I struggle with anime in general and Miyazaki specifically. There are different storytelling conventions and it’s weird when you’re struggle with the structure, don’t understand any of the Japanese cultural references, and they don’t put any edgier into explaining it — things just are the way they are and you have to go with it.

My brain gets overwhelmed and shuts down in self defense. I had to watch Princess Mononoke about 7 times before I got through it without falling asleep. It’s a good movie but like a lot of Miyazaki’s films, nothing makes any sense except internally and you have to watch the whole movie and understand the themes and internal logic before it makes sense.

But I have to say, Studio Ghibli movies are worth it. I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve seen. They are ethereal and surreal but they tackle real shit whether directly or allegorically.

I’ve always loved The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Ian McKellen as the bad guy (Chauvelin? I can’t spell French worth a shit). It has all of the above. He was so good in that movie.

They are so much better when you get together with friends to watch bad movies every so often. It helps to have someone to verbalize the ridiculous shit to or feed into the humor with you.

I’ve been a full stack developer for nearly thirty years. They keep adding so much to the stack that these days I will only claim to be a Java developer. I know way more, but there’s no point in laying claim to it. I can do JavaScript, css, and typescript, but I don’t really know react and I don’t want to because it’ll be replaced in another five years anyway.

I have worked with so many CI/CD systems and there’s a new one around every corner and what you know for one doesn’t apply to others.

Like, whoever you hire is going to take months before they are able to do significant stuff independently and 2 years before they can do the full scope of the job you hired them to do, and most folks are looking to move on after 2 years. About the time they’ve been around for a full Java/spring upgrade, build system change, and you’ve moved cloud providers, they will have encountered every problem often enough to know everything they need.

I’m here, aren’t I? Guess that could be interpreted either way.

I’m picky, but also not. I steam the hell out of Disney Plus because I like pretty much everything Marvel and Star Wars. But I’m always on the verge of cancelling Netflix because other than Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters I haven’t watched anything on there in years. (I haven’t because every time I do one of the kids remembers something they want to watch and I have to resub a couple of months later.)

Cold leftover pizza.

Indian—Chicken Vindaloo and Samosas and butter naan. I’ll be honest though, I’ve never had anything I didn’t like at an Indian restaurant, and when you ask for extra hot, they don’t give you a pussified “white people” extra hot, no, they try to murder you with spice like you were personally responsible for English colonialism and I’m here for it.

Thai—Chicken Panang is pretty good most places I go that have it. I’ve had plenty of Thai food I don’t like, but most places have something pretty good if you try a few different things.

I don’t think I have mainstays at other types of restaurants. I will say, for all the shit it gets, avocado toast is pretty good if you’re at an indie restaurant or local chain breakfast place. And try their specialty Bloody Marys. They are sometimes shit, but sometimes good, and if it’s shit their regular Bloody Mary was also shit so you didn’t miss out on anything. But if they have a dozen different kinds—they are all shit and just have a mimosa.

Mate, your judgement on the basis of nothing I’ve actually done means fuck all.

Used to commute 212 miles daily, so that’s about 4500 miles a month with lunches and stuff, plus errands and leisure travel would make that easily 5000 a month on average. Currently commute about 3 steps from my bed and about the only driving I do is taking my kid to and occasionally from school. So I figure about 500 miles a month which checks or math-wise.

Circ’d here but I’ve struggled with this decision myself. Lucked out in the matter and had girls. Society has changed. Circ rates have recently fallen just below 50% national average (much higher in the Midwest).

If your only reason for considering it is to match his peers, you can have no concerns either way.

That said, I do think people make a much bigger deal about this decision than it really is 99% of the time. You’re going to make thousands of decisions for your kids and most are more impactful than whether they have a penis hat or not. Saw someone here saying circing flat out makes you a bad parent. I don’t expect they are a parent because that’s not the kind of decision that keeps me up at night wondering if I fucked up, you know?

Go with your gut and it’ll be fine.

Ordinary movement isn’t an issue. When flaccid, the corona is generally still covered and underwear moves with it so there isn’t really friction. The only time I’ve ever had an issue is when bicycling. For some reason the mechanics can lead to side to side friction right on the tip and it’s pretty uncomfortable when that happens.

I feel like this would happen as well to folks that are circumcised often enough

It’s kinda hard to bully someone for matching the vast majority. Circ rates would have to come way down before it would be submerging to be bullied over.

Of course, there are regional differences. I just looked and in the Midwest the circ rate is about 75% which is way lower than I’d have expected based on personal observation. (OTOH , I’m older and the majority of penises I’ve seen were 30-40 years ago) YMMV.

National rates have declined to just under 50% according to John Hopkins, which suggests many fewer circs are performed outside of the Midwest.

At any rate, I think bullying folks for being cut is a ways off yet.

I have almost never put leftover pizza in the fridge. Generally store it in the oven. That’s how my folks did it. Never had any problems. Was not expecting to come into this thread and see universal adoption of fridge pizza. I find the crust gets wet and gooey. You all do you, but after fifty years of doing it my way without any issues, I can’t see any reason to change.

You can’t, all by yourself. At least not in the same scale. Fight them in conversations with people in your life whom you can reach when they repeat misinformation. That’s all you can do unless you are motivated to get involved in politics or journalism.

reading the portents: You will have fewer rodents and birds in your life.

I, as an atheist, absolutely believe God doesn’t exist. I believe in God no more than I believe in the tooth fairy because there isn’t a whiff of credible evidence for either. There is not even a modicum of uncertainty. Whatever the supposed laws of God, I will violate with impunity, without any hesitation or fear, should they conflict with how I wish to conduct myself.

That’s how I experience atheism, anyway. I know others experience it differently, but I’d hate for a reader to come away with the idea that we generally lack conviction in our belief. The difference is religion isn’t falsifiable, and atheism is, so there remains a pathway we might be convinced—if some divine entity steps forward and proves himself, well there you have it. But until then, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, there is no god.

Well history clearly would’ve gone a lot differently had the rebels lost the battle of Yavin.

Fifty-two. I don’t normally have any issues shaking off illness, though covid was a doozey. Injuries, on the other hand, both take longer to heal and just happen on their own constantly. And when I really do something like take a several mile walk or carry a bunch of holiday decorations up and down from the basement, I hurt things that last for weeks.

The hardest part about learning to code is that the projects you really want to do are far beyond your abilities as a beginner. I recommend starting with modding, creating websites, or even writing macros for stuff like excel. They get you started.

Then also watch some YouTube videos on stuff like SOLID, design patterns, functional programming, and “getting started with <language>”.

Then try to write your own versions of stuff. I learned a bunch of stuff by writing my own versions of stuff. Like I tried backporting Java Functions, BiFunctions, Predicates, etc to Java 7. It didn’t work great because the language support wasn’t there, but I learned a lot about what things are hard and why things are designed the way they are. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that inherited that code.

Also, don’t let people give you too much shit about asking questions of AI. It frequently explains things way better than it executes. It’s a great first line of learning even if you really need a deeper dive into the documentation to understand the more esoteric stuff. If you have a question you can’t find the answer to, ChatGPT will explain it in 30 seconds where you might have to wait days on a forum for someone to feel like answering.

Beware: ChatGPT is awful about mixing different versions of stuff so the answers it gives may well be obsolete. But if you’re really confused it can point you in the right direction. Yeah, you’ll have to learn a lot more nuance when you start doing shit professionally, but if you’re just fucking around it’s great. And googling for answers isn’t much better in that regard. The best answers come from the docs, but especially when you’re starting out, the documentation often assumes a baseline of contextual knowledge you aren’t going to have.

Try implementing a custom collector in Java just based on the docs. Have fucking fun with that.

I think porn is probably best watched without volume, anyway. Ass eating doesn’t bother me like it once did. About the time I tried it and it wasn’t gross, the scenes stopped bothering me. But there’s not really anything you can do to an ass that I wouldn’t rather watch being done to a pussy. It’s just not fetishistic to me. I just do it for my wife every now and then because I like variety and it’s another way to please a woman.

Hell I’d rather eat an ass than fuck it because the surface can be all clean but I’m scared of going deep and finding out I’m not alone in there.

Anyway, sorry, you probably don’t appreciate this reply, but you motivated it and it would be weird to just announce all that out of the blue.