As far as losing weight goes, the importance of that will really depend on the type of person you want to date. If you’re only attracted to people who put a lot of effort into their fitness and appearance, you’ll have to do the same. If that’s not as important to you though, there are definitely options out there. Online dating might be rough, but being kind, respectful, comfortable in who you are, and open minded will take you a long way.

On the contrary, the article listed in the OP is about people experiencing medical discrimination due to a lack of awareness that asexuality can be a valid orientation. The asexual people quoted in their personal anecdotes about their medical care were reporting that medical and psychiatric professionals continually misdiagnosed or gave erroneous treatment based on assumptions around what “healthy” sexual desire looks like.

Essentially, imagine someone posted an article talking about how medical professionals are finally recognizing being gay isn’t a medical issue that needs to be “fixed”, and then you respond saying what the physiological causes of being gay could be. You’re getting kick back because it’s at best pretty tone deaf, no matter whether it’s backed up with evidence or not.

Divorce rate spiked in the US when no-fault divorce was finally introduced, and that is when that idea of “50% of marriages end in divorce” popped up. According to these stats it’s been roughly a third for the past 20 years. So about 66% of marriages go the distance in the US.

I personally like how parallel to the door looks but don’t have a logistical rationale for it

I’ve been getting into having a pdf of the various manuals for things around the house on my phone. I recently consulted the manuals for my fridge, a new dehumidifier and the lawn mower and it was pretty awesome not having to find and dig out a paper booklet each time. My phone is on me all the time plus I can get rid of the paper copies.

I love PG Tips as well for a go-to grocery store black tea, as well as all of Celestial Seasonings hibiscus blends. I used to get tea from Adagio and even made a couple of custom blends but I moved to an area with a decent tea shop and local events that host smaller tea sellers so I try to get loose leaf from them when I get the opportunity.

We did “Photography Model” for ours lol

How about The Romans in Their Decadence? (Thomas Couture)

He was no less a fascist in 2016, but there were enough checks on his power that he mostly managed to simply be incompetent and chaotic. He bungled Covid response and gave free handouts to billionaires, sold who knows how many state secrets to foreign entities, but there are a lot of positions in government held by actually qualified and competent people who waylaid his whims. Conservatives have been carefully putting the pieces into place to prevent this from happening again, for instance reclassifying higher ranking government employees so that the president would be able to fire/dismiss them without cause. If the leader of the FBI attempts to investigate him again, they could just hire a new one who won’t. The supreme court being full of right wing extremists is another purposeful and deliberate step to undermine the checks and balances system. Conservatives want kings, and they weren’t prepared the last time Trump was in power. They will be able to do much more damage this time.

Not everybody who works for the government is elected. The vast majority of people who work for the government are hired like at any other job, and many of them work their ways up the pay levels with competency and years of experience just like the private sector. Only a very limited number of employees are supposed to cycle in and out with a White House administration, and those are the people the president is supposed to have the ability to get rid of at will. Tens of thousands of government employees keep working regardless of who is in charge and answer to their supervisors, and so can offer some resistance to illegal, immoral or downright stupid decisions from the “top”. For instance, if the General Natural Resources Manager of the EPA says “no, there shouldn’t be fracking operations here, it’s too close to habitation” etc, they can push back enough to possibly cancel that initiative. Unless, of course, you make it so the executive branch can point to any government employee and say “you’re fired” for arbitrary reasons and replace them with a sycophantic toady who always says yes to daddy oil.

Hmm I wonder if we know anyone who likes saying “you’re fired”…?