Being treated only as a font of knowledge, a hard worker, a reliable friend (when the friendship is otherwise not rewarding), having a lot of tools, etc, is kind of crappy. I at least get pleasure from sex. Honestly, if I had my druthers of how folks reduce me, I wouldn’t hate being valued for being good in bed.

I wonder if the friend with the truck ever feels like that.

The pain aspect is something you should address. First with your partner if their technique can be changed, and second with a few doctors. This one is like a layer cake - maybe you’re ace, maybe there is emotional context (that could be entirely unrelated to your current situation) that causes physical discomfort, or possibly there’s a physical component that your doctor might be able to help you with. Or some combination of all of them, because people are complex.

But romantic asexuality is definitely a thing, as is a number of variants within it.

You don’t message your homies at 2 am to tell them you miss them?

Until I saw your comment, my (flippant) response to the person you replied was going to be “Because Congress hasn’t figured out how to use Polymarket.”

Which is a far less eloquent corollary to your comment.

They did read my memoirs!

Ah, fuck. I read an article earlier that painted it as an ask for help from Ecuador without the context of the leadership.

I thought “Okay, fair play. I feel weird about it, but I can’t be a geopolitical expert in all things, so I’ll try not to automatically assume it’s bad.”

But… needle solidly swayed.

Horner also said Epstein made a $10,000 donation for his research and that he visited the ranch a second time in 2016 with a graduate student “as part of a geology tour”.

Has anyone heard from this student? I would not trust a word of his version of the narrative.

It’s all made up anyway!

(I thought the nose shadow was a weird mustache.)

Maybe she saw his their profile and realized she wasn’t interested after all.

Yup. Apparently the Clintons testified in front of Congress yesterday regarding the Epstein files. That’s not high on the list headlines today.

In same camp of supporting the sentiment, I played this out in my head.

Okay, but what if they’re open carrying a large gun?
[Bad outcome]

Okay, what if they open carry and have a body camera (that they turn off while in the restroom, obviously)?
[Bad outcome and ignored by media - bad outcome]

Okay, what if there’s a group that’s open carrying and have body cameras?
[Bitch, did you just determine they had to form a militia to go to the bathroom away from home? Sigh.]

I don’t know the solution, other than for people to mind their own fucking business.

I’m late to this train, but I recently got into Dimension 20, and the GM (Brennan Lee Mulligan) has some incredible characters. Here’s a fitting quote from one of them:

Laws are a threat made by the dominant socioeconomic ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted, and the police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean?
Video source (YouTube short - sorry)

Very probable. I was also not the most economically secure back then. I was trying to save money on a $20 can opener!

Can openers is what did it for me.

In 2015 I needed a new manual can opener. The local big-box stores had two basic styles. A cheap, all metal one that was just stamped from a single sheet, and a more expensive one with better handles.
The more expensive one had previously rusted and began to look nasty within a few years.
Amazon had a bunch of different styles at less than the price point of the more expensive one.

I bought one. It was fine. I didn’t love the operation. It cut the whole top off from the side, rather than from the top in a downwards cut. The sharp edges were on the can rather than on the lid. It would catch the paper labels and sometimes wad them up into the can while you cut. Cans with no air space would leak when opened.

Anyway. Replaced it in 2019. Amazon still had a broad selection, but all except for obvious crap was as expensive as the local big box store’s expensive option. Wound up going to a smaller local(ish) bulk foods store and bought a cheapo restaurant one for less than Amazon’s/the big box store’s similar offerings. Minimal rusting to date.

A long time ago, someone said something really useful to me about oversharing online:
“I would like to fuck you, but I’m afraid you’ll write about it on your LiveJournal.”

And on that day, I became a lot more selective about what I shared online. At least when it relates to others. I’ll tell you all about my childhood trauma.

It’s also a few days into Ramadan, a holiday where Muslims fast while the sun is up. (It lasts approximately from fat Tuesday to Easter.)
So, you know, if you want to fuck up someone’s day, make ‘em work extra hard while hangry.

(Which is not necessarily true. IIRC, much of the religious understanding and forgiveness in Islam is about intent. They might be cool with breaking a fast when facing an existential threat. But it’s Iran, sooo…)

I’ve begun to use nonsense statements, made up words, and random vocalizations to make the bots think they couldn’t help me. That usually gets me to a human faster.

My circulation is terrible. I’ll have cold feet and hands while my core is too hot. Sometimes I will move the blanket so it’s over my feet and arms but my body is just under sheets. I need a blanket that is like a reverse vest.

That’s the dream. After years I finally got serious about learning/implementing VLANs and have begun to isolate everything out/properly firewall them. Most of the smart home stuff is already Z-Wave/Zigbee, but the few devices that aren’t are mostly already migrated onto a dedicated IOT network, as is the hubs, where only devices that have business talking to each other can even see one another.

I have yet to play with tailscale, but it’s on the list.

I like smart home stuff. I hate my privacy being invaded. It’s a very thin line to walk.

A company recently released a product that promises to be Matter compatible. By the time the product arrived, they edited their product description to say it worked with Matter if you bought their always online hub, created an account, let their hub talk to the internet, and then installed their internet-connected plugin to Home Assistant. (So it’s not that HA talks to these devices, or that it talks to their hub. It logs into the company’s servers to get the current state of the device.)

I wrote a review outlining this. An AI bot sent me a message offering me additional products from this company. (Ha!) And included the line “We strictly adhere to data protection regulations” … in the U.S?

Laughably misleading.