Photos taken moments before disaster...

So yes, everything you said is true. Tires way more complicated than you think. The average driver should just stick to OEM tires as much as possible (although sometimes those can be more expensive than similar performing tires from different brands...).
My miata is a completely different car on its 205/45r17 all seasons that it came with, vs the 205/50r16 summer only tires i put on it during the warmer months

- i should have specified. Its not ALL the contact patch, but that's a big part of it.
- You'd have to have some really extreme low pressure to unmount the tire. Usually with very low pressure you worry a about poor handling and overheating the tire due to excess sidewall flex. High pressure worries about uneven wear, or blistering/bursting.
- Pretty much any passenger car tire is rated to enough weight that you dont have to worry about that.
- "speed rating" is mostly just the tire's ability to dissipate heat. As you go faster, it generates more heat from flexing. Part of the reason why hypercars like the Veyron need ridiculous tires for their speed runs.
I did waaaay too much research into tires with my 2012 miata. It came with some standard all-seasons. 205/45r17. It wanted its tires at 29psi and weighs about 2500lbs
My mazda 6 i had for a while wanted 33 and weighed about 3300lbs
My current nissan leaf wants 36psi and weighs about 3800lbs.

Most of the time the tire only gives the maximum psi the tire can handle.
Usually the car itself says what psi to inflate the tires to. The same tires on different cars often want a different pressure. It all has to do with the size of the contact patch, which is determined mostly by the width of the tire and the weight of the car.
But you almost always can find the recommended psi on a plate/sticker inside the driver door frame.

Badge of honor is accurate. Any woman who's done it, or man who's been in the room will no doubt agree.

Hey, any man that wants kids, or is dating a woman with kids needs to grow up and accept reality.
You can use all the stretch mark creams, do all the situps (sometimes those actually make it worse), and wear all the recovery bands you want, but you'll still at best look like the woman in the pic.
MrsBojangles had 3 kids, and you can definitely tell if you look closely at the before/after pictures. Don't get me wrong, she's still hot as hell, and can rock a two-piece.

Looks like either extreme weight loss, or a cesarian

There's only so many times you can excuse his words by "well what he meant to say was..."