Darkoshi

I've let the hairs on my chin grow out. Last month I counted about 60 of them, half white and half dark. Now after 2 months, they are about 1.5 cm long, all on the bottom of my chin. To begin, I just didn't feel like taking tweezers to them like usual. I've been busy, and it was easy to keep skipping it.

I've plucked them most of my adult life. Sometimes I let them grow out for a while, but this time is the longest I've ever let them get.

I only know it has been two months (it felt like longer) due to this note I happened to write; normally I don't document it:
2026/06/03 "Plucked the cute hairs from my chin."

Subsequent notes:
2026/06/28
I had considered pulling my chin hairs before shopping but didn't have any desire to, so didn't. I don't give a damn.
I'm old enough not to care. Or maybe because I'm non-binary.

2026/07/17
I went for a walk ... A car was parked with a young boy by it. The boy raised a hand. It looked like he might be signalling a greeting to me but I wasn't sure. From his facial expression, he looked ...stunned? I don't know.
I made a slight return wave with one hand, without raising it, like I do to the dogs sometimes when people are around and I don't want to be obvious about it. I'm not sure if it was enough for him to see or not.

I wondered then if he'd been able to see my chin hairs from where he was, 10 feet or more away from me, and if that is what he looked surprised by. Or maybe he just couldn't tell what my gender was.

2026/07/28
I took some more photos of my chin hairs. What will I do if we have a work meeting with cameras on?
Do I want my coworkers to see me with facial hair? Do I want to avoid them seeing it? Sigh. When should I pluck the hairs out? Or should I shave them off? Or should I just keep them. I don't know. How bad does it look to others?
I want to write a DW post and include a photo to ask opinions. But maybe I don't want to hear other people's opinions. If they say I should cut it off, I might hold it against them. And if they say I shouldn't, I might think they are trying to be open-minded and supportive while still privately thinking to themselves that it looks bad.

2026/07/31
This notes file actually mentions one of the last times I plucked my chin hairs, on 2026/06/03. So the length they are now is less than 2 months of growth. I'd thought it was a longer time period.
I've had various thoughts about them and whether or not I should remove them. At the moment I'm leaning towards keeping them and being gender-transgressive about it, not caring if other people see them or what they think. Suppose I get hassled about it when going into a public women's restroom - if so, I should deal with it. I especially should be ok with that, considering how I've thought it would be good for masculine trans men to start using women's bathrooms despite looking male, because that's what the new SC/etc laws says they should do, to make a point that the laws are stupid. And how, if they want the law to be based on birth certificates, then everyone needs to carry around their birth certificates to be able to use the bathrooms, not just trans people or gender transgressive people, as otherwise it isn't fair (as if the law is fair to begin with, but whatever).

With the current laws, it is easier for men with bad intentions to go into the womens' restrooms; after all they could just claim to be transmen who were born female. That's probably more likely than transwomen using the women's restrooms in order to victimize other women. Or what they claimed was a danger, men claiming to be transwomen in order to do it.

2026/08/03
Chin hairs / mini goatee:
It's a very slight discomfort.
When touching my chin, the feeling of coarse hairs rather than smooth skin.
When brushing my hand from the neck outward along the chin, the feeling of the hairs being pushed in the "wrong" direction, pushing against the hair follicles of the skin.
An occasional tickling when a breeze blows against the hairs.
When washing my face, having to remember to specifically clean the chin as those hairs might have captured dirt or sweat in a way that the plain skin wouldn't have.
When looking in the mirror, liking what I see.
It's not a full beard; I've never wanted one of those. If I had to have a beard, this is the kind I'd want.
And here I have it! Just by letting it grow on its own, not having to take T.

...

I post this now as the feeling of the hairs is getting more disturbing to me. I may soon pluck them out again. They are bristly looking. They curve, they curl, they stick out in different directions.
But it is not the sight that bothers me, it's the sensation.

I'm still not sure what to make of my reflection. It looks fine to me. But that is from a perspective of non-binary gender. If looked at from a perspective of "older woman with facial hair", it may look awful.

We have a work meeting this week where we're supposed to have our cameras on. I won't be presenting, so my image will be one among many small images; chin hairs probably not even visible but who knows. I am still unsure if I want them to be seen or not.

When I look up photos of females with facial hair, they really don't look bad. Many look AI-generated and it is hard to tell which ones aren't. But still, the ones that seem real look fine.
Michigan woman creates Guinness World Record for longest female beard
“I am a woman with a beard – this is how I cope with my hairy chin during summer months”
Aylesbury woman grows then shaves beard for PCOS awareness
Mustache.. TikTok video I can no longer access

Sexual Orientations & Genders Simplified

(from ChibiGreen)

The SC House of Representatives today passed a horrible bill, #4624, banning gender affirming care for minors and requiring teachers to "out" trans children to their parents. It still has to pass the Senate.

Per Ballotpedia:
South Carolina has a Republican trifecta. The Republican Party controls the office of governor and both chambers of the state legislature.
The House has a Republican majority of 88-36 (71% Rep, 29% Dem).
The Senate has a Republican majority of 30-16 (65% Rep, 35% Dem).

Also according to Ballotpedia, those majorities increased in both 2020 and 2022.
In 2020, the House had a Republican majority of 78-45 (63.4% vs 36.6%),
and the Senate had a Republican majority of 27-19 (58.7% vs 41.3%).
I wonder if those increases were due to redistricting.

In the 2020 Presidential election, Trump got 55.11% of the SC vote compared to 43.43% for Biden.
In the 2022 SC gubernatorial election, the Republican candidate got 58% compared to 41% for the Democratic candidate.

So the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the legislature is much more skewed than in the overall population, without even taking into account how people who haven't voted in the elections are more likely to skew Democrat.

In German, many words that refer to people have an extra suffix ("in" for singular; "innen" for plural) when used to refer to women. To refer to both men and women with that word, you can't use only the masculine term; you need to use both.

So for example, the German word for "teacher" (masculine singular and plural) is "Lehrer". The feminine singular form is "Lehrerin"; the feminine plural is "Lehrerinnen". To refer to both male and female teachers in speech you would use "Lehrer und Lehrerinnen".

Based on the linked site, you can also put the feminine form first, ie. "Lehrerinnen und Lehrer", but this sounds quite awkward to me. My knowledge of the German language is mostly from my childhood however, not from the past 30 years, so perhaps the latter form has become more common nowadays.

To simplify this kind of expression in writing, various short forms have been devised, as shown on the above (www.genderator.app) website. Some of these short forms are inclusive of non-binary genders too. Here I have listed the nominative case forms from that site:

Paarform (unabbreviated):
👤 die Lehrerin bzw. der Lehrer
👥 die Lehrerinnen und Lehrer

Schrägstrichschreibung (using slashes):
👤 der/die Lehrer/-in
👥 die Lehrer/-innen

Klammerform (using parentheses):
👤 der/die Lehrer(in)
👥 die Lehrer(innen)

Binnenmajuskel (using internal capitalization):
👤 der/die LehrerIn
👥 die LehrerInnen

Gendersternchen / Genderstar (nicht binär) (using asterisks; inclusive of non-binary):
👤 der*die Lehrer*in
👥 die Lehrer*innen

Genderdoppelpunkt (nicht binär) (using colons; inclusive of non-binary):
👤 der:die Lehrer:in
👥 die Lehrer:innen

Gendergap (nicht binär) (using underscores; inclusive of non-binary):
👤 der_die Lehrer_in
👥 die Lehrer_innen

Today I came across some job postings on a German website. The advertised jobs include:
- eine(n) Schlussredakteur(in)(mwd)
- eine(n) Software-Tester(in)(mwd)
- eine(n) Systemadministrator(in)(mwd)
- eine(n) Postmaster(in) (m/w/d)

I wasn't familiar with the (mwd) abbreviation.

https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/mwd-meaning

https://fashionunited.info/news/business/q-a-about-m-w-d-german-gender-regulations/20190725147

It stands for "männlich, weiblich oder divers" - "male, female or diverse".
The 2nd page explains about the legal reasons for including this in the job postings.

In November 2017, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled that civil status law must allow a third gender option, besides "female" or "male". The changes are aimed at all those who can not or do not want to be assigned to any gender within the so-called binary gender system and protect their “right to personality”.

This means, for example, that birth certificates cannot have blank gender entries for intersex and/or nonbinary people and as of mid-2018, they need to provide a third option. The deadline for the Federal Government to improve the civil law accordingly was 31 December 2018. As of 2019 employers and recruiters should comply with the same rule, by not excluding non-binary people and offering gender-neutral job advertisements.
...
In Germany, according to the General Equal Treatment Act from 2006, employers are not allowed to discriminate against an applicant on grounds of gender. The gender identities of people are diverse. This must be considered also in recruitment circumstances, job postings included so that no gender is discriminated against.

Another interesting German-language topic:
“Freundin“ means both friend and girlfriend. How do you differentiate between the two in conversation?

I filled in an online form which had a "Title" drop-down as a required field. The drop-down list included "Mr", "Mrs" and "Ms", but not "Mx".

One of the entries was "Me". I didn't know what it stood for, but considered using it because I'm surely me. I suspected that it might stand for "Madamoiselle", which I wouldn't want to use, but that is abbreviated "Mlle". "Me" seems to be for "Maître".

Then I saw that in addition to "Sir" and "Madam", the list also had "Sir/Madam", so I decided to select that one. Hah.

One of the entries was "Lovit", which even after doing a search, I have no idea what it might mean. Maybe it was in the list by mistake.

Dictionary.com's word of the year is "existential". But the runner-up was "nonbinary". Woo!

.

It was pointed out to me that when political pollsters call, they may show up as an unrecognized number. So if I want my voice to be counted in those polls, I'd need to start answering unrecognized numbers again, for the very slim chance that they'd call me. I'm not even sure what I'd answer about who I'm planning to vote for in the primary.

Based on this page about the debate qualifications, the candidates need to get at least 4% in 4 polls to qualify. Yang has 3 qualifying polls so far, so would I answer Yang, hoping to help him get the 4th necessary poll numbers? Or should I answer Castro or Booker, both of whom haven't even reached 4% in a single poll yet?

I was surprised and disappointed to hear that Kamala Harris dropped out of the race, when she had been doing better than my favorites, number-wise. Should I finally admit to myself that there's no feasible chance at all for Yang, Booker, or Castro to win?

.

My left wrist has been aching a lot this week; I'm wearing a wrist brace again to reduce strain while on the computer.

My lower back started aching a lot yesterday while I was out shopping. So much that I considered sitting down on the floor right there in the store, before I remembered the benches in the shoe section.

Before this, it's been quite a while since my wrists or back bothered me. These problems seem to keep coming for a while and then going away for a while, and I can't figure out what the triggers are.

My last two periods were 16 days apart, and now it's been almost 5 weeks without signs of the next one. Yay, peri-menopause.

I wonder if it is all related.

.

Before my back started aching, I took a look in a store named Five Below. They had a section of bulk loose candy for 10 cents each. These included both Zotz fizzy candies and Goldenberg's dark chocolate mini Peanut Chews! I was glad to find those because Qiao, who only rarely eats sweets, surprised me by eating up ALL the peanut chews that had been leftover from Halloween without me noticing until after they were all gone. I didn't take THOSE to work because I like them too much to give away.

So I got myself some candy for St. Nikolaus' Day.

.

Aww... This is a rather impressive Christmas ad from the German store Edeka. The robot is cute enough to be from Star Wars.



The newspaper headline shown is "Humans flee from artificial intelligence!"
The text at the end says "Without love, it is only a fest / party".

.

I was really searching for the song, "Lasst uns froh und munter sein" (Bald ist Nikolaus Abend da). Nikolaus Abend (St Nikolaus' eve) is when kids in Germany would put a boot out by the front door for St Nikolaus to fill with sweets and treats overnight.

Mainly for myself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT1dNkDW9i4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcDAR71W0xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auwgXNMwIMI

There are various versions of the song lyrics. Some sing it as "Weihnachtsabend" (Christmas Eve) instead of St. Nikolaus' Eve, and with "Christkind" (Christ child) instead of St.Nikolaus, etc.

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/lasst-uns-froh-und-munter-sein-let-us-be-happy-and-cheerful.html

https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/german-language/german-christmas-carols/lasst-uns-froh-und-munter-sein/

Sitting here with the windows open, listening to the wind blow. Crickets chirp. Neighbor's attic twirlyfan squeaking.

Some hours ago the local news channel showed a segment on "High winds reach Florence". The town of Florence, SC. I'd been waiting for someone to make note that Hurricane Florence will be passing through the town of Florence, ooh, aah! The news caster for that segment appeared female, but in a gender-non-conforming way. Like short haircut, man style, no make-up, and baseball cap. That's unusual for a news caster around here, even for someone dressed for a tropical storm.

I made a batch of gluten-free cornbread from a box-mix. It tastes good but makes the inside of my mouth feel puckery, dry, unpleasant. And gave me a blister on my tongue. The same thing happened a while back with some vegan corn dogs, which have a cornmeal batter on the outside. But I haven't noticed that with other cornmeal products, or even store-bought ready-made vegan cornbread from Whole Foods. So I wonder what triggers it. Maybe it happens when the oil used in the batter is too old.

The wind is only about 20mph, based on the weather page. Intermittent, based on my hearing.
The rain hasn't started yet.

I used mortar for the first time yesterday. Now I have an enhanced respect for bricklayers. I added 2 rows of bricks to the short brick walls around 2 of my crawlspace vents which are at a below-ground level. 4 bricks per row; 16 bricks total. First, I bought a 10 lb bag of mortar mix, thinking that was the perfect size for my small little job. But it was barely enough for half of my bricks. Q went to buy me another bag, but the store didn't have any more 10 lb bags, and he bought me a 60 lb bag. Damn heavy. I think my work turned out pretty well, considering it was my first time. The first batch I mixed up was too dry and didn't stick well (so much for following the amounts listed in the instructions). So I made the 2nd batch extra wet to make up for it, and squeezed it in the cracks over the too dry stuff. A mess, but it looks like it is hardening ok.

Driving into the parking lot at work on Monday, I noticed the low tire pressure warning light on. There was a nail in my tire. I got the hole plugged at the service station nearby, but they recommended getting the tire replaced as the hole was close to the edge. So I the next day, I got the tire replaced at the Toyota dealership. The price seemed reasonable; I was surprised by that. The "advisor" who handled my case was cool... very gender variant looking. At first she struck me as a butch lesbian. Then I wondered, why did I assume that? Maybe he was FTM. Or maybe they were non-binary like me. His/her/their business card was stapled to my receipt. They have a gender neutral name! Later I wondered if they staple their card to everyone's receipt, and if they were as tickled by my gender variance as I was by theirs. And I wondered if something they had jokingly said early on could be considered flirting.

The waiting room at the dealership had many noises. Two TV's on, tuned to different channels. Kids shrieking and crying. Music playing. Vending machines humming. I had brought my work laptop to do some work while waiting, which I did, but the noise was distracting and stressful. Next time, it would be good to bring my noise-cancelling headphones.

The little fig tree didn't react well to the snow we got a couple weeks ago. The leaves withered and dried up. The pink magnolia reacted similarly. I hope they recover.

On the way to work, another company has a row of trees by the street. I saw them pruning some of the larger trees one day. It was after the trees had already sprouted leaves. (They surely didn't expect to trees to sprout so early this year.) Now when I drive by, the ones that were pruned are all bare, while the other ones still have their pretty green leaves. I hope the pruned ones recover too.

Yesterday I washed the dogs.
While I had the hose unfurled, I also washed the green algae and dirt off of one side of the garage.

I went to Best Buy to see if they have any quiet/silent wired mice, as the scrollwheel on my mouse at work is messing up, even after me taking it apart and cleaning out the dust. I didn't see any particularly good ones at Best Buy, so I ordered 2 from Amazon that were specifically advertised as being quiet. Two, because the one looks good and practical, but the other one looks awesome and lights up. And maybe the way the scrollwheel is on the latter, I can turn it further in a single swipe. I'm sure I'll need another mouse anyway, sooner or later.

I replaced the clear glass lampshades on the ceiling fan light fixture in Qiao's den with some translucent/milky alabaster glass ones, to reduce the glare. I also bought 2 colored LED light-bulbs (green and pink - Qiao chose the colors) to put in the 2 sockets which face us when watching TV, to further reduce the glare, as even 40W bulb equivalents up there seem pretty bright. The colored bulbs, even though they are only 3W each!, are still brighter than I expected them to be.

I raked some of the yard. I washed clothes. I vacuumed, and washed dishes and dog collars. I cleaned the tub using 4 different cleaners, and it's still not as clean as I'd like (I wish I had written down how I got it so clean last time). The "tub grip" (gah, they've increased the price by 50%!) that I applied to the floor of the tub to keep it from being slippery is very good in that regards, but it traps more dirt than a smooth surface would. Ecover used to make a tub/tile cleaner that worked very good, but it's not sold here any more. I'm not sure if a similar one I found on Amazon has the same ingredients or not, but I may get it anyway to try. Because I want my darn tub to be spotless! Then again, I read something about using dish washing liquid mixed with vinegar, which I may try first.

HHS Issues Regulations Banning Trans Health Care Discrimination

Federal Register page with link to PDF (scheduled to be published on 05/18)

It even mentions protections for non-binary identified people.

... OCR recognizes that sex stereotypes can include the expectation that individuals consistently identify with only one of two genders (male or female), and that they act in conformity with the gender-related expressions stereotypically associated with that gender. Sex stereotypes can also include a belief that gender can only be binary and thus that individuals cannot have a gender identity other than male or female. OCR recognizes that an individual’s gender identity involves the interrelationship between an individual’s biology, gender, internal sense of self and gender expression related to that perception; thus, the gender identity spectrum includes an array of possible gender identities beyond male and female.

Galavant Season 2 seemed to me to start out a bit slow, but last week's episodes made up for it.

( a few spoilers for 'Giants vs. Dwarves' and 'About Last Knight' )