BootmanLA

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.

I can't advise you on whether to temporarily give up BB sex or not. However, I will note that I've been getting a fair amount of feedback from FTL area friends and acquaintances that monkeypox IS being discussed down there, and the community is well aware of it. As was the case with HIV in the very early days, the community is filling in with information resources where the media is letting things fall through the cracks. And so "local" information is more readily available in areas with dense populations of LGBT people, which gives FTL an advantage over Tampa/St. Pete. Unfortunately, awareness doesn't equate to vaccine availability, and that's going to be governed in part by the politics you referenced.

Because it's not that simple? Because there's a difference between, say, a president who actively is trying to undermine civil rights in this country and who appointed three justices to the Supreme Court to carry out that mission (one to a seat stolen from the previous president, one who actively lied during a deliberately botched FBI investigation into his background, and one rammed into the Court only a few weeks before said president was resoundingly rejected by the people), and a president who is facing obstruction to his entire agenda from the opposition party? I can explain the difference between being unable to overcome resistance to doing good things, on the one hand, and actively trying to harm people, on the other hand, to you. I can't understand it for you. But yes - many of us DO call out the present administration for its missteps. Here's an example. Trump weaponized the judicial appointment system beyond the SCOTUS nominations, with the GOP ignoring the home-state "blue slip" approval process for appellate court judges (who are the final arbiters of virtually all federal cases, since only a handful get to the Supreme Court). Coupled with the blockade on approving Obama appointees during his last two years, that gave Trump and the GOP a huge advantage in packing the appellate courts with right-wing judges. When Biden took office, he was in a position to at least somewhat balance that. But he's refused to encourage older federal appellate judges appointed by Democrats to step down (which would create a vacancy he could fill with a younger judge, who would serve a lot longer than the 70 or 80 year old she's replacing). He's not been in a particular rush to appoint judges in red states, which runs the risk that those seats will be open when/if the Senate changes hands to the GOP and thus blocked from getting filled. He was caught trying to cut a deal with Mitch McConnell to have the GOP stop blocking some district federal judicial appointees (they're currently blocked with unfavorable "blue slips") in exchange for agreeing to appoint a right-wing anti-abortion lawyer to a federal judgeship in Kentucky, and the Democrats have been uniformly furious with him over that. He's now committed to not nominating that person. That's just one example, but yes, we do hold Biden accountable when he's making wrong decisions about the future of the country. What we don't do is blame him for things outside his control. No president - not Biden, not Trump, not Obama, not Bush, none of them - have control, or even much influence, over gasoline prices at the pump. Yet GOP supporters invariably trot out the "Why are gas prices so high this summer?" in every Democratic administration, even though it also happens in Republican ones, because they see it as a winning issue for the economically illiterate. It's amazing how silent they've gotten now that gas pump prices have been falling steadily for five weeks. And those same economically illiterate people who are blaming him for inflation never seem to notice that inflation is, right now, a global problem, not a US problem. It's global because the factors that are driving it - chiefly labor shortages, supply chain issues, and pandemic recovery - are global issues as well, and inflation is an issue for right-wing governments, centrist governments, left-wing governments, coalition governments, and completely dysfunctional messes of governments. But the GOP again thinks it's got a winning issue by whining that a Coke that cost $1.75 last summer is now $2. You are free to blame the current administration, of course, for anything you want, including gas prices, inflation, or a toenail fungus. That doesn't actually make them responsible for any of the above, of course.

That's something you'd have to take up with him, I suspect.

If so, that's a new one on me. I'm old-school, as you know, so I come from an era when men would wear a wedding ring, if applicable (and if he chose one - I knew men who opted not to get one), and then on the other hand, one ring of another type - a class ring (high school or college), a signet ring, a fraternal/Masonic ring, or something like that. But the general gist was, one ring max per hand. Anything else was considered gaudy or froo-froo. Women had a tad more leeway in terms of a wedding band and an engagement ring both on the left, and a single "other" ring on the right. More than that was tacky. I'm as happy as anyone to toss toxic masculinity conventions aside, but it's still jarring to see guys with two, three, or four rings on a single hand.

All the same apply.

I wouldn't say "one culture in particular" as much as it's probably more common, in general, in cultural groups that practice sex shaming and repression. Because if you convince kids from an early age that we don't talk about sex openly at all, they're reluctant to tell people what's going on. And if you shame sex enough, you can also convince the kids that it's their own fault for leading the adult into this behavior. That said, some insular cultures almost expect couples to be related - cousins, for instance - in order to maintain purity of the bloodlines. Not necessarily first cousins (that is, children of siblings) but more distant ones - certainly. Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband, Prince Phillip, were cousins, as were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

I'm just going to throw out my periodic reminder that "should" is one of the most useless words in the English language, at least insofar as how many people use it. All these high and mighty princesses decreeing that a bottom "should" do this or that, just make me roll my eyes.

Indeed, vaccines are in short supply. In Louisiana, for instance, we have received 1,000 doses for the entire state, and the Dept. of Health has decided to use them for people who have had actual exposure to a confirmed case, at least for now.