jwiggler

jwiggler, 5 days ago

Curious why you feel its absurd people need to be told this? Even in the the study you linked, they note in the discussion

It is of great surprise to find that detection of fecal bacteria was prejudiced against the bidet toilet users.

Still a concerning study to me, since I’m a habitual bidet user. Fortunately I don’t need to worry about vaginal microflora. Furthermore, I could only find this one small study that shows correlation (not necessarily causation), so I’d be hesitant to immediately regard bidets as less sanitary than wiping, especially for men.

jwiggler, 5 days ago

Can you post the link to that study? I wanna read it. Here’s one that says almost the opposite:

Normal use of the bidet toilet by pregnant women poses no clinical health risk for preterm birth and bacterial vaginosis.

jwiggler, 5 days ago

That’s not very nice to say. I’m not being obtuse – the writers of the article you linked it even said themselves they were surprised that the bidet-users had more fecal matter. I don’t poop on my bidet, and regularly clean it. You’d think that the jet of water plus wiping would get more fecal matter off your butt rather than wiping, alone. Dang. I’m just trying to have a conversation.

jwiggler, 5 days ago

I gotchu, it happens. No worries. You’ve definitely piqued my (admittedly gross) interest – I’m gonna do some more research after work and I’ll look out for your link.

Good luck on zoom!

jwiggler, 5 days ago

Canobie Lake Park

Dang, so weird seeing a local shoutout here. Canobie and Story Land were part of my childhood.

jwiggler, 6 days ago

Could you tell me where I can read more about this ? specifically the french-canadian new england stuff ?

jwiggler, 6 days ago

My late Catholic grandmother believed this. She read some book by a Catholic “mystic” who had visions. Surprise! Racist visions.

jwiggler, 8 days ago

“You are shredding the UN charter…with your own hands.”

As he shreds the UN charter…with his own hands.

jwiggler, 10 days ago

Not that I don’t agree with the general sentiment, or want to condone slave-owning in any way, but Thomas Jefferson only had children with one of his slaves, and from the historical record it appears to have been a consensual romantic relationship, insofar as one can have one with such a vast power difference (you cannot, really). He did oppose slavery privately, however he owned slaves, himself. Although, again from the record, it appears that they were more a part of his household, and treated (relatively) well, rather than how we typically imagine slaves in the South. Again, still not right, but compared to his contemporaries, you would call Jefferson a good owner. Still fucked up to say. A further disappointing fact is that, despite the fact that he deemed slavery reprehensible, he also deemed it to be political suicide to try to change the status quo. He brought the issue up a few times during his very long political career, but quickly abandoned the efforts. Additionally troubling is that, like many other in opposition to slavery at the time, he thought the solution was to ship black people to an island in the Caribbean so that they could form their own nation. This was not an uncommon opinion during that era – I believe even Lincoln bought into this “solution,” at one point. Also fucked up, but somehow better than the at-the-time alternative of continuing slavery.

Anyways, I don’t mean to undermine your point that many of the individuals who established this country did so with the idea that black and brown people, women, and the lower-class, were less-than, and established it in such a way that made it difficult or impossible for them to participate. However, I think your specific examples aren’t super accurate, and since I just read a pretty fair biography of Jefferson recently called Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B Boles, I figured I would chime in. Really interesting and very much puts a great (in terms of historical stature) and flawed (in terms of our modern sense of morals) man in the context of his time and place.

jwiggler, 10 days ago

I’m not really doing any mental gymnastics, nor am I sucking him off. I’m just pointing out that you weren’t historically accurate in your comment, despite the sentiment being correct. I also happen to think that history is interesting (despite most of it being about rich white men – lots of credit to People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn) and that its important not to always paint over it with a wide brush soaked with our own modern sense of ethics and politics.

Edit: Also, I’m literally a socialist. You could be less reductive.

jwiggler, 9 days ago

That is all true

jwiggler, 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

I mean, it’s not defendable on any level, except that the prevailing notion of the time was that black people were inferior to whites. Obviously that doesn’t make it right, and by today’s standards Thomas Jefferson is a monster.

I’m not trying to defend Jefferson as being a good person, but expound upon the (what I consider) false assertion that Jefferson had no issue with slavery whatsoever (from his private letters, he held views against slavery) and that he fucked a bunch of his slaves. I agree with the point of the individual above that the US was built by white men for white men. But, as I said earlier, if you’re going to invoke history in your argument, it’s best to do it with some level of accuracy.

Since I recently read that John B Bole’s biography on Jefferson, I figured I’d chime in. The biography tries hard to put Jefferson in his time and place, establishes him as somewhat of a renaissance man (which, again, shouldn’t be praised much due to his privilege and use of slave labor on his projects), and also highlights out his hypocrisy and disappointing refusal to support anti-slavery movement publicly.

jwiggler, 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

I didn’t say you stated them. The person above did – the person I originally responded to. When I say “If you’re going to invoke history…” I mean, “If a person is going to invoke history.” Maybe I should have been clearer there.

I personally don’t believe Boles sanitized Jefferson’s biography. Again, I think he did a good job of outlining his life without letting him off the hook. It’s cool you’ve been to Monticello, and that you know about Jefferson. But if a person is looking for a fair depiction of Jefferson, is that really the place to go? I mean, certainly slaves were the ones who built up that place. I’ve never been, so I can’t say for sure that they (the curators) don’t condemn Jefferson in the way that you’d like, so doesn’t that point kind of undermine your argument? Hey, I’ve never been, so I don’t know. I’d guess Monticello is just as likely or more to have sanitized Jefferson’s life than Boles’ book.

And sure, there were people that opposed slavery centuries before Jefferson. But I’d wager to guess they were in the minority (ie, not the prevailing notion) considering there was an entire industry revolving around the slave trade during Jefferson’s time, consisting of more than just two individuals.

Edit: Sorry, this doesnt really cover your entire comment because of your edits, but yeah I think the general jist is that we disagree about the level of Jefferson’s “alrightness” with slavery. I mean, yeah he’s totally a hypocrite, and you could argue it makes him worse that he acknowledge slavery was wrong, but still perpetuated it. I’m hesitant to do that, because of the time and place that he lived.

I’d very very VERY softly compare it to the fact that today, we know Nike has bad labor practices. Am I going to condemn everyone I know who wears a Nike product? Probably not.

jwiggler, 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

I mean, I never said it was okay he had slaves. It’s obviously monstrous. And yes, it was cowardly not to be public with his private opinions on the matter. My whole point is Jefferson was not completely okay with slavery, although evidently he was okay enough to own slaves (depending on your viewpoint, that make your opinion of him either better or worse), and that he didn’t fuck a bunch of his slaves.

Edit: And i suppose that contradicts my Nike comparison (hence why I emphasized “softly” there). Still, I’d say Jefferson was a product of his time and place, for the worse.

Edit2: actually no, it doesn’t really. My point was that a person can be uncomfortable with a thing (Nike’s labor practices) and still perpetuate it because of the just vast vast acceptance during the time

jwiggler, 9 days ago

I didn’t think about it as a dog whistle, but I’m sure it is. That is me being ignorant. I’m not trying to use it in that fashion. It’s not right he owned slaves. Once again, my main point is that he was not completely okay with slavery, as the original person I responded to was asserting.

You’re getting into his role in drafting laws, which I havent commented on because I simply don’t know, off the top of my head, what is attributed to him besides much of the original Constitution. I can only guess in regards to that, and I would guess that, being a white man, he considered and heavily favored the interests of other white men in the drafting of laws, and is responsible for much of the inequity we still see today.

By the way, Nike has been accused of utilizing forced labor in the past.

jwiggler, 17 days ago

Military industrial complex says hello.

jwiggler, 23 days ago

So much for free speech

jwiggler, 23 days ago

It’s your sole soul purpose.

jwiggler, 23 days ago

Cool shot!

jwiggler, 24 days ago

The US is more concerned about antisemitism on college campuses than being complicit in the 670,000+ individuals starving in Gaza.

jwiggler, 24 days ago

Lol, that’s exactly what the article says. Literally the last three lines summing it all up:

Despite Trump’s public insistence that he deserves widespread immunity, his own legal team seems prepared to have their claims rejected by the highest court in the land. Rolling Stone reported on Wednesday that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers are bearish on their odds of success — but it’s not all doom and gloom.

“We already pulled off the heist,” one source close to Trump said, adding that regardless of what the court decides, they’ve already managed to severely stall the DOJ’s election interference case.

jwiggler, 24 days ago

Hate saying it, but Ubuntu just works for me. I’d rather focus my computer configuration and maintenance efforts on clients rather than my own laptop. If I have to reinstall for whatever reason, its pretty easy because I’m already very familiar with the (shitty) installer, and I don’t do much customizing because I’d rather not have to go through that every time I reinstall.

Granted I’ve never even bothered to run Arch, or any really other desktop distro for that matter. Ubuntu + Gnome looks nice, seems to just work, all I need to do is apt install nvidia drivers and firefox post-install and I’m up and running. I don’t want to do work on my laptop, I want my laptop to enable me to do work.

jwiggler, 24 days ago

I dont really fuck around with the GUI stuff tbh…I’ve always just done ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

I guess my issues with the installer have mostly stemmed around the software raid and manual partitioning. Simply installing on a single drive isnt bad.

jwiggler, 23 days ago

Ideologically Ubuntu makes me cringe, but I also use Google and a host of other technologies that fuck my privacy, so I guess I have accepted the world we live in.

In the same way that I think it’s noble when people try to live waste free, I think it’s noble to use things like GrapheneOS, or selfhost all your services, or de-Google your tech. But it’s unrealistic for all of the world to live waste-free or customize their tech so as to be private. In the end, the government needs to step in and force these giant-ass companies to behave better, because they are the primary forces pushing forward the destruction of the environment and personal privacy.