Men are always interrupting women while they’re loading 1,500 pounds of gravel into their cars, and I’m sick of it.

I think the Danish word Hygge contains this coziness-to-exterior-inhospitability quotient

They do actually want to ban Buck Angel from using the men’s room, and this is the point I always use to illustrate the real hatred underlying this issue. They want people like Buck to be forced into the choice between facing arrest for using one bathroom, or facing violence for using the other. That’s the only point of these measures - to make violence and legal threat the only two options available.

The goal is to ban trans people from existing in public.

Training and familiarization helped me a lot with that exact feeling. I had the same feeling about circular/table saws. My dad was a carpenter, and those things freaked me the hell out - one tiny mistake could have devastating consequences, and that was all I could think about when I was around them. But with careful instruction and exposure, learing to use and be more comfortable with them, that feeling was gradually replaced by calm and confidence, and they changed in my mind from these objects of terror into valuable tools. There was still fear, but it was a healthy, respectful fear.

I went through the exact same process with guns as well. Some classes with a good instructor, giving you a chance to get more comfortable and familiar before you bring a gun into your home, could help a lot.

I have a 43-inch Insignia N10 that works great in exactly that role. Dumb TV with HDMI inputs, audio outputs, and that’s about it. Best Buy’s in-house brand, it was like 120 bucks about a year ago, when my Vizio TV from 2003 finally died in a way I couldn’t fix :(

The built-in speakers aren’t great, definitely recommend hooking it up to something else.