What I’m seeing through your comments here is that your kid trusts you enough to get you into the weeds with them on this problem, has a good enough sense of judgement not to want to just fudge their name to follow the path of least resistance (don’t want to do election fraud in a technical, though not real, sense), and you all have thought through it all and realized it’s a battle not worth having, given your local and statewide political makeup as well as the stress it would cause your kid. It seems like your kid is comfortable with you, self-aware, and capable of making the sorts of pragmatic decisions that many adults cannot make.
Damn. Do you mind asking your kid what it feels like to have good parents that are preparing them to tackle life’s challenges?

Presented kind of as a joke, but good job. Seriously.

”Soory for robbing your sporting goods store, bud, but there’s a hockey stick shortage in Thunder Bay.”

Wisconsin city

CANADIANS?

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.

Heh. Asstronomers.

A base plate that’s got a spring under it, except for a little nub that pokes the power button.
Terrible if you live in earthquake-prone areas.

Wait. Are we describing a bump stock for your computer?

“I don’t really want to look at my body any more,” he said, noting it was too painful to see photos from the hospital. “Every time I see myself, I have flashbacks. And every time I see cops, I think, is he after me? And I know in my head it’s not true, but it just comes up.” He said he questions whether he could’ve done something differently. “I have to keep telling myself … I didn’t deserve this.”
He added: “I just want the Department of Justice to take care of them and fix what they say they’re going to fix … I’m not trying to get attention, I just want my story to be heard because I hurt.”

Oof.

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

(I have another response.)
Lean away, give her a long look, and gaze deep into her eyes. Tilt your head slightly to the side.

“…. dad?”

In the stunned silence, because she never expected you to be right, tell her that you didn’t think you would see her again after she disappeared on her way to get cigarettes all those years ago.

And then put your hand on her thigh and say “I’ve missed you daddy” with wide eyes.

Gets ‘em every time.

“Oooh, I don’t know. Maaaaybeee your lips, because I can’t stop looking at them. But if you did, then your doctor is really good.”

Deliver it light and kind of flirty and she’s not thinking about whatever trap that question is, she’s thinking about how you just told her you want to kiss her.

If it’s for any other reason - making sure an insecurity is unknown, wanting to springboard into a conversation, wanting to see how you react if she baits you into saying something dumb, or even having her own flirty line to deliver about it - she’ll probably get to it. Assuming you haven’t wooed her into a voracious make out session.

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.

All the people dumb enough to waste their money have a red one. Black is the new grift.

The Associated Press reported that Trump briefly met with executives of Bezos’s space exploration company Blue Origin on Friday after his newspaper had spiked its endorsement of Harris.

Musk goes MAGA in the hopes that Trump’s corruption will save him via government contracts and policy decisions.
Bezos, fearing for Blue Origin, spikes a Harris endorsement, which very fucking transparently gets the company an audience with Trump. If it weren’t for the fact that, you know, I live here, it would be very funny to watch these idiots get swindled by a con man.

But I live here, and that con man will tank the economy, raid the stock market, strip everything of value from the government, and do all he can to transfer that value into his pockets or the pockets of those he thinks he controls, while letting his allies steer the domestic and social direction of the country. And I don’t much care for the people he’s allied with.

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.

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.

Hell yeah girl, take your top off!