Kind of meta, but does anybody remember garage door openers back in the day? My family had one for which the “security” consisted of an 8-bit “key,” as in, the remote had 8 jumpers, and the lift unit had 8 DIP switches. You’d cut jumpers in a certain pattern, and flip the switches to match. What was fun was seeing how many garage doors around town we could open using the default pattern.

Smart locks have got to be at least a slight improvent, right?

And with the pickup trucks, it’s the high center of gravity which makes them deathtraps.

And yet the Model F trucks are consistent best-sellers today.

Earning money from having money flies in the face of OC’s implication that being a billionaire is the result of virtuous effort. And, it sounds like a major flaw in the system all by itself.

But, even though they could passively rake in the income, so many billionaires actively try to increase their wealth, for no particular apparent purpose, and at the expense of harm to others, which does seem pathological.

Oh. I was supposed to lick it? I, uh, might’ve eaten it.

Mental disorder is very, very tricky to define, as something maladaptive in one context may work in another. One example is how in individualistic cultures, people hearing voices more often experience them as intrusive and malevolant, and we call it schizophrenia, while people on collectivist cultures may experience the voices as friendly and comforting. Is that a disease, then, if it benefits a person? Psychologists tend to go with a working definition based on how adaptive a condition is for the person and their society.

But in what context does it benefit a person to be unable to ever have “enough” of anything, never able to be satiated, compulsively adding to an enormous pile of wealth far, far beyond anything that they could ever use? Further, when the condition drives them to use the power attendant to that wealth to actively harm their society in myriad ways, how is that adaptive? It seems that they harbor a deep anxiety about the possibility that their accumulated wealth might be reduced, in a way completely imperceptible to them, and even being consciously aware that this is so, still suffer from a mania that compels them to hurt other people to keep that from happening.

Hardly sounds like what most of us would define as “successful in life.”

The bootlickers aren’t giving practical advice when they say it; they’re victim-blaming.

Counterpoint: Philando Castile, Daniel Shaver, Renee Good.

That’s why it’s Bootlicker Bullshit Bingo card.

Ah, yes, the 8-year-old queso fresco.

I don’t have to ask, it’s right there in the image: It’s an aged (hard) cheese.

Probably because we’ve heard this bullshit so many times that nobody believes it anymore.

Wow. How bad at food do you have to be to have cheese go bad in two weeks?

Again, I have to express doubt. I understand brain plasticity, and why some people can read Braille, while I cannot. (I haven’t put in the work.) Sensory receptors are specific to certain functions, though, and one type cannot assume the function of another if it’s not present. Nobody can read Braille on their lower back, because it lacks fine-touch receptors.

I did read a study which made a good point about perceived intensity of sensation not correlating with number of sensory receptors. I can understand why circumcision may not affect many men. However, I stand by my statement that you cannot perceive sensation from receptors that are gone. WRT the original comment, there are some men who do experience lowered or absent sexual sensation due to circumcision. Perhaps their brains are attuned to those receptors that are gone. Also, later in life sensory perception of all kinds naturally begins to fade, and the number of missing receptors become more evident.

Imagine being so ignorant and/or racist to call out another nation for human trafficking from the United States.

That, uhh, sounds nice and all, but I don’t believe it. This doesn’t even make sense on the face of it: Why does removing one body part lead to phantom pain signals, but removing another body part lead to improved sensation? Do people who lose fingers develop better sensation in their remaining fingers to compensate? Wouldn’t it stand to reason then that some men would get phantom foreskin pain?

That is non-figuratively impossible. You can’t feel anything with nerve endings that have been removed.

There are several possible reasons why other men might be upset, although your own equipment still works perfectly normally:

• Just like women’s sexual responses differ, men’s sexual responses may differ, as well. I’ve learned from a friend, who’s had many male partners, that some men get intense pleasure from manipulation of their foreskin. Some can even reach orgasm that way. I’ve learned from several (intact) men on Reddit and Lemmy that their primary source of sexual sensation is their foreskin, rather than their glans. Losing a major source of pleasure could be upsetting.

• This same friend also reports that, in his experience, intact men have better awareness of their own state of arousal, and better control of it. In brief, they can “last longer.” This is anecdotal, of course, but I seem to recall reading some research to back that up. That’s part of the reason why he’s upset by his being circumcised.

• “Circumcision” is not just one thing. It ranges from the traditional bris (a small snip at the tip of the penis, so that the tip of the glans just peeks out) to amputation of the entire mobile skin system of the penis (about 15 sq. in. of adult tissue gone). I would imagine that men who have drum-tight skin on their penises, and must use lube to facilitate penetration or masturbation, might not like it, whereas a man whose glans was still covered when his penis was flaccid might not notice much difference.

• The dorsal nerve of the penis can be severed during the procedure, removing sensation from the glans almost entirely, leading to erectile and performance issues, as well as greatly reduced enjoyment of sex.

• The healing of the circumcision wound can go not-quite-perfectly, leading to adhesions, assymetry, tight frenulums, phantom pain, and scarring. Journalist Gary Shteyngart wrote an essay about the odyssey of pain that he was thrown into when a skin bridge (an adhesion) on his penis became infected. Worse, I recall a letter published in Savage Love from a man whose circumcision scar was so thick and inelastic that it caused the end of his penis to go ischemic, then necrotic, and then fall off when he was an infant. He’s left with a stub of a penis, and a pretty good reason to be upset about circumcision, I’d say.

ETA: I did not think of this, but @[email protected] pointed out that removal of the foreskin complicates bottom surgery for trans women, I would guess because it gives the surgeon less tissue to work with.

We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation

[Citation Needed]

The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can’t get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn’t work hard enough.

It’s why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He’s a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn’t even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!

If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can’t be overcome by any amount of gumption. (And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?)

This is a shitpost? Seems like a LPT as a useful, quick approximation, since the real formula is “subtract 32, divide by 9/5”. 30≈32, and 2≈9/5, as long as you’re figuring out what to wear for the day, not working in a chemistry lab. (Don’t burn your meth, fer gawdsakes!)

For 32°F, the approximation is 1°C, and even where the scales align at -40°, it works out to -35°C.