The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.
The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.
Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.
Given that no company walks away from European consumers voluntarily the phones are going to change and once they change for Europe the rest of the world will ask why theirs still do not.
if i had a dick i would love to have a disappointing orgasm in the shower while thinking of something or someone that i felt i should not be thinking about & then stand under the water with my forehead against a wall watching the proof of my guilt & shame go down the drain
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
Iâd been feeling pretty dysphoric lately after seeing a photo a coworker took of me while I was working at a miniature convention. You know how sometimes pictures taken by other people just look... wrong? Like somehow they capture a completely different version of you. I didnât feel feminine in it at all. It just didnât look like me, the me I see in the mirror, the me Iâve been growing into.
So this morning I was doing my usual routine before work: grabbing breakfast at a local restaurant. I headed to the bathroom. Even now, as a trans woman, I still get nervous about using the womenâs restroom because thereâs always that little voice in the back of my head telling me I donât pass well enough yet.
I ended up using the menâs room and was walking out when a woman stopped me.
She looked genuinely concerned and said, "Maâam, youâre in the wrong bathroom. Thatâs the menâs bathroom."
Then she pointed toward the womenâs restroom.
When I just stood there for a second, completely caught off guard, she pointed at the sign again and said, "They should really make that thing more visible."
And honestly? As a gay trans girl who'd spent the last few days spiraling over a photo and picking apart every masculine feature I thought everyone else must be seeing, that was probably the most unexpected bit of validation I could have gotten.
trying to create an ebay account to sell smthn and tell me why I can't use my REAL LEGAL LAST NAME because it includes "dick" which ebay considers offensive
BUT THEN IN THEIR MISREPRESENTATION POLICY THEY SAY YOU CAN'T COLLECT MONEY TO A BANK ACCOUNT THAT'S NOT IN YOUR BUSINESS OR LEGAL NAME. BUT MY LEGAL NAME INCLUDES DICK, WHICH YOU CONSIDER OFFENSIVE.
the sanitization of the internet is so fucking stupid we live in the stupidest time
Not shaving and not wearing make up are literally nonbehaviors. Theyâre a complete lack of action. But doing nothing is considered masculine because women are not allowed to just be. this goes double for trans women.
Bear religion probably fucking rocks. You're a fucking bear, you're the deadliest thing on earth, once a year an endless supply of salmon just flings itself up the river to gorge on and then you nap for 3 months.
The most delicious food in the world is protected by tiny demons who can defend it from everyone except you. Your natural armor is thick enough that you can just eat the damn hive while they buzz around you. God's chosen animals right there
the species that can take you out are literally wizards with magic boom sticks that instantly wound you from a distance. they're mostly just scared of you though, if you catch one without the boom stick they're very easy to kill. also they leave treasure chests full of delicious food around where they live and if you're smart you can figure out how to open them. going into one of their settlements is basically a dungeon crawler RPG.
okay so, guy at work, who i find out afterwards is famous at this place for being a sex pest, comes up and starts with what i also learn is his favorite opener to conversations where heâs going to be a sex pest, namely: âDo you know where the term âblow jobâ comes from?â
and here he made his first fatal error. his moment of hubristic sex pesting. because of course i know where the term blow job comes from, i love learning about sex and the history of sexual terms! i know so much about oral sex that i could write a book on it!
his second error: approaching a little autistic freak with what he intended to be an uncomfortable sex question that would make me feel weird and gross. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I Have Never Misjudged A Manâs Intentions So Incredibly In My Life. because i did not realize he was trying to harass me. because i love talking about sex facts, albeit not usually at work. unless. someone prompts me. my coworkers are the kind of people who are generally online enough to know terms, but not exactly what they mean, and they realized they could ask me a while back and get good answers without the resulting awkwardness because i do not experience shame. i am primed to answer questions like the one he has proposed.
So I Answered It.
and well, really, what happened is that I began answering it, then realized the answer required a bit more context. I mean, you canât just say âoh, well, the term first appears in writing in the 1940sâ without first explaining that âblowâ by itself already had sexual connotations for centuries, and then, really, are we talking about the origin of the term or the origin of the act. and well we have a ton of literature and art depicting fellatio throughout human history, did you know a lot of it was men performing it on other men? oh, that reminds me, there are a multitude of latin words for oral sex performed on penises, and hold on let me quote you the entirety of catullus 16 from memory and explain itâs fascinating insights into the roman world of homosexuality-
i do not know how to turn any of this ^ off, by the way. iâm sure some people out there have a switch that disables their infodumping mid-speech. i do not. and i also didnât realize he wasnât looking for a real answer until my other coworker explained so hours later. he could not excuse himself from the conversation he started, and i made a conservative man at least 30 years older than me to listen to my catullus recitation. i will sodomize and facefuck you, indeed.
anyway, i think i got a bad grade in being sexually harassed. my pro tip is maybe donât start with what a very autistic individual will misconstrue as you earnestly asking them to explain sex to you. the special interest shield will cause splashback damage.
