BannedWord

You forgot to mention who has the refinery capacity -- The US. But prior to all of this, we were drilling less on home turf and purchasing more from countries that are and continue to be enemies of the US. Keep in mind that the prior administration made it more possible to drill, and the current has made it less. Shutting down drilling, shutting down pipelines, reverting to being a net importer of crude -- those decisions don't help us and make us reliant on foreign powers, like Russia, who can take actions against us and leave us in a lurch. And living in LA off the gulf, I figured you already knew about the refining bit. I don't completely disagree with this, but now we're getting into whether we actually benefitted from something like the Affordable Care Act, which was not at all affordable until major subsidies were finally provided to lower-income brackets. Under Obama, you had to purchase a plan -- not the one that "If you like your plan, you can keep it" which was a total lie, but the one that you could probably no longer afford to purchase over the choice of buying things like food or housing. 2900 pages that basically benefitted big Pharma, big Healthcare (hospitals, DME providers, etc.) and took their toll on the rest of us. And if you think that National Health schemes are so terrific, I know a lot of people who've dealt with them too and they'll gladly tell you how long they've waited to get even basic care. So somewhere there's an answer in simpler steps, like mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions or providing the ability to better negotiate drug prices (which the rest of the world on national health schemes already does, and the US picks up the full freight beyond those subsidies). No fan am I of the military industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned us. But the costs of NATO also need to be balanced so that we aren't picking up more than our own fair share and can put that money to appropriate use. Preferably not by the government. So Trump tried to get us out of Afghanistan. Are you disagreeing that it was a bad decision to be there, or is this just another "let's blame the other guy for anything wrong"? Sure, you can negotiate and set deadlines, that's done all the time. But when you are withdrawing, it's up to whoever the administration is to execute on it. It would have been Trump were he re-elected. But setting a deadline doesn't mean that it's someone else's fault that you completely botched the overall pullout and did so in a way that put American and ally lives at stake and gave away military hardware. A deadline is one thing. Poor execution entirely another. Sorry, I grant that the deadline was set, but call BS on blaming it all on the guy who was out of office and no longer controlled how it could play out. How does the botched withdraw "keep America's word" to its allies? Can they really trust us again to make sure we don't throw them under the bus or leave them in harm's way when we leave a military theater again? Sorry, that's still on Biden. You're inferring that making NATO member countries pay a commensurate share of NATO's expense is "sabotaging" ties. How did you reach that one? Ordinarily, I'd agree. But this isn't an "ordinary" circumstance. Putin has quite a bit of money already stashed away in foreign currency before he needs to ever tap currency markets for exchanges. The sanctions come exceptionally late for that move. The lack of unity in comments between Biden and Harris goes much further to erode confidence because Putin will listen to that messaging carefully and note the lack of apparent organization around all of that. You want to shut someone like that down? It's real easy to say "ratchet up" sanctions until he folds. Putin isn't the sort of guy who folds unless you've severely crippled him. He's already negated wheat sanctions via deals with China, so that won't work. He can still sell oil to China and India, who unsurprisingly seems to be going along with its neighbor to the north to avoid conflict. ECB has already made mention of revoking Russia's SWIFT access, which cuts it out of the global banking system. Putin won't listen to incremental moves, and only does things he knows will benefit him. Why else do you think that he wants to meet with the Ukrainian president...in Minsk!? Belarus will do Putin's bidding, and Ukraine's President won't be returned to the Ukraine. Seriously?!? Are you actually believing that the DNC had nothing to do or gain from setting up the entire Steele dossier? Steele has as much as admitted that it's written for the express purpose to smear Trump and had no verifiable information. It's pure naïveté to think the DNC was completely removed from it. To prove something, you need to find that something factual existed, vet and confirm it, and then be able to present the finding. As you said, Mueller couldn't prove something that did not exist. Then you have the media's constant drum-beating about this day-in-day out in the news cycle, even after it was debunked. So people listen to the same noise over and over, and now that it "hasn't been proven", they keep harping on that to make us believe they know better and their narrative is more accurate? Would Russia have had a preference for Trump? I don't dispute that. Did Trump's staff step out of line when they were told information might be useful, and would Trump have said that he'd love it in the summer? I don't doubt that happened either. So I won't say that either side was wally-white here either. Politics is dirty business, so I as much as expect a lack of ethics on both sides of the aisle. I mean let's just agree on one key issue: Trump is an asshole. He pisses people off. He's not diplomatic. He's probably highly unethical. He's misogynist. We can keep going here, and I'd totally agree. So you've made clear. through this that you have an allegiance presumably to the Democratic Party and an axe to grind against the GOP in the way you seem to mention anyone "right-leaning". The entire country in the 30's and up to 1940 didn't favor going into another world war. And let's be fair that Woodrow Wilson was an isolationist before he was pushed to involve himself in World War I. Wilson wasn't GOP. The argument you're making is that we need to be protecting democracy, and I largely agree with it. But you're neglecting that we supported Britain via Lend-Lease and other actions before being brought into war. War was inevitable, but Roosevelt needed to convince a wary American public about the need to send its men and children into wars far from our borders once again. Unfortunately, it took Pearl Harbor to do so, but it was very clear that the US was building up to that point well beforehand and our involvement likely would have been inevitable. Again, I don't disagree with you on wasting trillions on wars of choice, and agree also that we should be supporting Ukraine because, well, we made a promise to do that. I simply don't see the situation as black-and-white or "Republican-bad, Democrat-good" as you seem to suggest. I'm fiscally moderate, socially libertarian, and hawkish on defense to an extent. But I think the item we can share is that we have a healthy distrust of politics and politicians. Be well. Thanks for reading. 😃

This is definitely worthy of a deep discussion with your girlfriend depending on how serious you are. Or whether she'd actually be keen on joining you in those scenes. I'd definitely consider PrEP in any case just to be sure you aren't picking up something and "re-gifting". But if you two are sexual, she deserves the information to make her own informed decision. If the discussion and condoms aren't happening for you, PrEP seems like a better compromise as long as she doesn't wind up trying to figure out why she picked up a new STI.

Don't you hate when the link you've placed gets removed once you post? Yeah, me too. Sorry, @ohmalewhore. Here's the actual link.

So perhaps we should examine the situation as objectively as possible. The reasons that the Ukraine is in its current position dates back to promises made by -- wait for it -- the Clinton administration, who committed to defending them from foreign aggression provided they give up their nukes. This didn't help them now that we have a feckless response. Fast forward a few years to the Obama administration, who unfortunately also gave a fairly wane response to the annexation of Crimea, accompanied by Biden bragging about wielding influence to unseat members of the Ukraine government in exchange for a couple billion in US aid. Let's take where we are a bit further. That previous occupant in the White House that is the subject of derision (note: I'm not a fan either, but I'd rather deal with a few mean tweets versus the current administration) warned Europe about their increasing energy dependence on Russia. Sound like a friend of Putin? Not really the kind of action that I'd consider ass-kissing. But more importantly, Europe was already biased against anything Trump would say, so his advice on the matter was cast aside. Europe becomes a patsy because they're sucking at the teat of Gazprom. Meanwhile, back at home in the US, we not only became energy independent, we became energy dominant, which is a pretty bright move to not be dependent on your enemies for things that are essentials. We became so glutted in petroleum that you'll recall almost 2 years ago that oil futures were actually negative, owing to a lack of storage for all the crude being pumped. Demand had bottomed out because of COVID, which didn't please OPEC one iota. So keeping all that in mind, let's fast forward to present day. And on the comment of NATO and "whether the US should be the world's police", the prior administration -- rather than low to disassemble NATO but pressure the European community to fully commit to the 2% of GDP that each nation needs to commit to their own common defense. Now we see why that becomes important. We can't be the police of the world. First, let's remember that the administration provided intelligence to -- again, wait for it -- the Chinese that troop build-ups were occurring outside the Ukraine. The hope was that we could get that country to side with us, which they've shown little evidence to want to do. So they rebuffed the US, turned around, went straight back to Putin, provided our intelligence and placed themselves in a similar position to Japan at the beginning of WW2. Now with the world's attention on the 21st Century's version of invading Poland by Germany (recall that one?), China finds itself in the enviable position to turn its attention squarely to Taiwan. Second. Ok, so why strike now? They clearly are looking at the handling of the exit from Afghanistan and how the US. failed its allies in the region and left behind $85B in military hardware to a hostile foreign power. The withdrawal was not well organized, and the protest from the US's oldest ally -- France -- was very clear in their removal of their diplomats from DC. If you're Vlad or Xi, you're probably thinking that this administration is fumbling the ball on both military leadership and detente. Especially when it sends Kamala Harris out on Monday to tote the sanctions as exceptionally tough and designed as "a deterrent", only to have Biden turn around 4 days later to refute that and admit that it was never a deterrent. And it wasn't because Putin was already set in foreign currency for quite some time, and the clear key to lock him out of the global economy would be to lock him out of SWIFT. Neither we or the EU are doing that, so Putin continues to capitalize on that lack of leadership. Third, let's also keep in mind that before we were all ready to fully pursue a "Green economy", this administration turned its back on energy independence and cancelled drilling leases, cancelled Keystone XL, turned off the taps from Canada, and shut down key pipelines that could feed the west coast, all of which have had a serious impact on supply. Biden's recourse was to go to OPEC begging for them to increase production to supplement the growing gap in energy supplies. OPEC and the Saudis haven't been keen on that since this administration is now trying to make a deal with Iran, and the one thing that both Israel and the Saudis will always have in common is that neither of them particularly like Iran. Now I've tried to keep this as centered as possible on the core issues and noted that while I have a particular dislike of #45, he actually managed to accomplish some things that were positive for the country despite the constant rhetoric about "Russian collusion" (which was never proven, and moreover the Steele dossier was revealed to be completely fabricated and paid for in part by another member of the Clinton family) or other comments about the prior President. I'll admit that I truly dislike most if not all politicians. But the version I've outlined is common to what has been presented whether you watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Newsmax or One America. We have the run-up to war. Except that instead of Germany and Japan, we have Russia and China. And people seem to have forgotten that in a wide swath of areas, the most vocal sycophants of one particular political persuasion have engaged in a lot of the same types of rhetoric and behavior that we saw at the very beginning of the rise of the Third Reich. We must learn from history lest we be caused to repeat it.

Bravo @ErosWired! It's probably appropriate that I refer to it as "Anti-social Media" because it actually creates environments where such enmity can bloom and flourish amidst the attention of getting a crowd to support it. There was a great writing from Noam Chomsky on this long before all of this happened -- when I think of it, I'll cite the reference. We've created a society of trolls. We've abandoned and stifled civil discussions in favor of flame wars. Espouse another point of view that varies from the accepted narrative and you're somehow branded as a 'racist' or some other irrational term that just shuts down any intelligent discussion. People have suddenly begun to feel emblazoned to be keyboard warriors and not recognize there is another person on the other side of the words who deserves basic civility. "Those social networks, there's something sad about them…. It's like a talkative mirror where people talk to themselves." - Karl Lagerfeld I've been totally trolled for civil activism that accused me of anti-Semitism (because their core arguments couldn't pass muster or scrutiny). This was before people started throwing around racism, or even before Whoopi claimed that the Jews weren't a race. It didn't hurt so much as it actually detracted from the correct narrative and that truly pissed me off more than someone just talking. Thankfully, there are good lawyers for those things, and people use them. But to the point, it's less about anyone being butthurt, and more about just the complete ignorance of people (and you can use any definition of that word interchangeably to the same outcome).

Sadly, Putin is doing this because he knows he can get away with it. But that's less important than the toll this will exact on the citizens of the Ukraine. Keeping them in our thoughts and prayers if you're so inclined.

You don't happen to have hemorrhoids, do you? Sometimes the blood can come from there as well if you've had a fissure. Thanks, @ErosWired for making this point. Perhaps worse / more immediate danger from that is sepsis. HIV can be long term, but sepsis will take you quickly. Doesn't sound to me like that's it, but definitely see a good proctologist to get everything checked out. Yeah, it feels great while it's happening, but that won't be a 'gift' you want to have.

When you said all of this, I had to look up where Defiance County actually is. Turns out your nearest major city in Ohio isn't much better. Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio (Complete with the truckers)I feel for you, @ohmalewhore. I really do. 😀

If you want to see the adventures of the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA), watch the series "Parking Wars". They're worse than ambulance-chasing lawyers to hunt you down and cite you for being 30-seconds over your meter expiration. But like @ejaculaTe mentioned northern Delaware, I would honestly suggest Collingswood since it's a 15 minute commuter-train ride from Spruce Street in Philly, has a Main Street, has become a gay hangout (though not a meat market), and the vibe is very low-key. And there are plenty of charming duplex homes you can rent if you're into that. If you really want to consider Delaware, why not Rehoboth Beach? The Diamond State's answer to Fire island. 😂

So I'll throw something out there from personal experience: Philadelphia. Yes, it's a city of neighborhoods and places like Fishtown which are now up-and-coming and not far from the main action in Center City (Spruce Street). You can fan out to neighborhoods in the Northeast of the city, or near South Jersey which are commutable without needing a car. There's a fairly vibrant gay scene there. And you can still get some affordable housing unlike in cities like New York or DC, but both are within a weekend trip. And depending on your career aspirations going forward, there are opportunities in the education and healthcare sectors. But...there is a downside. Philly suffers from total political incompetence, which trickles down to crime, policies that disaffect residents, and their mayor is well-known for blunder headed moves. Plus you get a 'city-wage' tax to contend with (around 5% on top of state and federal taxes) and car insurance is insane. The bottom-line is that you need to be careful about your choice of neighborhoods in terms of not being a victim of crime, shootings, etc. PM me on the topic and I can guide on where to locate and where to...ahem...avoid. Good bet is to try Collingswood across the river, which has become a great gay-friendly community in the past 20+ years.

I for one am damned glad you said it. There are far too many out there who just want to capitalize on guys by charging them for a half-hearted fuck or blow-job, followed by repeated swiping of an American Express card. I even get approached by those younger who want to call me daddy, but are clearly not in a position to eve understand what they really want.

Did he ever serve time? 😂🤣 Seems like there's a lot of M/M sex going on with incarcerated men...or the LGBTQ+ population is more prone to criminality and subsequent imprisonment. (No, I seriously do not think that's the case). I think it makes the point that we're not as either straight or gay as we think we might be, and everyone needs an outlet.

I'd much rather be shaved -- or at least trimmed -- as I know I don't like getting a surprise flossing during or after. I had one guy decide to give me a complete manscaping before we got down to playing, which was nice. The playing...not so much.

I agree with a lot of the responses suggesting that we don't necessarily 'turn gay', and that it's probably complete masturbatory rubbish to think that someone can be 'turned gay' if they don't already have the inclination. However, I think there could be two factors at work that help the process: Conditioning - whether it's through exposure or someone is being psychologically conditioned more toward a latent inclination they had deeply hidden. The sorts of people who find themselves more and more drawn to something based on seeing or experiencing it. Gay porn, looking at other hot guys, being brought out to understand that getting horny over a guy is something perfectly natural even if it might seem abnormal by some societal standards. Sexual flexibility - I'd like to start with the statement that I don't think people are naturally binary by nature. Either 100% straight or 100% gay. And there's likely a variable scale that says that your preferences mostly run on a 0.01 to 99.99% scale of something. Which might explain why some men aren't necessarily repulsed when they discover that they can be sexually aroused by another man. Maybe it's chemistry or other factors, but just as you have people who are attracted to both (all) genders, I think there's a less binary lens that could be used to assess whether someone might have an inclination to have non-heterosexual desires. Hell, it might explain why I like what I like, and why my tastes can be so wide-ranging. <shrug>

I've heard the term "pillow princess" applied to women who demand to receive oral from men or women but don't put out (either at all or in reciprocation). It used to be that if I saw that, I'd steer clear of it because...well, I'm putting in the effort and they're just laying there. If I wanted that, I could have stayed with any one of my exes. Pretty sure you could use it interchangeably without it being gender-based. To @ErosWired's point above, I'm not going to call anything lazy -- Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors because everyone likes or wants something different. If Vanilla isn't your thing, there's probably Rocky Road or Fudge Ripple. 😂

Hell yeah. Let me know your next court date! 😃

I suspect there are two different dynamics at work here @Baretop4ever. Perhaps three. Guys who just want to hookup and enjoy sex and getting off with other guys. Guys who talk about it to see if there's common ground, but their overall goal is that they want some sort of ongoing situation if they share (or think they share) chemistry. Guys who flake-out when faced with the real prospect of sex with someone else and while the conversation originally may have been hot and heavy, the reality hits and they're afraid of diving into that deep end of the pool. Sounds like you managed to find the second and third bullets on that list. I can be #1 or #2 above, but it's the guys who are in that other category that drive me nuts. It's why I'm drawn to cruising guys and enjoying what happens. Everyone knows they're there to hookup and it's just lust and about enjoying someone for a while. If I'm talking with someone online and the conversation is going well, of course I want to know them more. But I'll still want to fuck anyone in both categories. The flakes you describe just grind my gears.

As a guy who fucked women, I loved the feeling of pussy and cumming deep inside with the risk that I'd knock her up. And from early enough on, it was always raw as that's also how my partners wanted it, so it got to the point where it was no questions asked and whatever happened happened. To me, the FtM thing is hot as fuck! It's who they are so why not enjoy that part of them too. As a guy, it's all about the connection of being inside my partner and the catharsis of just reaching orgasm, and having a partner who wants me to cum deep inside them. I don't care which way it happens, all of it is fun.

You do you, friend. There is a vast difference between being lonely and being alone. I've been alone in my life and felt very happy, fulfilled and free. I've also been involved with others and felt lonely, completely unfulfilled and miserable. I'll take the aloneness over being with someone who makes me feel like less of a person and thereby lonely.

Thanks, @fskn. I agree and I think that part of the thread has run its course. The conversation veered off organically based on quite a few of the points on PrEP availability and vulnerability, which begat the other points. Hopefully we can move on.

There are definitely areas where we both agree and disagree in this post, and I've shortened this since I still don't quite have the knack for multi-quotes on this site. No personal offenses made in any of my comments: Voting Rights/Term Limits, et al. Foremost, one of the glaring things is how voting rights has been weaponized, and I've actually participated in clear voter fraud litigation against government entities where it's actually occurred and no one wanted to establish correct oversight (or were too content/lazy with keeping status quo). It's disingenuous to state that asking for identification to vote is disenfranchising to people who already need to produce identification to do just about everything else from applying for a driver license, receiving government benefits (medicare/medicaid, public assistance, social security, the list is. far too long to state here). And trust me when I tell you I've seen the evidence of the same individuals voting on multiple occasions with election officials turning a blind eye because it suited them just fine. Moreover, the right to vote has been a privilege granted to legal US Citizens, and that's being trampled by opportunists weaponizing the specter of Jim Crow to say that people are being kept from voting. Really? They've just decided that anyone in the City of New York can go to vote regardless of their citizenship. Given the closeness of the last election, packing voting booths with people of dubious legal status in this country and allowing them to vote does what to the rights of those who are conducting themselves in a law-abiding manner? Go anywhere else in the world and see if you can vote in their elections. As for Term Limits, that is already built into our system. It's called VOTING. We have the right to keep a representative as long as we want...or not...by participating in legal voting. You want some asshat politician of any party out of office? Vote. Don't want to vote? Don't bitch about it. Keep in mind that I lived in New York, and you could put any idiot on the ballot and they'd likely win (and have). Just make sure they're on the Democratic line on the ballot. I mean look at AOC, the woman making $175K and still wants the average American paying off her student loans. Really?!? City of Chicago. I'm pretty sure you can still vote there, right? I mean there's an entire legion of World War One vets who remain politically active to this day there. 😂🤣 Seriously though, I agree that reforms need to take place, Chicago is a great example of that. I've loved the city every time I've visited. It's just really difficult to feel safe there, and Mayor Lightfoot hasn't exactly shown herself capable of doing much about the problems. We need better choices. (I'm only partly joking about Chicago's "Vote Early & Often" reputation). Constitution/SCOTUS. There are three branches of government for a reason. They're supposed to be a check-and-balance on each other, or at least that's how the framers envisioned it. While I don't think it's possible to keep SCOTUS from being a political football, the process of selecting and confirming justices is as mercurial as are the people sitting in the White House and Senate. Anyone remember Robert Bork and how he got basically lynched in Senate proceedings? Almost happened to Clarence Thomas as well. You can cite any politician going both ways on positions on how nominations should be handled. But getting back to my point, there are Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches for a reason: We don't legislate from the bench. That's for Congress to do, and if citizens want something to change, there's a great way to do it called a Constitutional Amendment, something voted on by Congress, signed by the President, and adopted by at least 38 states. Don't like the law? Great. Change it. And speaking of 2A, especially with the current lynching of law enforcement amidst cries of "Defund the Police", defending yourself becomes all too much a matter of every man for themselves as even law enforcement has done the Great Resignation based on having targets on their backs doing what we've asked them to do: Protect us. I almost can't blame them for giving up. Does that mean that I don't think there are some really bad actors in law enforcement? Damn right there are. Let's make sure we deal with that in the correct way, but not in a totally reactionary/start needless riots and looting/shoplift from any shop we want and disadvantage other potential allies way. I've met really shitty cops too and agree some of them are the picture of the kids who got bullied in the schoolyard getting their revenge on people. Address the real problem. Making us totally lawless does the opposite. Do we potentially need reform on 2A? I'm not sure. The only solution I have seen from anyone are solutions designed to strip lawful gun owners of their guns and doing nothing to ensure guns are taken out of the hands of criminals, or they're prevented from getting over the border and bringing arms in. So I'd prefer to keep my 45. And compared to our current situation, probably the other 45 as well. 😉 No fan of Trump am I, but Biden makes a huge case for being out of touch and tone deaf to what people find important. CDC/Fauci. "Wear any mask...oh wait, cloth masks work as well as knitted condoms." Yes, I know we're learning a lot about how to handle a pandemic, but I'm skeptical of the CDC and especially Fauci's claims because some very specific ones ("there was no Wuhan Lab...wait...well, there might have been"). Am I an anti-vaxxer? Nope. Have mine. Been COVID free and taken precautions to a reasonable degree. But two years on, people just want a path forward. I grant Fauci is still muddling through like the rest of us, but I'd have liked to have seen more authoritative voices on the topic than just taking as gospel everything that Fauci says. Or the overt criticism of everyone who isn't vaxxed, regardless of whether there are underlying conditions that a vaccine may exacerbate. Trust but verify. Thanks for some really great points and a civil discourse. Peace!

I'll contribute a couple points here, noting that I'd prefer to steer clear of the political because (a) I expect that philosophically I may sit at the polar opposite viewpoint of the majority (and that's ok with me, frankly, but those discussions have been known to stray far afield from civil discourse far too often) and (b) I have a total distrust of government in general since neither political party gets a pass from me. That being said... @fskn I really like your comment and view on availability of the generics for the PrEP drugs or opening the generic market wider, allowing importation from other countries, and other solutions that help close the risk gaps. In general, just one issue: Big Pharma. They've been so accustomed to getting their way in the patents for new medications versus the ability to introduce generics after that reasonable point in time to recoup R&D costs for those drugs. And I'll go right back to my initial statement on why, since Pharma has pumped serious money into both lobbying and otherwise plying the pockets of nearly every elected official to ensure they get precisely what they want. And what they want is to keep pillaging the pockets of the US while other nations with public healthcare have set pricing for what is paid for specific drugs. Want to sell the drug in North Elbonia who has nationalized healthcare? They'll only pay for one or two drugs out of all available, and lowest bidder wins. Who picks up the difference? The US who already has the highest per capita cost for healthcare. Not even talking about how egregiously long patents are to prevent a drug from going into broader distribution. Basically, we're all getting fucked here without even getting a reach around. @hntnhole can we address the "widely accepted source of reliable, non-judgemental information" for a moment? I'd love to know your views on why you think that exists, and what you actually think that means. If I pick on Joe Rogan for a moment, you can point to a number of specific instances where he provided discussion (I'm not going to call it 'information' yet) on topics such as alternative treatments and the efficacy of cloth makes for COVID that at one time were the subject of ridicule and derision, even censorship and social media squelching/banning but have since been given credibility by the CDC (in the case of masks). So I'd need to ask who the arbiter of the impartiality of information becomes since most discussion has become parochial in nature...and you're shouted down if you disagree. I would add that any information needs to be qualified as "factual and impartial", just like the way that news at one time was not a glorified opinion and focused on the what, who, where, when and how, possibly the why of an event. Who would provide that information? How could we trust it to be reliable, factual, impartial? I'd argue you're on the right track with government. But when you have people in power -- Nancy Pelosi, for instance has made massive profits from stock deals that would put Gordon Gekko to shame -- who benefit from this ongoing status quo, you won't see the change with nearly anyone in the current system. Go further and really question and challenge! And @fskn, as to "coverage through age 25 on a parent's plan was one of the first visible ACA provisions. As a privilege for the politically powerful middle class, it could help shield the ACA from repeal. I'm sure this was a careful political calculation", I'll say this: One of the things that could have benefitted ACA from repeal would have been to ban the implementation of "pre-existing conditions as a barrier to a claim". That could have been done with the stroke of a pen and saved millions from the fear of (a) losing affordable coverage, (b) being able to 'keep their current plan if they liked it', and (c) avoided the alternative of inferior coverage and high deductibles for the ACA plan at ACA rates (which are far enough above markets that people resorted to non-ACA compliant plans at 1/2 or less of their ACA counterparts -- I don't need maternity coverage, so why do I need to have a plan that provides it?). Instead, we got 2,900 pages of what seems to have provided a state-by-state marketplace that benefits...oh, that's right, the healthcare companies! 😃 Seriously, I don't have a problem with the parental plan age extension, but ACA didn't do anything measurable to contain rates that have risen by double-digits annually (I've been in the insurance industry for a few decades, there's other options than how ACA did it that are more beneficial to the subscriber, but that's a different thread). I appreciate that people can look at this intelligently and explore alternate options. It makes me optimistic about other solutions. I personally think we need to go much, much further.

That's actually one of the smartest things I've heard someone do, makes every bit of sense to me. As I peruse the forums here (Backroom) and elsewhere, I'm exposed to people participating in exceptionally risky behavior -- things totally separate from the decision to bareback or be pozzed -- so much that you tend to become somewhat numb to more and more extreme acts, any of which can go sideways. It makes me wonder how many are actually taking such precautions . Thanks for putting that out there.

I am glad someone stated the obvious here. No means no, full stop. Granted, if you're in a sling and bound such that there's a queue of guys waiting their turn behind the current it's difficult to withdraw the consent, there seems to be among some elements of the community that feel they've been given the right to abuse as only they see fit. Separate the fantasy from the reality, guys. 19 versus 50's? Not everyone gets off on people their own age, and there's whole contingent of guys into "daddy/son" relationships. Go see [think before following links] https://www.silverdaddies.com for fun and you'll see the amount of cross-generational dynamic. Whatever floats your boat, but they're just guys of consenting age. How much do we need to police ourselves and others for what is and isn't acceptable? If a young Twink wants me to pound him, bring it on. 😃 But agreed it's not abuse. Ignoring consent? 1. Know what you're getting into. 2. If it goes sideways, make sure you both agree that it can stop where it's no longer what was planned.

On the PC/Windows, you can run a program called Character Map (CHARMAP.EXE). For the Mac, the various characters are shown inside each of the fonts in the Font Book, or as you're typing, you can Select Edit > Emoji & Symbols which you can use to find certain symbols like ⍶. In addition to some of those above.