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.

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.

I used to play 1v1 Ticket to Ride matches against my wife using the app.

As background: I’m not a very competitive gamer, but I’m decent at problem solving. When I first learned TtR, I played with fairly … great players. One of my friends was (is?) nationally ranked. They routinely beat the ever-loving crap out of me. I think of the dozens of games we’ve played, I have won maybe 10-20% of the time?

My wife isn’t bad at TtR, but she doesn’t see things the same way in terms of strategy.

We had this one game where I drew a bunch of short routes all over the map, which blocked her early in the game, and a series of lucky route draws lead me to connect them, inadvertently blocking her at least twice, including on the last play, where I was just dumping cars to end the game.

She was always a little upset when I beat her, but this time the discrepancy was so bad and she was so upset. I just stopped playing Ticket to Ride - like, at all.

Not yet. But their intentions are clear.

Destroying the hospital destroys vital services in Lebanon’s capitol city. A nation - especially one that is already struggling after years of economic crisis and national disasters - that has its healthcare system under attack is a destabilized nation.

If people are fleeing and not united, they cannot support a government, and the government cannot fight against an unlawful invasion.

That’s when my mom became old enough to vote, and she was a real idiot.

It’s not, you know, the best theory, but it’s the best theory I can come up with while also doing no research.

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

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?

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.

An ex once told me her mother wasn’t a fan because talking to me was like talking to a thesaurus.

Yeah, well, Donna, your daughter decided to start fucking me because I was the only person who could consistently beat her at words with friends.

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.

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. 🫤

I’ve never been able to get them to work for me, but I also don’t have any AMD graphics cards. I’m beginning to think that might be the issue.

I’ll have to think about how those might fit for us or our pets.

She doesn’t have issues remembering that she’s taken the meds, just remembering to take them. It’s very much an out of sight, out of mind thing.

I’m so sick of my wife forgetting to do things (like take the medication that if she misses a dose it ruins her entire next day and sets off a ripple of migraines that can last a week) that I’ve just started stealing her phone to put in reminders.