C Sharp Graphics


For some time I’ve been attempting to learn a little bit of C# the programming language. It’s very much like C and C++ except that it comes with the whole .NET framework which includes a method of creating images. This makes it easier for graphics programming than C or C++ because the standard libraries don’t include such features and I have not yet learned how to use a third party library for those to do what I want. For now however I am impressed with how easy this simple experiment was to do in C#.

I read enough of the C# reference to create a bitmap, turn every pixel yellow, and save it to a PNG file. These screenshots show how it works!

 

Here is the link to where I was reading the methods of the Bitmap class.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.drawing.bitmap?view=netframework-4.7.2

 

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C program ltostr function


I worked so hard on writing this function in the C programming language that I have been making backups and posting screenshots on all my social media sites. I want to make sure I NEVER lose this source code because it’s my most brilliant function yet. I can imagine using this in other programs I write in the future.

This program is a test of my function ltostr. It can convert a long integer into a string of any base from 2 to 36. This program first reads command line arguments using the standard library function strtol and then uses my non standard function to display the results in different bases. This allows for printing integers in binary or any other base not supported by the C standard library. It works with some complex pointer arithmetic which I understand but am unable to explain because it’s weird!

Pet Sterilization


Alice Dee on Facebook already has a thread going about this topic however it’s worth making my own post about because it’s important. I have no pets nor ever plan to have a dog or cat. I would in theory if I was in the financial position where I owned land out in the country. However I do have strong feelings about this topic because I agree with the majority of vegans and even some non-vegans who care about avoiding the suffering and death of many dogs and cats by preventing them from breeding.
The majority of what I have read shows that the benefits of sterilizing animals always outweighs the risks of allowing them to breed. The only alternative to sterilization is to literally watch them 24/7 to make sure they do not have sex with animals of the opposite sex or keep them in a cage while you are gone at work all day. Because of this, I believe it is the less cruel option just to sterilize them if you can afford it and it may even benefit their health because most of what I read shows the fixed animals live longer than the intact ones on average.
People do not consider the various causes of death that reproduction involves. Especially for females, they will live shorter lives if their body spends energy procreating. Additionally fixing them removes the possibility of cancers or anything else that might be a cause of death that involves diseases of the ovaries and testicles.
I have some links here which are worth a look.

Moving Possibly


This is something that could happen but is not a sure thing yet. However it may be the start of a new life for me.

You see, years ago we were told that two people had to be living in our apartment and so if something happened to either me or my mom, such as moving out or death, the other one would be evicted. Now this is something we were both worried about as we are on government subsidized housing. This is an expensive town in general and rent almost anywhere is going to be close to $600 or $700. So as much as I’ve wanted to get my own place, it financially has never been an option and I didn’t want my mom to be homeless even if I did move out.

However we recently got a new manager and I brought the topic up. She said that we were told wrong before. My mom would be able to stay and her rent would go down if I did move out. This was very good news.

However, the only place that I would have a chance at living would be Sage Crossing. It’s sort of well known around here as a place that sometimes goes by people’s income rather than them paying full rent. I applied there and am most likely on the waiting list. I really hope it works out and I can pay rent that I can afford with only my income from my part time job. They have no real reason to deny me considering that all I need is a 1 bedroom apartment, I don’t have pets or kids, I don’t smoke(they have a strict non smoking policy), and I have no criminal record.

Who knows what could happen but at least I know there is a chance that I could get my own place. My mom is as thrilled about the idea of me moving out as I am. She wants to turn my bedroom into a writing office.

Also, I have one more thing to say for those who read this. At many times people have criticized me for being an adult who still lives with my mom. I find this rude and just place ignorant and offensive. First of all they never knew the situation and there were idiots telling me ever since I turned 18 to get a job, go to college, live separately from my mom, and all kinds of bossy dumb advice.

I am not stupid and I have all along been trying to improve my life. I also have been working at Hy-Vee for almost 6 years. I have been financially supporting my mom and paying for our food and often half the bills. However whenever my income increases so does our rent and so we’re stuck in a financial trap and have been for years. However if I succeed in moving out, not only would my mom’s rent go down but she might even qualify for food stamps again. My mom and I have both been trying to do the best for both of us and people with all their dumb advice and “simple solutions” need to shut up.

Anyhow that’s my current rant. Have a nice day!

Why Homosexuality is REALLY Considered Wrong by the Religious


My good friend Poffo wrote this and I just have to share it because I think it’s spot on.

** Why Homosexuality is REALLY Considered Wrong by the Religious **

The only reason and i stress, the ONLY reason(s), homosexuality was ever considered a “sin” during the Bronze and Iron Age (when the bible was written) comes down to 4 things, and they are:

#1.) It was a patriarchal, male-dominated society, geared toward creating large families and continuing the bloodline and family name. Children were your legacy, your way of ensuring your own survival, etc. Especially with struggling races like the Jews, who were constantly being oppressed and attacked and enslaved by other, more dominant, warring cultures. Now, if you’re a gay (male or female), you’re NOT reproducing. No procreation means no children, and this made absolutely no sense to the people of old and it made being gay a complete oxymoron in terms of your survival rate, bringing honor to your family, etc.

#2.) When the armies of warring tribes would conquer an opposing army, many times they would sodomize the other defeated soldiers, often raping them in a “homosexual” way in front of the surviving men, in order to crush their spirits and break their resolve. This was considered abhorrent for obvious reasons and when the Jews and those descended from them saw the behavior of gays, they immediately thought of this war tactic and instinctively looked down upon it. For the worst possible thing that could happen to you in this male-dominated society was to be treated like a woman. Which leads me to the 3rd reason…

#3.) Women were horribly oppressed, abused, mistreated and generally looked down upon. Their standing as citizens only slightly elevated from that of livestock and animals. You can see this in many of the Levitical laws of the Old Testament and in the horrendous treatment of women in modern day Muslim cultures of today- which, as appalling as it is to us, is not really that far from what the Old Testament teaches (a book, i might add, that Fundamentalists are using as the basis for morality and their objection to homosexuality). Women had little to no rights or freedom and to these people, for a man to “lay with another man as one does with a woman” was an absolute disgrace and an insult to their identity as men. Do you see where I’m going with this?

And finally,

#4) During biblical times and onward, prostitution was always rampant and as you can imagine, there were many men who took to this profession to make money and sustain themselves. Whatever your views on this, I’m sure most will agree, it’s a very dishonoring act- to sell your body for someone else’s demands just to earn money and to perform sexual favors for someone that you have no emotional attachments to, makes the act cheap and meaningless.

Well, this is how the ancient Jews felt as well, and another reason why they saw homosexual acts as defiling, unclean and distasteful. Adding to this, the great range of indecent acts committed by even more primitive cultures (orgies for the dead, bestiality, temple prostitution, etc.), and when the Jews saw these things, they just lumped homosexuality together in with them, so it naturally came to be severely despised.

Now, with all of this being said, can anyone out there give me a real, MORAL reason why homosexuality is wrong today? If it’s consensual and doesn’t involve money, if it’s between two adults and if you can get over the fact that a man is acting somewhat like a woman (this is NOT a moral crime, but more a matter of aesthetics), and if you can get over the fact that gay couples can’t reproduce naturally, the question must then be asked with our modern sensibilities: why is it wrong?

If all you have to say is because, “God said so” then you’ve not realized the obvious truth- that those same, desert-dwelling, uneducated, superstitious, bigoted and misogynist men from the Bronze Age are the ones who wrote the bible!

MEN wrote the bible. Men who looked down on homosexuality because of all the aforementioned reasons. If we were following the tenants of some other culture, such as Greece for example, there would be absolutely nothing wrong with it in anyone’s eyes.

So you see, bigotry and intolerance is just a consequence of the type of society with live in now; the residual, after-effects of the Judeo-Christian influence upon the world and the Church’s hideous legacy of oppression and hatred toward gays which stems from understandable but anachronistic reasons that DO NOT APPLY to modern gay relationships.

 

Why anti-natalists should be against abortion


I would like to explain why anti-natalists should be against abortion. I’m not making the case that one should necessarily vote for certain politicians or try to make abortion illegal. The subject of this article is a strictly moral one because people get so distracted by the political side of things that they never discuss the deeper issue of whether abortion is right or wrong.

Perhaps the best way to start is telling you a brief history of how I came to be an antinatalist and vegan. I grew up in Christianity like most Americans and was constantly obsessed with believing the right things when it came to god, jesus, heaven, hell, and that sort of thing. However this was all interrupted one day when I got something in the mail telling me to vote for Claire Mccaskill instead of Todd Akin. The reason was because Todd Akin was pro-life. I was greatly upset by this because I really hadn’t known much about the abortion debate and so I started searching online and I read many things from pro-life and pro-choice people.

This led to many changes in my life. First, the lack of consistency among different people all claiming to be Christians and yet having different opinions on abortion. The question “What Would Jesus Do” is one I thought about. Eventually I discovered that I didn’t know who to believe about religion anymore than I knew who to believe about abortion. Jesus never showed up to settle differences between the different Christians and they each interpreted the Bible in whatever way pleased them and conformed to what they wanted to do. I had to find my own path which eventually led me out of Christianity and religion entirely. I figured God would have had the power to end the abortion debate once and for all and I only felt very motivated to speak on that subject after I was convinced God did not exist.

The only thing I knew was that I did and to this day see the unborn as no different than those who are born. I never did care about whether it was called a child, baby, embryo, or fetus. I still saw it as murder and to this day I still do.

Whether I am right about abortion being murder is something you may agree or disagree with me on, however my own opinion on abortion led to other changes in my life. Somebody asked me once if I was vegan. I didn’t know what a vegan was but I was vegetarian at the time. They told me that unless I was vegan I was a hypocrite to be anti-abortion. This led to me learning all I could about veganism. It didn’t take me very long to see that I had to do it if I am against killing. And the important thing to remember is that I have always been uncomfortable with killing, although I didn’t know that food choices really had such an impact on who lives or dies(both humans and animals). I learned and I changed.

A few years later I met and anti-natalist named Trick Slattery. He introduced me to the concepted of anti-natalism. I also did a lot of reading and watching of videos about anti-natalism. I know that the anti-natalists are right about the various reasons why procreation is unethical and I can call myself an anti-natalist. My primary reasons for being against procreation are as follows.

1. Each person brought into this world is forced into it without their permission or consent. They may or may not enjoy their life but it is still wrong for us to assume that they will and it carries great risk that they will suffer greatly and commit suicide anyway later.

2. The attitude towards procreation being a good idea is not a rational one nor is there justification for bringing people into an already overpopulated world with people who already exist who need families to adopt them and/or lack food, water, and shelter. Our focus should be on helping those already here rather than procreating while ignoring all the other people who need help. Basically the act of procreating is a slap in the face to others and giving them the message that we don’t care about the.

3. By promoting the message of anti-natalism, my hope is that people will focus more on preventing pregnancy in the first place with the effect that abortion will become a thing of the past as people are educated and technology improves to sterilize those who want to have sex while allowing others to remain celibate if they prefer that to surgery.

4. Each new human who lives out their life has the choice to either be vegan or contribute to the animal suffering like the majority just by eating and purchasing the same food that others around them do. I cannot justify taking the risk of doing something that will create another human with the power hurt the animals. It’s important to not view anti-natalism as just about reducing suffering of humans but all sentient beings as much as possible.

There are of course other reasons for anti-natalism other than the reasons that are important to me. David Benatar is famous for his book: “Better Never to Have Been” which I never finished reading because I was repulsed by his pro-abortion views but I do agree with the asymmetry argument he presented and it’s worth mentioning.

Because of my reasons For me personally I’ve vowed celibacy for life to make sure I don’t force others into this miserable world of suffering without their consent. This was the natural solution for me because I lack sexual desire or attraction. However I do realize that I am a rare case. I soon found out that other anti-natalists don’t commit themselves to celibacy or abstinence. They instead use various types of contraception and when those methods fail, they plan to go for an abortion. I however could never do such a thing because I am pro-life. I would never do something that could result in something consider murder.

With my personally history in mind, perhaps you can at least understand why I believe the way I do. You may be pro-life or pro-choice legally or morally. Personally I am morally against abortion because while I believe that bringing others into this world without their consent is wrong, I equally believe that it’s wrong to force them out of this world by an act of murder.

The end result is that I am probably the only anti-abortion anti-natalist vegan you have ever met. However I wish more anti-natalists would at least understand that being anti-natalist is not a synoynm for being pro-abortion. I am both at the same time and there are others. I would at least ask anti-natalists to respect the views of pro-life people and not stereotype us all as caring only about the unborn or only caring about humans and not the other animals. While humanity may never come to an agreement on what the laws regarding abortion should be, my goal is to at least make the case that being against abortion is part of the same type of philosophy as anti-natalism because it’s about prevention of harm.

Whether or not the unborn feel pain may be a matter of what stage of development it’s currently in. Abortion is also not harmless to women. Women do sometimes die or experience other complications of psychological trauma after having an abortion and so it is with great respect to the women we should take action to prevent this from happening. For me the answer is celibacy but for some of you the answer may be a vasectomy or other method of preventing pregnancy. Some people view abortion as their “Plan B” but I say that we should use a Plan A that is foolproof. The obvious solution is celibacy but if people can find other ways that are 100% effective then the abortion debate would end not because we came to an agreement on the legality or morality but because pregnancy is prevented in the first place. Pro-life and pro-choice anti-natalists should hopefully be able to agree on that.

I also do believe that more pro-life people would be able to agree with anti-natalism if they see that it does not conflict with being pro-life. Some criticize my views and think it’s a total contradiction to be against procreation and yet be either pro-life or anti-abortion. However the reason I do not see it this way is primarily because my anti-natalism only happened because I was against abortion. I also had to go vegan to be consistent with my views and the result is not only removing the cognitive dissonance I used to feel but my health has also improved as a result.

And to me I would feel like I was living a double standard if I was pro-choice and indeed I do have respect more for the pro-abortion view than I do the position of simply being pro-choice. I think being pro-choice is a quick and simple way to please everybody by just giving them the message: “I don’t care what you do, choose whatever you want.” This for me would be dishonest because I care greatly and I think that it’s better to be honest about that rather than taking a weak watered down position that makes somebody popular. And so it’s good when people can be honest about how they feel about abortion or any other issue because otherwise nothing will get solved. People who openly admit to being pro-life or pro-abortion are at least making a clear statement of where they stand that then opens up the discussion so that they can explain their reasons.

I learned something today about Progesterone


This is some information I found today that was unlike anything I’ve ever read. It may be helpful to others so I’m gonna post it on this blog that I almost never post to!
I always thought progesterone was like a totally separate hormone than testosterone, I didn’t know it was a precursor to it. I learn something new every day. Personally the stuff that scares me from this list is the muscle and hair loss. Of course I have no signs of losing and muscle or hair right now but when I finally get somebody to take me for my yearly checkup I think I do want to ask about getting my hormone levels tested. I’m probably alright but since I’m already planning to get checked for testicular cancer and prostate cancer I’ll see how much they can test.

https://www.bodylogicmd.com/hormones-for-men/progesterone

Why progesterone for men?

When many of us think of progesterone, we think of it as being a hormone strictly for women. However, men need progesterone too. Progesterone helps to counteract the effects of estrogen on the male body. Not only is progesterone found in males, but men rely on the alleged “female hormone” to preserve their masculinity. In fact, progesterone is a precursor to testosterone – the male sex hormone. As men age and testosterone begins to decline, estrogen levels steadily rise. As estrogen levels increase,progesterone levels plummet.

Symptoms of low progesterone in men include:

  • Low libido
  • Hair loss
  • Weight gain
  • Fatigue
  • Depression
  • Gynecomastia (“man-boobs”)
  • Erectile dysfunction
  • Impotence· Bone loss
  • Muscle loss

In addition, men with low levels of progesterone have a higher risk of developing health conditions, such as osteoporosis, arthritis, prostatism and prostate cancer.

Estrogen dominance

Estrogen dominance is a term coined by hormones expert Dr. John R. Lee, and it describes a condition where a woman (or in this case, man) has more estrogen than progesterone. Even if a man’s estrogen levels are low, it is still possible that he will experience symptoms of estrogen dominance. The main cause of estrogen dominance in men is exposure to xenoestrogens and phytoestrogens? which are hormone-mimicking chemicals found in consumer-based products and even in the air we breathe. In addition to environmental factors, other causes of estrogen dominance in men include alcoholism, obesity, chronic stress and glandular dysfunction.

In addition to testing testosterone levels, men should also consider having other hormones tested to get a clearer picture of what’s going inside their bodies. This includes estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, DHEA and thyroid hormones. Hormonal balance is like a jig-saw puzzle – without all of the pieces in place, it just doesn’t work.