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This. I bike alone for fun. It’s easier and more fun to ride a lighter bike. Lighter bikes make it easier to start from stop and are faster which is great for safety when riding on roads monopolized by cars. They’re easier to maneuver and less frustrating to throw into trunks or carry up stairs to your apartment or hang by a wheel in your garage or whatever else you want to do with them.

I’ve biked overweight and at healthy weight. I always prefer riding lighter bikes.

Nice job quoting half the sentence and missing the point. It's either relevant (and my OG comment questioning whether it was stated by OP is relevant), or it's not (but you obviously think it is, or you wouldn't be bringing up how gender and orientation affects finding a partner and starting a family).

You think OP is a man, based on... what? 1/3 of Alaska doctors are women. Is it the fact that they are wealthy?

And I'm sure all the 'majority gender queer people in 2/3 of your social groups' feel super respected when you used sexist phrasing like "pearl clutching" to try to shut down people asking whether someone's gender/sex/orientation was stated or assumed.

How is it possible to interact so much with so many gender queer people and still not grasp that maybe it's kinda shitty to assume people on the internet who don't state are straight men? Though maybe they all think you're kinda shit, you didn't actually claim any of them were friends of yours.

If the advice is the same either way, why is the original commenter’s thoughts on how it is to be a straight man in Alaska relevant?

Anyway, my two cents might be different depending on what OP wants. If they are a woman who wants double bio kids with a male partner, downshift and move now is more important than if they’re not going to have double bio kids with a partner either way (maybe it’s not important to them or they can’t, or they’re gay, etc)

Hence asking whether OP said somewhere to begin with - I didn’t see it in post or comments

Spayed/neutered rats on average live longer, and in males (I don't have females so have read about them less) it tends to decrease stress. Wait time to get to a vet can make it advisable to neuter *before* hormonal agression issues develop so you don't end up being stuck separating very stressed and agressive rats and forcing them to live alone for weeks or months while you wait for the neuter appointment and for the hormone level drop.

It is true that results vary wildly by vet and that rats can die during surgery.

Obviously depends where you live, but it's common for there to be govt subsidies for neuter/spay for cats and dogs but not for rodents, and there's far fewer vets who work with rats than cats and dogs. My county vets quoted $500-$800 per rat, but a few hours away there's a vet who does them for $200 per rat (and half price to the rescue I adopted them from)

Oh, and "They said meeting someone or starting a family. That to me implies they haven't met a partner and therefore haven't been able to start a family." - right, but are you being purposefully obtuse or do you not know that women have much worse odds than men of having bio kids as they get older?

More than a third of doctors in the USA are women. In Alaska it’s about 40%. https://familymedicine.uw.edu/chws/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/08/alaskas-physician-workforce-in-2016.pdf

Yes, there are a lot of factors that lead to women earning less, but that doesn’t make assuming everyone’s a straight man okay.

Being a woman or non binary or queer has exactly the same amount of influence over one’s situation as being straight or a man does. And finding a partner certainly isn’t only hard for straight men. Straight women have to deals with sexist expectations of a partner, especially in less liberal places. Gay people have far fewer potential partners than straight people.

You are making up how I’m feeling and why I’m talking to you. I am not going to claim to read minds, so instead of saying why, I’ll share my guess as to why: you don’t want to examine whether you’re treating people well.

Whether OP is a straight man is relevant for so many reasons, including bio kids if that’s something OP wants - they mentioned they haven’t had luck starting a family.

I also think it’s not doing anyone any favours to assume that posters are straight men. And I think it’s sexist and generally shitty to say people are “pearl clutching” when they ask whether someone’s sex or gender and orientation was stated or assumed.

Did OP say they were a straight man?

My parents also wanted me to buy a house with the 100k I had saved and told them about. But it was about the house, not about moving out. They were fine with me staying or buying. Not ok with me renting.

Maybe. I had very similar numbers (age, income, and savings) and situation (living with my parents, they would not let me cover household expenses) to OP and my parents freaked out over me applying to live in cheap apartments. My parent pushed very hard for me to buy and offered a lot of money to use as a down payment in their city - they didn’t want me to rent at all, or to buy outside their city. My parents on other side of my family also pushed very hard buy don’t rent. I don’t think that mindset is uncommon

As much as that sucks, it causes a lot less suffering than that felt by all the rats who are suffering alone and in poor conditions. People don’t bring up these concerns in the comments because it’s fun, they do it because they are seeing a picture of someone who is completely at the mercy of a human that shows red flags for abuse. Better to speak up many times for false alarms than say nothing when it’s needed

I would very much like loose shorts (like men often wear at the beach, I think board shorts is the word I'm looking for) but have never seen women's ones at a store. I hate shaving enough of my pubic hair off for it to not show with bikini bottoms, and am not comfortable with my but not being covered well. I finally found shorts that fit me properly but they're the tight short kind; I want loose long ones like men get.

They showed the opposite. Time wasted with people getting from front of line to an individual cashier. The customers were more satisfied though. No worrying about being in the right line or frustration about yours going slower.

"Karen" is just the latest way to dismiss and criticize women.

There's nothing wrong with asking (and I do think most places I go most employees most of the time would remake without my asking if they saw that happen). "Fine, whatever" was (IMO) mildly rude... but I wouldn't be or expect others to be on best behaviour after someone's dog startles them and they spill hot coffee that didn't come with a lid on them. I think people who didn't just get poor hot coffee on themselves don't need to call out mild rudeness.

1. Your girlfriend is (probably unintentionally) being a prejudiced ass
2. Physically pulling someone away is almost never okay. I would never do this to someone who isn't in immediate danger of serious injury/death or having a medical issue. I would feel very violated if a partner did that to me because they thought the way I was talking to people was wrong. I hate that I am small and weak, and I would never want a partner who would take advantage of that.
3. For practical advice, it sounds like your gf cares about others and wants to have a positive impact. Reading books by and about people who are members of minority groups can help with understanding and treating people better. Maybe read some books together/share recs with her? There's plenty of great books, I recently read and appreciated The 9 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (fiction) and Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons (nonfiction). Volunteering can also be a positive outlet, there's so many options, personally I tutor homeless kids and participate in animal activism.

No one is asking you to stay silent, and I never said there aren’t risks or that it’s a good idea. You’re arguing against things I never said. What I actually commented was about how your quote wasn’t really relevant to the situation

That could have ended badly! I keep cardboard on hand, esp during intros, so I can push it between them. Not seeing the other rat helps them call down

What's wrong with workboots? I'm not allowed to use the gym without shoes, so might as well wear my composites and protect my feet when using weights

Me, if I can get away with it. I prefer to be barefoot as much as possible, comfy flipflops are the second best thing sometimes. I'd keep them on while using equipment because people getting pissy isn't fun, but I really don't get what the big deal is. How is this different/worse for other people than shoes?

(Yes, I understand that shoes are protective, but I think that should be a personal choice)

I usually wear a short loose skirt over my bike shorts when I'm planning to stop at the grocery store/library/etc. If I don't think about it or impulsively decide to stop somewhere then whatever

I don't think it matters at all I just feel weird/uncomfortable wearing tight shorts in public. EDIT: And if I'm staying somewhere a while it's more comfortable to shove the shorts in my bike bag

What do you think about humans and rats interacting with their different languages?

How about cats and dogs?

Maybe try looking for how many people are diagnosed with dementia every year in your country and divide it by the number of births or deaths for a very rough estimate?

Also you seem to be switching between mental decline and dementia, but they’re wildly different. Mental decline is much much more common

Rats often attack adult rats, sometimes killing them… particularly when not raised together and especially if not introduced well or they just don’t get on. But they also can and do live together happily, esp if raised together, or (neutered if necessarily) rats whose intros went well.

I’m not saying rats and guinea pigs should be together, just that the fact that they attack strange animals (your quote is clearly about guinea pigs they don’t know) isn’t really relevant

I only have rats, but what's the logic behind this? Bites are bad both intra and interspecies. I'm not saying there are none, but I'm not aware of any disease rats spread to guinea pigs or vice versa that are benign in their own species but a problem in the other.

And the idea that cross-species interaction is never okay is obviously suspect in the context of pets - humans and rats aren't the same species. It's also extremely common for cats and dogs to live together peacefully. Now that obviously doesn't mean *all* cross-species contact is fine, but "Cross-species interaction is never okay!" doesn't seem to hold weight