Ah, yes, indeed! Related to that, I’ve seen a lot of comments from circumcised men on here saying that they’re glad that they had it done, because they’re already “too sensitive,” by which they mean that they reach orgasm too easily. (Not that it’s too pleasurable.) I’m a straight guy, so I’ve only experienced one penis, but my friend who has experience with his own, and many more, says that that’s not how it works. He says that intact men have better awareness of their own level of arousal, and better control over the level of stimulation, and can last longer before.

That’s certainly a case of not missing what you never knew.

Great insight!

I would add, though, that you absolutely can miss what you never knew you had, even if you don’t know you’re missing it. (Else, why the concept of eggs?) I have seen several intact men in these communities say that their primary sexual sensation comes from their foreskin. Say you were one of those men, and had your primary source of sexual sensation amputated at birth. You could go through much of your life knowing that something was “not right” with sex, but not knowing what.

I still have an impacted wisdom tooth, and it’s okay. Everybody should keep theirs.

Okay, but let’s then also talk seriously about routine infant labiaplasty. A lot of women prefer the look, and it’s a common cosmetic surgical procedure that many of them get later in life. If it were done at birth by a qualified medical practitioner, it wouldn’t harm the clitoris, but have the advantage of cleanliness and, while it hasn’t been studied extensively, preliminary results show some benefit in preventing disease. Seems like a great idea. Why don’t we do it?

Oh my gosh, yes! As a fan of the books, I was so excited for the series. I was determined not to be put off by the changes to the story the producers made, so it took me a while to realize that the changed story lacked something. Like, being good? I should’ve just stopped after the terrorist attack that killed nobody, or tens of millions of people maybe, in the first episode just to advance the plot. Great visual effects, no emotional resonance. Why should I care? Nobody on-screen seemed to. I stuck it out until the episode that ended with the one character getting surrounded by the Anacreon landing party, but the show never established why I should care about her. So I didn’t, and never bothered with the next episode to resolve the cliff-hanger.

Thanks for the explanation, even if it’s verified as half lies.

WTF are you talking about?

Well, hey, at least this year, I learned that it’s even a thing, so this time I did not watch intentionally.

Yes, try the Sonoff ZBMINIL2 device, which does exactly what you want. Wire it in the box with your existing switch, then you can control the light with either the switch, or via HA. If you have a neutral wire in the electrical box, there’s also the ZBMINIR2, which has a relay-disconnect feature. In that mode, it provides continuous power to the the bulb, and sends switch-toggle events to HA to trigger an automation to turn the smart bulb on and off.

I’ll take your word for it, because it would be awfully hard to compare it to other billiard balls after we’d asphyxiated from the atmosphere dissipating into space.

I was at first leaning toward Bojack Horseman, but after thinking it over, I have to say Babylon 5, too. That has a lot to do with how I experienced it.

I first heard of it before it even aired, because they used Lightwave on the Amiga for the CGI sequences. I think I still have the VHS tape from the first airing of The Gathering. It turned out to be an interesting show. I quickly forgot about watching for the CGI, and found myself watching for the story.

Not only that, but the shows creator engaged fans directly during production on CompuServe, and later, Usenet. (That was totally new at the time.) Since it was back in the ancient times, episodes aired once a week. We fans had plenty of time to discuss each episode, and speculate about where it was going.

Then, And the Sky Full of Stars hit like a ton of bricks. (“Wham! Wham! Wham!” as JMS liked to say online.) The story, the imagery, and the music just created the perfect storm of grief and dispair, and we got the full treatment of what it meant to have a 5-year story arc. (Oddly enough, I just realized that it was also the 8th episode of Bojack in which that show demonstrated real depth, and started to get really good.)

As the show continued, my personal life fell apart, as major depression took hold. I don’t quite recall when I stopped being able to catch it when it aired, or why. (I think it moved to cable after PTEN folded?) But it wasn’t until years later that I watched the 5th season, when I was scrabbling out of the deep hole of depression.

Holy hell. Getting to the series finale was emotional enough, but That Scene hit like 20 tons of bricks. It was played well, yes, but I had known these characters for literal years by then, learned what they’d gone through, felt the weight of all that they had done and felt, and I cried for a long time. And it was amazing to feel anything so deeply, which is why the show will always be special to me.

In many ways, I think that the streaming format robs us viewers of something vital. Binge-watching doesn’t allow time for the characters and stories to really settle in your soul. And then there’s no social group to share the experience with. I didn’t watch Game of Thrones when it was new, and I know that the experience wouldn’t be at all the same now. I did binge The Good Place last year, and the effect was like a summer thunderstorm—intense, but brief. It’s a great show, but didn’t affect me so deeply. As such, I’m glad I watched Bojack when it was new, to be able to share the experience online with other people. It was made for streaming, and the season-at-a-time release, so it couldn’t be any other way, but nothing will quite match the experience of a dedicated fan base and weekly episodes.

Linux requires tinkering and Windows doesn’t? Is that some alternate-universe version of Windows? In my experience, the difference is social/psychological. When Windows fucks up, “everybody uses it,” so the blame falls on the masses, not the user, who was just going along with what’s normal and expected. People sort of mentally elide memory of the Windows fuck ups, because that’s just how Windows is.

Linux is different and weird, and you have to stray from the herd to use it. Straying from the masses is scary, because when Linux fucks up, it’s your fault for being contrary. That threat to one’s place in the social order is quite memorable. Hence the reluctance of Windows users, who hate it, to even consider trying another OS that they know nothing about.

I never switched from Windows. I never used Windows as my main OS. I had an Amiga, then learned Unix on SunOS, so I was used to being weird. Once I got a PC, I used FreeBSD. It did require a lot of fiddling back in those days, and when I got tired of that, I switched to Ubuntu, which was amazing in that it Just Worked™. (Aside from manual installation of the Windows driver for the PCMCIA WiFi card with NDISWrapper.)

(I still do tinker with it, and sometimes break it, but the base OS has been rock solid. I noticed the other day that my main PC was installed with Ubuntu 18.04, and upgraded to 24.04.)

Here is osmium, a framework and tool to work with OpenStreetMap data.

Here ya go.

By the time I left r/fuckcars, people were asking this question several times per day, or every 15-20 minutes at peak times. I recall that the moderators had an auto-mod bot that would respond, and my paraphrase of it is something like this:

We don’t hate the cars, per se, but rather the physical, environmental, and social destruction wrought by designing all aspects of daily life around their use (to the near-exclusion of anything else). Small, cheap, utilitarian motorcycles are better than cars in a lot of ways (space, cost, fuel economy), and worse in others (noise, pollution). They’re fine, as long as the riders aren’t demanding that the entire landscape and society be structured and built to cater to their machines.

And just like that, MAGA loves participation trophies.

Quite a few of them actually do have public transit in the form of shuttle buses.

I can pinpoint the moment, it was “solitract.” Like, lonely intestines? I think I finished out that season, but haven’t watched any Doctor Who since then. It was just so hand-wavey with a ridiculously dumb name that it demolished my ability to suspend disbelief.

Seems like Germany could save a lot.of.money by not building lanes that you’re not allowed to drive in!

That’s utterly ridiculous. If the highway has three lanes, it’s because on average there’s too much traffic for two lanes. That’s why they added a third lane. What—the left lane is for passing, the right lane is for cruising, and the middle lane is for decoration?