Been there!

Well, I'd say that tennis did catch on. Ashe, McEnroe, Agassi, Sampras, the Williams sisters, Billie Jean King, Evert; they all had major followings as pros. It's also a very popular sport to play at all levels of skill. It does have ups and downs, but in terms of pros, it's a pretty consistent sport to be able to make a living at, which isn't true of very many single player sports that aren't fighting.

Soccer, yeah, it's way behind in terms of draw. There's a shit ton of opinions about why that is, but I've never really put any time into considering them because I'm not a team sports guy at all, and soccer/futbol is low on the list of what I'll sit and watch for any period of time even when I'm in that mood.

As far as the thought experiment of pitting the players against each other, you'd run into three conflicting training and selection paradigms. I dunno if you've ever played both, but holy fuck do they take different bodies to do well at.

Even a running back or wide receiver is going to out mass most Soccer players, and most Soccer players would have trouble with the extra gear even if they didn't get tackled. So you run into each sport being dominated by people that are physically less capable at the other one at pro levels. At amateur levels, that isn't as drastic, but you'd see the players from the other sport gassing out early.

Besides, the argument about which sport is "better" has nothing to do with the players. They're all peak level athletes in the pros, so that's not relevant. People will argue about it, but people are mostly idiots that will argue whether vanilla is better than chocolate just because they think whatever opinion they hold is superior even when there's no competition in the first place (they're entirely different things, not opposites).

I know you're really asking trans folk, but I'm poking my nose in anyway because I feel you.

I'm cishet, but I've been at least loosely connected to the LGBTQ+ community since back when it was still just LGB as far as most people were aware of.

While I had, and do have, cishet friends, I've always found that I tend to prefer the company of folks living on the rainbow in one way or another. Not necessarily because of shared interests, though that's a factor for sure. It's the community, the way that folks living beyond the default assumptions tend to look at the world, and treat people.

I've never really fit the standard white cishet world, and likely never will even if it shifts a lot more than I believe possible. But hanging out with my gay friends always felt like home, like I belonged. Again, not necessarily because of shared interests, but it was really nice to be able to engage with some of those things and have people not only get them, but share enthusiasm.

By the time I ran into the trans community within the greater LGBTQ community, I knew damn good and well that I was going to find plenty of common ground, and plenty to love about the people involved. I was right, and I am so thankful that trans people exist, though I dearly wish their path in the world was easier.

Not saying I necessarily like every individual, but damn if I don't usually like a damn bigger percentage than of the general population lol.

So I totally relate :)

Dammit, that got me lol. That's a literal lol right there. Fuck me, that was a good one

White metal, the ultimate underground you haven't heard of yet, you poser

Oh fuck me! An all electric, or even hybrid 57 bel air? I just jizzed my pants at the idea

I don't know that I can agree that the entire field of talk therapy is the sole domain of the rich. I've engaged in one-on-one talk therapy, and that was while entirely jobless and without income of any kind. Got it totally free. It took some jumping through hoops, yeah. And it was as an adjunct to other treatment modalities rather than the primary; but that's actually a good thing, not a bad one since one-on-one is way less effective than other modalities for most people in most situations.

What is absolutely true is that acces without either very high income, or unusually great insurance (here in the US at least) is much harder, and often with long waiting times, as well as being very difficult to schedule. In my area, you can expect to be limited to monthly sessions outside of crisis, and if you have to cancel, it will not be a quick new date. But, again, one-on-one talk therapy isn't a first line of treatment.

There was most definitely a hard class barrier originally, and it's entirely possible it could get that bad again.

I mean, that's at least partly true lol.

If you have access to something like a diamond lapping plate, that'll get you started faster, with the caveat that you have to work with the edge trailing or you'll just be making new chips. You can't "scrub" with those, or even the really coarse stones of other types, with harder steels. I mean, you can, but it isn't going to end well imo. I sure as hell wouldn't with a knife I cared about.

Fwiw, with something in the 400 grit range (or equivalent), it shouldn't take thousands of passes, just hundreds. Well, assuming the steel isn't freakishly hard. But I've never seen one like that that went over maybe 65 Rockwell. Ish. Obviously, if you've only got a single 1 stone, which is perfectly reasonable for 99% of what most people need, it'll take thousands lol.

Just to kinda babble on about something I enjoy as a tangent (so feel free to just ignore the rest lol), I tend to favor oil stones, particularly for rehab jobs like that, and leave the water stones more for polishing when I need/want something that can do fancy push cuts. It's what I reach for first with this kind of task. The coarser aluminium oxide stones can actually do a solid job on the Japanese steels, and they take less lapping over time by virtue of wearing slower.

There's the argument that water stones are exposing fresh grit faster, and thus the lower grit water stones can remove metal faster as well. However, I find that the faster wear of the stone shows up in a wonky bevel that then needs more time correcting. Plus, if you don't go with something crazy low grit (say, under 200 for this application) you can actually scrub as long as you're careful. I managed to do solid jobs on similar steel that way with no new chips.

Anyway, like I said, I'm just geeking here, not trying to get you to do any of that. It's really the kind of job that you either do because you enjoy it, do because someone is paying you, or you find someone else to do it :)

It does!

That sense of discovery just hits harder when you also feel like a pioneer.