what the fuck is going on

this app will be the death of me

[demilypyro]

assuming that people are attracted to you would be too conceited. so I never do

[apathyarchon]

people who don’t run are awesome you can tell them any bullshit and they’ll be like wow you’re superman. i told some guys i ran 6mi@8min/mi pace and they freaked tf out.

[crystalis]

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

[apathyarchon]

one of the things i hate most about being reared as an american male is the violence that is so forcefully penetrated into you since birth, creating a machine of hatred and malice within you without your consent. a form of rape perhaps.

[eebie]

I just ate one

[eebie]

You can lie when you name things

[hazeydaisey]

there is a voice that comes from the back of its throat right as soon as no light reaches its insides. there is a voice at the back part of its head kind of more on the right side but it depends. there is a voice that comes from somewhere in its mouth but sometimes from the eyes.

[apathyarchon]

oh my god summer sucks i need to get a job to distract me from the fact that i’m a closeted transgender

[ozempicofficial]

[starorcinus]

Study time

[missstrogen]

The (slightly less) broke tgirl's guide to HRT

Other guides: Breast forms

(This is less of a "broke tgirl" guide because you can't really get hrt without money but i'm keeping the naming convention)

We'll be covering two things in this post: How to get started on injections, and an alternative if you can't do needles.

Injections are generally considered the first avenue to (DIY) HRT.

Depending on your situation, it can be easier or cheaper to go a more legal route. In that case, it will be highly dependant on country, so search country specific information.

The cost of DIY injection

Monetarily, a vial of estrogen will cost you between 40-80$, and lasts somewhere between a year and a year and a half. Supplies for the injection (needles, syringes, swabs), should usually run you to about 50$ for 2 years. (These are US prices, and may vary in other regions, but should usually not change much)

The cost in time will be up to a day every year for ordering the vial and supplies (if you get used to it, much less), and the cost in time of doing an injection will be up to 30 minutes, usually about five minutes, usually once a week.

How to:

This is just an overview. For a more in depth guide, if you're doing anything more than considering diy, PLEASE, refer to diyhrt.info

The usual proposed method is to inject about 4mg of estradiol in intramuscular or subcutaneous. Subcutaneous can mean smaller needles, and be easier for some. The rough process is:

grab supplies

sanitize vial and leg

draw air into needle

enter needle into vial

expel air

draw estrogen

extract needle

inject

remove needle

sanitize leg and vial again

It's far from impossible, and if needles are possible from you, it's a very good option. I usually recommend valerate, as it has a somewhat easy to follow schedule (weekly), and is relatively easy to access.

Of note, estrogen injection massively lower your alcohol tolerance on the days your levels are at their peak.

The alternative

Some girls can't do needles. DIY estrogel is an alternative for them.

A good source: Hrt Mom.

Once again, if you're doing anything more than considering it, check the sources. This is just an overview.

Estrogen is applied on the skin, and left to dry, usually 2 to 3 times a day. My personal recommendation is applying it on the inner thigh (as it generally has a better absorption, and rubbing one thigh against the other to apply the gel, then leaving it to dry. Drying usually takes up to 15 minutes.

Estrogen gel can be bought (see the link for injections), but often at a high cost. Depending on source, it will cost you between 100 and 500$ a year.

Making estrogel is relatively easy, thankfully. All that you will need is some hand sanitizer (easy to source, and estradiol powder (quite cheap). Finding a source for that powder may be harder, but you can find it at Dragonordnance, a relatively trustworthy source, or, from recommendations, Purple panda lab. Gel generally doesn't last very long, so you'll have to make it relatively often.

Go forth and feminize yourselves!

Footnote: Buying diy hrt means often needing to pay in cryptocurrency. You can learn how here.

Remember: adjust your dose based on how it feels, and the effects you feel, not on hitting or missing some target.

[missstrogen]

Reblog the corrected version ok

[apathyarchon]

jar of fluid with unspecified psychoactive properties under my desk calling to me like the green goblin mask

[oldbutchdanielmolloy]

can we make men lonelier

[apathyarchon]

sometimes you just gotta accept that the test isn’t happening and ho to speep

[melodies-stereo]

being a boy rated #1 worst possible thing 10th year in a row

[sailatina3]

Stop reading theory that is elitist and doesn't save anybody. You heckin Walmart firebombing wannabe! That pales in comparison to my plan, writing fanfiction and attending protests in Seattle. *picks up my protest sign that says "possums are cool, fascism is not"*

[elvishcostello-deactivated20260]

already found my pick for worst post of 2026

[elvishcostello-deactivated20260]

going to completely brush the whole “billionaires get to commit sex crimes so we should also be able to!” thing under the rug for a second. this illustrates one of the most infuriating things about this website. people just think about everything in terms of fanfiction. i remember hearing people on here talk about project 2025, and the point they kept bringing up was “THEY’RE GOING TO MAKE FANFICTION ILLEGAL!” i always think… do you people have any fucking problems outside of fanfiction? you’d think that they would at least say something like “i’d like to marry someone i love someday” or “i’d like to be openly gay at work” but these people don’t have jobs or lovers. all they’ve got is good omens fanfiction.

[impaled]