I’m a huge fan of Nabokov’s and have read Lolita several times… But I’ve never heard it described as horror before and you are so right! I guess before I’d have classified it as tragedy but horror fits so much better.

It’s basically a horror story told from the point of view of the monster.

The only “tragic love story” is maybe Dolores’ mother trying to warn the world about Humbert being a pedophile only to be hit by a car and killed, unable to save her daughter. Or maybe Dolores’ tragic battle to love herself and escape from all the men who want to take advantage of her.

Rowling with another steaming hot garbage pile of an opinion on sexual abuse, no surprise there. What an awful person.

Cisgender woman here, I just wanted to add that if my husband were to come out as trans, that would not be a tragedy or something I wished he’d gotten figured out sooner for my sake. In this hypothetical scenario, if it somehow managed to make us incompatible as married partners we’d deal with it but people have gotten divorced for much worse reasons before. The worst part for me would be worrying if he’d been miserable during our marriage, because I love him and would hate for that to be his experience of our time together.

It’s really hard to imagine because AFAIK we’re both cis but personally I’d probably prefer to stay married to my spouse even if he changed his gender identity. I mean he’s still the same person I married and we still love the same things and have a wonderful life and child together. I dunno, maybe it wouldn’t work out in the end but I sure as hell wouldn’t be mad at him for something he couldn’t change.

Anyways, my point is you don’t have to assume that your relationships with cis people will all get blown up if you do happen to be trans. I appreciate the urge to have your ducks all in a row before embarking on significant life events but the truth is that marriage and adulthood is super messy anyways. If you marry someone and have a kid with them the odds are good you will have all sorts of chaotic events to deal with- physical illnesses, mental illnesses, kid stress or illness, weight gain or loss, money trouble, job changes, changes in personality with age, the list goes on and on. The trick to being happily married is rolling with the changes, working hard at your partnership, and being committed to your partner, not having it all perfectly lined up at the start.

You’re not missing anything, people are just weird about it.

Also the person who named it “toilet-to-tap” is an idiot. Reclaimed water is “toilet to tap” in the same way that a vegetable grown in compost is “garbage to garden.” There’s a host of sophisticated engineering processes in between the two, making the water just as clean as any other treated drinking water.

Mixing with river water or putting the water in a reservoir and then pumping it back out again simply makes people feel more comfortable about it and, like you said, reduces the “ick” factor.

Trike! Or recumbent trike. Or an e-trike.

Get an ebike. It solves several of your cons at once.

No need to wear spandex or neon to ride on an ebike (or any bike honestly I bike everywhere and the only neon thing I own is my rain pants) just put lights on your bike and don’t dress all in black.

Can’t help you with the helmet, that one’s pretty important but there’s lots of nice looking helmets out there.

No getting sweaty on an ebike unless you want to, because you can crank the pedal assist if you’re starting to sweat.

Have literally never had an issue finding somewhere to park my bike. Sure have an issue finding car parking though. At the downtown garage I park at, cars are $20 an hour but bikes are free.

You’ll probably go faster than the cars if there’s lots of traffic. We’ve done a car vs bike race a few times when we had both starting the same place and going to the same place and the ebike always wins or is like 10 minutes behind at most.

Bluetooth speakers and transparent headphones both solve the music issue.

Many ebikes have extra cargo capacity, so grocery runs are easier. If you’ve got a large family then you might need a cargo bike or to rent a car periodically for large trips.

The only real downside imo is the weather if you live somewhere extremely cold/hot and the safety from riding near cars. The rest is easy to get over once you’re zipping down the road at 20mph getting those sweet, sweet biking endorphins.

Username checks out