! LAVA SOAP!! is THAT the name of the super hardcore orange soap that they used to have at the bike co-op I used to go to!! I need to buy that shit!!
wait no definitely not this appears to only come in bar form? and the one I remember was a Powerful Gunk? but plausibly this is as good. making a mental note here.
You may be thinking of Fast Orange!
Avoidance is the worst reaction to stress. Oh this thing is giving me anxiety? And it's something I could prepare for by looking at it more or learning things about the topic? No, I will take psychological damage if I look at it directly. I will still be thinking about it and be stressed though.
Sunscreen: it doesn’t have to suck!
Not medical advice, but this is your regularly-scheduled reminder that if you are American and hate wearing sunscreen, you should try sunscreens from the international market, particularly Japan and Korea.
Why? Well, the FDA has refused to approve any new UV filtering ingredients since the 90s, even though new, powerful ones have been invented, and the old ones are what makes US sunscreen greasy, stingy, and chalky-looking on the skin. Plus, the old filters are significantly worse at blocking UVA, a part of sunlight that causes cancer, is primarily responsible for photo-aging (e.g. getting wrinkles prematurely from tanning or burning), and can pass right through the ozone layer, clouds, and window glass. (Yes, you can get a sunburn inside your car or on a cloudy day, thanks to UVA.)
EU and Asian regulatory regimes are generally more exacting about safety than the US is, so the new filters are safe; the FDA just doesn’t think it’s important for sunscreen to…*checks notes* work well and not be intolerable to wear, even though sunscreen is one of the main ways to prevent melanoma, which is both common and super-deadly. Every sunburn, every day out in the sun that someone (understandably!) says “Ugh, I don’t want to put on sunscreen, it feels so gross” - that raises their skin cancer risk. Sun damage is cumulative.
This is especially but not exclusively true for people with light skin. If you are very prone to freckling and burning rather than tanning - e.g. the classic redhead complexion - you are at especially elevated melanoma risk.
If you are an adult human person who has been in the sun - but especially if you have any moles or particularly large or unusually colored freckles - you should probably also get a skin check, which is a special doctor’s appointment where the dermatologist tells you if your moles are precancerous. This is important because melanoma has a ludicrously high cure rate if and only if caught early. Skin checks specifically are free of charge with all US insurance by law; you can have one per year totally for free.
The cumulative nature of sun damage also means it’s never too late to start caring for your skin, and the FDA can’t make you buy the bad American sunscreen. There is a massive Asian skincare export market, and there are very reliable websites dedicated to shipping Asian skincare direct to US addresses at minimal markup. I’ve had good experiences with both StyleKorean and YesStyle. Some Japanese or Korean cosmetics stores in the US will also carry them; I’m not sure how this is legal, but I do know e.g. the cosmetics stores in the Japan Center mall in San Francisco have a suspiciously comprehensive selection.
The prices are also decent - I always get sticker shock at how pricey “nice” US sunscreens like Elta MD and (the US-only version of) La Roche-Posay are, and for a worse experience too. You can typically get Asian sunscreens for $5-15 for a 50ml tube, which is a few months, depending on how much you leave the house. Shipping is slow but not too pricey, and better if you buy multiple tubes at a time, for the usual reasons.
What to buy: Most Korean or Japanese sunscreens will be better than any American sunscreen you’ve ever tried, so it very nearly doesn’t matter which one. Common beginner recs include Biore UV Aqua Rich, Canmake Mermaid Gel, and Etude House Sunprise Mild Airy Finish. My super-picky housemate really likes the Beauty of Joseon Relief Sun and Beauty of Joseon Mugwort and Camellia Matte Sun Stick. (Not sponsored.) The latter comes in a little stick format, which is less protective than liquid sunscreens but if it’s all you can tolerate, that’s much better than nothing.
We both actively disrecommend most every sunsceeen Shiseido makes, which despite being really expensive is also super fucking greasy. This is probably because - even though Shiseido is a Japanese brand - these sunscreens are sold in mainstream stores in the US, which means they are obliged to use the same garbage filters as all other US sunscreen. This just goes to show that this post isn’t about the mystic cosmetic formulation knowledge of the Orient; it’s specifically about the next-gen UV filters the US FDA is actively hiding from you. For example, European sunscreen is probably also good in the same way East Asian sunscreen is good, but I am personally less familiar with it so I can make no specific recommendations.
But to a first approximation: Pick anything not available in the US, pick a few, reorder your favorite next time. It will probably work out fine.
The only circumstances under which I wear US-made sunscreen is when I expect to be sweating. Asia doesn’t have as much of an outdoor sports culture as we do, so most Asian sunsceens are intended for everyday use - walking around, driving, hanging out outdoors - and will be washed off by sweat or water. (Exception: I’ve heard the Anessa UV Perfect sunscreens are bulletproof, but they’re also slightly pricey, $25/60ml, which is a little steep for something you’re gonna want to put on your arms and legs too.) My best attempt to patch this is UV-protective clothing, including a hat, SPF rash guards, and leather gloves for biking, and then for my face and any remaining exposed skin, just putting up with whatever Banana Boat-ass spray sunscreen Costco will sell me a three-pack of. I hear the Australians and Europeans have cracked this problem, but again I’m not familiar with those markets so I can’t help you.
How to use it: anywhere the sun touches, liberally. This describes the rule in detail: squirt out two lines, the length of your pointer finger and your middle finger. That’s the amount for your face and possibly neck; I do another finger-line for the neck too, but sources vary. Most people don’t apply enough, probably because many sunscreens suck to apply “enough” of!
How often: Technically you should reapply every two hours, but my personal opinion is that’s mostly every two hours while you’re getting exposed to the sun. If you work indoors and not directly next to a window, the decline in protection over your workday is probably more like 50->30 SPF. So, maybe worth reapplying if you have a long outdoor lunch, or a long outdoor/car commute home, but if you can’t stand to reapply every two hours indoors, that’s probably not going to be the worst thing in the world. Definitely you should reapply every 2 hours if you’re outdoors continuously, particularly if swimming/sweating. I’ve personally gotten got this way.
In conclusion: Sunscreen! It’s important, and it doesn’t have to suck! Do whatever will protect you from the sun the most, that you can also bring yourself to do! Also: FDA, approve more UV filters.
EU and Asian regulatory regimes are generally more exacting about safety than the US is
Citation? I'm aware they approve slightly fewer drugs per year but it's not by much and there's some pretty giant confounders
Yeah, this was misleadingly phrased, sorry. The EU is generally slightly more aggressive on drug safety and significantly more aggressive on food safety with an “unsafe until proven otherwise” approach to food additives. All three regulatory agencies require similar safety evidence for new UV filters, but the US treats each new UV filter as a fresh drug with unknown efficacy, dosing, and effects, requiring the full phased escalating series of drug trials, whereas sunscreens are either not drugs or are treated as quasi-drugs in the rest of the world. Once safety is established the EU and Japan/Korea have preset standards and tests for effectiveness in direct, straightforward human trials. My broader opinion, which I didn’t make explicit because I was mostly trying to get people to wear sunscreen, is that:
- the general safety stance of the EU regulatory bodies is so aggressive about compounds in direct-to-consumer products (food additives, pesticides on crops) that I am inclined to trust that their safety assessment process for new UV filters is sufficient
- on the “effectiveness” side, the full clinical trial process is unnecessarily onerous and we do not in fact need to treat each new filter as a total unknown in humans, because we pretty much understand how UV works on the skin at this late date
- that specifically what we have learned is that sunscreens do not work via interacting with the skin below in a standard “drug-like” fashion, but by physically blocking or chemically absorbing UV. If the UV doesn’t reach the skin, the desired effect has happened: you don’t need to do clinical drug trials on a heavy denim jacket to prove it significantly blocks the sun, it’s a non-biological effect in both cases. We use similar compounds in industry for UV protection as on human bodies, in fact. The safe concentrations still need established, and UV filters may have unintended other effects as it is still a chemical you are applying to your living skin (and in the case of SPF lip balm, probably eating), but that is a matter for safety review. Photostability is relevant but is, again, a purely physical effect that can be demonstrated in other ways. Similarly, an otherwise effective UV filter may fail to stay intact or on the skin under certain conditions in specific formulations of sunscreen, but that is actually a matter of cosmetic chemistry, which even the FDA doesn’t regulate. The level of confusion about efficacy, and thus the needed evidence threshold to prove efficacy, is fundamentally not really that high for UV filters.
- (I already said this but it bears repeating) melanoma is so common and deadly that the FDA is doing much more harm by treating each new UV filter as a novel drug. This is particularly true with the situation with UVA, which causes skin cancer and is only sort of blocked by the physical filters most used in the US (because US-available chemical filters feel awful on the skin). The new filters are especially good with UVA and far-UVA.
- Meanwhile, your best option for UVA filtering under the US system is, like, wearing a hat, or, if you are a sunscreen company, putting some extra antioxidants in your shitty mineral sunscreen, which is a hackish workaround at best. It kind of looks like the most widely used antioxidant for this purpose is goddamn vitamin C; which, do not get me started on vitamin C; vitamin C is nearly impossible to formulate stably because its great passion in life is, predictably, oxidizing immediately; I suspect almost all vitamin C products no longer contain nearly sufficient vitamin C by the time they get to you; I think putting vitamin C in sunscreen is damn near deceptive marketing; I have given up on vitamin C in cosmetics despite its excellent evidence base because it is just so— (I am yoinked off stage by a comically long cane, Vaudeville-style)
juicing: the mirror universe HRT
cis bodybuilders r out here doing shit with hormones most trans people would never DREAM of, my god. take my hand, let’s read the erowid trip reports for testosterone:
CATTLE IMPLANTS! maybe im a naive little tenderqueer who doesn’t do enough drugs but: CATTLE IMPLANTS!!
being way too online has taught me that this sort of behavior causes you to grow ears and a tail. but no, apparently it’s also used to juice the cattle: the added E promotes IGF-1 production in cattle muscle tissue. no furry HRT here.
oil-extracting the contents of the CATTLE IMPLANTS and running it through a COFFEE FILTER. to get out the ESTROGEN. sure. why not.
well im glad you didn’t get an abcess (from THREE INJECTIONS OF CATTLE HORMONES per week!)
also — as someone who’s taken T at normal physiological levels & previously knew fuck-all about testosterone as a “drug of abuse” — all these doses are also absolutely insane. all the reports of gynecomastia make perfect sense now — yeah i bet you were aromatizing all that T back into E, how could you not? (note he doesn’t give a dose here. “three times a week” is not a dose, but it is suggestive of one. namely, Lots.)
this guy put it under his tongue. probably safer! let’s see how that goes for him:
testosterone enanthate: not a stimulant by oral route, it turns out! not sure why we thought this would work, but a negative result is still a result. science.
bodybuilders are also inventing a new kind of nonbinary HRT (cycling between T and E, eight weeks T to four weeks E):
apparently this is common; clomid, in addition to being estrogenic, boosts gonadal function and counteracts the thing where your testicles forget how to be testicles after a while on steroids
honorable mention to the only valid person in this part of erowid, the trans woman who took one for the team and snorted her estradiol:
she did NOT find estrogen was psychoactive by insufflation, but the same poster DID get immediate effects from sublingual estrogen when she was just starting it. by immediate I mean within hours, and by effects, well…
apparently she started anti-androgen treatment first, which is unusual, and was able to find other trans women who started HRT in this order, who also had similar experiences. ??!
anyway the takeaway is that more trans people should post trip reports. there’s nothing quite so psychonaut-like as transing genders; if I were Erowid I’d be particularly interested in capturing reports of the phenomenon where some trans people get an immediate and persistent transformation in their perceptual and emotional landcape after a few days or weeks on HRT, even before the HRT could have possibly resolved their dysphoria by changing their bodies. (Gender Dysphoria Bible calls this ‘endocrine dysphoria’, and I’ve definitely heard anecdotes of it too.) The fact that this sort of thing happens at all, should tell us something fascinating about how human sex hormones act on the brain, but I have no clue what.
OP, since you mention the test doses for bodybuilding seeming oddly high, what is the dose for trans hrt?
I’m lifetime natty, but the basic test cycle is about 400-500 mg/week, judging by friends of mine.
A factor there is that the cis male endocrine system is wildly less sensitive to testosterone, ironically. You have to really push a serious amount in there to move the needle to levels beyond natural physiology to where you notice startling and rapid change.
Meanwhile, cis woman bodybuilders can get comparatively yoked on doses that a cis man would see only moderate changes from, if any. There’s so little test there naturally that any boost is proportionally large and very anabolic. This is also why gym girls can get away with using milder effect profile but less potent compounds like Anavar.
I suppose it makes sense that trans man HRT would only require a mild dosage, all that’s needed to generate a baseline of testosterone and biology does the rest.
Can also confirm that clomid is used to jump start the testicle function, although I didn’t know it was estrogenic, that’s funny
Yeah, those are very high doses. A common starting dose for testosterone for trans men - and for T microdosing for e.g. nonbinary AFAB people - is 20mg/wk, and a common middling dose which achieves tested T levels in the normal male range for many trans men is 50mg/wk. IIRC TRT doses for hypogonadal cis men, including for after orchiectomy, are a bit higher but definitely not 400+mg/wk. Which makes sense - the entire reasons steroids produce what I guess you could call “supraphysiological” muscle growth, is by achieving supraphysiological testosterone levels.
Given the above “cis vs trans testosterone HRT dosing” thing, I’d guess that the apparent difference in sensitivity to steroids isn’t mostly about different hormone sensitivity between biosexes as much as it is about the relative strength/muscularity difference between the biosexes, and also the general dose-response curve. Cis men are generally already on testosterone, so they’re on the unforgiving, shallow part at the right end of the dose-response curve, meaning you really have to push massive amounts of testosterone to get the same amount of absolute improvement, whereas cis women are hitting the nice hockey-stick part of the curve with any exogenous androgen exposure whatsoever. Cis women also have a lot further to grow because trained female lifters are still significantly weaker on average even with overall body mass taken into account, and the same amount of absolute strength or muscle gain on a smaller-framed, less strong person might be more marked visually than on someone who was bigger to start.
Fascinated by whatever’s going on with the “high-anabolic, low-androgenic” effect profile anabolic steroid you mentioned. There doesn’t seem to be multiple androgen receptors, which is my go-to model of how different drugs in similar chemical families can have different effects.
Yeah, clomid is really complicated, actually! It has both estrogenic and anti-estrogenic effects depending on organ, specific estrogen receptor, and pre-existing estrogen levels. Its main medical use is in triggering ovulation, which ironically happens by its anti-estrogenic effects.
as someone who remembers the patriot act and all the conversation surrounding it, it's a bit... of an experience being able to remember how many people pointed out that Terrorist was a politically convenient term which could be used to dehumanise and legally strip the rights from someone and that eventually all this would be used internally. and the response was 'nuh uh only browns with funny headgear are terrorists'. and then two decades of 'fighting age males' being blown to pieces at weddings because they might have, maybe, looked at a terrorist once. A week ago a head of state is black bagged in the middle of the night by the US for being a 'narcoterrorist'. And now an unarmed, random woman - white, citizen - is gunned down by jackboot thugs and before her body is cold she is, of course, a domestic terrorist.
If you are reading this, you need to know that the moment the US state needs to kidnap you, the moment a drone pilot decides you're in the wrong place, the moment you are bleeding to death on the sidewalk, you will be a Terrorist. Because anything can be done to a Terrorist.