Coffee is highly personal, I agree. The comment above reminded me of a friend though, a very woke social worker, highly anti exploitation and pro environment. You get the point. She did hand filter, but like… Putting 5 spoons in and then just splashing boiling water over it so that the water hardly even touched the coffee because it just whooshed to the sides. Her coffee was… Brownish water. It was so light, if it were driving in the US, it wouldn’t have been racially profiled. She liked it that way and while it was not drinkable for me, it’s fine, she likes it, but it was just such a waste. It took a lot of careful phrasing to point it out to her that, you do you, but you are wasting coffee (which is, after all, ethically, socially and environmentally quite complicated to say the least) and you could get the same strength/result with like 1/5th of the coffee you use. She is still rather grateful for your coffee needs… more love and has now diverted to more conscious coffee making.

I also bring this up in people who get overly defensive about their (excessive) meat consumption. I hear the argument that we evolved to eat meat and they want to eat a “natural” diet and this involves eating chicken breast and steak every day.

I mean don’t get me wrong, I also eat meat sometimes, but I do realize that there is no good reason to do so. Indeed it is hypocritical of me, knowing how it is both bad for the environment and morally wrong to kill an animal for my consumption when I can get all the nutrients in it from elsewhere, be it “natural” via food choices or “synthetic” via supplements. Because sure as fuck it’s also not natural to have cooked pasta with brussel sprouts, tomato sauce, a grotesquely large chicken breast, with a dessert of blueberries and yoghurt in the wintertime. Like, just own it. Just admit there is no good reason other than I like it and that the choice is very self serving.

And yes, bring on the GMOs.

I got a follow up question to the biblical academic consensus - where do you get that from? I mean literally, since I always wanted to kind of read the bible with these kinds of interpretations, but I absolutely don’t know where to go for a source like this. Any tips?

I was like your daughter. Between like 5 and 15, I’ve tried so many different things. And while I sometimes had troubles admitting that I lost interest in something - especially when I knew the thing was expensive, like keyboard lessons - I am hella glad I got to try out so many things with no strings attached. It’s not even about committing to something or getting burned out. It’s just, man, life is short and now I am 33 and I just wouldn’t have the time or energy or motivation or money to try out everything I did as a kid. Karate and ballroom dancing and hiphop dancing and tennis and drawing and violin and ice skating and crafting - some things stayed for just a tryout, some for half a year or a year, some interests stayed for years. I’m so happy that I don’t have any hobby FOMO nowadays. I’m super grateful that my parents let me try out all of these things. (Also all the sports despite me sucking at sports like crazy. Except for all the dancing, that I rocked.)

That’s a good point, but in my opinion the other common deaths are way worse. Cancer? Living with the anxiety of impending death and constantly getting sicker, more in pain and being nauseous from medication? Or COPD, feeling like you are suffocating slowly? Alzheimers, Parkinsons? Or my personal fear - dying from a stupid simple cold? Man, I take a heart attack any day of the week.

No, the people you mentioned are fine. I think it is something with the nose-chin-cheek combo that I find appalling.

For Jennifer Lawrence it’s a separate thing, we have many similar features (like fat cheeks and hooded eyes) and it creeps me out too much and I get insecure watching her. I keep thinking how weird I must look and reevaluate my makeup the whole time, it’s too stressful.

I also have a thing where I can’t stop thinking of rooster anuses whenever I see Kevin Bacon (his mouth).

I want to emphasize that none of this is meant in a mean spirited way and those people are beautiful the way they are. It’s my brain that makes these associations and I very much disapprove of them.

I have that face thing with Patrick Swayze and Meryl Streep. And the girl from Dirty Dancing. I am working on getting over Jennifer Lawrence’s face. All these people are surely somewhat good actors but there is something about their faces that I cannot stand and it makes it impossible for me to focus on the plot. I just made it through Silver Linings Playbook today, finally, it was hard but I am glad I managed, Lawrence did a good job and I forgot about her face for almost 30% of the time. One day I will manage to watch more than 15 minutes of Dirty Dancing.

WHAT DOES THE BLACK MOONFACE MEAN

I ask my spouse all the time and he just replies with another black moonface

I still can’t believe that we went from 16 years of stillstand under CDU to finally some progress under SPD-Grüne-FDP, just for it to be sabotaged by Merz with his stupid lawsuit, which then got FDP into their anal power play and somehow Lindner managed to make his solely Lindner focussed politics even more solely Lindner focussed, and then collectively decided yeah, that government didn’t solve world hunger, injustice, climate change and international wars within 3 years, fuck them, let’s go back to CDU.

And now Spahn, that fuckface, is Fraktionsvorsitzender. This means de facto he will be chancellor down the road. That AfD ballsucking fucktard. Watching the world burn for personal political gain. (Also looking at you, Amthor.)

I never played princess. I always wanted to play queen. Married, mature and with power, sounded like a much better deal.

My alcohol addiction

Gravity affects the booty too. Well thought through graphic

I will proceed to check out the national anthem of Djibouti and the state anthem of Mississippi. I might be back with some questions.

When I was in elementary school I tried to start a protest during the break by getting on the desk and proclaiming that we need to stop the discrimination of the middle finger, it is a finger like the others and should be allowed to stand on its own just like the other fingers. Needless to say I held up my middle fingers during that passionate speech. I was also very sincere about it, not emotional, but I did find it unjust. I’m not sure where I am going with this but it was weighing on my chest for too long and needed to get out finally. Thanks for reading.

People have already pointed out the legal and financial aspects. But I also want to address the philosophical aspect of your question, which I think you had in mind. And I think the answer I would give you is this one:

Marriage has the meaning that you assign to it.

I strongly believe that if we got rid of any legal and financial benefits of marriage, even if we made it explicitly illegal, there would still be a bunch (or even a lot) of people who would get married.

I would compare it to a house fire. If my house was burning (and there were no living beings in it) and I could save 5 things, what would I save? What would you save? I would take, for example, my favorite soft toy from when I was a kid, and my old box filled with diaries. Is this worth any money? No. Does it have any value? To me, it does. To you, it doesn’t. Maybe you are a very rational person that isn’t attached to anything (or to nothing material) and you would indeed make the smartest choices, saving your passport and documents and money. Maybe you would save a small gift that someone important has given you. Maybe you would save the first guitar you ever bought. You save whatever has value and meaning to you. And these things have solely the meaning and value that you have attached to it.

Likewise, people have different value and meaning attached to marriage. If you look at it from a rational, logical side - it has its legal and financial perks and benefits and if they weren’t there, getting married would make no sense. But things don’t have to make sense. The meaning we assign to rituals, things, concepts, aren’t necessarily rational. They are, however, deeply personal.

So, as a side note, please beware of ridiculing people for their views on marriage or weddings, just like you wouldn’t want to ridicule or belittle someone for other things that mean a lot to them. Always sharing the last piece of bread. Always giving a coin to a homeless person. Having a breakfast for 30 minutes every morning. A good night kiss on the nose from their partner. Drawing a dick in the first snow of the winter. Some things mean a lot to people even if they do not rationally make sense.

In the case of marriage, of course, some of the meaning comes from culture, history, and tradition. Marriage might have had different purposes than it has now, and surely the origins weren’t that romantic. (Not saying, however, that marriage has to be romantic.) But it is there. It is important to some people simply because they have, at some point in their life, decided it is important for some reasons, rational or irrational, social, cultural, and hopefully personal too. To them, it makes sense, it has meaning, it has value. And whatever marriage or a wedding ceremony mean - you decide.

So the question you should be asking is not whether or not you should get married, it is what marriage means to you. Does it have any benefit or value in your eyes? Are the legal benefits enough for you to get married? What is your stance on divorce? Do you feel like you would get “closer together” with your partner? Would you feel it would make things harder to separate? There are a ton on questions like these that you can ask yourself, I hope you get the jist. There are not right or wrong answers. The only thing that is important is that the meaning you assign to marriage is (about) the same as the meaning your partner assigns to marriage. You can both not care about a spiritual meaning, but just get married for the benefits. You can both be a type of “whatever happens, we don’t get divorced, til death do us part”. You can be “we’ll keep reevaluating whether we still belong together”. You can also be “we get married because we have children and this is practical”. Or “we get married because I am hot and you are rich and when one of us loses their asset we split”. Or “we just want a fancy huge ass party to show our love in this very moment and celebrate it with our friends and whatever comes afterwards is secondary”. It doesn’t matter what your view is, it matters that you guys agree.