cobysev

Women are so cute and adorable and I love you too baby girl 😘💋❣️

Yes, it even popped up emojis at the end there, then got stuck looping on the same 3 emojis.

And no, that’s not how I text women. My wife would kill me if I called her “baby girl.” She doesn’t like infantilizing speech; says it sounds creepy to be called a baby, even in the context of cutesy romantic lingo.

Breast augmentation is one of the more common cosmetic surgeries in the military. I actually knew someone who had hers reduced in size because they were too big and interfering with her life. Plus, wearing heavy flak vests with armor plating is painful if you have boobs, and next-to-impossible if they’re massive.

I also had another coworker who got implants because she said her flat chest was affecting her mental health, self-image, and confidence. Now she’s one of the more confident and outgoing people I know in the military.

The most common surgery, actually, was LASIK/PRK eye surgery. For most of my career, it was considered a cosmetic surgery. The military defined “cosmetic surgery” as any unnecessary surgery a member elected to have done. You didn’t need to fix your eyesight, because the military would issue you glasses. So it was cosmetic.

However, in the last handful of years I was in, someone successfully argued that getting your eyes corrected would improve your effectiveness at work, and thus was a benefit to the military, not just the member. Plus, they started allowing people to become pilots if they had the PRK surgery. (You need perfect vision to be a pilot, and eye surgery used to ban you from the job.) So eye surgery is no longer a cosmetic surgery.

Knowledge-seeking is not necessarily a selfish act. Ideally, knowledge is something to be shared, to propagate, to enhance our species in the long term.

Most of our advancements in science, medicine, philosophy, etc. weren’t discovered in a single lifetime. It’s the culmination of hundreds of thousands of researchers, scientists, and even some laymen who got lucky and stumbled upon a discovery. And over time and many generations, we build upon the knowledge that’s already been discovered and find new and more complete knowledge that benefits our world.

There are some who are fascinated with a single topic and dedicated their lives to researching it. Then there are autodidacts (self-taught learners), like my late father, who spend their entire lives studying everything they can get their hands on. And of course, there are those who don’t care to learn and just try to exist and get by until the day they die. Plus many other flavors of knowledge-gatherers in the world.

Is any of this wrong? No; everyone is free to pursue whatever knowledge they can or want, or even a lack of it if they desire.

Is it pointless? Not really. As stated before, your knowledge can be passed on to benefit future generations. Or if you keep to yourself, then perhaps you’re learning for your own self benefit. Being better educated about your world and yourself can only serve to help you make more informed decisions in your life.

What’s the meaning of life? There’s isn’t one specific meaning. We happen to exist, and whatever you decide to dedicate your life toward is what gives you meaning. So no pressure about meeting some imaginary goal or standard of accomplishment. Do what makes you happy and what benefits those you love and care for, and you’ll carve out your own meaning in life.

The “Work/Government Issued” one make me laugh because I served in the US military, and a handful of years ago, they approved gender reassignment surgery for trans people.

You’re allowed to receive one “cosmetic” surgery for free while serving in the US military, and this counted for that. So you could literally be “issued” a new gender by the government, for free.

Trump became president, and while military people were signing up for gender reassignment surgery, he randomly ordered that trans people weren’t allowed in the military and had to be kicked out immediately. So a bunch of people who outed themselves to take advantage of the surgery suddenly were at risk of losing their jobs.

Fortunately, the Department of Defense put a hold on those orders and managed to talk Trump out of kicking people out for being trans. But I guarantee, if he becomes president again, he’s not going to be talked out of it again.

Doesn’t matter where you start; like the old-fashioned food pyramid, the whole chart lists everything you need to be healthy and well-rounded in life, with the larger-sized portions indicating that you need more of it.

When I was a child, my mother had to travel to Kentucky for work and I told everyone who asked that she was at “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

My dad pointed out where Kentucky was on the map, and I almost immediately saw the chef and pan in the state shapes. I’ve never forgotten where Kentucky was since then.

Unless it was translated in the '90s and before. A lot of early manga translations, they just digitally flipped the pages so they were a mirror image to the original manga, then added English text in the bubbles, which were now facing left-to-right.

I specifically remember Ghost in the Shell and Akira were flipped for American reading order. Maybe Battle Angel Alita too? I bought the English-translated books, but had to find fan translations online to read it in its original orientation.

Fun fact: Ghost in the Shell (the first volume) actually had a couple pages of an explicit lesbian threesome on a yacht, which were edited to a few girls hanging out in bathing suits on a yacht for the American release. Too spicy for '90s American sensibilities.

Way back in my senior year of high school (around 2002), we had a debate project where everyone partnered up, picked a controversial topic, picked a side of the topic, and then researched and advocated for their side to the rest of the class, including a Q&A at the end, where the class could challenge their position.

To our surprise, the two hottest girls in our class picked prostitution as their topic, and advocated for it to be legalized. The teacher was also surprised, and curious enough to let them present their topic to the class.

We all thought they were joking with their topic, to get a rise out of all the horny boys. After all, as 17/18 year olds, our experience with prostitution came from movies or TV documentaries, where it was generally shown as a disgusting and degrading act; the last resort for a woman down on her luck.

But the girls’ presentation was incredibly well researched, with figures regarding the number of deaths, violent crime, drugs, and human trafficking involved in illegal prostitution, compared to Nevada’s legalized prostitution since the 1970s, which had practically no numbers to report.

They even did a deep dive into a brothel in Nevada, where the women were paid very well and treated kindly and fair and not like they’re just a piece of meat. Plus, they had regular checkups and practically free health care because of their profession. They even walked through the various services they provided, since some people (they serviced anyone, not just men) wanted other forms of intimacy instead of just sex. It was a safe and judgment-free environment, on both sides of the table, and the women employed there actually wanted to do the job, with the option to quit anytime. Unlike illegal prostitution, which removed the woman’s autonomy over her own body and placed her in dangerous situations, exposed to violence and drugs to barely make a living.

In the end, the girls did a fantastic job on their presentation and convinced a whole class of seniors that prostitution could be an honest and respectable position, and should be legalized. I’ve never looked at it the same way since.

✨

That’s the anarchy symbol, not the Avengers logo. Fitting, considering it’s spray-painted on a public structure.

This is the new MN flag. They just decided on it like a week ago.

My wife suffers from this. It’s called clinical anxiety and depression, with a heavy dose of ADHD. She needs medication to keep it in check, and some days, even that’s not enough. Trying to get her out of the house every few days is like pulling teeth.

On top of that, my wife is an introvert by nature, but you’d never know in a social setting, as she will talk everyone’s ear off all night long. I found out that’s her nervous tick; when she feels the social anxiety kicking in, she just lets the ADHD take charge and will run her mouth non-stop. When she gets home from any social event, even just a quiet evening hanging out with a close friend, she’ll collapse from exhaustion and sleep for half a day afterward.

This is why Apple just announced their new iPhone 15 with a USB-C charging port. They’re standardizing and getting rid of the lightning cables, because the EU forced their hand.

Now you can buy any USB-C cable for your iPhone, instead of the overpriced garbage cables they forced you to use previously.