rudyharrelson

Not that guy, but I have one kid who I love to bits. Got a vasectomy when he was 2 years old cause we would explode if we had a second kid, lol. One is enough for us. We’ve been incredibly fortunate so we decided we didn’t need any more surprises.

The doc who did mine was a military vet who went into urology after serving. I remember reading the pamphlet on the operation and it said the vasectomy only took 15 minutes. I asked him, “It only takes 15 minutes??” and he responded, “Eight.”

I like a good speedrun as much as the next guy, but I told him to take his sweet time lol. Ain’t in no rush, doc.

Recovery was super chill. Couldn’t roughhouse with my son for a week or two, and that’s about it. I’ve got some fun titanium clamps chilling in my junk now, so that’s fun. I’m basically Wolverine.

Birth control and STD protection are two wildly different things. Imagine, if you will, a married couple who doesn’t want any more kids. They want the former and don’t need the latter.

Based on the thumbnail I thought it was gonna say “and here’s where I’d put the documentation… if they gave me time to write it!”

I would prefer for crypto to be gone. Based on my understanding of blockchain, I don’t see how it can be used as currency ever. Blockchains can be extremely useful, just not as currency.

Hm, my understanding was that blockchain was the technology that handles the distributed ledger rather than the currency itself. Blockchain seems useful to a point in this realm, but is, like we both know, extremely energy inefficient and unsustainable.

The only thing you can really do about stolen tokens is have some authority de-list them and re-issue new token to the victim. That’s hardly a solution. It also extremely centralizes control, which runs antithetical to the purported benefits of crypto.

No arguments here. Though I think there could be better solutions out aside from using some centralized authority to delist stolen tokens. Blacklisting certain wallet IDs could be a crowd-sourced project, much like how blocklists for adblockers are largely community-driven.

Crypto also doesn’t take power away from institutions. […]

Gotta disagree with “crypto doesn’t take power away from institutions”. Exactly as you said, if institutions leverage their pre-existing power in the crypto space, it becomes centralized because a small pool of wealthy players control the majority of the currency. The currency itself is not centralized, but it can be exploited by bad actors who wish to manipulate its value (or just profit off of it, either way). If existing institutions weren’t using their massively accumulated wealth to affect the crypto space, they would be losing power over the people who decided to avail themselves of it and bypass conventional banks. I consider this a weakness in cryptocurrency that needs to be addressed, but is this weakness any different from any other currency?

Crypto is also incredibly power inefficient. Even with proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work, it is still factors less efficient than normal FIAT transactions, and as of yet I see no solution to that. One may pop up in some hypothetical future, but I have no faith in that.

Zero arguments from me. It’s an environmental disaster.

Additionally, crypto will also always reward those who engage with it disingenuously, as it is not linked to one’s real identity and, again, is inflexible and impossible to truly regulate. In a mass-adoption scenario, scammers would become enormously more successful.

Depends on how you intereact with crypto. In the US, most states require crypto brokers to verify the identity of those trading on their platforms. No different from opening a checking account with a bank. Sure, one could get into crypto anonymously but it’s considerably harder. Some crypto ATMs exist, but I think virtually all of them have cameras and require you to show photo ID to use them (at least in the US).

Most importantly, crypto is a digital asset whose store of value is implicitly tied to the belief that it can be sold for FIAT. It is almost exclusively a speculative vehicle, and always had been since its inception. Actual crypto purchases are disincentivized by how slow, inefficient, unwieldy, and volatile it is. Not to mention high transaction fees for the most popular coins. It is also deflationary, meaning one is disincentivized from spending it, which is extremely bad for the economy in a mass-adoption scenario. Gentle inflation is one of the core principles underpinning our economy. Having currency also be an asset that appreciates in value is objectively a bad thing.

I disagree that it’s been a speculative vehicle since its inception. It’s undeniably a speculative investment now, and has been for years, but when it first started out, it was basically worthless and adopted by a handful of businesses who were understandably pissed off after the 2008 market crash. People naturally speculated as to whether or not it would take off, and I think it’s unfortunate that it became a speculative investment by those who weren’t really interested in its use as a currency.

I’m no economist, but I don’t see much difference between “crypto’s value is implicitly tied to the belief that it can be sold for FIAT” and “FIAT’s value is implicitly tied to the belief that the issuing government values it”

I feel like I could keep going for a while but hopefully you at least understand why I feel this way now lol.

Oh believe me, none of this is news to me. I just wanted to see what you thought. I’ve found the cryptocurrency conversation interesting as the years have passed and enjoy asking people for their thoughts when they appear to be engaging in good faith. Most people I see are very unpleasantly hardline for or against crypto and don’t care to take time to discuss any of the nuance.

I’m curious if you would prefer crypto disappear entirely, or if you would prefer it be properly regulated so it has all the same, or greater, protections so that it can be part of the economy without being as risky for consumers.

I can only assume the early internet had little to no consumer protections on purchases (compared to the protections they have today, that is), but I could be wrong on that. Laws and regulations tend to always lag behind technology.

I like the idea of taking power away from big banks. Crypto is no silver bullet, but I’d like to think it could get there one day. But since capitalism always protects itself, I doubt any wealthy lobbies are going to be asking congress to pass common sense regulation for a currency that takes power away from institutional banks.

Definitely not a stupid question! Networking infrastructure is complex. I’ve been working in IT for years and still find myself scratching my head at times going, “Wait, how does the OSI model work again?”

Connecting to a VPN on your phone while using mobile data basically means the cell phone tower handling your data only sees encrypted data. Whoever your VPN provider is will see your traffic instead of the cell tower.

However, in modern times it’s fair to be wary of backdoors and exploits that can compromise your device and render the VPN encryption moot. There’s not much that regular people can really do to mitigate that possibility other than not use a phone.

If you’re interested in learning more networking fundamentals, I’d recommend starting with the OSI model and its layers.

A handy mnemonic I whipped up with ChatGPT last year for better remembering the order of the layers:

Precise Data Navigation Takes Some Planning Ahead

I run my own wireguard VPN at home and connect to it from my phone when I’m traveling.

Grants me privacy (but not anonymity) from my mobile carrier. Sure, my home ISP still sees my VPN’s traffic, but that’s still one less company able to monitor my web traffic when I’m mobile.

I enjoy listening to college radio stations. They’re usually varied in music genres and tend to reflect what college students want to put on the airwaves.

I’m a fan of 88.3FM Central Carolina Community College Radio.

Why

Why not? Nothing wrong with research and development as long as everyone participating in the test is an informed, consenting adult IMO. The advancements could make current accessibility tech even better. For one reason or another, a quadriplegic person decided they were willing to take the risk, so maybe they consider current accessibility tech for quadriplegics to be insufficient and wanted to try for something better?

Please dude I promise you this is near universally hated by disabled people 😭

Well damn, I didn’t know.

Agreed. I was flippant after reading the headline, since I don’t like Musk, but once I read the story I was like "oh yeah this tech does have big potential for the differently abled. "

A quadriplegic being able to control a cursor on a screen with the implant for 100 days seems like a legit first attempt.

Could be great for the accessibility movement in the long run. But I could be naive or too optimistic.

I don’t think it’s morally incorrect to eat another animal.

I don’t think most vegans think so, either. It isn’t the eating in and of itself, but the suffering that occurs on the path to being food. Gas (petroleum) is widely considered vegan because, even though it’s made from dead animals (dinosaurs), they didn’t suffer and weren’t exploited to create it; they died of natural causes. Vegans (typically, I believe) don’t consider eating meat to be cruel if the animal dies of natural causes. Steer, aka castrated bulls, get their balls chopped off because it helps produce more meat (ironically steer are more muscular than bulls, TIL). I’m a guy (albeit not a vegan), and it isn’t hard for me to see that’s unnecessarily cruel and inhumane treatment.

We can debate the treatment of animals in how they are kept. But that’s another topic.

It’s not a separate topic at all. Vegans primarily care about animal suffering, which is a direct result of how the industry largely operates. Not all vegans are opposed to simply killing an animal to survive; that isn’t the core issue for most. Yes, killing an animal for food can be avoided, but as long as it’s a quick/clean kill, like an arrow to a major artery, it’s fine from a survivalist perspective because it’s humane and not unnecessarily cruel.

The meat industry is accountable for the undeniable mistreatment of animals in the course of producing food for the masses.

I’m not against vegans, but where the hell did you read that meat is bad? You can have an opinion, but that’s just not a fact. Period.

I mean, the meat industry is factually bad for the environment at its current scale. That’s not really in dispute, is it?

Millions of vegans worldwide skip that opportunity every day. You just assume every vegan is a loudmouth jerk when that simply isn’t the case. I have vegan friends and co-workers who have never, ever shamed a single person for their dietary choices. Your comment is wildly ignorant.

People complaining all day long about “annoying militant vegans” but have apparently never met the equally annoying, militant meat-lovers who deludedly believe the liberals are gonna make burgers illegal. Sure, I find opinionated vegans as annoying as the next guy, but I’ve met way, waaaay more annoying, militant Americans who would rather die than eat one less angus burger per month when their doctor recommends it to help prevent cardiac disease.

Like they’d literally rather die in their 50’s than cut out a few burgers from their diet. It’s nuts.

I don’t necessarily agree that being vegetarian/vegan is inherently more expensive than being an omnivore, but I’d like to point out the meat industry receives a lot of government subsidies (at least in the USA) and that helps keep costs down. Vegetarian/Vegan options would be more affordable if they got the same government subsidies as the beef industry. Sure, things like corn/wheat/soybeans receive decent subsidies, but most of that is for feeding, you guessed it, livestock.

I migrated from Plex to Jellyfin maybe a year and a half ago and haven’t looked back. Great user experience and works so well out of the box IMO. Good Android app, too. Works with Chromecast, too (though I’ve been trying to ditch Chromecast in favor of just a laptop connected to the TV via HDMI).

I started digitizing old home movies that were on VHS and created a “Home Movies” library for my family; none of us had watched them in ages since none of us have a VCR anymore, lol. Great mother’s/father’s day gift for one’s parent if you’ve got the time and equipment. It’s nice having the whole family able to easily stream our home movies.

How can you hate a concept that doesn’t even make any sense.

I hate lots of concepts. Nazism, for example. You could call it a concept or an ideology, but I hate it all the same. I don’t just hate the people who practice it; I hate the concept in and of itself.

It’s the belief online that […]

Well, the idea of the “Law of Attraction” is far older than the internet; I recall reading about it in a book on old timey “magick” teachings many years ago. If I recall correctly, the idea was that the only real “magick” in this world is our attention/willpower. So the things we’re attracted to, or the things that we use our willpower toward or spend our time on, are the things we are “magicking” into existence, so to speak.

So if one uses their willpower toward helping others and being a positive person, that’s using the law of attraction to the benefit of others and yourself.

If one uses their willpower to be a total jerk and only look out for themselves, that’s using the law of attraction purely for your own benefit, and maybe to the detriment of others.

One could also use their willpower to, say, stop smoking cigarettes. That would be using the law of attraction for self improvement.

That was my understanding of the idea, anyway. Haven’t read about it since then. I liked the book because it was very clear from the beginning that “magick” is no shortcut to real results because “magick” is just human willpower manifested through actions, and anyone who was offering quick solutions via “magick” was a scam artist.

There’s definitely animosity toward veganism as a concept itself. The types who use the term “soyboy” and boomers who consider eating lots of red meat some kind of manly recreational pastime.

I think “the money is made from animal parts and there are no fully vegan cars so you’re arbitrarily picking and choosing when to be vegan” misses the point of ideological veganism. I’m not a vegan, but I believe the goal for ideological vegans (in contrast with those who are vegan for medical reasons) is to minimize suffering and exploitation within reason for the specific reasons you said. No one can be 100% free of animal parts unless they become an off-the-grid self-sustained homestead.

Vegans know that. But most come to the conclusion that just because you can’t live 100% animal free doesn’t mean you can’t try to get to 80% because you want to live your life in a manner you consider morally and ethically consistent with your collective ideologies. You get as close as you can within reason depending on the various constraints of your individual circumstances. “I am still a vegetarian, and I try to be a vegan, but I occasionally cheat. If there’s a cheese pizza on the band bus, I might sneak a piece,” to quote Weird Al Yankovic.

I’d say most people, including vegans, have more than one goal in life. The “lines in the sand” you’re referring to are at the intersection of their goal to minimize suffering and their goal to, say, keep living. Like if a vegan were told by their doctor, “If you don’t start eating meat, you’ll die from this weird disease,” the vegan likely wouldn’t be like, “Well, I might as well indulge in eggs and milk and all other animal products now since I can’t be 100% vegan” and chow down. They’d probably eat just the amount prescribed by their doctor, because they still don’t like eating meat because its origins bother them.