Demimasc (he/him/his or they/them/theirs)
Universal expert: somehow, no matter what I post, my username always checks out :)
Sometimes I have to be away from the internet for days or weeks at a time. If I'm not responding, that's probably why.
I think most of the general LGBTQ+ activity is at [email protected], if you're not already subscribed there.
For transgender-related content specifically, I know these communities:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected], a.k.a. !traa
I'm not as informed about communities for other parts of the rainbow, so maybe someone else can chime in.
Oops. This is Picard about to say "Engage!", not "Make it so (sew)!", isn't it? Oh well.
egg🪡irl
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/qSHJjHudYv.png?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/qSHJjHudYv.png?format=webp)
Image: Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation in the captain's seat on the bridge of the Enterprise with his right hand raised and index finger extended, about to point forward as he says his catchphrase.
Top text: "My wardrobe: \Gives me dysphoria\"
Bottom text: "Me: \Finds a machine at home labeled 'Singer'\"
egg🧥irl
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/5srxBd8osf.png?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/5srxBd8osf.png?format=webp)
Template: Evil Kermit (Kermit the Frog on the left faces a Kermit lookalike on the right. The lookalike has his eyes covered by a black cowl, giving him a mysterious, Sith-like appearance.)
Text above Kermit: "Me: \Supposed to be shopping for warm-weather clothes\"
Text below the lookalike: "Me to me: 'I could always use another hoodie…'"
Same. !egg_irl is the first community I searched for when I got here.
And, BTW, welcome!
[email protected] — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics — Blåhaj Lemmy
# !egg_irl !egg_irl is for widely relatable memes about questioning one’s gender or being an egg (a trans person in denial) as well as other eggy topics. If you are looking for a place to discuss something specific to you or especially if you need help or are in crisis, we have communities and resou...
![egg_irl — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics - Blåhaj Lemmy](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/e709e143-c608-4153-818b-35b50e1d34db.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
!egg_irl is a community for memes about being eggs (people who are trans but don't know it yet or deny it) and other trans topics.
You can find us by searching for https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl or, if someone from your instance has already subscribed, by following this link.
If egg_irl is your cup of tea, you may also be interested in our sibling community, [email protected].
[email protected] — Memes über verleugnete Transmenschen und andere Ei-bezogene Themen — Blåhaj Lemmy
# !egg_irl !egg_irl is for widely relatable memes about questioning one’s gender or being an egg (a trans person in denial) as well as other eggy topics. If you are looking for a place to discuss something specific to you or especially if you need help or are in crisis, we have communities and resou...
![egg_irl — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics - Blåhaj Lemmy](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/9kvU68y7TW.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
!egg_irl ist eine Community für Memes über das Eier-Sein (Menschen, die trans sind, es aber noch nicht wissen oder es leugnen) und andere Trans-Themen.
Ihr könnt uns finden, indem ihr nach https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl sucht oder, wenn jemand aus eurer Instanz uns bereits abonniert hat, indem ihr diesem Link folgt.
Wenn !egg_irl dein Ding ist, könnte dich auch unsere Geschwister-Community interessieren, [email protected].
[email protected] — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics — Blåhaj Lemmy
# !egg_irl !egg_irl is for widely relatable memes about questioning one’s gender or being an egg (a trans person in denial) as well as other eggy topics. If you are looking for a place to discuss something specific to you or especially if you need help or are in crisis, we have communities and resou...
!egg_irl is a community for memes about being eggs (people who are trans but don't know it yet or deny it) and other trans topics.
You can find us by searching for https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl or, if someone from your instance has already subscribed, by following this link.
If egg_irl is your cup of tea, you may also be interested in our sibling community, [email protected].
[email protected] — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics — Blåhaj Lemmy
# !egg_irl !egg_irl is for widely relatable memes about questioning one’s gender or being an egg (a trans person in denial) as well as other eggy topics. If you are looking for a place to discuss something specific to you or especially if you need help or are in crisis, we have communities and resou...
![egg_irl — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics - Blåhaj Lemmy](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/J9hVGgiI57.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
!egg_irl is a community for memes about being eggs (people who are trans but don't know it yet or deny it) and other trans topics.
You can find us by searching for https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl or, if someone from your instance has already subscribed, by following this link.
If egg_irl is your cup of tea, you may also be interested in our sibling community, [email protected].
Bonus Appendix: Catalog of Elementary Fermions in The Standard Model
Here is a list of the 32 elementary fermions in the Standard Model's first generation. The letters at the beginning tell you the answers to the five questions in order, and they are followed by one of the particle's names and its stats.
- Grade 0 (zero "yes" answers):
- NNNNN: left-handed electron antineutrino; hypercharge=0, isospin=0, color=black
- Grade 1 (one "yes" answer):
- YNNNN: right-handed antielectron (a.k.a., positron); hypercharge=+1, isospin=+1/2, color=black
- NYNNN: right-handed electron antineutrino; hypercharge=+1, isospin=-1/2, color=black
- NNYNN: right-handed red down quark; hypercharge=-2/3, isospin=0, color=red
- NNNYN: right-handed green down quark; hypercharge=-2/3, isospin=0, color=green
- NNNNY: right-handed blue down quark; hypercharge=-2/3, isospin=0, color=blue
- Grade 2 (two "yes" answers):
- YYNNN: left-handed antielectron (a.k.a., positron); hypercharge=+2, isospin=0, color=black
- YNYNN: left-handed red up quark; hypercharge=+1/3, isospin=+1/2, color=red
- YNNYN: left-handed green up quark; hypercharge=+1/3, isospin=+1/2, color=green
- YNNNY: left-handed blue up quark; hypercharge=+1/3, isospin=+1/2, color=blue
- NYYNN: left-handed red down quark; hypercharge=+1/3, isospin=-1/2, color=red
- NYNYN: left-handed green down quark; hypercharge=+1/3, isospin=-1/2, color=green
- NYNNY: left-handed blue down quark; hypercharge=+1/3, isospin=-1/2, color=blue
- NNNYY: left-handed antired antiup antiquark; hypercharge=-4/3, isospin=0, color=antired
- NNYNY: left-handed antigreen antiup antiquark; hypercharge=-4/3, isospin=0, color=antigreen
- NNYYN: left-handed antiblue antiup antiquark; hypercharge=-4/3, isospin=0, color=antiblue
- Grade 3 (three "yes" answers):
- NNYYY: right-handed electron; hypercharge=-2, isospin=0, color=white
- YYYNN: right-handed red up quark; hypercharge=+4/3, isospin=0, color=red
- YYNYN: right-handed green up quark; hypercharge=+4/3, isospin=0, color=green
- YYNNY: right-handed blue up quark; hypercharge=+4/3, isospin=0, color=blue
- YNNYY: right-handed antired antidown antiquark; hypercharge=-1/3, isospin=+1/2, color=antired
- YNYNY: right-handed antigreen antidown antiquark; hypercharge=-1/3, isospin=+1/2, color=antigreen
- YNYYN: right-handed antiblue antidown antiquark; hypercharge=-1/3, isospin=+1/2, color=antiblue
- NYNYY: right-handed antired antiup antiquark; hypercharge=-1/3, isospin=-1/2, color=antired
- NYYNY: right-handed antigreen antiup antiquark; hypercharge=-1/3, isospin=-1/2, color=antigreen
- NYYYN: right-handed antiblue antiup antiquark; hypercharge=-1/3, isospin=-1/2, color=antiblue
- Grade 4 (four "yes" answers):
- NYYYY: left-handed electron; hypercharge=-1, isospin=-1/2, color=white
- YNYYY: left-handed electron neutrino; hypercharge=-1, isospin=+1/2, color=white
- YYNYY: left-handed antired antidown antiquark; hypercharge=+2/3, isospin=0, color=red
- YYYNY: left-handed antigreen antidown antiquark; hypercharge=+2/3, isospin=0, color=green
- YYYYN: left-handed antiblue antidown antiquark; hypercharge=+2/3, isospin=0, color=blue
- Grade 5 (five "yes" answers):
- YYYYY: right-handed electron neutrino; hypercharge=0, isospin=0, color=white
The 32 fermions in the second generation follow the same pattern, but replace the word "electron" with "muon", the word "up" with "charm", and the word "down" with "strange". For the 32 fermions in the third generation, replace the word "electron" with "tau", the word "up" with "top", and the word "down" with "bottom".
Patterns
While it's nice to know about electrons, up quarks, and down quarks, there are a lot of weird numbers to remember about them. Imagine how scientists felt, then, when they found out that there are more than a hundred more particles to learn the numbers for! It's too complicated to memorize all that stuff, and it doesn't explain anything. What we need are easy-to-remember patterns. That's what The Standard Model gives us.
Elementary Fermions
We'll start with the patterns for elementary fermions. Elementary fermions are the particles that are good for making stuff. We'll worry about the other particles, the elementary bosons, later.
The standard model says that we can describe fermions using a mathematical idea called U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3). The "U(1)" part tells us that every fermion has a hypercharge, the "SU(2)" part tells us that every fermion has an isospin, and the "SU(3)" part tells us that every fermion has a color. So now you know why we were talking about hypercharge, isospin, and color. But what's more interesting is that U(1)×SU(2)×SU(3) is a subgroup of SU(5),[^2] which is a fancy math way of saying that you can pick a fermion and know nearly everything about it by answering five yes/no questions. Here are the five questions:
- It the fermion isospin up? (Worth +1 hypercharge and +1/2 isospin, which means +1 charge.)
- It the fermion isospin down? (Worth +1 hypercharge and -1/2 isospin, which means no change in charge.)
- It the fermion red? (Worth -2/3 hypercharge, which means -1/3 charge.)
- It the fermion green? (Worth -2/3 hypercharge, which means -1/3 charge.)
- It the fermion blue? (Worth -2/3 hypercharge, which means -1/3 charge.)
This is kind of like making a character in a video game; you answer the questions and see what it does to the particle's stats. No matter how you answer, you will always get the stats for a real fermion.
For example, let's say I design a particle that is isospin up but not down and has only the color red. My answers would be "yes", "no", "yes", "no", and "no", or YNYNN when abbreviated. Then the particle's hypercharge will be 1 - 2/3 = +1/3, its isospin will be +1/2, and its charge will be 1 - 1/3 = 2/3. That sounds exactly like a left-handed red up quark.
In fact, the answers to the five questions not only tell you stats, but also tell you other things:
- A fermion is right-handed if the number of "yes" answers is odd. It is left-handed if the number of "yes" answers is even.
- A fermion is matter if the number of "yes" answers to color questions is odd. It is antimatter if the number of "yes" answers to color questions is even.
- A fermion is a lepton if the color questions all have the same answer. It is a quark if the color questions have different answers.
- A lepton is a charged lepton if the "isospin up" question has a different answer than the color questions. It is a neutrino if the "isospin up" question and the color questions all have the same answers.
- A lepton is white if it is matter and black if it is antimatter.
- A quark is red, green, or blue if that is the only color with a "yes" answer. A quark is antired, antigreen, or antiblue if the opposite is the only color with a "no" answer.
The one thing these questions can't easily tell you is how heavy the particle is. But you can sort-of tell by answering a sixth question:
- Is the fermion first-generation (light and unlikely to fall apart), second generation (heavy and quick to fall apart), or third generation (extremely heavy and extremely quick to fall apart)?
Again, you can make any choice you want here and still be talking about a real particle.
Elementary Bosons (Force Carriers)
Now imagine an experiment: We smash together a left-handed red down quark (NYYNN, isospin=-1/2) and a left-handed electron neutrino (YNYYY, isospin=+1/2). Because they are both have nonzero isospin, the weak force can affect them. One way that could happen is that they switch isospin answers (the first two yes/no answers) with each other. That means that the quark changes to YNYNN, a left-handed red up quark, and the neutrino changes to NYYYY, a left-handed electron. But other outcomes never happen. Why?
One important rule is that when two particles affect each other using some force, the changes to one particle have to be balanced out by changes to the other. If one particle loses something, the other has to gain it. In The Standard Model, a something that can be lost or gained because of a force is called a force carrier or an elementary boson.
In the example, the quark lost its isospin downness (worth +1 hypercharge and -1/2 isospin) and gained isospin upness (worth +1 hypercharge and +1/2 isospin), so the neutrino had to gain isospin downness and lose isospin upness. Or, said another way, the quark gave away 1 isospin downness and -1 isospin upness to the neutrino through the weak force. That transfer, 1 isospin downness and -1 isospin upness together, is called the W⁻ boson, which is a force carrier for the weak force. And we can compute its stats by knowing what its changes are worth: (+1 hypercharge and -1/2 isospin) - (+1 hypercharge and +1/2 isospin) = (0 hypercharge and -1 isospin).
The give and take doesn't have to be giving and taking question answers though. For instance, the electromagnetic force's boson is a photon. When particles exchange photons, they transfer momentum and energy, not anything to do with their types.
In some cases, force carriers can also exist on their own, without obviously being part of a trade. For example, sometimes an electron in an atom loses momentum and energy by shooting a photon off into empty space. We call photons like that light.
Inside The Standard Model, these are the fundamental force carriers:
- The B boson is the force carrier for hypercharge.
- The W⁻, W⁰, and W⁺ bosons are the force carriers for isospin.
- Eight gluons are force carriers for color. (There are different sets of eight gluons that you can pick to describe the effects of the strong force. Scientists don't agree on which set of eight is the best one.)
- The Higgs boson is unlike all the other force carriers. It follows unusual rules, and it makes other particles follow unusual rules. The only way to overcome those effects is with an insane amount of energy.
However, you won't hear many people talking about the B boson or the W⁰ boson. The reason is that the Higgs boson messes up how they work, so we don't see them on their own. Instead, we usually see them in special combinations:
- The Z boson is the combination of a W⁰ boson minus half of a B boson, and
- The photon is the combination of a W⁰ boson plus half of a B boson.
So the weak force's force carriers are usually listed as the W⁻, Z, and W⁺ bosons, while the electromagnetic force's force carrier is the photon. (Remember how the B boson goes with hypercharge, and the W⁰ boson goes with isospin? Since the photon is half of a B boson plus a W⁰ boson means, that's where we get the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula from, the rule that electric charge is half a particle's hypercharge plus its isospin.)
[^2]: For a while, scientists thought that SU(5) would be enough all by itself to describe fermions. Unfortunately, when they tried that, their computations said that protons can fall apart, which nobody has ever seen happen, so the scientists knew they were still missing something. They have ideas, but the search for the right something continues even today.
Everyday Matter, Hypercharge, Isospin, and the Three Forces
Just like the ingredients in a bakery have numbers on their nutrition labels to tell us how they will affect our health, in The Standard Model, elementary particles have quantum numbers that tell us how different forces affect them. For each particle, we will talk about two quantum numbers, hypercharge and isospin.[^1] Think of hypercharge and isospin as two different nutrients that can be found in the ingredients.
Also, just like different kinds of food are in different food groups, we can also classify elementary particles into groups using colors. These aren't really how the particles' look—when we say that a particle is "red", what we mean is that it's in the "red" group. There are three color groups, "red", "green", and "blue". If we say that a particle is "black", that means that it isn't in any groups, and if we say that it is "white", that means that it is in all of the groups. If we say that a particle is something like "antired", that means it's in all of the groups except red—in other words, the green and blue groups.
Now, according to The Standard Model, most of the stuff on earth is made from particles called electrons, up quarks, and down quarks. Before we get into patterns, let's talk about these particles' quantum numbers and colors (their "nutrition facts" and their "food groups"), starting with electrons. That will also give us a chance to talk about the three forces in The Standard Model.
Electrons
In The Standard Model, there are two kinds of electrons: right-handed electrons and left-handed electrons. You can tell them apart because, when a right-handed electron moves, it gives the illusion that it is spinning to the right like a corkscrew or drill bit, even though it is not actually spinning, whereas when a left-handed electron moves, it seems to be spinning to the left. A right-handed electron has a hypercharge of -2 but zero isospin. A left-handed electron has hypercharge of -1, and its isospin is -1/2. Both electrons are white, which is to say that they have all of the colors, that they're in all of the food groups and make a balanced meal all by themselves.
What do those numbers mean? Well, the most important thing to know for an electron is the Gell-Mann–Nishijima formula, that you can add half a particle's hypercharge to its isospin to get another quantum number called electric charge. Electric charge that tells us how the particle is affected by the electromagnetic force. For a left-handed electron, half of -2 plus 0 is -1, and for a right-handed electron, half of -1 plus -1/2 is also -1. So both kinds of electrons have the same negative electric charge. The electromagnetic force pushes negative charges away from negative charges and positive charges away from positive charges, but pulls negative and positive charges together. That means that electrons run away from each other and try to go towards positively charged particles. Because of something called "relativity", the electromagnetic force also means that moving electric charges create magnetic fields and moving magnetic fields create electric forces. We use those effects to move electrons around—we call that electricity—and to change electricity back to motion with devices like motors.
The electrons' isospin tells us another thing, this time about the weak force, a force that can change particles from one type to another. Since the right-handed electron has zero isospin, it isn't affected by the weak force, so we can't use it to make new elementary particles. But the left-handed electron does have some isospin, so if we smash it with a careful choice of other ingredients, we can make new elementary particles.
There's also a third force in The Standard Model, the strong force, but it doesn't affect black or white particles, so we have to wait to talk about it.
Up Quarks
How about up quarks? They too come in right- and left-handed forms. The hypercharge of a right-handed up quark is +4/3, but just like a right-handed electron, it has no isospin. A left-handed up quark has a hypercharge of +1/3 and an isospin of +1/2. Like we did before, we can compute the electric charge by adding half the hypercharge to the isospin. Half of +4/3 plus 0 is +2/3 for the right-handed up quark, and half of +1/3 plus +1/2 is also +2/3. So up quarks are positively charged and will be attracted to and attract electrons. And since only the left-handed up quark has isospin, only the left-handed up quark can be used to make new elementary particles with the weak force.
Up quarks are not color-balanced, so now we get to talk about the strong force. There are actually six kinds of up quarks: red, green, and blue right-handed up quarks and red, green, and blue left-handed up quarks. The Standard Model says that the strong force causes color confinement, which means that it pulls particles of different colors together to make a balanced meal so strongly that it's impossible to have a combination that isn't balanced. That means you can't have an up quark all by itself—it would be like trying to make a healthy meal out of only desserts. But you could put a red up quark with a green quark and a blue quark since then you'd have all three colors. It doesn't matter that the electromagnetic force is trying to push them apart when the strong force pulling them together is so much stronger. A balanced diet is important!
Down Quarks
What about down quark? Just like up quarks, they can be right- or left-handed, and they come in three colors: red, green, and blue, so there are six kinds of down quark in total. The right-handed down quarks' hypercharge is -2/3, but they have no isospin. The left-handed down quarks have a hypercharge of +1/3, the same as the left-handed up quarks, but their isospin is -1/2, the opposite. If we do the math, down quarks' electric charge is always -1/3, so they are negatively charged, like electrons. Only the left-handed down quarks are affected by the weak force because the right-handed down quarks have no isospin. (Notice a pattern?) The color confinement rules apply to down quarks the same as they do to up quarks.
Nucleons and Atoms
Now that we know those particles, we can make some recipes to put them together. The basic recipes for earthly matter are the recipes for protons, neutrons, and atoms.
Our first recipe will make a proton. Protons are very important for chemistry because you can control the kind of chemical you have by changing the number of protons in each bundle of quarks. The recipe for a proton is two up quarks and one down quark, all of different colors. (Actually, something interesting happens when you put these ingredients together. The "up" and "down" gets mixed all around so that it's like each individual quark is actually two parts "up" and one part "down".) A proton's electric charge is 2/3 + 2/3 - 1/3 = +1, which means that it is the electromagnetic opposite of an electron.
Our second recipe will make a neutron. Having the right number of neutrons in the right places helps keep big balanced meals of quarks from splitting into smaller balanced meals, and without them, most chemicals would just fall apart. On the other hand, by purposely using the wrong number of neutrons, we can make a pile of quarks break into pieces and maybe get some energy out of the split. That's how nuclear reactors work. The recipe for a neutron is one up quark and two down quarks, all different colors. A neutron's electric charge is 2/3 - 1/3 - 1/3 = 0, which means that they aren't easily affected by the electromagnetic force. (But the quarks themselves are! That's how scientists first figured out that neutrons are made up of smaller ingredients.)
Since quarks have different colors, and different colors like to be near each other, if we can get them close enough for the strong force to start pulling, we can stick a bunch of protons and neutrons together to make a jumble of quarks called an atomic nucleus. Then, if we surround an atomic nucleus with electrons, we get an atom. Almost everything you see around is you is made from atoms.
[^1]: A note for once you've read about forces and fermions: When scientists first discovered hypercharge and isospin, they were working with the strong force, so they only thought about using these numbers for quarks. But when they were studying the weak force, they found out that other fermions have similar numbers. Everyone had been saying things like "leptons have zero isospin", and they didn't want to confuse people, so they decided to pick new names for these similar numbers. They still said "isospin" and "hypercharge" for the old numbers, but they said "weak isospin" and "weak hypercharge" for their new numbers. The word "weak" doesn't mean that the isospin or hypercharge are actually weak; it just means that we learned about them because of the weak force. But nowadays, a lot of people don't think its important to keep saying "weak" all the time. I'm one of them; I will just say "isospin" and "hypercharge", but you should know that I'm talking about "weak isospin" and "weak hypercharge". Still, be careful—if you are talking to someone else, they might get confused if you don't say "weak".
I'll lead with an apology: I got ambitious. You said you wanted to know about particles; I wanted to say a lot about them, so I guess I wrote a book.
Also a disclaimer: I only had physics through undergrad. My source is Sections 1 through 3.1 in Baez, J., & Huerta, J. (2010). The Algebra of Grand Unified Theories. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 47(3), 483–552. if you want to consult something more reliable.
Introduction
If you look inside a bakery, you will find lots of different ingredients—flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, and so on. By combining these ingredients in different ways, the baker can make all kinds of different breads and desserts. To make the kind of food they want, the baker has to understand their ingredients, how much of each kind to use, and how to combine them.
In the same way, we know that everything in the world can be made out of different kinds of very tiny ingredients called elementary particles. By combining these particles in different ways, we can create all kinds of stuff. But to make the stuff we want, we have to understand the elementary particles and how they affect each other, just like the baker has to understand their ingredients and how they go together.
There are over one hundred different kinds of elementary particles that we know about and maybe more that we don't. We could just memorize them all, but scientists think it's better to look for patterns. Think about when you were learning addition: its easier to learn that zero plus anything is always the same thing than it is to memorize 0 + 0 = 0, 0 + 1 = 1, 0 + 2 = 2, 0 + 3 = 3, and so on. Scientists do the same thing; they find patterns. Eventually they wrote down all of the elementary particles that they had discovered and all of the patterns they were really sure about. They called this knowledge "The Standard Model".
We just put up a first revision of a resource list in the sidebar for [email protected], in case you want to borrow any of those.
Looks like we have our mod team! I'll keep everyone informed if there are any changes.
Hey, I reviewed your user history and found nothing so far that raised questions or worries. Welcome to the team! Hopefully the load will be as light as it is currently.
Unless you have a reason not to, would you be able to add your pronouns to your account bio to help model the recommendation below the rules on the community sidebar? Thanks!
And, I'm sure that you know this, but let's strive to be transparent and consistent in our moderation, seeking community input where appropriate and consulting with each other on any nonobvious decisions. I'm looking forward to working with you!
Hey, I reviewed your user history and found nothing so far that raised questions or worries. Welcome to the team! Hopefully the load will be as light as it is currently.
Unless you have a reason not to, would you be able to add your pronouns to your account bio to help model the recommendation below the rules on the community sidebar? Thanks!
And, I'm sure that you know this, but let's strive to be transparent and consistent in our moderation, seeking community input where appropriate and consulting with each other on any nonobvious decisions. I'm looking forward to working with you!
Hey, I reviewed your user history and found nothing so far that raised questions or worries. Welcome to the team! Hopefully the load will be as light as it is currently.
Unless you have a reason not to, would you be able to add your pronouns to your account bio to help model the recommendation below the rules on the community sidebar? Thanks!
And, I'm sure that you know this, but let's strive to be transparent and consistent in our moderation, seeking community input where appropriate and consulting with each other on any nonobvious decisions. I'm looking forward to working with you!
I have also added Rule #12:
If a post is tagged with a specific gender identity, keep the conversation centered on that identity.
This used to be a bot post in r/egg_irl. Hopefully it's not controversial, but let me know if you have feedback on it.
Okay, everyone, I made an update based on your comments. Please check over the sidebar and see if it looks okay.
Resources in Sidebar?
Sorry for more meta posts; I'm depending on you all to counterbalance them with memes :).
I wanted to ask if we should have any resources for eggs and trans people listed in our sidebar after our rules. For example, the transfem community on lemmy.blahaj.zone has these resources listed:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
- Trans Resistance Network // A mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
- TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for trans healthcare procedures.
- TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.
Another that comes to my mind is The Trevor Project.
Thoughts? Yea, nay? Any suggestions on what to include or leave off if we do post a list?
Announcing !egg_irl
# !egg_irl General Rules: 1. No bigotry. 2. No spam, bots, or vote farming. Rules on Content: 3. No reposts. 4. No personal-life posts, bingo cards, quizzes, selfies, “trans/not trans” lists, picrew, or non-memes. 5. No visible names or usernames. 6. Do not post or link to pornography. Rules on Post...
![egg_irl — Memes about being trans people in denial and other eggy topics - Blåhaj Lemmy](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/nCXh3GEPmQ.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Hey, everyone! I'm happy to announce that !egg_irl is starting to take off now that we've moved instances. If you have eggy memes to post, or would like to see more eggy memes, or just want your feed flooded with more trans goodness, we'd be delighted to have you join us. Please find us at our new home on lemmy.blahaj.zone or search for https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl if that link doesn't work on your instance.
Many thanks to your mod @bunnygirl for permission to post this here and for our swanky new logo!
I've made some preliminary edits to the community description based on the comments so far. These are not necessarily final or set in stone; further discussion is welcome!
Are you clicking the ellipsis on the post as shown on the community page or from the post on its own page? IIRC, mod actions only show up if you visit the post itself.
Indeed. egg_irl is also moving there.
https://lichess.org/Rgr7yWOK: BabaDuda versus library_patron 1-0 (assuming random colors was okay)
A lot of swings, but hopefully still interesting. As black I was happy to go up in material, but although I knew I really had to keep an eye on king safety, that's exactly what I failed to do.
(Also, as someone used to not playing with time controls, rapid feels so fast. I have no idea how people do blitz or bullet.)
Rules Discussion
At the moment, I've taken the rules that were in place on r/egg_irl as a starting point for our community. You can find them, tweaked for Lemmy (edit: and updated according to early feedback below), in the sidebar. Unfortunately, the r/egg_irl wiki is not accessible during the blackout, and it was not archived in the Wayback Machine, so we'll have to wait a bit to get the full versions.
There are, however, four potential changes that I'd appreciate community input on:
Scope
Nominally, r/egg_irl was for memes about being an egg, but a lot of the posts were just about things that eggs and omelettes could relate to. Do we want to update the community description to reflect that broader scope?
Content Warnings
Lemmy does not have post flairs at the moment, and I know it's going to be important that people can filter out content that would cause dysphoria. As a stop-gap, I would like to propose that posts assuming the gender of the viewer be required to be spoilered and be marked with a square-brackets tag [CW: Assumes Viewer is …]
at the start of the post title. Similarly for posts that discuss violence, transphobia, etc. That won't be enough to support filtering, but hopefully it would help people avoid clicking through to content they don't want to see. Thoughts?
Also, while discussing post flairs, do we want to go further and ask all posts to be tagged [Transmasc Meme]
, [Transfem Meme]
, [Nonbinary Meme]
, etc.?
Pronouns
Lemmy does not have user flairs either, so there's no good way to know commenters' pronouns at a glance. Do we want to have a recommendation (I don't think we could make it a rule) that commenters list their pronouns in their user profile?
It was also nice that people could flair themselves as questioning, cracked, etc., but I don't that that's the kind of thing everyone wants to make as visible across Lemmy as being in their profile, so I don't have a good suggestion for replicating that feature.
Image Descriptions
One thing that I think we could improve on versus r/egg_irl is accessibility and searchabilty. (I at least had trouble finding old memes back on Reddit since every post is titled so similarly.) I have tentatively added
> 10. If possible, include an image description for accessibility.
to the sidebar, but there is a cost because it takes time to manually type up an image description, as well as a risk that people won't write good descriptions. Are we okay with this being in the rules? Do we want to make it a hard requirement?
egg_irl, for memes about being trans people in denial, is migrating to lemmy.blahaj.zone!
# !egg_irl Rules 1. No visible names or usernames. 2. Posts must be titled “egg_irl”. An emoji or two is OK, but they have to be between “egg” and “irl”. 3. No bigotry. 4. No personal life posts, bingo, quizzes, selfies, “trans/not trans” lists, picrew, or non-memes. 5. Tag submissions for content w...
![egg_irl — Memes about being trans people in denial - Blåhaj Lemmy](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/7zVI2WpeZw.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
egg_irl, a community for memes about being eggs (people who are trans but don't know it yet or deny it) and other trans topics, is migrating from lemmy.ml to lemmy.blahaj.zone.
You can find us by searching for https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl or, if someone from your instance has already subscribed, by following this link.
If egg_irl is your cup of tea, you may also be interested in our sibling community, [email protected].
⚠ Community Migration
As discussed in this thread, we are in the process of migrating !egg_irl off of lemmy.ml. You can find the new community by searching for https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/egg_irl or, if someone from your instance has already subscribed, by following this link. Hope to see you there!
egg🇸🇪irl
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/rrWvG0IYpN.png?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/rrWvG0IYpN.png?format=webp)
Image description: A four-panel meme. In the first row, the left panel shows an illustration of a nonbinary person frowning with their head turned away and their hand held up in refusal, while the right panel, that they are refusing, has text reading "Voice training to sound more like your actual gender and less like your AGAB." In the second row, the left panel shows the same person smiling and pointing at the final panel in recommendation, while that final panel shows an illustration of Blåhaj with its fins raised in excitement in front of blazing fire and the text "Voice training to pronounce 'Blåhaj' with a proper Swedish accent!"
Template courtesy of @[email protected], available at https://stgiga.github.io/gigaware/5box.png.
Blåhaj image is the instance icon from lemmy.blahaj.zone.
egg🦈🙌irl
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/LmzZuOCGle.png?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
![](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/LmzZuOCGle.png?format=webp)
Image description: A four-panel meme. In the first row, the left panel shows an illustration of a nonbinary person frowning with their head turned away and their hand held up in refusal, while the right panel, that they are refusing, has text reading "Choosing a Lemmy instance based on interests, language, and region." In the second row, the left panel shows the same person smiling and pointing at the final panel in recommendation, while that final panel shows the icon for lemmy.blahaj.zone, an illustration of Blåhaj with its fins raised in excitement in front of blazing fire and the text "Choosing a Lemmy instance based on how excited their Blåhaj is!"
Template courtesy of @[email protected], available at https://stgiga.github.io/gigaware/5box.png.
Blåhaj image is the instance icon from lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Seeking Moderators
We are currently looking for additional moderators. If you are interested in helping out, please leave a comment below.
⚠ Moderation of !egg_irl (Subscriber Input Needed)
Hey, all. I started posting here because it was the result that came up when I searched for "egg_irl" on browse.feddit.de, but it turns out that this community is currently unmoderated—the moderator listed in the sidebar over there is a banned user. I think we should take steps to get moderation in place now rather than later. I have already begun the process, but need your input for subsequent steps.
The first question is who would moderate. Ideally we would have at least two people sharing the load. I can help out, but I am not suitable as a primary mod because I am often away for long periods of time. If any of you reading this are willing, please leave a comment.
The second question is whether we want to take this opportunity to move !egg_irl to a different host instance. lemmy.ml, as you know, is hit pretty heavily with traffic, and I don't see that changing, so we could probably get more responsive and reliable federation from elsewhere, incidentally helping to take some load off of that server. It also might be more apropos to have !egg_irl on an explicitly LGBTQA+ instance.
So, two ways this could go down, once we have moderator candidates:
----
Option 1: Keep !egg_irl on lemmy.ml
- Pro: We keep the content and subscribers we already have.
- Con: We contribute to and suffer from the load on lemmy.ml.
Assuming the request I put in gets me temporary control of !egg_irl, this option is pretty straightforward: I appoint the mods, and off we go.
Option 2: Migrate !egg_irl to another instance
If we choose this option, I would like to nominate my home instance, lemmy.blahaj.zone. Not only is it explicitly LGBTQA+\-friendly, but its performance has been pretty good in my experience, we have understanding and responsive admins, and there's very little chance that the instance is going anywhere.
- Pro: We no longer contribute to or suffer from the load on lemmy.ml.
- Con: We have to migrate the four posts we currently have if we want to keep them, and we have to notify subscribers here to subscribe to the moved community.
The process in this case is a little more involved, but not bad: Someone with an account on the new home instance (I could take care of it if we choose lemmy.blahaj.zone) creates the new community and appoints the mods, we ask posters to repost their memes/comments there, we delete the old posts and put up a notice about the community's new home, and then after a suitable transition period we delete the old community.
----
Please share your thoughts in comments below so that hopefully we can develop a consensus. Thanks for bearing with these growing pains.
Requesting c/egg_irl
Only listed mod is a banned user who therefore has not been active for about two years.
How to Subscribe to Kbin Magazines from Lemmy?
This post suggests that Kbin magazines can be subscribed to in the same way as Lemmy communities, by searching for them, possibly waiting for one's instance to pull info about the magazine in, and then visiting the magazine through one's instance. However, although my home instance is federated with kbin.social, I am not able to get any search results for kbin.social magazines, and it seems that I am not the only one; see here, here, and here, though that last case seems to have fixed itself on its own. The behavior is the same whether I search by URL (e.g., https://kbin.social/m/fediverse
), by magazine name with an at-sign (e.g., @[email protected]
), or by magazine name with a bang (e.g., [email protected]
).