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.

In this economy? Better believe I’m looking up the No A Button strats.

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.

I just find it fun. And super hot sauces don’t have to be devoid of flavor. There’s truly a lot of options when it comes to hot sauces. I have a rack specifically for super hot sauce bottles, lol.

My wife got me these really nice pepper flake blends from Flatiron for the holidays a few years ago and it was a fantastic gift. It included 5 different blends ranging from about 10,000 Scoville to about… 750,000K. It’s painful. Straight up. I can’t say it isn’t an unpleasant sensation. It’s just fun. Like I’ll be chuckling to myself while wheezing from the overwhelming heat.

There’s a Carolina Reaper version of Blue Almond almonds that I love. Super spicy. And low carb. Unfortunately I think they discontinued them because there isn’t a huge market for superhot enjoyers.

Ohh, gotcha, lol. Yeah, I completely misinterpreted your comment. Thanks for the clarification

What’s wrong with pannenkoek? Am I out of the loop? I’ve watched a couple of his videos and they were interesting deep dives into SM64.

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 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.

You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci.

And “driver crash”

Clearly you aren’t doing it right. Me buying shares is a death knell for companies. I’d be surprised if my broker doesn’t give companies a courtesy call when I’ve bought a few shares to let 'em know the company’s about to go under.

That’s one of the more depressing aspects. Whenever I see people say, “I can’t wait for McConnell to die” I’m like, “It’s not like Kentucky is suddenly going to vote in someone who isn’t horrible to replace him.” Just trading out one shitty politician for a younger one.

Sure, but you also said not to shame people for how they vote. I responded specifically to that statement and not the others because I understand wanting to vote for a candidate you actually want in office.

Unfortunately, strategic voting has to occur in order for things to get better in the USA. Until we massively overhaul the voting system, voters need to understand that you either vote for the lesser of two evils, or are (albeit passively) contributing to the greater of two evils’ ascent to power.

Even far-left progressives like Bernie Sanders or Noam Chomsky were like, “Dude, you gotta vote for the Democratic candidate or else these crazy far-right candidates are gonna push the country further to the right. At least if the Democratic candidate wins we either stay where we are, or maybe get to move a bit further left during their tenure.”

It’s a deeply flawed system, but in the general election, it’s a simple calculus. There’s nothing Biden could do to lose my vote in November because I owe it to our society (and our allies worldwide) to prevent another Trump term.

Let people vote for who they believe in without shaming them.

Voting is like freedom of speech. Everyone is free to vote for whoever they want, but they aren’t immune from criticism for how they vote. If someone votes for a guy who says he’ll “be a dictator on day one” and encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want”, I’m gonna shame that person for supporting such an insupportable candidate who espouses such insane ideas.

where’s the pleasure in watching a story you’ve just created with prompts?

I imagine (some of) the fanfic/fanvid community might love something like this for making fanvids. Some of my friends are big into the fanfic/fanvid scene and would probably love writing/directing their own videos to share with fellow fans in the community.

If I hadn’t gotten a home right before the housing market went to shit, I’d be discouraged too.

Same. My family hit the lottery when we decided to buy a house when the covid pandemic was tanking the market. Locked in a mortgage at around 2.25% and feel so privileged every day for it. The apartment we lived in at the time said they were upping the rent nearly 30% when we were due to renew, so we started looking at houses. We were incredibly lucky that we met someone entirely by chance who was planning on selling their home around the same time our apartment lease was due to renew. They never even listed their house on the market so we didn’t have to deal with getting into a bidding war. And it was within our budget. And I got a raise at work right before we signed the papers (we were already gonna be able to afford it, but just barely). The stars aligned in so many ways at such an uncertain time in our lives.

It’s one of the few things that gives me comfort in trying times. So many things could go wrong, but we’ve got a house with a fixed mortgage and a very low interest rate and a half acre of land for our kid to run around and play in. I’d say my general anxiety levels have been lower since buying a house cause it just passively comforts me to have gotten so lucky. Even though maintaining a home is a big responsibility compared to renting an apartment, it’s totally worth it, and I’ve enjoyed becoming more handy over the years as things have needed fixing.

With any luck, we’ll never move again. It’s a nice place about 15 minutes from the nearest town, which is already a rural area, so there’s little light pollution so the stargazing opportunities are nice. Hoping to eventually add some solar panels to the roof to lower the energy bill one of these days.

If we were still living in a basic apartment and paying effectively the same amount in rent that we’re currently paying in mortgage for a 3 bed 2 bath house with a garage, I’d be depressed as fuck about it every day.

I agree the situation is oppressive and untenable, but the plant manager isn’t the same as a King. We don’t know if the plant manager had the actual power to fix anything, given the corruption and embezzling going on behind the scenes. A King is the top of the pyramid, this guy wasn’t necessarily, so I don’t condone his murder based on pure speculation. The French people didn’t have to speculate that the King and Queen were directly responsible for the peoples’ misery and oppression.

We just don’t know enough.

I would say that’s a good reason not to condone mob violence, not a reason to support it.