Does ex(1) count as specialized/higher ed? On BSD systems I just use standard ed(1).

If you don’t mind me asking, how is this affecting you? How do you feel about it?

Is this something she expects you to figure out for her?
If I were you, I’d explain that you’re open to try anything in any way that she is willing to try with you, but the initiative must come from her. You are there for her to help her figure it out, if she’s interested in trying something.
If she is interested in exploring this, she will. If she is not, well, then nothing you can do will help or convince her. Instead it could become a stressful expectation in itself.

True, I don’t have to dress plain, but if clothes make no difference for her, I just wear what I feel most comfortable in. I know how I react when I see her in yoga pants, and I wish I had the option to affect her similarly through clothing.

As a man, I wish clothes would make me feel desirable. I have asked my girlfriend which clothes she would like to see me in, but she says it’s not about the clothes. That it doesn’t matter. It’s more about what I do. So I just dress in plain, comfortable, practical clothes which makes me, well, practical. Useful. I often wish I had options to just be desired for my body, without the pressure to achieve this or that to be desirable. It’s a source of sadness for me.

Didn’t they just get like a million dollars from the Sovereign Tech Fund?

One time I figured out why a strange dependency was needed in a LaTeX book. It’s part of the official documentation of a project and the author had opened an issue about it. I dug deep into the package code and figured out why, came up with a fix, and contacted the author about the solution. That was two years ago and they have not replied or fixed it, but just worked on different things. I don’t demand anything, but I haven’t felt motivated to help out since then in that documentation project.

ed is sadly not installed by default on some modern distros. Even vi is often a symlink to vim in vi-mode.

The difference, and the best part of the fediverse imho, is that if you’re not happy with someone elses rules you can become your own admin and set your own rules. The more we centralize power the further we go against that idea.