nickwitha_k

@nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org

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nickwitha_k,

!!!

nickwitha_k,

This is me with my Dactyl Manuform keyboard. I have been putting off the hand wiring for over a year now. I actually got another keyboard kit to “hold me over” until I figure out a better way.

nickwitha_k,

there’s the rumor that it affects sensitivity

Just to offer a correction to this for you, it is not a “rumor” but physiological fact. Circumcision removes the frenar band, which is very densely innervated and a principal errogenous zone for those that are uncircumcised, additonally, the Meissner’s corpuscles, which contain thousands of touch receptors and tens of thousands of endings that are biologically specialized for sexual pleasure are amputated.

I can’t, personally, attest to the effect as being cut is all that I’ve ever known but, the evidence is undeniable about the fact that circumcision diminishes the male sexual experience.

nickwitha_k,

Reduction in STIs

There is indeed an upside, though in my opinion, it does not justify the amputation of healthy, functional tissue in infants who clearly cannot consent to it and condoms are readily available even for these with allergies to natural latex rubber.

The most recent studies that I’ve read did elucidate a likely mechanism too. Making the glans an external organ, rather than be protected by the foreskin, causes the development of keratinous tissue (literally called “horny” tissue) on the glans in order to protect it from the environment, rubbing against clothing, etc. Effectively, it becomes callused. The horny layers are composed of dead and denucleated cells, creating a physical barrier that bacteria and viruses must pass in order to infect the underlying cells.

Note, though, that there were three studies conducted in Africa on the impact of male circumcision that was/is cited on HIV prevention that are so blatantly terrible tha PLoS Med and the Lancet, along with whatever IRB was in charge ought to see reparitive and punitive fines brought against them. The studies show extraordinarily poor study design, data collection, data analysis, and alarming degrees of multiple biases. The issues include, among others:

  • All HIV infections were assumed to be sexually transmitted and the result of heterosexual intercourse (bizarre assumptions). Conservative estimates from follow-up research puts the percentage at only 43.1% of the infection from all three studies being sexual transmission, with no extant data or tracking on partners involved. Due to not accounting for the vector of infection, it is impossible to draw the causative relationship that the researchers claim.
  • Improper controls: The test group were given sexual education around STI transmission and proper condom use. The control group were not.
  • Lead-time bias: Data collection began immediately, despite researchers instructing the study group not to have intercourse for 6-8 weeks and likely discomfort with intercourse and increased condom use occuring in some who undergo adult male circumcision up to 12 weeks following the procedure.
  • Attrition bias: Significantly more subjects dropped out of the studies than became infected, which was not accounted for appropriately, corrupting the dataset used for analysis.
  • Duration bias: The PLoS Med study was planned to take 21 months of data but only ran for 14 months. The Lancet studies (near identical to each other) lasted 24 months. Neither is sufficient to either remove tye statistical significance of the lead-time bias, nor to provide objective long-term efficacy rates for an irreversible treatment.
  • Expectation bias: A number of principal investigators involved in the studies had previously publicly called for mass circumcision campaigns. This alone is a major red flag that should have resulted in more critical review of the study protocols and required that they, at the very least, mak, clear disclosures of their personal biases but, to have actually trustworthy results, they should have had no role in data analysis due to clear lack of objectivity.

Referenced studies:

  • PLoS Med 2: e298. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020298
  • Lancet 2007;369:657–66
  • Lancet 2007; 369:643–56
nickwitha_k,

Absolutely! Though, if a low-risk procedure becomes avalable to restore it with full biological functionality (all the nerves, glands, etc), I’ll absolutely get it, if I can. I don’t harbor ill will either as, probably, none of those involved had any idea, with how commonplace it is in the US.

I’m just happy that I wasn’t the recipient of a botched circumcision and that they are pretty uncommon in the developed world at somewhere around 0.6% but in some developing nations that shoots up to a reported 5%. And that’s a pretty fucked up amount of risk to subject one who cannot consent to such a procedure to.

nickwitha_k,

This would absolutely be my thinking too. When I was still newish to linux, I remember lots of confusion with LVM and trying to reformat drives.

nickwitha_k,

Lending my voice to this as well for most, my thought is EXT4, without LVM, deferring to the preferred FS for the distro. It is a mature, stable, and reliable choice and logical volumes complicate things too much for beginners.

If dual-booting, yeah, definitely an NTFS partition for shared storage (just be aware that Windows can be weird with file permissions and ownership).

Does AI-generated art posted on lemmy bother you?

I find that i can spot AI Images fairly easily these days, especially the sort of fantastical tableaus that get posted to the various AI communities around lemmy. I’m tired of seeing them; it all looks the same to me. Was wondering if im being too sensitive, or if other people are similarly bored of the constant unimaginative...

nickwitha_k,

I am ok with clearly-labeled posts that are in dedicated comms and occassionally enjoy examples of the shitshow that the models produce when they hallucinate. However, if the model is trained on works without authorization from and compensation to the creators of its training data, I find their use beyond ethically-questionable.

"Must Try" distros and DEs?

Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in...

nickwitha_k,

I love Proxmox, especially with CEPH as backing storage for VMs. I’ve never thought about it as a local hypervisor. Might be worth a try, if I don’t like NixOS.

nickwitha_k,

That’s one that I’ve been that I’ve been meaning to give a shot.

nickwitha_k,

Beyond the usual browsing I’ll mainly be doing tinkering with hardware, gateware, firmware, CAD, art, projects that I may or may not finish, and the like. It’s going to be my “everything but playing video games” machine.

nickwitha_k,

That’s absolutely my thought. Having a rock solid system close to the metal that doesn’t really get touched is something that I’ve become used to from work. It gives a lot more insurance against having to do as many re-installs and maximizes compatibility.

nickwitha_k,

I’m assuming you’re running a Ryzen 7040 series then. No kernel support for the FPGA yet.

Honestly, I wasn’t aware that they had included a fabric. That’s really awesome, whether it is supported yet or not. I have a couple of dev boards and intend to build a board with a previous gen Xilinx chip that can fit in the expansion bay.

Also, Linux is great for gaming. Not sure why you’d limit yourself there.

100% agreed. However, I already have a Steam Deck and console, so, it’s more that gaming is already covered by other devices than thinking the system is not capable. I’m intending to take advantage of the modularity to turn the laptop into a platform more physically spacialized for tinkering.

nickwitha_k, (edited )

I’ve never really Fedora or Void. Will definitely try those.

Of your DEs, I think KDE is the only one that I’ve not used significantly. I need to fix that. I think MATE deserves a place there too.

ETA: As for why not just Nix or Nix as a package manager? I’ve become accustomed to being in VMs all of the time and really like the way that doing so impacts how I interact with a system and extra capabilities provided.

nickwitha_k,

I am so glad that Cinnamon has been going strong. It made Gnome 3 a lot less painful.

nickwitha_k,

Alpine as a desktop? Now that’s weird and I’ll have to give that a go.

nickwitha_k,

I have meant to try out LXD for a while but it has dropped of my interest due to Canonical’s shenanigans. Incus being a community fork gives me more comfort in trying it. I wasn’t aware of Proxmox using hackery to make use of an ancient kernel, as seems the claim in that thread. If this is the case, I will indeed be migrating away.

nickwitha_k,

What’s your favorite distro for running Hyprland?

nickwitha_k,

I’m going to be on an AMD CPU and didn’t opt for the discrete GPU at this time, nor will I be purchasing an Nvidia device until they start being consistently FOSS-friendly.

nickwitha_k,

You know what? Yeah. I’ve wanted to try that product of schizophrenic mania for a while.

nickwitha_k,

Intriguing. I do have reservations about “all-the-package-types” but need to give that a try, for novelty, if nothing else.

nickwitha_k,

They’ve got time. Shipment isn’t due until Q2.

nickwitha_k,

Oof. Yeah. Years ago, it was the other way around.

nickwitha_k,

That’s a name that I’ve not heard in a long time. Wasn’t aware that Compiz was still active. It was my favorite compositor until the Gnome 3 switch.

nickwitha_k,

Quick! Make this a library, then encourage its widespread use. Nothing could go wrong. Who’s that behind me? No, one. No. It’s absolutely not node.js.

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