I remember after having a complete mental breakdown was an intense desire to protest the world. So I decided to tattoo both of my arms.

I was still pretty scared of showing my tattoos and tried to hide my arms for some time because I was still scared of those miserable types who can’t stand other people being happy as themselves.

Eventually it got too hot and the arms had to come out and to my surprise I got so many compliments. That was such a huge confidence boost and I started to feel so much better about myself.

My favourite compliment ever was when I was Cardiff visiting a friend. This little boy was hopping around the grocery store, stopped and paused for a moment then said with a giant smile “I like your tattoos!” and then hopped away after I said thank you.

As an added bonus, I get to annoy miserable old men who hate people being themselves and I don’t even have to say a word.

These days I am definitely more comfortable about being able to have fun with my life.

Shellcheck is a great tool for scripting.

When I’m building a new script, I usually add the following function to the script and run the function before anything else. The script will exit immediately if any issues are found so I have a chance to correct things. If no issues are found, the script will simply continue.

It’s small and simple so it’s easy to remove when I’m done building a script.

script_check() {
    if ! shellcheck "${0}"; then
        exit 1
    fi
}

script_check

Shellcheck has helped me learn a lot about scripting and I strongly recommend using it too.

If I tuck my pant legs into my boots or socks, I can deal with the draft that way.

Having tight material around my thighs makes me uncomfortable and I’m constantly pulling on them. Same with belts, waistbands and neckties. My thermal tops are stretched and warped with how much I tug on those. A few months ago I broke a belt by constantly tugging on it for so long. I just really don’t like clothing in general but I still have to wear them.

I also sweat a lot in general so I’m forever in a losing battle against discomfort in so many ways.

I wear long johns on days below -15. Otherwise they are just too uncomfortable for me. I also like to sleep in jeans because I like the rough texture. There’s not much about me that makes much sense but I roll with it anyways.

If I’m wearing tights, I may as well wear pants. And I do mean any draft is cold on me. I have to tuck my shirt or undershirt into my pants often because even the slightest draft sends chills throughout me.

I need socks and I always pack gloves, a neck gaiter and a hat in my backpack when I leave the house from early autumn to late spring. I start wearing thermal shirts around late autumn to early spring.

I’m an east Indian body, with south American parents living in a North American country with very long and dark winters.

I’m forever cold. Drafts are my enemy. Thinking about skirts and dresses makes me feel cold.

If anything, I want cloaks. They are so warm cozy. I also want a cloak for when I go on hikes. Cover my body with a loose, light material while not trapping too much heat but protecting any exposed skin from mosquitoes. I basically do that with a very light hoodie. I have a shaved head so I wear my hood on my head, drape the rest over my backpack and arms and it drastically reduces the number of bug bites.

I’ve experienced gatekeeping issues long before I got into self-hosting specifically. Years ago I wanted to learn C++ for Arduino and I was constantly talked down for asking questions.

“Why don’t you just do …” in response to a question feels very rude as a newcomer because it feels like I am being talked down to for not knowing what others already know. Even when I made an effort to show I was making an effort to learn on my own, I was still belittled.

I’m all for hearing different ways of approaching my issue but from the replies, it often feels like other people insist there is only one true specific way to handle an issue.

When I first got into self-hosting, people kept pushing Cloudflare on me. When I expressed concern over a large centralized corporation having that much control and how they might have service issues, I was mocked really hard. Half a year later and there was a significant outage and suddenly there’s all this talk about how centralized the internet is and how that is bad.

After that I took it upon myself to find alternative ways to protect myself without Cloudflare’s services but every step of the way has been an isolating experience. Every step of the way has been full of people saying that my efforts are pointless and that the bots will win anyways so I shouldn’t bother.

I decided to try to secure myself through multiple layers of obscurity and every question in that direction has been full of people saying that obscurity is not security, the bots will find you anyways!

I’ve stopped myself from asking too many questions now. I still keep learning in my direction. I feel like I’ve managed to find multiple solutions that both obscure and protect myself. I’ve constantly check my logs for months now and the bot is less than I expected in places I expect them to be and completely zero in other places I thought there would be some activity.

I want to share what I have learned and my experiences but I know I will receive backlash for deviating from the norm.

I’ve spent a lot of my self-hosting efforts trying to find ways to protect myself with minimal use of third party services, documenting as much as I could only feel afraid to share what I have learned.

This comment may not be about learning self-hosting as a beginner specifically but the vibe has been pretty damn consistent throughout me learning C++, self-hosting, linux and shell scripting. All things I enjoy but all so full of people ready to talk down to someone who wants to learn.

I guess it depends on the people. Our little group are quite open with each other and she means it in an affectionate way.

We met in an unexpected way but we have the same taste in music, we nerd out on electronics together, we enjoy the same activities out, we both try to be vegan and cook together. We also have similar views on openness in relationships so we kiss, cuddle, and hold hands. Her partner who is also in this group enjoys seeing us enioy each other. It honestly seems like her way of including me in this lesbian group and means no harm.

She knows how little names and labels means to me. They all do. I’ve been called everything from gay to princess and never bothered to correct anyone. Because I do more than I say, people will abruptly find out how I’m not as easily definable as they thought and it always has some widely different but interesting results.

My other friend thinks it’s cute and enjoys seeing me happy, considering how we both went through some dark times together. We both sort of trauma bonded over how men mistreated the both of us in our own ways.

It’s confusing because I spent most of my life being bullied by men and I would have never expected this situation I’m currently in to have ever happened. These are people who not only accept me but are genuinely happy that I am who I am and never broke my ethics or values because of how I was mistreated by my family or by so many men.

I’ve met people like this before but that was always when I traveled. Those relationships come and go quickly. This is the first time where it’s lasted longer than a couple weeks or a few months.

Oh no, I’m a guy, dangly bits and all. I guess I forgot to mention that before.

I’ve just never gave much care for labels so I kinda forget what’s important for a full conversation.

Maybe I’m the one that’s confusing hahaha

I look, act and present myself as a guy. I’ve never felt any gender dysphoria and have been completely fine with people assuming I’m a gay guy.

I guess there’s a whole lot that’s happened in the last year of my life that’s made little sense in comparison to my whole life before that where I’ve generally been surrounded by guys acting like manly men. Well that didn’t make much sense either. I think I’m just eternally confused.

My closest friend in my friend group keeps calling me a lesbian and honestly that fucks with my head. I even told another close friend about that and she agrees and that isn’t helping me at all.

I’m finally going to mention this to my therapist soon and I’m kinda afraid she’ll lowkey agree too and that this is just another thing I have to accept? Things have been happening for the last year and they keep happening and I don’t know how to process any of this. It feels like insanity but I’m also happy?

There’s a reason why my reddit/lemmy/piefed usernames always have the word confused in it because what the fuck…

I’ve always found it strange when people make assumptions and are afraid of asking direct questions. Most people seem to think I’m gay. I never correct anyone. I let them live in their world of assumptions. I quietly mind my own business and simply do things for myself.

It’s the simplest way to fuck with people who assume everything. My whole family has been assuming I’m gay my entire life. I never tell them who I’m hanging out with and always use them/they to keep my family in the dark.

My family assumes I’m hanging out with a bunch of guys. One day I’ll bring all my friends over and I’ll have the pleasure of introducing them to the gang of lesbians I hang out with that just walked through the front door.

I have three backups. One is my laptop where all the backups initially start. Then that gets copied to a plugin USB SSD. Then another copy goes to my server which has another USB SSD. That means I don’t have an off site backup.

I don’t have a place to host an off site backup and I’m not comfortable or interested in using cloud services. Instead I just decided that if it all goes up in flames. So be it.

It’s just data and backups are just nice a convenience. I’ll be upset but there’s more important things in life to worry about.

I’ve always lived a life of minimalism and to me stuff is stuff. None of it mattered before I was born and none of it will matter after I die. That happiest and most free feeling I ever experienced was when I spent years travelling with only a 34 litre backpack and that’s kind of been my baseline for happiness ever since.

Sometimes in this community, I’ll check the comment history of someone people who have heavy downvotes, sort by controversial and go on an adventure.

As someone who doesn’t have much care about words, it’s always interesting to see into the mind and history of people who are easily angered by words.

Since 2020, I’ve been telling people that the whole world has entered a collective mental health crisis. Covid has really put on display all the cracks in the systems currently in place and those cracks are only getting bigger.

All the people that ignored me or dismissed me were the type of people who thought we would eventually return to a pre-covid era of normal. Which was the vast majority of everyone I was surrounded by.

These days I talk to only a handful of people who take their mental health seriously and I keep them very close to my heart.

Before the Reddit API change, I made a post to a smaller support subreddit. I made a post about my frustrations about how the majority of men in my personal life treat women in a terrible way. I also made the comparions of the daily aggression against women and how politicians, business and corporate leaders treat people the same way on a much larger scale.

This came after a female friend of mine came out to me about how a now former male friend of mine was creeping on her and making her feel all fucked up. I saw how badly that situation affected her and I was angry, frustrated and confused. I needed to vent.

After 24 hours, 300 upvotes and 150 downvotes, my post was removed for hate speech. All the women who commented were appreciative. All the men who commented were overflowing with hate.

Even though I had been on Reddit since the Digg migration, I had no problem deleting my then 6 year old, 20 something comments account and leaving for Lemmy.

I spent so much time on Reddit lurking that I somehow didn’t fully realize until that day just how deep the toxicity runs on that site. Never looked back and never had the urge to look back since then.