I’ve started noticing birds, and worse, I’ve started recognizing them.

My favorite MMO is Guild Wars 2. While it certainly has grind available, it doesn’t require it to play the content. It genuinely respects your time and understands people have lives outside of gaming, and tries to give a lot of options for ways to progress so you can focus on content you enjoy. There’s a lot of communities, guilds and activities to do with others. You can join 5 guilds at once, if for instance you wanted to join a group of friends, a big guild that does events together, another one that does raids, another based on your identity or location etc.

It kind of throws you into the deep end when you start, and suffers from layers upon layers of developed complexity thanks to add-ons and content updates over the years, but for a certain type of person it will really click. It’s free to try so you might as well see if you like it.

As someone who is demi and married, it was a lot of hard work to find what I was looking for. It was not something I was able to achieve organically out meeting people via a hobby or something. The dating pool is shallow and small for aces, tiny if one is rural. I was determined and persistent because it was important to me, and it still took me about 6 years of consistent effort to find the right relationship for me. I do not blame anyone for just opting out of trying.

I see, I didn’t interpret that paragraph that way

you deserve the full range of the human experience.

Please remember that if someone is sex repulsed or doesn’t feel sexual desire that this is a weird thing to say. There are so many things humans can experience, with varying degrees of joy and pleasure, sex is not in some special category of “required in order to be human”. From my perspective if someone hasn’t had a perfectly ripe mango they haven’t had the full range of human experience, but some people don’t like mangos.

I didn’t see anything in her posts that implied she wanted a higher libido or that she saw her lack of sexual desire as an issue in her day to day life. I did see her say she might like intimate human connection but that’s perfectly possible without sex. I think we might both be doing some projection, as yes I am sensitive to people who recommend seeing a doctor when someone describes what its like to be ace, but also you seem to assume having sex is a prerequisite to having an intimate relationship with someone.

It’s not.

Aces exist, there is nothing wrong with not feeling sexual desire or attraction. If it doesn’t upset her or effect her life in a way she doesn’t like then she doesn’t need medical intervention.

As someone who is demi and has lived many years at a time as essentially ace, it’s frustrating to hear people consistently downplay asexuality as a physical ailment. No, some people are just like this, it’s as valid an orientation as any other.

I haven’t watched much standup for a while but even I’ve heard of Hannah Gadsby, so they must be decently well known at this point.

It can be a healthy way to have a relationship as long as you’re honest with your partners. Don’t promise them the moon and eternal love. Don’t lie about your intentions. Keep up with STD testing and use protection obviously.

There are people out there looking for friends with benefits and are happy to find a regular partner who respects consent, takes feedback and is a known quantity. There are also aromantic people out there who are happy to have a purely physical relationship. There’s someone for everyone. Finding that kind of relationship might have its challenges but the internet helps with that at least.

Tanned arms, skinned knees, bug bites
Summer leaves its mark

Be grateful, I tell myself But the longing doesn’t listen

You might not be identifying reasonable feminists then, because the “men are trash” ones are more visible. You’re probably surrounded by feminists and encountering them all the time, but unless you’re asking them their stance about reproductive rights or equality in parental leave or something else in conversation you wouldn’t know it.

I imagine for OP it was a bit like picking up a salve for a rash in the pharmacy and realizing it says “homeopathic remedy” on the side.

Faith in others or trust in others has absolutely nothing to do with thinking there’s an invisible, ultra powerful person just chilling somewhere in space just because someone wrote a book about it 2000 years ago.

Is the fear of hell or divine retribution the only thing keeping you from doing things that harm others? Yikes.

Why do you fear Batman?

You’d have to, like, add a whole other layer to the inside or outside

That is, actually what they do, by my understanding. If the house isn’t brick, then when you need to replace the siding they will actually put an entirely new layer of sheathing on over the outside, something like Zip R that has poly-iso foam insulation and acts as an air barrier. They then can put siding back on that fits the original look of the house, hopefully using architectural elements and details that were saved from teardown.

Another way is to go from the inside, and rip out the walls to the studs while saving trim pieces and put in new insulation and replace the horsehair plaster with drywall. Then you’ll be dealing with special ordering non-standard modern double glazed windows in weird sizes, because if you wanted to use the standard window sizes you can’t use your beautiful old growth mahogany trim pieces lovingly carved for your whacky leaky windows.

The attic is often not that bad to insulate because there should be relatively few cut-ins and blown in cellulose can go everywhere, but then you miss out on your perfect gothic “Wednesday’s room” unless you want to spend even more money trying to figure out how to get all of those turret towers and vaulting and weird rooflines into your envelope.

Yes, I’ve thought about this scenario lol.

I’ve lived in New England most of my life, and most other posters have covered the major points. One I would add is that the weather IS getting more extreme here, and we are now getting things like tornados and worse hurricanes. It’s not anything like as bad as other places in the US but climate change is definitely effecting this area too. I would watch out for where you end up being a decent elevation, and give any bodies of water a good amount of space, no houses or apartments right on the edge of a river. There was an unprecedented flood that hit Leominster and Fitchburgh MA not long ago that shocked a lot of people because the region had never experienced something like it. That will probably be happening more often in the coming years.

An antique Victorian or Queen Anne house. I love the towers, the gingerbread charm, the corbels and fascias and all the little crinkly bits. The rich old wood interiors with tin ceilings and plaster medallions, hand carved staircases and crown mouldings.

However I am never going to be able to afford the absurd cost of retrofitting one to be energy efficient, and I know the quirks of odd room sizes, antiquated floor plans and non-standard sized things like weird door heights and window widths would drive me absolutely insane. So I’ll admire them from afar

If you can spare a spa day once every couple of months, you can try sugar waxing at home. The smoothness lasts way longer than shaving and it’s more gentle on the skin (and easier to clean) than normal waxing. After a few years of that my hair stopped growing back on my calves, and I haven’t had to shave there in a long time.

“Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.”

From Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, which is full of banger quotes