Marriage is changing, from who can get married (37 states now allow gay marriage!) to who actually ends up doing it. Only 26% of millennials are married, a sharp decrease from 36% of Generation X and 48% of baby boomers, according to the Pew Research Center. But marriage isn't obsolete — in fact, in many ways it's thriving as we re-evaluate what the institution really means to us.

And with re-evaluating marriage comes re-evaluating weddings. The Knot's "2014 Real Weddings Study" found that couples are foregoing traditional wedding customs to modernize their nuptials through their choice of rings, dresses and officiants.

That includes — perhaps most importantly — the vows. Couples today are taking cues from badass brides like Amelia Earhart, who banned the word "obey" from her 1931 wedding vows, and reciting promises to one another that reflect the partnerships they strive for. Here are 12 real-life couples who vowed...

1. "To split the difference on the thermostat."

Why it's awesome: When Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston got married, Pitt pledged to "split the difference on the thermostat." While that partnership didn't last, as we all know, it was a lighthearted vow that highlights a crucial element of modern marriage: compromise. The key to a happy marriage is learning how to meet halfway.

2. "To be a true and loyal friend to you."

Why it's awesome: Marriages weren't always about intimate, caring partnerships between equals. But we know well enough now that the happiest, most long-lasting marriages are those in which partners see each other as friends (even studies have proven it true). Jevan's vows to Alithea, shared by the Knot, are a reminder that the bedrock of friendship is what makes a modern marriage stand.

3. "To communicate fully and fearlessly."

Why it's awesome: Among the traditional promise of partnership and faith, real-life couple Anne and Gabrielle told the Knot they vowed "to communicate fully and fearlessly" as spouses. In our modern world, we have seemingly endless ways to communicate — text, email, Skype, Snapchat — and yet still have to work to connect. Sitting down face-to-face, making eye contact and being vulnerable with one another is still crucial, as is being honest without fear of judgment from your partner. Emojis aside, that's what really sustains a lasting relationship.

4. "To grab your **** even when we're old and wrinkly."

Why it's awesome: As we become more open about sexuality (thank goodness), it's only natural that a wink and a nudge find their way into the wedding vows. In an open thread on A Practical Wedding, Zach and Kate shared their vows, which included the promise "to hit on you in awesome accents and grab your **** even when we're old and wrinkly." This promise to keep the spark alive even years down the line is no small thing. After all, studies have shown that all it can take is a simple touch to maintain a ****** connection.

5. "To value our differences as much as our common ground."

Why it's awesome: Love is a powerful force to bring people together, even when they're divided by cultural background, religion and, increasingly, politics. As society grows more divisive and we hold tight to our views, it's valuable to remember that our differences don't have to actually divide us, as these vows from real-life couple Greta Christina and Ingrid, told to Patheos, show.

6. "To continue to love your children, as if they were my own."

Why it's awesome: A marriage isn't just a vow to one person, it's a vow to an entire family — future and present. In 2011, Pew Research found that more than 4 in 10 American adults have at least one "step relative" in their family, including a stepparent, a stepchild or a step or half sibling. These adults are just as likely as others to say that family is the most important element of their lives. So it's no surprise that people have been adapting their weddings to encompass the commitment to an entire family, as Sara M. did in her vows, shared on Offbeat Bride.

7. "To comfort you when the Falcons lose and drink beer with you when they win."

Why it's awesome: As Mallory summed up so perfectly to Eddie in their vows, shared by the Knot, appreciating each other's distinct interests and actively sharing in them together makes a huge difference. It goes beyond just putting on the Falcons jersey: Sitting down for the game and sharing a beer is what researchers would call "shared leisure," and it makes a big difference for marital satisfaction. That football game is more than just a football game.

8. "To never try to hurt you just because I'm angry or tired."

Why it's awesome: The chaos of our lives means lots of stress, lots of late nights and lots of exhaustion. (Unsurprisingly, Gallup found that 40% of American adults get less than the recommended amount of sleep.) That can actually wreak havoc on a relationship, which is why it's all the more important to anticipate the challenge. Sarah's vows to her husband, which she shared on A Practical Wedding, are a promise not to take out her stress and exhaustion on him. Instead, she vows to trust him throughout the chaos, "even when we veer from GPS directions, schedules, itineraries and to-do lists."

9. "I have called you my life partner, my significant other, my longtime companion, my lover. ... Now I vow to love you always as my lawfully wedded husband."

Why it's awesome: The vows said by George Takei and longtime partner Brad Altman at their wedding, after the passage of marriage equality in California, were unsurprisingly moving, given they were 21 years in the making. As couples, straight and gay, wait longer to get married (and cohabit in the meantime), labels like "husband" or "wife" are less crucial for defining the relationship than the moments a couple has shared. Takei and Altman's wedding was not proof of their commitment, but rather a tribute to the commitment they had already demonstrated — a truth echoed clearly in their vows.

10. "To be your partner in all things, not possessing you, but working with you as a part of the whole."

Why it's awesome: If we're really striving for egalitarian marriages, then recognizing the equal amounts of work required by each half, as partners, is crucial, especially as women's participation in the workforce keeps growing (57.2% compared to 69.7% for men in 2013). In order for both careers to receive equal focus, a promise not to "possess" but to work to support each other is key. Much like Amelia Earhart refused to use the word "obey," real-life couple Alex and Michelle promised to be each other's "equal in all things" in the vows they shared with the Knot.

11. "I will love you no matter what makes my blood circulate, or even no matter what provides my body with oxygen."

Why it's awesome: Traditional weddings tend to be religious occasions, but with increasing rates of atheism and marriages across faiths, religion is taking a back seat to a more personalized expression of commitment. As of 2013, only one third of couples opted to get married in a church, and even more are removing religion from their vows. But that doesn't mean the vows don't appeal to a higher sense of faith — in the other person or in the world, as these scientific, "atheistic" vows, translated from Swedish and shared on Reddit, prove.

12. "I see these vows not as promises but as privileges."

Why it's awesome: Marriage might have been necessary decades ago, but these days it's more of a choice. So it's only natural that the vows we recite — traditionally a list of duties and obligations — actually reflect the happy choice that marriage now is for so many.

Yuval and Dina chose to frame their vows as honors, as they shared with the Knot: "I see these vows not as promises but as privileges: I get to laugh with you and cry with you; care for you and share with you. I get to run with you and walk with you; build with you and live with you." With between 40% to 50% of marriages in the U.S. ending in divorce, it's more important than ever that couples remind themselves that being with their partner is a privilege in itself, and one to never take for granted.

Source: http://www.graziadressau.com

as a usual Saturday, a sniff of whiskey left
from the previous night -
that'll do - it's not much, but it steadies
the nerves and handshakes with ghosts
of dead writers and poets -
but then the paranoia kicks in -
this isn't the same utensil as a fork, or a typewriter -
this keyboard is attached to a matrix -
it extends far and wide,
i don't know... you can get paranoid
after writing at the height of your drinking
the previous day and wake up the next day
and consider it as nothing more
than diluted prose - which it is, a snapshot
of Joycean ergonomics - but you then
by accident hit the F5 button, yep, the one just
above the 5% button: are there poets
out there, still writing as if they are holding
quills and their fingers have ink stains
and they're airing their frustrations at a blank page?
seriously? i freaked out for a minute having
pressed the F5 button, panic! sheer panic!
panic is worse than fear, i thought for a splinter
second that the government was trying to
censor me... that i was somehow in deep ****,
writing propaganda for some obscure government
that allows 12 year old children perform public
executions by shooting culprits in the back of the head...
what does the F5 button do?
it freezes / blocks / denies the laptop mouse -
a rectangle mat and two buttons incorporated into
the actual laptop - for those few seconds
i felt monitored - standard paranoia of the 21st
poet / writer / whoever, but not quiet enough
for a spy novel... just bog standard feelings... which
are very much linked to printed book materials...
e.g. **** deus: a brief history of tomorrow by
yuval harari - about how we're getting dumber
because someone smarter programmed something
and we weren't given the manual...
funny... they started selling computers like they
were selling hammers... they said: easy, easiest
thing to operate... i'm well chuffed (i guess i use
that word to replace being surprised - local
ingredient - how they bang on about organic
locally grown potatoes and beef, same thing,
only with local vocab) - but they don't sell computers
with instruction manuals - so obviously
the smartest kids these days get on the app. rather than
the mortgage ladder - but **** me! you
could have at least included a little booklet that tells you
what F5 does... i never use it! i'm one of the few
lucky ones, i have some literacy in this department,
but i'm not a techno-philiac as such -
i'm one of those people that says: well, so much
for the building, but you have to put something
meaningful and human in it for the building
to be worth something... not what it is, but:
what it's about - i once learned to use Excel...
****! gone, not coming back. i once learned to
code and build a website... ****! gone, not coming
back, goldfish syndrome due to excess drinking...
but what bothers me is finding something
interesting in that book review... the invention of
humanism as a religion in the 17th century (
funny how Nietzsche criticised Christianity when
as an academic he would have known about
humanism, but dumbly persisted to criticise
what was already being replaced... unless...
he was anticipating American Evangelism,
which might be true) - so i'm trying to look for humanism,
and i come across Copernicus and Galileo -
because, apparently, (as already mentioned)
'Christianity was gradually dislodged by a belief
in the scared status of every individual's feelings
and judgement; we became the centre of the universe,
placing our trust in an unease alliance between
science and moral instinct.'
so there me thinking: so this goes back
to what we're experiencing now, heliocentric humanism
and geocentric humanism -
like i already mentioned, what's west for
nautical calculations past the moon and where's up
or north? it's still flat, the earth, if you're
trying to get from A (Lisbon) to Rio (B) -
so it's happening now, the great schism in humanism,
one side demeaning, angry, frustrated,
the other optimistic - heliocentric humanism
suggest that humans have all the great answers,
that we're all little Louis XIVs, about to dream big
about sorting hunger with spaghetti with a chance of
meatballs machines lodged in our head...
cure for cancer, etc. but then the geocentric humanism
movement is also strong: carbon footprints being
more important than carbon dating, global warming,
you know, typical ****.
still, the F5 paranoia was great,
writing this with an unlit roll-up cigarette was even
better, puckering that luxury before
the last word, and Houston: we have lift-off.

The golden light caresses the horizon,
Almost like a rainbow flushed out one final go-
Before the world is devoid of light for the next two ‘prahars’ of the day.
The time when we bearing the weights of extended tutoring or -
The day job, come out, to public squares
Take roads illuminated by street lights to a destination where -
There is either a plate of food waiting on or aperitifs to begin a night a revelry.
Both fulfilling.
But, gluttony kicks in, which is almost second nature,
To gorge on (circa Harari, Yuval Noah).
In inebriation, inhibitions take a hike; the decisions to call/text people are usually very wrong.
We need to accept that the things we do then,
It’s what we wanted to do all along but societal/personal pressure - Inhibitors do not let us, which blow off when alcohol blurs them.

The development of a classification system
for rattles became a topical issue since the
new experimental techniques found by many
of them revealed that everything could not
be elementary.                                      These discoveries made by Wolfgang;
Pauli shout: "If I predict it, I will go to the botanist".
Advises the students Enrico Fermi
and León Rederman. "If I could
remember the name of these particles,
I would be a botanist," who was
at the forefront of many of these developments,
including these new Nobel Prize systems,
including Luis Alvarez. The construction
of the hammer as a limited condition
of fewer sections will organize your "zoo".
Some of the first meson proposals,
such as Enrico Fermi, Chen-Ning Yang
1949 and Sakata 1956, were successful,
but they could not compensate and could
not explain all the data. The Gel-Man-
Nishijima formula developed by Murray
Gel-Man and Kazuhiko Nishijima led
to an eight-way classification invented
by Gel-Man in 1961 with important
independent contributions from Yuval
Ne'eman. Organize HIS (3)            Expression of multiples of approximately
the same mass, octave and Dickle
due to strong interaction. Smaller
mass differences associated with the quantum number
of flavors that do not appear to be a strong interaction.
The Gel-Man-Okubo tissue formulated
the quantification of these small differences
in mass between the multichannel members,
controlled by the distribution of the explicit symmetry
of SU (3). A basic bidirectional member,
B-baryon spin-3/2, was an important predictor
of this classification. Gel-Man received
the Nobel Prize for Physics approximately
eight times in 1969, after having been discovered
in experiments at the National Laboratory,
Brookhaven. Finally, in 1964, Gel-Man
and George Zweig independently received
What The Image Encoding. Eight times
They made a start-up and made
the underlying scheme unpredictable
and possibly unobservably free, and the
classification coding more simply
into a narrow economic structure in eight ways.

Differences in Hadron's mass were associated
with different masses of quark components.
It takes about 10 years for unexpected nature
and physical reality. These quarks
are understood in more detail; seeing
Quarks. Unlike intuition, it cannot
be considered in isolation the birth
of color, forms with other quarks
are a complete hero and provide
a lot of indirect information about
the captured game. Instead, quarks
help define quantum chromodynamics,
a basic theory that fully describes
powerful interactions. And now
it is understood that the eighth shape
is the result of three light symmetric
flavors. It is believed that advanced
civilization techniques have emerged
that allow for tight curves,
such as the distortions of space
and time. Complete the possibility
of traveling. This is a document
that examines this possibility, in
other words. The violation of causality
in the final zone is not the final curvature
of the space-time feature. There
is no powerful Cauchy medium
that does not consist of closed land
of incomplete production. Geometrically
measured sizes can be used to determine
the increase in the Lorentz area,                                        which will increase
the closed geodesy. However,                                                       the causality
of early underdevelopment in certain
categories of weak energy conditions
must not break the Cauchy horizon.

This shows that it is impossible to create
a world enclosed by a closed time curve.
                      This is a prerequisite to address the weaknesses of the industry,
but the principle of what is legal
for the industry with the hope of
the value and importance of the
tweezers is like a tight curve
of space. To get more. It seems
less closed, deadlines must be presented
immediately. Look at these results
and learn about the defense of the incident,
as long as it supports the value
and does not suffer the law of revolutions
physically closed. Press and Japan,
especially 893 mobile phones.

The roots of Dada are in the vanguard
of the pre-war. The term anti-art,
a precursor of Dada, was coined by Marcel
Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works
that defy accepted definitions of art. Cubism
and the development of collage and abstract
art inform the detachment
of the movement from the limitations
of reality and convention. The work of French
poets, Italian Futurists and German Expressionists
would influence Dada's rejection of the close
correlation between words and meaning. Works
such as Ubu Roi 1896 by Alfred Jarry, and ballet
Parade 1916-17 by Erik Satie would also be
characterized as proto-dadaist works.
The principles of Dada's movement
were first compiled in the Dada Manifesto
by Hugo Ball in 1916. The Dadaist movement
included public meetings, demonstrations
and publication of literary / art magazines; Passionate
coverage of art, politics and culture were topics
that were often discussed in a variety of media.
The key figures of the movement were Hugo Ball,
Marcel Duchamp, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp,
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Raoul Hausmann,
Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Tristan Tzara,
Francis Picabia, Huelsenbeck, George Grosz,
John Heartfield, Man Ray, Beatrice Wood,
Kurt Schwitters, Hans Richter, Max Ernst
and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
among others. The movement influenced later
styles such as avant-garde and downtown musical
movements, and groups that included surrealism,
nouveau réalisme, pop art and Fluxus.
The development of a rattle classification system
became a topical issue, since the new experimental
techniques found by many of them revealed
that everything cannot be elementary. These discoveries
made Wolfgang Pauli shout: "If I predict it, I will go
to the botanist". Advises the students Enrico Fermi
and León Rederman. "If I could remember the name
of these particles, I would be a botanist," who was
at the forefront of many of these developments,
including these new Nobel Prize systems, including
Luis Alvarez. The construction of the hammer
as a limited condition of fewer sections will organize
your "zoo".                                                 Some of the first meson proposals, such as Enrico Fermi, Chen-Ning Yang in 1949
and Sakata in 1956, were successful, but they could
not compensate and could not explain all Dada.
The Gel-Man-Nishijima formula developed
by Murray Gel-Man and Kazuhiko Nishijima
led to an eight-way classification invented
by Gel-Man in 1961 with important independent
contributions from Yuval Ne'eman. Organize HIS (3)
Expression of multiples of approximately the same
mass, octave and Dickle due to strong interaction.
Smaller mass differences associated with the quantum
number of flavors that do not appear to be a strong
interaction. The Gel-Man-Okubo tissue formulated
the quantification of these small differences in mass
between the multichannel members, controlled
by the distribution of the explicit symmetry of SU
(3). A basic bidirectional member, B-baryon spin-3/2,
was an important predictor of this classification.
Gel-Man received the Nobel Prize for Physics
approximately eight times in 1969, after having
been discovered in experiments at the National
Laboratory, Brookhaven. Finally, in 1964, Gel-Man
and George Zweig independently received What is
The Image Encoding? Eight times they made a start-up
and made the underlying scheme unpredictable
and possibly unobservable, and the classification
was more simply encoded into a narrow economic
structure in eight ways. The differences in the Hadron
mass were associated with different masses of quark
components. It takes about 10 years for unexpected
nature and physical reality. These quarks are understood
in more detail (seen Quarks). Unlike intuition,
it cannot be considered in isolation from the birth
of color, the forms with other quarks are a complete
hero and provide a lot of indirect information about
the game captured. Instead, quarks help define
quantum chromodynamics, a basic theory that fully
describes powerful interactions. And now it is understood
that the eighth shape is the result of three light symmetrical
flavors.

It is believed that advanced civilization
techniques have emerged that allow
for tight curves, such as the distortions
of space and time. Complete the possibility
of traveling. This is a document that examines
this possibility, in other words. The violation
of causality in the final zone is not the final
curvature of the space-time feature. There
is no powerful Cauchy medium that does not
consist of closed land of incomplete production.
The geometric size measurements can be used
to determine the increase in the Lorentz area,
which will increase the closed geodesy. However...