BootmanLA

The first sentence is partially true. Yes, you have to go to a doctor to have either PrEP or HIV treatment prescribed - they don't just dispense it in vending machines. Yes, you have to either have insurance coverage, or participate in a program designed to make those costs reasonable. But getting a doctor's appointment for these things is not particularly complicated in the U.S., at least, and in most states, there are health office workers whose job it is to assist you in getting coverage under the program. When I first got coverage for HIV treatment, the person assisting me literally filled out the forms as I answered the questions he asked, and he clarified anything I didn't understand along the way. It literally could not have been easier. As for the second sentence, that's really not true. Regulations can change, of course - one of the characteristics of the previous administration was its ham-handed attempts to overturn existing regulations by executive fiat, and the courts repeatedly striking those changes down because there is an established procedure for changing regulations, involving public comment, hearings, and the like. A more competent administration could probably have accomplished far more along those lines, but Hair Furor prized loyalty over competence every day of the week, and as a result, much of what he tried to do never got off the ground. (Caveat: there is a big apparatus being built among conservative groups with plans to "hit the ground running" if Trump or another Republican is elected in 2024, aiming to avoid all those missteps.) Under the ACA, the federal government is charged with identifying and rating preventative health care services based on effectiveness. If a service gets an "A" rating, then it must be provided at no cost under most health insurance plans. In order to change that, a future GOP administration's DHHS would have to reduce that rating, and if they tried, that would almost certainly result in a court challenge to provide evidence that the change was warranted. And I just don't think that is possible - the evidence is what it is. But even so, statutory law doesn't change at the drop of a hat. As we've seen, only certain fiscal items can get through the Senate with a bare majority vote; everything else takes 60 votes to break a filibuster, and changing something like gutting funding for HIV treatment isn't going to get 60 votes in the Senate, period. Your choice, but understand that if things DO change as you fear (I think it's unlikely), it'll be that much harder to get onto meds if you reach the point where they're needed to keep you alive. I don't disagree that many GOP people would be content to see HIV+ die rather than give assistance, but I don't think even all of them would vote to end a program like Ryan White.

There may be 1001 reasons, but not all are valid enough, when dealing with *me*, to justify that. Living in a country where there is danger in doing so is certainly a valid reason. On the other hand, what possible reason could someone living in such a place have for contacting me, in the southern United States? I'm not looking for cyber sex with someone whose first language isn't English, I'm not looking to sponsor someone for immigration purposes, and if it's not safe for him to be open there, I'm sure as fuck not going to travel to that country. Most other reasons - and they all boil down to either "there are people that I'm not out to and don't want to be discovered" or "I have low enough self esteem that I don't think you'll talk with me if you see my face" - can be dealt with by sending a photo with the message (assuming the site allows that, and most do). About the only time I'll consider one of those reasons "valid" enough to continue conversing with the person is if he indicates, first up, that he's interested in talking about something specific and not having to do with finding me physically appealing in some way - such as, he noticed I listed X as a hobby and he shares that hobby. I'm not worrying about what such a person looks like - my friends run the gamut of conventionally plain to ohmygodhesgorgeous, and I am much closer to the "plain" end of that spectrum myself. Otherwise, yeah, I'm pretty much on team "No pic, no chat".

Because you responded with expectations. Here's the thing: you don't know what the person "means" when he taps/oinks/woofs. You just know he's noticed you. Just like in the bar, where it may be "man, that guy is hot" or "man, does that guy know his fly is open?", noticing and acknowledging the notice is just a first step. That's why I respond in a way that acknowledges, but does not impose an expectation of a further reply. If there is one, great. If not, I've done my part, and I move on.

Everything has risks. You pays you money and you takes you chances. So does holding the elevator door for someone coming towards it. So does holding a door for someone approaching it with a package in her arms. It's called living in society, and we do these little things to acknowledge one another's existence and value. Maybe to YOU it's always that way. Assuming the entire world views things the same way as you do is just a little bit self-important. Sometimes a compliment is just a compliment and the person's not interested in more than acknowledging that he finds something about you appealing - even if he has no intent on acting on that appeal. Again, your insistence that it must lead to a suitable transaction or it's an offense against humanity is just... something. I mean, I do get it. You've mentioned before that you're somewhere on the autism spectrum, and that you have a difficult time reading people's signals. That's fair. But neurotypical people (for lack of a better term) do use signals - which we have to evaluate and place in context, and sometimes misstep, but that's life - as a means of navigating social spaces. As I noted, just post in your profile that you don't respond to them, and then you're free to ignore them without worrying that you seem rude - BECAUSE YOU INFORMED PEOPLE, and if they're too stupid to read your profile before tapping/oinking/whatever, that's on them. Complaining that because YOU don't/can't/won't use these things makes them horrible and useless and something that should be abolished is, well, again, something.

Most STI's can be spread by sexual or non-sexual contact. If you touch an open syphilis sore, for instance, you can contract syphilis even if the contact was completely non-sexual. Ditto for herpes. That's less true of gonorrhea, for some reason. They're called STI's not because they ONLY spread through sexual contact, but because they OFTEN (or most often) do. At this point, monkeypox qualifies.

One word: Floriduh. Or two words: Ron DeSantis. I'm not faulting you in particular, but anyone who expects a state to have even a vaguely reasonable approach to monkeypox when it's headed by the asshole governor who did so much to drive Florida into the ditch over COVID isn't paying attention. As long as the main vector for the disease is same-sex personal encounters, I don't see Floriduh's health department responding with any urgency whatsoever.

I look at these things - growls, woofs, grrs, oinks, taps, whatever the site has - as the old-school bar equivalent of catching someone's eye across the room and nodding, or otherwise acknowledging that something about him caught your eye. I suppose one problem of "the apps" is that some people INSIST that the only reason to use them is to get laid and how DARE anyone reach out on them for ANY other purpose because you're WASTING my precious time so fuck you. Well, most such apps have an option where you can (a) post what you're looking for - and surprise! many of them offer choices other than "come fuck me right this minute" - and (b) describe what you're looking for and what terms you're looking under. Someone else's failure to utilize those means to convey a clear message about what they want does not constitute a requirement on my part to refrain from contacting them, even with the dreaded "oink" or whatever. If someone puts in his profile "I don't respond to oinks (growls, woofs, whatever)" then I abide by that. If someone puts in his profile "Only contact me if you want to come fuck me within 10 minutes of your first hello message", then I abide by that too. But if someone wants to get his panties all wadded up because he failed to do either of those things and then - OH MY FUCKING GOD - someone has the temerity to attempt to break the ice with the digital equivalent of that across-the-bar nod, I'm grateful, because that's someone I can immediately block with a clear conscience because he's a fuckhead. As for receiving them: I almost always reply. If I have no interest in the person after looking over his profile, but it's otherwise innocuous, I simply say "Thank you, that's kind of you." Most people can interpret that correctly. If I do have an interest, I thank the person AND either growl/oink/woof/whatever back, or just give the written equivalent. If the person's profile indicates he hasn't read mine (for instance, his clearly says he's only looking for single people and his only "Looking for" is "Partner/husband"), I point out that they really, really should learn to read a profile before expressing interest in someone that clearly isn't what they're looking for.

To the Civil War discussion, I'll add: sure, the North was becoming more economically powerful than the South, but that was only relevant insofar as what the North would DO with that power. And the biggest concern among the powers-that-were in the South was that the North's economic growth would result in more and more free states carved from the west, leading to the majority needed to abolish slavery nationwide. The South had long had power to block this because of the 3/5 compromise boosting Southern numbers in the House, but if newly admitted free states boomed in population, that advantage would erode. In other words, the economic dispute itself turned on slavery. And that's why (most of) the slave states seceded after Lincoln's election: he'd made it clear he did not believe the nation could endure "half slave, half free" - that "it will all one thing, or all the other." And the South knew the North would never, ever accept "all slavery". But far from taking my word for it: the surviving declarations of secession, from those states that formally adopted a resolution in favor of it, are crystal clear that preservation of slavery and white supremacy were the driving factors. Mechanization of agriculture, of course, would have made slavery too expensive to continue, and in any other context, slavery would have gone the way of whale oil lamps and buggy whips when confronted with superior technology. But unlike whale oil lamps and buggy whips, slavery and white supremacy was the very foundation of the social order in the south, and you couldn't simply replace slaves with machines without a massive upheaval in the social order. (In fact, one could argue that with the end of Reconstruction, the old social order was largely restored and it stayed in place until the middle of the 20th century).

The other problem I see with this map (beyond NM and Colorado) is that other areas are also changing. Virginia is shifting purple-blue (they have a Republican governor but the problem there is a bar on re-election to consecutive terms). Arizona and Georgia are also trending in that direction - perhaps not irrevocably, but both states have two elected Democratic US Senators, showing Democrats CAN win statewide in each state. The bigger issue, however, is setting a precedent that if enough wackadoo right-wingers take over a state's government, they can pull out of the Union. IF we had a "Dumbfuckistan" like the red areas of the map here, you can bet they'd write a Constitution without protections for the right to vote AT ALL, so that they could maneuver themselves into permanent power, such that even if a lot of liberals somehow settled in a red state, they'd never be able to vote out the nuts and rejoin America. BUT - having established that you can LEAVE the U.S. (the blue parts), Dumbfuckistan would be pushing people into the remaining blue states trying to flip them red, and then they'd argue that they have a right to leave, too, because Dumbfuckistan seceded and we let it go. That doesn't mean there would be reciprocity, since Dumbfuckistan would have weighted the vote in favor of straight white male Christians, so the U.S. would be under constant siege as they tried to take state after state. They might succeed with Michigan or Pennsylvania. Tempting and amusing as it is, this would be a disaster for the country as a whole.

No suggestions on the first question, as that's out of my wheelhouse. But as for the second: He's expressed that he's not comfortable with what you want him to do. It's (possibly) okay to mention it again, periodically, to see if he's changed his mind, but if he hasn't, after a couple of tries, you need to give that up. He's not a pet to be trained; he's an adult who has the capacity to make his own choices. Frankly, I can't think of something more likely to drive a couple apart than one partner nagging the other to do something he's made clear he doesn't want to do. That's not to say what you want is unreasonable per se; it's just that it's (probably) unreasonable *for him*. Dan Savage refers to this kind of disconnect between one partner's desires and the other partner's limits as "the price of admission". Each of you can set your own price of admission. His may be (at least in part) that you accept he's not going to be a cumdump. Yours might be that he has to agree to be one. But if those are the prices each of you sets, it would be pretty clear neither of you wants to pay the other's price of admission. You said "he is not interested" in this activity. So you have to decide whether you can accept having a primary partner who won't do that (perhaps coupled with having a secondary partner who WILL indulge that interest for you), OR whether you need a different primary partner.

Where did you get the statistic that 20% of people in Berlin are "gay males"? Given that male/female ratios in a given geographic area tend to be roughly 50/50, that would mean roughly 2 out of 5 men are gay. Seriously?

For those GOP apologists who were having apoplectic fits that we dared - DARED - suggest that Justice Thomas' view that people don't have a right to birth control was a harbinger of the GOP's position: The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to guarantee under statutory law that, in fact, Americans have a right to access contraception and that it can't be prohibited by the states. Guess what the vote was? 228 to 195. All 195 votes AGAINST a right to contraception came from Republicans. Only 8 Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats. State legislatures are filled with wackadoo Republicans who will vote to ban or require things in line with their personal beliefs at the drop of a hat. If this many congressional Republicans are willing to let states do that, just imagine what states would do if the Supreme Court lets them - and with Barrett, Alito, and Kavanaugh on board, all they have to do is convince either Gorsuch or Roberts. It's closer than you think.

(To the mods: I hope this stays in the public area and is not moved to the Backroom Chem sex forum, since the whole point is this guy does NOT want to become, in his words, "a drug addicted cumslut". To that end, I think responses urging him to give into this should be removed because that kind of discussion DOES belong in the Chem sex forum.) Tough love time. If you do not want to end up a drug addict, stop with the meth and get rehab, whether it's outpatient or inpatient. The fact that you haven't used in a long time means zero if you are not dealing with the underlying urges. I know there is a significant number of guys who use all sorts of party drugs in conjunction with sex, but frankly, most of the ones I've met have been lousy fucks. That may mean avoiding certain environments where drug use is common. Given that you're already aware of the seductive nature of the drugs, if you don't want to get hooked, it's easier to just keep it out of your life rather than try to be around it without partaking. Stay on PrEP. You don't have to switch to condom sex in order to prevent HIV. You do have to take PrEP according to the directions - either daily, or in advance of AND after planned sex. If you go for the non-daily schedule, you can't find yourself ready to get fucked and suddenly remember you haven't taken a PrEP dose, swallow it quickly, and get to fucking. It takes some time to spread through your system and HIV, if the top is infectious, may beat PrEP to the punch. Otherwise, yes, PrEP is as close to foolproof as it gets. Not perfect - there are rare, occasional cases where it fails - but those are very, very rare. Accept that if you do continue BB sex, you are going to have other STIs from time to time. My experience is that drug addicts have more of them (partly because so many of them stop caring about treating them) and if you stick to sober sex with sober partners, that alone may reduce your risk somewhat. But nothing is foolproof.

True. It would be for the best, ASSUMING another Democrat can win. That's not a certainty. And the rematch may (see below) be critical. Mainly, I think it's because he needs the money. He's learned that billions flow through right-wing politics every cycle, and he's learned how to tap into it. As long as he's the face of the GOP, everyone from DC thinktanks to PACs to state senators and representatives seek his endorsement and spend money at his properties. When you can charge people $10 a pop for basic bottled water and $600 a night for rooms in his resorts, the revenue can make the difference between losing money and making a profit. And as long as he's a candidate, he can raise money via donations and then divert it to pay legal expenses (of which he's got a lot and of which he'll have a lot more in the future). He could still try to fundraise to pay those expenses if he weren't a candidate, but his followers believe he's a multibillionaire, so why would they give him money if they knew up front it was only going to pay his lawyers? Right now, they assume the money's going towards getting him back into the White House. Finally, the DOJ position is that they generally don't make public statements about investigations into declared candidates and they don't do anything (or they're not supposed to do anything) close to an election that might sway voters (a guideline they pointed ignored in 2016 with Clinton). Trump seems to think (mistakenly) that as soon as he declares, he's off limits to the DOJ. He'll learn that isn't the case. As for that rematch: the problem is this. If it's Biden against, say, DeSantis or Cruz, the Republican might win - not because they're more popular, but because the red tilt in the electoral college means turnout in swing states for the Democratic candidate is critical, and if Biden fails to inspire Dems in Wisconsin and Michigan, and the GOP candidate gets out the vote for the challenger, the GOP could well take the presidency. If it's Biden against Trump, Biden would probably win again, because the GOP is souring (significantly) on Trump at the moment. A lot of those voters will come home to the GOP if Trump is the nominee, but there's a growing number of GOP voters would would just vote third party or stay home, even if they couldn't vote for Biden. If it's Trump vs. some other Democrat, that becomes more of a tossup, because Biden (for all his faults) was a known quantity in 2020. He had high name recognition, people generally liked him even if they didn't like the Democratic party, and he wasn't Trump. That last will boost any Democratic nominee, but some Democrats could beat Trump, and some can't. Finally, there's the possibility that neither Biden nor Trump is his party's nominee (the least likely, but most problematic, situation of the bunch). If a well-known Republican like DeSantis is running against a Democratic nominee who is either divisive within the party (too centrist or too leftist), or who motivates the GOP to turn out in opposition (see: Clinton), or who fails to motivate the base, a Republican could win with a bigger margin than Trump did.

Fwiw, at least for now, some portions of the Constitution DO apply to non-citizens. The Court has held that absent a qualifying adjective, "person" means all persons, citizen or not, and in general, any provisions of criminal law in the constitution apply to all persons. As do First Amendment rights, for that matter. Of course the current regime might well ditch that precedent at some point. Interestingly, because SCOTUS has held the Second Amendment confers an individual right to possess a firearm to "people", some federal courts are holding that restrictions on undocumented immigrants possessing firearms are unconstitutional. (Felons can be prohibited from firearm possession as that flows from their conviction with, one presumes, due process.)

To be fair, I think the OP here *IS* implicating his Fifth Amendment rights (conceptually speaking; they obviously don't apply to private companies). Because he sure as shit is waiving his right to testify against himself.

I'll point out a few things that might be relevant in some of these cases. First is the average length of a porn scene vs. the average length of a typical sex act. In my experience, the latter is almost always shorter than the former (with some notable exceptions in cases of excellent stamina). Back in the heyday of gay porn studio productions, an average scene lasted between 10 and 15 minutes, in order to have 4 or 5 scenes fill between an hour and 90 minutes of videotape. The physical medium constraints are long gone but people still want to have lengthy scenes (in my experience), and that means cutting and splicing the action so that it looks like it's longer than it actually was. That wouldn't require sharp cuts, but (second) you're also dealing with a generation that grew up with fast-shifting video games from early childhood; it's been remarked on that music video (are those still a thing?) editing also took a turn towards dramatic swoops, fast cuts, and the like. My guess is that's done a number on people's attention spans. And third, old style porn had camera operators who understood what they were doing. Because porn films had a larger budget then (nobody spends a dime on something they're planning to put on OF/JFF), so they could block shots ahead of time, make sure that mirrors didn't reflect the camera, that lighting eliminated shadows from the equipment, and all that. Those operators understood how to use the camera without having to rely on gimmicks. The majority of porn today is amateur, not professional, but some amateurs want to stand out from the crowd, and I think some of them have a strange idea of what makes them look "professional". The idea seems to be "attempt to do something dramatic" and it will have "artistic vision".

Kinda hard to be a "start" when the OP made clear it's also "the end". (Not that I object to one-part stories, just pointing out that people expecting more will be disappointed.)

If by "anything else" you mean a sexually transmitted infection, the rules on that (which went into effect more than a year ago) are crystal clear. The reasoning behind them - which you may or may not agree with - are also spelled out here: This post appears at the very top of the Backroom section, and if "READ THIS!" isn't sufficient to get someone to actually read the rules, I'm not sure what else the site owner could do. Regardless, your ire is misplaced. The moderators enforce the rules laid down at the top. The site owner, who makes the rules, has made his position clear on this. Complaining and mocking the moderator who gave an infraction is childish and unproductive.

As long as you stay on PrEP, and keep on top of any other STI's you may acquire (and you should be getting tested for them, even if you've always "expected" your partners to be "ddf"), then you should be fine.

Actually, the odds, as you describe them, might be elevated in your case, at least for the combo. Not sure whether this is your first Herpes infection, or an outbreak of an existing, ongoing infection, but even if the latter, that can dampen your immune system (because it's fighting the herpes outbreak either way). That can leave you susceptible to other infections, like strep, which you might otherwise be able to fend off. Or, even if you're on meds and undetectable, your system is still constantly dealing with HIV; and the meds themselves are quite possibly, albeit slowly, taking a toll on other bodily processes. That, too, can lower your overall defenses just enough that in combination with the herpes infection or outbreak, you were vulnerable to the strep as well.

That's very possibly correct. When I looked it up trying to figure it out, I got lots of other possibilities, mostly non-sexual - which suggests to me that it might not be readily recognizable the way BBBH is. I don't know of any alternative meaning for BBBH, so I think it would be recognizable by most people for whom it was relevant.

BBBH does not have a graphic symbol per se, as far as I know. I have seen promotions where they are seeking to have people tattoo the hashtag #BBBH on their bodies. I have no idea what RIL stands for.

You're right - these are the same idiots who thought a grifter con artist who ran multiple companies into the ground and who squandered a multi-hundred-million dollar inheritance on projects pampering his ego but hemorrhaging cash was a business genius who nonetheless cared about the common people's concerns.

I think that may be because of the increased visibility of sports championship rings and the decreased appeal of university/college rings, both over the last 3 decades or so. As for the latter: I think the increased physical mobility of the college-educated classes in the U.S. over the past three or four decades has reduced their significance. When a large portion of the graduating class of a particular college stayed in the same region for work (and tended to stay for a lifetime until retirement), other graduates of the college would recognize the ring, and it served as a kind of starting point for conversation (which class were you in? Did you have professor X?). And it helped distinguish college grads from non-grads, so it also served as kind of a class distinction. Once people started moving around the country for careers, and doing so multiple times over a working life, the value of such a ring declined significantly, because a UCLA ring would go unrecognized in Atlanta or Nashville or Salt Lake City, just like a Columbia ring wouldn't be identifiable on sight in Seattle or Dallas. Also of note: with the dramatic rise in tuition costs over the last 30-odd years, class rings may well be an expense few people are eager to take on, especially with student loans pending.