https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkNqNYkwhlg

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.

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.

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.

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.

You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci.

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.