It sounds like your job requires no talent and you could be easily replaced. Is it so?
Just because there are other people out there who can do the same job as you (or them) doesn’t mean that it takes no skill, nor that replacing them can be done at a snap of the fingers. But nobody is irreplaceable. That’s how companies see their employees. Even you.
I may be remembering that wrong, as it was before my time, but I had heard that people moved to cable for the same reasons that people moved from cable to streaming services. You bought one cable package, it gave you access to everything, and there were no ads. Then came the ads, and eventually, the packages you have to buy in addition to your cable subscription for the channels you actually care about.
And the irony is that people switched to cable for the exact same reason. They got tired of the nonsense that broadcast TV pulled with subscriptions for different channels and all the ads and everything, and went to cable because you paid one bill for every channel. Then, everyone moved to streaming because you had to buy 50 different cable packages for the one channel on each you actually cared about, and there were just too many ads to deal with, etc.
Something something, those who don’t listen to history are doomed to lose profit margins or whatever.
Yeah, there’s been a number on both surgery and HRT, as well as plenty of studies on the effects of supporting trans people - especially trans kids.
I even remember a series of studies that found that HRT had a 90% success rate among patients. 90% of people in the study said that there had been either an improvement or at least no change in the quality of their life after they started compared to before, and of the 10% who didn’t, many of them cited outside factors as being the cause of their issues. Stuff like unsupportive family and harassment/hate crimes were some of the most common factors, and post HRT regret being the least common factor. The majority of that 10% said they would be starting HRT again as soon as they were in a position where they safely could.
Made in Abyss vibes, 10/10. A great worldbuilding aesthetic of a city of would-be adventurers hanging on the edge of the ruins they want to but can’t explore.