SwingingTheLamp
@SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
- Comment on Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document 2 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document 2 weeks ago:
Generally, I think it’s a situation of “people don’t miss what they never knew they had.”
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.
- Comment on Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document 2 weeks ago:
I still have an impacted wisdom tooth, and it’s okay. Everybody should keep theirs.
- Comment on Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document 2 weeks ago:
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?
- Comment on Anon thinks about wheat 3 weeks ago:
There most certainly is gluten in barley! Breweries don’t just add gluten to beer just to be dicks to people with celiac disease.
- Comment on Anon tries to understand credit scores 4 weeks ago:
It was definitely pitched in western media as something we should all fear. I just found it funny that everything that they tried to scare us with (“it might be used to determine whether you get a job or can rent an apartment!”) applied equally to our credit scores.
- Comment on Anon tries to understand credit scores 4 weeks ago:
Remind me, were we supposed to be disgusted and afraid of the Chinese social credit score system because it included woke BS like how nice you are to others, and how things you do improve society, rather than just laser-focusing on the only important thing— whether your existence can be monetized by rich assholes?
- Comment on Sea Level 5 weeks ago:
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.
- Comment on There is software/a technology company/a game named after most of the elements in the periodic table 1 month ago:
Here is osmium, a framework and tool to work with OpenStreetMap data.
- Comment on There is software/a technology company/a game named after most of the elements in the periodic table 1 month ago:
- Comment on Not impressed 2 months ago:
English isn’t that far off. Animal has the same root as animate, which is the Latin anima, “soul” or “breath.” The English word plant has synonyms and general connotations of fixedness or non-intentionality.
- Comment on 2 months ago:
And windshields/screens.
As well as tires, lubricants, tools, etc I guess. People tearing around the desert in vehicles with flawless glass is maybe the most unrealistic part of that image for me.
- Comment on Jesus hates American "Christians" 3 months ago:
But, here’s the kicker, if we don’t know anything about this other plane of existence, then how can we know that our universe couldn’t spontaneously arise from it without the intent of a creator? That’s the crux of the question: We have a mystery about the origin of our existence, and “solving” the mystery by saying, “God did it,” is just sweeping the mystery under the rug and pretending it’s not there. What OP was able to see at 7 or 8 years old was that the mystery was still there, but with an unexplained extra step added.
- Comment on Some important facts to always remember 4 months ago:
Aww, 1990’s memes give me the warm-fuzzies.
- Comment on Posting for the "Now guys he was MURDERED! Don't celebrate!" Crowd 4 months ago:
Here’s the thing, though, this guy isn’t one of “us.” I didn’t egg him on, or help plan. I only knew Kirk from the tiny-face memes. The nebulous “we” isn’t responsible; the shooter doesn’t seem to have had a network radicalizing him. He’s the proverbial lone wolf. That means he’s exactly the kind of unpredictable, stochastic agent that I’m saying is out there in the world to provide the fascists their justification.
- Comment on Posting for the "Now guys he was MURDERED! Don't celebrate!" Crowd 4 months ago:
They were gonna do it, anyway. They were just waiting for an excuse. Any excuse. In a world as big and complex as ours, probability would have provided them with some pretext sooner or later. As we can see, they don’t know anything about the shooter, or his ideology. It’s just an excuse. If the world didn’t provide them one, they’d manufacture it. Walking around on eggshells and trying to avoid giving them one was never tenable.
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 4 months ago:
Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.
- Comment on 5 tomatoes 4 months ago:
Way off! There are 25.4 millimeters per inch, not 64, and most measuring tapes have 1/32" markings.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
self driving cars which negotiate a uniform speed.
Until then, human drivers could approximate this system by all agreeing on a uniform speed. Maybe through some sort of app?
Or, this sounds crazy, perhaps the authorities could post signs by the side of the highway with the uniform speed printed on it?
- Comment on Anon thinks there is a bicurious double standard 5 months ago:
??
I’ve never heard of gay people ever using contraceptives. That’d be silly.
- Comment on Anon thinks there is a bicurious double standard 5 months ago:
That’s probably not a coincidence, as the label “queer” is a political identity statement. That is, the people who have made it an important part of their personality are the ones who self-identify that way. I’ve known many gay men and women for whom their sexuality is an incidental part of their lives, and none of them feel affinity for the “queer” label.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
Consider that the Father of All Selection Biases at work here: Of course we’ll hear comments, from all the men who can’t handle the concept of not sharing their opinion, sharing their opinion of not being able to share their opinion.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
Lemmy is like a house party, where everybody has the freedom to talk to whomever they so choose. Segregated groups, creating segregated groups. If one butts in to a conversation, the participants are free to ask one not to participate, and are free to walk away if one insists. (In this metaphor, the WomensStuff community doesn’t even mind if you listen in.) For a house party, though, the host is well within their rights to not invite anybody, or even ask guests to leave. That’s a very strictly segregated group.
What’s been the ripple of evil from allowing house parties, or companies to pay only a select group of employees, private clubs, family dinners et cetera? Has the existence of the chain of women’s-only gyms destroyed men’s lives?
- Comment on Businessman Josh Kraft, son of Billionaire Robert Kraft, is running for Boston Mayor. He is accusing the mayor of worsening traffic by building bike lanes 6 months ago:
“Carbrain” is a real mental disorder, though. How else do you describe somebody who looks through a windshield and sees a long line of idling cars into the distance, and thinks, “fucking bike lanes!”
- Comment on Car crashes have killed and seriously injured roughly the same number of people as shootings in Chicago this year. Only one of these things is treated as a safety crisis in the media 6 months ago:
Of course, I drive (I kind of have to because of the way our landscape is designed to mandate it), so I have to include myself in this. It’s well-established by psychological research that drivers have very little empathy for other drivers, but especially little empathy for bicyclists and pedestrians, viewing them as less-than-human annoyances. Add in that driving in a city requires that one subject other people to the noise, the pollution, the danger, and the arrogation of space by one’s vehicle, and you pretty much have to suppress any empathy for the people who live there, otherwise it’d be unbearable to do. That lack of empathy is textbook sociopathy, induced by the activity of driving. It just happens to be widely normalized, but we still see posts even here on Lemmy from new drivers who are struggling to suppress those thoughts.
- Comment on Car crashes have killed and seriously injured roughly the same number of people as shootings in Chicago this year. Only one of these things is treated as a safety crisis in the media 6 months ago:
Putting the shoe on and loudly announcing that it fits?
- Comment on Car crashes have killed and seriously injured roughly the same number of people as shootings in Chicago this year. Only one of these things is treated as a safety crisis in the media 6 months ago:
Getting trapped in a building with a mass shooter is something very, very unlikely. On the other hand, I face the danger of death by automobile at least twice a day, on my ride to work, and my ride home. More, if I go other places. It may seem not that bad because it’s so normalized. Dying in or under the wheels of a car is something that happens to people every single day, and it barely rates a mention in the local news. Sometimes the victim doesn’t get even get a name. By contrast, the stochastic nature of mass shootings makes them scary, like plane crashes or terrorist attacks, the natural order of things is upended. Death is death, though, and I wouldn’t be less dead if it were a texting driver rather than a gunman.
And the texting driver is a whole hell a of a lot more likely. So, yes, it’s entirely logical that I’m afraid of that. Not being able to understand and denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.
Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.
- Comment on Car crashes have killed and seriously injured roughly the same number of people as shootings in Chicago this year. Only one of these things is treated as a safety crisis in the media 6 months ago:
You don’t understand what fear is like?
- Comment on Car crashes have killed and seriously injured roughly the same number of people as shootings in Chicago this year. Only one of these things is treated as a safety crisis in the media 6 months ago:
They’re not the same. This is privilege speaking, I know, but gun violence mostly occurs between people who know each other. I’m not in those circles or neighborhoods, so only the occasional mass shooting might affect me.
But cars? They’re omnipresent. There’s a steady stream of them in front of my home, so I can’t avoid the danger. My life is threatened by cars every damn day, and my quality of life degraded by them. And you can’t tell me that driving a car around a city is anything but sociopathic disregard for the well-being of others, because that’s what it amounts to.
Cars as bad as guns? No, they’re worse.