Don't check #present? of ActiveRecord objects because it's always true

[robotdana]

(or the variable is assigned nil and it's always false)

While the rails maintainers decide whether it's a good idea https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/35059

I found this because out of curiosity I ran our test suite with ApplicationRecord#present? raising in our projects

[kbrock]

it may also make sense to just look at the parent id

not sure if we're going to make that lookup right afterwards anyway, but it is a thought