Welcoming people and being willing to answer over the top weird questions.

Right from the start of my leaving the military I vowed to be an out proud gay man.  This was in 1986.   It has lead to a lot of embarrassing conversations.  People have asked me such personal questions on same sex actions and how gay feelings might differ from straight feelings.  At first I found it weird and offensive, but as I got older I realized I brought a lot of straight cis people to be allies simply by being willing to answer sensitive or stupid questions.  I remember one weekend a straight co-worker with two young children showed up at my house.  Thankfully he had left his children at home with a sitter as he had lost his wife.  After talking for a few minutes he got around to discussing gay sex and why I liked it.  I struggled to understand his questions and to explain it to him.  He then surprised me.  He said show me.  I was like what?  He said let’s have sex.   I thought oh shit a straight guy who just wants to fuck a gay guy and put that notch on his sex card.  I was wrong.  He started taking off his clothing and said to me, you say it feels good, it is like me with a woman, so it should be the same.  He wanted to do oral sex and then anal, but wanted me to do anal with him being the bottom first.   I was desperately trying to explain to him that the first time can be bad or painful and it is not just about sex.  It is a need, and emotional feeling.   He was like we are friends, I like you, you like me so it should be OK. 

Let’s just say after that night he was still straight but he understood how two men had sex.   I was surprised when after giving him oral he insisted on doing the same to me.  But later I remembered my years in the military and how many straight young guys begged me to go with them on passes and have sex.  It was never one sided.  I have realized a lot of bigotry can be undone, can be reversed by simply sharing time with those that are the “other”.  Everyone needs someone to hold, to touch, to feel a connection with.   Hugs

My positions on homosexuality & the Bible

Responding to Ben Shapiro and other videos on LGBTQ+ sex and the bible

Florida demand for VPNs surges by 1,150% after Pornhub bans access

I use NordVPN and have for years.  They are hyper secure, lots of sites worldwide, and they do not log or record user data.  The VPN also has its own security built in for detecting and blocking Malware and other threats.  It works. Plus it has the kill switch mentioned in the article.   When I first got it VPNs were new and expensive.  The price has dropped way down.   I wouldn’t dream of going online with it.    Hugs

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But will users of the surfing services face more exposure than they expect?

Demand for virtual private network (VPN) services surged in Florida after Pornhub shut down access in the state. But cybersecurity experts say Floridians using VPNs may find more exposure than they desire.

A report by vpnMentor found the interest in VPNs skyrocketed as the internet’s leading pornography publisher publicly punished states over age verification policies. No state witnessed greater enlargement than Florida, where VPN interest jumped by 1,150% immediately after Pornhub started limiting access on Jan. 1.

“This surge in VPN usage suggests users are circumventing the IP-block and accessing Pornhub (and other restricted websites) through IPs where the block is not implemented,” a report reads.

Pornhub beginning Jan. 1 prohibited users in Florida from accessing pornographic content on the site. A video now greets Florida porn consumers trying to access the site and urges them to contact state lawmakers to object to age verification requirements. The state imposed a requirement for third-party age verification on publishers of content “harmful to minors,” with rules in effect as of the beginning of 2025.

But VPNs allow users to work around geo-blocking measures, including those used by Pornhub, to restrict traffic from certain states. Sports fans have for years used such services to evade regional broadcast rights restrictions.

 

The vpnMentor report also mentions other contributors to a surge in demand for restriction-dodging technologies. Use of VPNs soared nationwide when a U.S. TikTok ban briefly went into effect this month.

But the researchers found interest in the location-masking software went up disproportionately in 17 states where Pornhub now limits access. They based findings on state-by-state search volume, web traffic and clicks to downloads for VPN services.

Florida’s 11-fold spike led all other states. In South Carolina and Tennessee, where Pornhub limited access the same day as in the Sunshine State, VPN demand jumped 171% and 40%, respectively.

Other states with content throttled also saw mass interest in VPNs. In Oklahoma, where Pornhub announced a ban in October, demand spiked by 1,060%. In Utah, where Pornhub blocked access in mid-2023, VPN demand rose by 967%.

In Louisiana, where Pornhub allows access but other publishers restricted visits after age verification states went into effect in 2022, VPN demand leapt by 200%

 

Of note, Pornhub saw a significant decline in U.S. traffic last year regardless of VPN usage. Researchers found 15 million fewer visits to the website from U.S. users (or at least those with U.S. IP addresses). But that likely matters little to the publisher as traffic to the site exceeded 1.8 billion visits before the end of 2024. The website continues to have around 500 million more visitors than its closest competitor, XVideos.

While Florida users may turn to VPN services to bypass Pornhub’s gateway restrictions, that brings certain unsafe surfing risks.

Many VPN services lack the same security of major internet providers. In 2023, vpnMentor reported that a cybersecurity security researcher had found 360 million records leaked online after a breach of SuperVPN users’ data. The records included passwords, email addresses, personal financial information and personal content from individuals’ personal devices.

The report recommends users only employ VPNs with strong encryption services, an enforced policy not to log personal data from users, a “kill switch” feature that automatically disconnects users from the internet if a VPN connection drops, and a built-in DNS leak protection.

The 10 Weirdest Ways Animals Have Sex

Before I post the video, let me tell you all what is going on.  My health first.  I am very tired only wanting to lay in bed, sleeping or just laying there.  At first I thought it was a depression thing, but when my blood work showed I was again anemic that may explain some.  All I want to do when up is watch videos and I struggle to read news or do other tasks, feeling like every movement is too much and just wanting to sit here un moving.  The second issue I have is I recently expanded the memory of my oldest computer, a built I like better because it is expandable.  Pride go before the fall.   I felt I understood the motherboard well enough and the system architecture to simple look for and buy the cheapest priced ram the system could handle.   

I am humbled to admit I got my butt handed to me as after installing the cheapest four sticks equaling 64 GB of ram which is the max the system can handle I dumped and started the computer.  Yes it seems all four sticks and ran at the higher speed.  Grand.  But then as I loaded Windows and other programs … problems happened.  I got almost everything done and then had sudden BOD … the blue screen of death that I have not seen in my own systems ever.  I diligently tracked every error, researched every error code and security event.  What I got made me realize I had not done enough work understanding my system and the unbuffered ram.  

I could make this a post on the system and what I learned.  Going cheapest for me is going to cost me.  I need to go back to a two stick mode with buffered memory.  The reason is that the CPU can see the dual channel two stick configuration as one big stick.  With four it has to run through the memory controller system to read each stick as a separate entity and compare try to manage the flow and errors of each.  When the errors become too great or do an act that the system deems threatening, it shuts everything down.  So I am going to spend more money on a new set of buffered 2 stick memory which should solve this issue and I can get back to being online with everyone and not spending weeks of every online time searching for and reading tech pages and specs reports.   Now to the video.   Love and hugs to all.  Hugs

Rant About Tim Poole Kicking Down At Canadian Pole Vaulter

True Facts: The Echidna – Militarized Whoopie Cushion