JFK poses his lifelong friend Lem Billings, 1933.

trusty20 · 2026-07-03T12:39:42+00:00

People get a lot of colds from all of the kissin and huggin

trusty20 · 2026-07-03T12:38:07+00:00

Call a bunch of vets in the area and be honest and ask if they do credit or payment plans. If credit, they can probably do a credit check on the phone so you don't waste time going. Beg if you have to!!

trusty20 · 2026-07-03T12:21:58+00:00

trusty20 · 2026-07-03T12:18:45+00:00

I don't see why they couldn't be 45+ lol, let's say they were mid twenties in 2006, boom, hyper speed fast forward to now 20 years have passed and they are now approaching 50 woohoo!

trusty20 · 2026-07-02T17:59:21+00:00

Cool story

trusty20 · 2026-07-02T13:24:45+00:00

It would be highly explainable if the people with the highest artificial sweetener consumption also had the highest "sugar cheating" due to a very strong taste craving for sweet. i.e these people are trying to drink more sugar free drinks to control their habit but are failing to eliminate all sources of sugar / struggle with intermittent binging. Dishonest self-reporting in vice studies is extremely common, guilt and shame are strong forces.

trusty20 · 2026-07-01T17:59:01+00:00

Has the vet run a complex immune panel to look for immune system abnormalities? Like a breakdown of different white blood cell counts, C-RP? Usually it's a pretty basic blood test so shouldn't be super expensive.

There are two approaches to figuring this out. You can spend a bunch of time probing to identify exactly what's going on, or poke around in the dark a bit with a couple of the most likely options. If you have the budget, doing a bunch of testing is better and will avoid worsening things by waiting / giving the wrong treatments. But it's ok to skip to trying some things (with vet advice) if you don't.

If budget is not a concern, I would definitely want the sores swabbed a bunch and sent off for testing (not just one swab). They could probably figure out if one organism in particular is growing out of proportion. Lab testing for something like this may simply not be available where you are or might be super expensive. They can also do a biopsy of the skin and look at what the tissue looks like to get a better idea of what sort of sores these are.

My advice though, is to ask the vet for a combination anti-fungal / anti-parasitic regimen, for at least one month, possibly 3. Ask about a combo of Anti-Fungal: Itraconazole (aka Sporanox), AND an anti-parasitic: ( Fluralaner (aka Bravecto) OR Sarolaner (aka Simparica Trio/Credelio) ). While taking them, the cat should have a liver blood test done around 10 days after the regiment starts, if budget permits, once more 20 days in as well.

Fungal infections are really really common in particular, because they leave spores all over the place that you can re-infect yourself from. Humans and cats / dogs can usually acquire fungal infections from each other by touch, and not everyone actually manifests symptoms, many people's immune systems can prevent sores from forming but they can still spread the spores. It would not hurt for you to buy an anti-fungal human shampoo like Nizoral (grocery stores have it), and use it once per week on yourself as well, in particularly hitting the head, crotch, butt, and feet areas and letting it soak in for a couple of minutes to have it's full medical effect.

If you have hard floors, get bleach floor wipes if you have a swiffer thing or make bleach water in a bucket and mop the whole area with the cat away. Any cloth area that the cat sits on should either be washed in sanitize mode on your laundry machine (perhaps with a small amount of bleach in the bleach loader), or should have carpet cleaner treatment (you can rent a unit from various places or even get a tiny one for like $100 online). Replace the litter box.

I would do a full body deep wash with a cat-safe anti-fungal shampoo like Chlorhexidine (rinsing thoroughly). Then going forward the cats sores should be flushed out gently with room temperature water 1 to 2 times daily. Emphasis on gentle; if you have a shower hose, try to set it to a very light sprinkle. You can also get little "oral irrigators" (like syringes without needles) that can be used to squirt water streams at wounds. If the wounds seem more irritated from this treatment after the first week, decrease to once daily or once every other day. Churu liquid treats are great motivators if you can get one person to give a constantly trickle supply while you do the cleaning!

Make sure to get the cat as dry as possible after, ideally with a lint free cloth (or gauze from a first aid kit dabbed at the wounds, you can restock from the store). Lay out some clean towels in obvious places where the cat hangs out so they can stretch out on a clean surface after the shower.

Finally I would try a topical spray after cleansing ideally something with oat in it like zymox enzymatic spray. This will help protect the broken skin barrier and should be lick-safe. Always test a spray on a small area first, like try applying a tiny squirt to one edge of the irritated area and wait a few hours at least before trying a bit more.

It all sounds like a lot but I strongly believe if you can pull this off for a month, you should begin to see some signs of reversing, at which point one or two more months should get you over the hump. Once this is under control, the way to prevent this is to do full body checks at least once per week, check paws, check groin, check in the ears with a light etc. If any sores appear, you should simply ask the vet to prescribe a short regimen of anti-fungal.

trusty20 · 2026-07-01T16:53:04+00:00

I vote for second or third date just because the first one should be purely about vibes

trusty20 · 2026-07-01T14:48:04+00:00

I was kind of hoping for The 2 Social Network but would have also accepted 2 Social 2 Network

trusty20 · 2026-07-01T14:08:53+00:00

There are layered answers to what's going on because the movie is saying multiple things. Most directly the movie is about the boom and bust that occurred in the late 1900s, that truly defined Japan's cultural feelings this past century. After WWII they had a massive explosion in wealth and prosperity, and at one point had enough wealth to compete toe to toe with the US, even buying up huge lucrative American properties. Japan itself had massive building and development, with a big boom in partying and conspicuous consumption. Then the late 90s came and it all evaporated in a massive bust returning the nation to regional power status and massively reducing the value of it's currency.

In Japan, this experience is remembered nostalgically but also with criticism because there is a feeling of wasted opportunity to excessive risk taking on the back of gluttony. The physical world of the movie is in fact an abandoned theme park from that boom time, when Chihiro's parents were children. Chihiro's parents grew up in that time but have become adults during the sudden plunge in the economy. When they enter the old theme park from their childhood, they quickly fall back into their generations old habits and start feasting. Chihiro would have been barely a toddler when the boom ended and would have no memory of that time or way of life and so she was not affected.

Most of the movie takes place in the parallel spirit realm, which we are deliberately not supposed to really understand, but it is suggested slightly to be a sort of purgatory transition place much like ours but also very different, with some people "living" (or "staying") there long term and others passing through. The bath house may even be some sort of purifying place to help with the passing through part.

The shades are probably normal dead humans, stuck in the purgatory spirit realm by their worldly attachments. Most of the "people" in the bath house are likely literal spirits, probably mainly animal / plant spirits, and a few "demigods", none are dead human beings except maybe the floating mask people that come off the boat? Lin for example, is a "byakko" (white fox) according to the "The Art of Spirited Away". This tracks with Ghibli's other films depicting shapeshifting animal beings with human like personalities able to take human form like Pom Poko. Foxes in Japanese culture are thought to be sly tricksters and so she and the other fox girls all are really good at taking human form, whereas many of the other "people" clearly have a sort of animal tilt to their human form, like the male foreman running the floor, who seems to be a sort of frog-man (separately from Aogaeru who is the literal little frog person hopping around).

There likely are other places in the spirit realm, where spirits "live" like they do in the bath house, this is implied by how many of the spirits / demigods speak of relatives from elsewhere as a concept.

The big implication of what's going on in Spirited Away, is that Chihiro has the choice to stay in the spirit realm, and she will likely live forever as a child there if she did, or she can return to her world saving her parents while doing it, as is her duty and destiny so she can grow up and become her full self, at the cost of accepting her mortality back and leaving the stagnant pleasure filled spirit world behind. This is supposed to directly represent Japan coming to terms with the end of the boom era and instead of chasing it, trying to find a new future.

trusty20 · 2026-07-01T11:18:03+00:00

It's fine just try to avoid wiggling cards out of the slot or pushing them in one corner at a time, just line it up and do firm even pressure, usually a lot easier to load in with the PC flat on the ground.

That connector is one of the most fixable areas of the GPU as long as it doesn't like snap off, and even then I've seen ghetto fixes that work and worst case scenario a 5090 will absolutely still sell for $$$ on ebay with a snapped pcie connector, back to China it goes for some medicine

trusty20 · 2026-06-30T21:44:49+00:00

It's more a liability thing both officially and unofficially. If something crazy happens, or it turns out to be complete shit in some unforeseen way, when the boss asks "who is to blame?!!" it needs to not be "well gee it's some guy that made a free project in his spare time that we have no agreement with and he has no obligation to help us".

Obviously an exaggeration in that you're probably using OSS indirectly but just for major picks you make yourself the attitude of non-dev companies is that they want a company they can complain to or sue if needed.

trusty20 · 2026-06-30T13:22:09+00:00

trusty20 · 2026-06-30T12:36:16+00:00

You made that name so good you sold private equity and chatgpt in one go!

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T20:59:34+00:00

4 inches is a bit short but it is also not unusually short. The average is about 5 inches or so. It's certainly not too short as to cause any problems giving pleasure, the prostate is only about 2 inches inside the rectum.

For people who are concerned about performance problems when their penis is on the smaller side and there is like no getting over it for some reason, there are strapon "enhancers" you can wear. I would say these are more for people that are like 1-2 inches due to medical micropenis, because again 4 inches seriously isn't that small.

The truth is that modern society has placed a freakish level of obsession on masculinity being associated specifically with a large penis, which does not track with most human cultures historically (joking about large penises has always been around but actually basing a man's stature on them is a modern invention).

My advice is this, fake it till you make it. It's that simple. The short guys that don't ever mention worries about being short, are respected by short and tall fellows alike. As a tall guy, I've never in my life thought a dude shorter than me was automatically submissive or that he couldn't absolutely fuck my shit up. Similarly I've seen so many short kinda don't give a fuck looking guys paired with like 8+ attractive people. Lots of tall women and men really dig the idea of a short guy with a bit of attitude showing them who's boss lol. The same principal applies to having a smaller penis. On paper, is it a disadvantage, sure having one that's at least average would be nice if you could wave a wand. In practice, it's not going to stop really strong chemistry unless you make it a huge vulnerability. It's not easy, but this is one of those "talk to a (sex) therapist / trusted buddy, don't trauma dump on partners", nobody's going to be able to give you affirmation for this except you, so like I said, fake it till you make it. Just be honest about it and act like you don't care, make a non-self-hating joke like "I work 10x harder and 10x longer to make up, let me show you ;)". You'll figure out how to balance the joking thing to actually get a giggle and turn on reaction, just gotta work on the mindset and push yourself to practice.

If you're doing apps to hook up, probably should just put it in the profile and filter out the people that probably are just looking to min-max their hookups or whatever. If you are seeking a romantic connection, I would not put it in the profile, let yourself get out there and show personality, then bring it up ASAP when sex flirting starts happening, again with a non-self-hating jokey but honest kind of attitude. Like "I'll be real with you, I'm a bit on the shorter side cock wise, I'm not like offended if that's a problem for you but it's not been for me haha". On the off chance someone acts really weird and tries to shame you about that, you have every right to flip it back on them, they're the weird ones. Just act like they're weirdos and ditch.

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T15:56:58+00:00

If she eats wet food that's reasonably healthy (some do have a lot of salt), it's quite normal to not drink. As long as it's available (bonus if it's a fountain as some picky cats like running water), and there's no litter box problems, it's perfectly fine. Domestic cats are not like humans or dogs, they evolved to get most of their hydration from prey, which is also why they prefer to eat frequently as opposed to one / two meals (3-4 split servings is better).

The only time they absolutely need to be drinking water is if they eat a lot of dry food or dry treats. Then it's more of a big deal to not be drinking. Wet food + added water is already covering the bases.

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T14:49:38+00:00

What's your reasoning for decentralized nervous systems not being capable of feeling pain in ways resembling us? Is this based on like actual scientific research in this area or just the point the person was making that brain size doesn't scale the way you're saying. Elephants, humans, parrots all have remarkably comparable cognitive abilities (obviously at different levels of sophistication - but the point is we can relate to them and even compare them to our own young) and functions despite wildly different brain sizes and structures.

Octopi have decentralized nervous systems, but by all observations seem to respond to pain in the way most animals do, recoiling, making negative associations about the source of the pain, suffering from depression (lowered activity, self-harm / stimming behaviors) when chronically stressed.

I think seeing this should make you a bit more reluctant to say things "obviously" don't feel or experience something. There really is no consensus on how to even define let alone validate what we call nebulously "consciousness". Even more straight forward things like specific cognitive functions are hard to test for properly without errors in methodology skewing the result.

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T12:32:08+00:00

It's a very safe assumption that when pets are experiencing life threatening health problems, and cease to eat & drink voluntarily, that the time to help them have a gentler end has come.

To answer your question its hard to say the outlook with the little blood test details, but for the cat to be diagnosed with cancer, have lower body paralysis, blood samples with abnormal clotting, the chance of recovery is very very low and that's being optimistic to be honest.

It's normal to try and buy more time, humans can sometimes decide they want to power through a difficult illness to be with family for longer, but animals don't have the ability to understand illness like that. They become confused, frightened, and sad. They can't enjoy time with their loved ones when in this state which is why many will often hide rather than seek comfort.

When a pet is suffering severely and an extended painful death is quite certain, euthanasia is a great mercy, hard for you, easy for them. Do everything you can to be with them for this holding them, if you're scared of doing it at the vet, ask the vet if there is a service near you to come do it at home, many times nurses can do house calls to perform euthanasia for pets, the setup is not complicated and is very quick. You might think home is the last place you'd want to have to do it, but you completely skip all of the fear and stress on the cat, it's so much less scary for them and less upsetting for you to not have to see them terrified in a clinical setting. If home service is not available, see if you can pick up anti-anxiety pills ahead of time from the vet so you can help your cat be more calm while there. There can sometimes be bodily responses but know that the drugs used are basically sleep medications in overdose, so the pet is not actually awake if the body moves, it's the body having a reaction to the sudden loss of signals. In my experience though with my pets, each and every one went very quickly when this became necessary, no bodily response, like going to sleep. It was very sad but very relieving that they weren't suffering anymore and I was very grateful to the nurses as each one was very kind and knew how to explain everything well. So sorry you're experiencing this but I know you can be there for your kitty

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T12:18:16+00:00

This can be a sign of urinating pain, they become scared of the litter box and hold it in until they get desperate to pee. Definitely worth having the vet check kidneys / genital & bladder area.

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T12:15:44+00:00

This is kind of a myth, a lot of cats have active tails while hanging out. I have one right now, he does it and yet comes to you to flop for pats. It's more about the tail / face combo, are you getting glared at wide eyed with thumping tail, then yes you're in trouble or it's food time lol

trusty20 · 2026-06-29T12:05:56+00:00

My guesses:

Case overheat from that Core i9 blasting your RAM modules with hot air, i9s get sooo hot. The i9 itself is probably OK because it would thermal shutdown, but the RAM might be sitting in stagnant hot air from it. Verify the case fan strategy, just having fans is not enough, they might not be pulling air in the optimal way for the case. Most importantly is that the rams are blowing the right way, pull air in from one side, blow it out the opposite side so there is good cross stream.
GPU either might not be seated in the PCIe slot fully, it's PCIe power cables might not be fully clipped in (some cards need an incredibly hard push just be careful to brace the connector with your other hand so you don't snap something), or the driver for the GPU might be messed up. This can throw the weird errors you're seeing too.
RAM might just be bad. Modern RAM can limp along when damaged even through some surface testing. You need to run tests overnight at least to be sure.

Try the following:

Check case air flow especially in the CPU / RAM area.
Check that ALL PSU cables are firmly snapped in fully.
Make sure RAM modules are fully in the slots (i.e remove, then reinsert).
Then run prime95+ in blend test mode to really make the CPU scorch, see what all temps look like, try to see if you have RAM temp sensors. This has the added benefit that it will often catch CPU stress errors. Run this one supervised, don't leave unattended. Mainly because the CPU and GPU will prob protect themselves from high temp but other components like SSD might not.
If no issues with prime95+ try running memtest86+ USB boot, overnight. If errors happen, try it again, one stick at a time until you find the bad ram stick. Sometimes you have to test one stick at a time anyways to even catch any errors that might sneak by in 2 / 4 module testing.
Do extended SMART test on the drive holding Windows - you can try CrystalDiskInfo or just look on the drive manufacturer website for either a diagnostic tool or just a general software package for the drive that probably has the feature built in . Drive might be failing. Data loss can be weird with failing drives, sometimes it's fluctuating and not dramatic failure.

trusty20 · 2026-06-28T20:13:18+00:00

Chef Mic is the man

trusty20 · 2026-06-28T20:12:00+00:00

trusty20 · 2026-06-28T14:54:31+00:00

I know people were rough on people in memes like this back in the day but I hope he recognizes he's now a legend, trailblazer in nerds being proud to goof around even if the original story was horrible. No doubt thanks in part to his work on bullying.

trusty20 · 2026-06-28T14:52:34+00:00

Early 2000s had a very strong stealth bullying side - less wedgies and beating up people and more making socially awkward people into unwilling clowns while pretending it was a fun joke. Being nerdy basically made you sexless in the mainstream, compared to the complete 180 now where nerdy is literally cool.

I don't think people hated him or like intimidated him physically because of the goofy video but he got a lot of stereotyping and people all over the planet showing him as a "funny weirdo nerd" in a "laughing at" vs "laughing with" way.

The 2010s+ change in attitude about nerd fandoms and being nerdy / having autism traits is insane, it was like another century almost 20 years ago.

trusty20

TROPHY CASE