Hi David, > sorry to admit that your last message is more interesting to me than your > descriptions of technical endeavours, which are largely over my head,
My vision of FC community is not just technical, but also social. Right now those of us who detest and refuse to use sheeple smartphones, preferring traditional dumbphones instead, and those of us who wish to use GSM instead of the 4G/5G abomination, are a highly oppressed, endangered and trampled-upon minority, EXACTLY the same as the anti- Covidian-cult and anti-injection minority, and we need to stick together socially. It is certainly unfortunate that I have not yet found any other trans women (or helping professionals who work with our kind) who share my anti-smartphone beliefs OR my anti-4G/5G beliefs OR my anti-Covidian beliefs, but there is at least one teensy-tiny overlap between our GSM work in FreeCalypso and the kind people in Mexico who helped me realize my life-long dream of becoming a complete woman: when I told them about Rhizomatica and the indigenous GSM networks they operate in Oaxaca, all of those medical tourism coordinator people in Tijuana really liked it, and I was happy to tell them that I give out free-of-cost FreeCalypso hardware to those kinds of maverick operators. Speaking of the medical tourism industry in Mexico, transgender surgeries like mine are only a very small part of that business - instead the vast majority of their patients are cisgender folks (meaning not transgender), mostly cis women, and the surgeries for which they come to Mexico range from vanity cosmetic stuff to the rather horrible bariatrics - the latter I do NOT approve of. But whatever their reasons and motivations, the steady flow of all those medical tourists keeps the prices very competitive and affordable, and possibly even encourages the Mexican govt to stay away from draconian anti-tourist policies, so as to not bite the hand that feeds them. Some of those non-transgender medical tourists also provide for a lively social company. While I stayed at the medical recovery guesthouse after my surgery, I had a roommate who was a cisgender girl who came for a bunch of vanity cosmetic treatments. She checked into the place where we stayed a couple of days before her surgery, whereas I was already post-op - but I was recovering so well that I was very social despite being only a few days out of my surgery. She quickly realized that I was a hot commodity when I told her not only about my hobby projects like FC, but also about the work I do with terrestrial microwave links in my day job - and then as I was entertaining one of the nurses with my singing, my roommate could not believe that I don't actually speak Spanish, she thought I was pulling her leg - I have a couple of rather long and complicated Spanish songs in my repertoire, I have them meticulously memorized and I sing them from memory without actually speaking the language, and my American roommate thought it was impossible. The other person in my audience, the Mexican nurse who was obviously a most native Spanish speaker, was also impressed by how correctly I was pronouncing some of the more complicated words in those songs. So yes, I had a good amount of entertainment thrown in at no extra cost along with my surgery in Mexico! > I'd resigned myself to never travelling again; In my case, I may indeed never again in my life be able to do the kind of travel that requires getting onto an airplane for an international flight, but I am *so* thankful for my ability to travel by land, including cross-border travel in my car, without having to get onto a plane and be subject to all of the mistreatments that come with the latter. > I think if I went to Mexico, I'd have to spend 14 days or so in an isolation > facility at my own expense on return. Quarantine on return to your own home country, ouch! In the case of USA citizens coming back home from overseas travel, I heard something about them requiring a negative test before you can get on the plane home, which is certainly very problematic: at 40 cycles they are basically amplifying random noise, and if that random noise comes out positive in your case, not being able to get on the plane back home would be really major trouble. Thankfully there are no such impositions for land border crossing back into USA from Mexico: just show them proof that you are either a USA citizen or what they call a "lawful permanent resident" (my status here), and they let you through on your merry way. > 5 star hotel rates for the privilege of being imprisoned in other words > - nice neh? What you just said is exactly what the diabolical govt of Thailand (a country that was once previously referred to as Vaginaland) does to innocent medical tourists (mostly trans women) who go to that country for their quality-of-life surgeries. Unlike Mexico, Thailand is the world capital for gender-affirming surgeries, and many of my kind still go there for that purpose. I am extremely fortunate that I found a kind surgeon in Mexico who was able and willing to do what I wanted (being post-op now, I have no complaints: he did exactly what I asked him to do on me, same YAFIYGI principle as good old UNIX), but many other trans women still go to Thailand, even today with all of their unspeakable Covidian tyranny. Why? Every trans woman's needs in the surgery department are different and unique, some really need a different surgery variant than what I got, and there are many for whom top Thai surgeons are still the only ones in the world who can deliver the desired result. I have read stories that are just heartbreaking: trans women just like me (OK, they may not share my extremely strong anti-Covidian beliefs, but their lack of clarity in this regard does not reduce their humanity) go to Thailand in order to get their long-desired surgeries done by the very best in the field, but as they arrive in the country, they are immediately escorted to what you quite accurately described as a prison implemented inside a 5-star hotel. They are not allowed to leave their room at all, exactly the same as if it were a jail cell, and the only time they take you outside for a few minutes is for the purpose of shoving a hockey stick up your nose. They tear families apart, imprisoning each person separately - I remember reading a story where a married couple had to beg for special permission to be allowed to quarantine together in the same room, and they only found one hotel that allowed them to do so as a special rare exception. The crimes against humanity that are now being committed in the country that less than 2 y ago was THE beacon of hope for people of my kind (it was called Vaginaland for a reason - just ask Leah Rowe of Libreboot) are just unspeakable. Now if anyone thinks that those of us who seek and eventually undergo sex change surgeries are wrong in our heads and that we bring all of our suffering upon ourselves, including suffering inflicted directly at the hands of tyrannical Covidian govts, you have no idea what you are talking about, so just shut your ignorant trap, please. Just because YOU were born with the PRIVILEGE of soul and body of the same sex does not mean that everyone else was born with the same privilege - some of us were born without such. People with my condition (the currently accepted scientific term as of ICD-11 is gender incongruence, replacing previous terms which were less accurate) have existed for as long as humans existed, our existence in remote antiquity is documented on clay tablets and other similar long-lasting media, and even surgeries, obviously far more primitive than what I just got, were also done for thousands of years. Transgender priestesses devoted to several ancient Goddesses (Hekate and Selene at minimum) very willingly underwent primitive orchiectomies and penectomies without any anaesthesia, without sterile operating rooms and without antibiotics, knowing full well that their chances of making it through alive were maybe 50% at best. Giving gratitude where it is due, I am extremely thankful that I was able to get my body-match-soul surgery done by a good doctor using highly advanced techniques which were simply unavailable even a couple of decades ago - so much more advanced than what I would have been limited to had I lived in ancient Greece some 2500 y ago. Back to Covidian tyranny, when trans women seeking surgeries suffer more than other people at the hands of those evildoers, we are simply being used as the canary in the coal mine. I hold steadfast to my view that all current anti-human Covidian policies are crimes against humanity, and that various high-placed perpetrators of these crimes need to be subjected to the same trials and punishments as the Nazis after WW2. And no, you can't invoke Godwin's Law against me here, as I am the listowner, so there you have it. And to bring this thread back on topic, if anyone reading this rant is an anti-Covidian freedom fighter and you also happen to like GSM, you are welcome to receive whatever FreeCalypso hardware you like free of cost. Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela aka The Mother _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community