I’ll second the recommendation for the Braun Silk Epil 9, though noting I never used one pre-HRT. If battery runtime is a concern, there are also several corded models which work well.

Congrats!! 🥳

No, really, I used to end with negative scores all. the. time. 😅

That’s quite the drama. I wonder why one of the parties in the dispute seems a lot more believable than the other…?

💯 A cishet person who treats “ally” as a verb is WAY more helpful than one who only wears it as a noun.

Other people here are already doing a great job of covering the “what we think” and “whether welcome in queer spaces or not” aspects of your question, so let me dive into this part instead:

…someone who’s not in the space or actively an ally. I would more accurately describe myself currently as a “don’t care” person in the sense that to me it genuinely does not matter what someone identifies as or who someone is attracted to.

Ever watch the TV show Ted Lasso? There was a scene in the final season where one of the players on the football (soccer) team came out as gay. The other players tell him they “don’t care”, meaning to be supportive but not actually succeeding. Ted gives a speech and, as his character admits afterward, makes a poor comparison — but still does a good job of communicating to the others that they should care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcaUZ9R0y2c

So, like… I’m glad you’re not antagonizing any of us, but that’s just kind of the bare minimum for being decent, you know? And that is somewhat similar to racial discrimination: as a white person in North America, telling Black people I “don’t care that they’re Black” would tell them I haven’t considered that being Black is something core to their identity and how they experience the world because of the way society works. It would tell them I still see whiteness as the “default” but it’s “okay” to be something else. It would tell them that I might say something if I witnessed blatant racism happening, but they shouldn’t count on me to do so because I haven’t made any effort to learn how racism actually works and I might back down if I feel speaking up would put myself at any risk. But I do care, so I try to educate myself, and I look for opportunities to practice anti-racism. I absolutely make mistakes, but they tend to be easily forgiven so long as I show a willingness to listen, learn, and try.

But hey… I freely admit that I was way older than 18 when I finally started listening to people and began understanding all of this! So I absolutely don’t mean to “rake you over the coals” or anything. I just tell you these things because I hope you grow into a better person faster than I managed to. 🙂💜

P.S. When I transitioned, I had this mantra which I found immensely helpful: “There is not one damn person on the face of this earth I ever have to see again if I truly decide I don’t want to.”

“Truly” is a heavy decision to make, but there’s always some way to push them forever out of your life and keep going. Often very difficult, but the option is there. 💜🏳️‍⚧️

Assuming you’re trying to call a place/person who offers HRT regularly, try to remember that the person who answers your call has received this same call many times before and wants to help you get what you need. And it’s okay for you to ask for what you need. You deserve to get what you need.

Alternatively, remember that the longer you delay, the longer you still have way too much testosterone flowing through you. 😉

It’s scary to take these big steps, but you’re traveling a well-worn path walked by we who came before you. 💜

Oh hey! I just went to some trouble to explain something similar for you and everyone else in some depth last night…

One thing I should add here is that there’s often no one person who’s “best for the job”. Different people have different strengths in ways that often don’t directly compare. The idea that we can stack-rank candidates of similar knowledge and experience is misguided at best.

Mod chips used to be necessary for playing games on CD-R, but now that can be done with just a 4-in-1 cartridge using the PseudoSaturn hack. My recollection is that Saturn mod chips only defeat the copy protection check and you’d still need another solution (like the 4-in-1 cart) for disabling the region-lock.

If you want a more authentic experience, Retro-Bit made some officially-licensed Saturn and MegaDrive replica controllers including USB and Bluetooth versions. Or you can get a DIY Bluetooth conversion kit for Saturn controllers from 8bitdo.

For sure, the Fenrir ODE (optical drive emulator) is a great option if the CD drive is dying or dead. The drive in my Saturn still worked fine last time I checked, but I was lucky enough to pick up a Satiator which plugs into the rear expansion port and leave the CD drive intact. (I think the MPEG decoder for VideoCD was the only official peripheral made for that port.)

It’s very easy to get around region locking with a “4-in-1” cart, plus two of the other functions are RAM expansion (1MB and 4MB modes).

In addition to what others have said, it’s also becoming more difficult to find Saturns with working CD drives as they continue aging.

PS2 defaults to 4:3, digital out can be things besides HDMI, and the vast majority of 360 consoles sold had HDMI out. If you want to draw the line elsewhere, no big, do your thing, there’s no one True answer to OP’s question… but your comment feels like whataboutism to me and adds nothing of value.

In my view, systems without an HDMI output or which default to a 4:3 aspect ratio are retro. But I don’t expect everyone else to share this opinion, and that’s totally fine. 🙂

Direct link to the PDF: https://segaretro.org/images/8/8c/SegaFY1997BrandReview_US.pdf

OP made a point of requesting resources and specifically asked us not to suggest whether or not they’re trans.

Hello! I think the book “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves” is a great starting point, it collects a lot of info in one place and will probably give you a better sense of the trans community and the breadth of our experiences. (If you can’t afford a copy, there’s a pdf of it on Internet Archive.)

You are 100% right that you’re the only one that can answer these questions for you. No matter whether you’re ultimately trans or cis, good luck finding your path to self-acceptance and joy. 💜

I can’t see how they could possibly market a “Game Boy Advance” handheld successfully. It’d have to be something fundamentally different from the Game Boy Colour. 😉

For the average consumer, it’s all about the games. If the next platform has awesome games you can’t play on the current-gen platform, it’ll sell. (Well, barring some disastrous marketing…)

Wishful thinking at best. Nintendo has no incentive to rush forward with a new platform yet. Hardware ain’t where the money is, and they’re not struggling to sell software when they have something good.