In retrospect I think my comment sounds like I’m just excusing being sort of crappy if you’re humble about it.
I wish I’d included the sentiment that we’re all trying the best we can — because being a good partner should be the goal for any relationship.

Even though I’m currently only with my wife, I’m right there with you. I don’t want to add anyone to the mix unless their addition is very carefully considered.
I speak better in metaphor sometimes: It’s kind of like physics, almost. Imagine that we’re touching everyone in our life. If we allow someone to connect to us, they are going to impart their own momentum and direction. That is going to ripple through every connection we have, even if we aren’t able to measure or observe it. So we better make sure they don’t hit us so hard that pieces break apart or get damaged in the process.

If you’re somewhere in the world that has a TJ Maxx/TK Maxx or similar, go buy their random products that are on sale. Not all are winners, but if you change up your products and just experiment, you’ll find something you like.

I have long wavy hair, and right now I’m on a Shea Moisture curl and shine kick, but before then it was the Verb Ghost line of products for a long time.
Don’t sleep on after shower crap, either. My hair has been really dry lately, so I’ve been using a leave in conditioner by Shea, too (now discontinued, sadly). In the rotation is also the Verb Ghost Oil, and some random peptide leave in. JVN (Johnathon Van Ness) also has some excellent products, but we haven’t found them on sale in awhile.

I don’t use all the after shower products at once, but each has their use. Once you get a feel for what you’re going for, it’s like having a shelf full of tools.
And if you got a beard, well… use something and tell me if you figure out what works, because I still can’t figure that out. My hair looks great and my beard looks like it got lost in the desert.

That sucks, man.

I’ve been some stripe or other of non-monogamous for most of my adult life, and those types of relationships are often the ones that people experience first when they dip their toes in.
It’s honestly kind of maddening, because beyond making it seem like everyone who is poly/nm/whatever are all horny sociopaths (because almost everyone has something like that as a first story), it’s harmful. It’s physically and emotionally unsafe for the person who gets shafted. It treats people like they’re disposable and frankly, it’s selfish, insecure, and sometimes malevolent bullshit dressed up as a hippy-dippy love-fest.

It’s really fucking hard to be ethically nonmonogamous, and I wish people would stop pretending they knew what they were doing. No one knows, and it’s the faked confidence that gets so many people in trouble. People just trust someone to take care of them, and then the other person fails because they’re human, and humans fail. And yet… I can’t imagine not being this way, for some dumb fucking reason.

Toxic polyamory situation. A partner I lived with and was once very in love with fell away when she got interested in someone new. It was messy and shitty. I wound up dating someone new, who I had a great relationship with, and it was very physical. But I still lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with my ex.

My ex was a bit weird. She sort of viewed relationships as whatever things with no boundaries. Folks just do whatever they want in the moment and there’s no fidelity according to her. (Things I learned after I fell in love with her. Woof.) She also had intoned a few times that my new partner was a slut, which was sort of funny, given that my new partner had a pretty strong moral code.

My ex got a little less interested in her new guy, and tried to seduce me one night. And I rejected her. We had officially ended things, and I did not want to revisit that.
My ex sneered at me. “Fine. I hope you’re happy with [New Partner], and I hope [NP] is happy with you and your… magical penis!”

She practically spat that out at me, and… yeah. It was as funny then as it is now.

And for the record, it’s not magical. I just like to put top hats and little capes on it sometimes.

If I had one of those in my living room, my house would collapse.

I’m sure once the paper gets ahold of the terrorists PR team for a quote, they’ll say they killed 5 infidels and had 2 martyrs.

But for now, it’s the government giving the quote, and they’re saying they killed 2 terrorists, and had 5 martyrs.

Editing to add: I don’t see martyr as a loaded term. It’s an honorific about someone’s death, when other words fail. It’s just a colloquial use of the word.

Yeah. I guess we’ll never figure out why oil washed up on beaches next to an offshore oil drilling zone. One of life’s mysteries, I guess!

Editing to add: The legal fate of the offshore oil wells is in question, and it’s not clear if work has begun on them or not. New South Wales has banned drilling within their territory, but the company said they’ll just go farther out to sea, where it’s governed by Australia’s federal laws, and I don’t know if they’ve actually started drilling yet.
Heck, those could also have come from a deteriorated WWII ship. Not that I seriously believe that theory, though.

I’ve responded to similar questions with “I will not explain.”

Maybe you can.
All the money I’d earmarked for kung fu lessons and a collection of random lethal weapons wound up going into pet care and hobbies. Besides, I definitely don’t have plot armor. I’d get popped by some junior security mail cop. They probably wouldn’t even have to shoot me. They’d run me over with their Segway, I’d fall, crack my head open, and they’d put a little skull and crossbones sticker on their scooter, like a WWII fighter pilot.

So are the old, children, and anyone not within the “best for capitalism” bell curve (which I just made up, but you get the sentiment).

That’s basically a pro-capitalist argument used to justify a system which should not exist in the first place.
If we’re discussing our thoughts of what should be, then I believe healthcare should be a function of government and a human right.

that happiness should not come at the others’ expense.

It’s probably a failure of imagination, but I’ve never really understood this part of anti-acceptance sentiment.
Any valid criticisms I’ve seen largely come down to regular old accessibility failures or capitalism making people believe airline seats should be miserably cramped.

What is the trade off, in a real, not hypothetical sense?

They have been corralled into a kill box, not “whoopsie, we stumbled into a war zone when the place we were born was turned into a war zone by invaders and we were promised this area was safe but now they’re bombing the areas they said would be safe and there’s no where else safe to go, lol, how silly!”

That’s very fair, indeed.

Perhaps awareness of one will spark awareness of the other. I suppose my concern is that plasticisers are sort of a ‘hidden’ risk, for the most part. They’re used in nearly every food packaging (and prep, such as hoses) that isn’t contained in glass, or served up in its own peel.

Microplastics are terrifying and all that, but I’m sort of more worried about plasticisers like BPA, BPF, BPS and the rest of the alphabet of BP-whatever’s that was created and brought into use after the dangers of BPA were realized.

Just a heads up - if something plastic says it’s BPA-free, it probably uses a different bisphenol compound that is less studied than BPA. And is likely as toxic (or even more toxic)!

But nobody ever talks about those, because science words.

I’ve turned off my voicemail with my cell carrier, and send all unknown numbers to voice mail.

It’s a peaceful life.

The problem is that now the first page of results is all AI garbage and wrong, so you’re not 100% sure at what point you’ve reached the sane internet.

“The secretary also increased the readiness of additional U.S. forces to deploy, elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.

Military.com: Thousands More US Troops, Attack Aircraft Heading to Middle East as Israel Targets Hezbollah in Lebanon

Ehhhh…… Israel is making this threat because the U.S. is sending more people to the region. Israel’s insanity and posturing is enabled by the U.S. putting itself in a position to be committed.

We already know Russia has assets in Syria and is fighting a proxy war with both the U.S. and Ukraine there.

For the 5% of my adult life that I’ve had short hair and no beard: Quentin Tarantino. For the rest of my bearded, long-haired adulthood: Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus. But they need to have blue/green eyes and forehead wrinkles.
(Huh. On paper that just sounds like I look like Nick Offerman, but not really.)

Patron status is ok

Glad your friend is doing well! Send my regards.

My understanding is that they are focusing on adding in “AI” features in a big way, and that’s why they cut development on the other work. 🫤