mike carey

A person in dress-up is not inherently sexual.

Article in The Australian (no link, paywalled) about Fiji's tourism chief taking hope from this development. The paper posited advertising 'Come to Fiji and be yourself', although didn't indicate if that was their intention or the paper's suggestion. I've seen recent reporting of J-class award availability through Alaska and American on Fiji Airways, and they are opening YVR as a third North American mainland gateway to add to LAX and SFO. Of course for those of you in that part of the world there are closer tropical getaways and certainly places with an overt gay ambience.

It could be that the number of hotel rooms in Doha is such that many fans have to fly in from other Gulf cities just to attend a game, and there are restrictions on entering Qatar unless you hold a ticket. Abu Dhabi and Dubai may just be easier to get to and to find accommodation.

Don't mention the day that lived in infamy.

Moderator's Note Please stick to discussion about the links between the incidence of mpox with HIV, not to passing judgment on people with either or both infections. Factual statements are fine, attributing 'blame' to elements of the community is not.

Moderator's Note Ladies and gentlemen, a gentle reminder that this thread is about scheduling an Mpox vaccination in Kentucky, and at a stretch the availability of vaccination appointments elsewhere. It is not a place for revisiting discussions about whether vaccinations are still needed or for whom it is a good idea. You will recall that another thread that drifted into a willing debate on those lines was closed with cause. Off-topic comments are liable to be hidden without notice.

Had to laugh at the italicised section! I think the three word assessment of the article is 'nonsense on stilts'. Yes, the microbiome is a complicated 'organism' and yes it is widely accepted that it interacts in complex ways with how our bodies operate, including with our mental health. It can also be changed, both by dietary change (different foods favour different bugs in our microbiome) and by a microbiome 'transplant' from another person. But no way can you 'catch' a different one accidentally, much less by casual contact. So, if you want to kiss your escort, by all means worry about what pathogens you may pick up by doing so, and that may even include something that gives you the shits (literally), but don't worry about it changing your lower GI tract flora and affecting your mental health. Reading that article on the other hand ...

France 3 - Pologne 1 Or Francja 3 - Polska 1 And the Polish goal was a Lewandowski penalty deep in time added on at the end of the game. A strong performance from France. On to England - Senegal!

Federation Square at 6.40am today (which is after the Messi goal): The area was filled to capacity at 5am, that is, an hour before kick-off.

Moderator's Note Gentlemen, let's keep this to the discussion of masking and covid and stay away from any political angles to it.

They don't allow rates (in the US at least, they do elsewhere) but they usually edit them out (when they notice them). Ads are frozen by the provider not the site (the banner actually says 'Vivace have temporarily frozen his membership).

I assumed he was talking about testing positive for the virus itself, not for the resultant T-cells or any other marker of immunity.

It's been very different here. There were 30,000 people in Federation Square in Melbourne at 2am for the game against Denmark, and there were additional public sites with big screens for the final this morning. In Sydney there were also public sites where people gathered in large numbers. The final was at 6am, so not so wrenching as a 2am start. Sydney made public transport free from 4am to midday for people to go out for the game. (In Melbourne the fire brigade had to put out flares that had been thrown on the stage when Australia scored.) Aside from the public events, everyone seems to be talking about it, but no doubt interest will fade, but not disappear for the rest of the finals. It was football's once in four years moment in the sun. The consensus here is that the Socceroos did far better than we had dared to expect. Two wins in the group stage, no clean sheets against us, progressing to the knock-out phase for only the second time, and having Argentina on the back foot for the last 10 minutes and coming close to equalising at the end. That after only qualifying in a penalty shoot out in an intercontinental playoff (against Perú). Our dreams shattered (or to be more accurate our hopes again unfulfilled) it's now on to the qualification rounds for 2026. Or perhaps not quite, for both our countries. The women's world cup is in Australia and Aotearoa next year and both the Australian and US women's teams are more highly ranked than our men. (I heard that the US men's team reaching the round of 16 will result in a pay rise for the women (not just the men) because both teams' pay deals benefit from prize money from the men's tournament.) As was the case for the men's 2015 Asian Cup (which we won) Australia will certainly be focussed on the Cup for the weeks that it is on.

I don't think there's as much of a contradiction as there seems to be. When testing was more thorough, and often mandated in certain circumstances, there was a significant proportion of those testing positive who had been asymptomatic, so I doubt that self-reporting figures provide an accurate reflection of actual disease incidence now that testing is less frequent. In the latest statistics I looked up (on the Bloomberg covid summary page) the US has had 98m and New York state 6.4m confirmed cases which are both in the region of 30% of the population (yes, some of them are second cases for individuals). So, yes it's possible that your acquaintances have been lucky and not caught Covid. It's also possible that they have been lucky to have been asymptomatic, and not been picked up by a test either through happen-stance or avoidance. But the odds are, whether they know it or not, about a third of them have been infected at some time. We routinely judge annual influenza outbreaks on metrics like hospital admissions and ICU numbers, not by any measure of the total number of infections. Public health officials make recommendations for precautions based on predictions and actual numbers of these metrics. The same thing will likely happen with SARS-Cov-2. They will also use the statistics they have on the relative prevalence of the different antibodies generated from vaccinations and infections to inform their advice. And they will use all of that to inform their recommendations on vaccinations from now on and (circling back to the topic of this thread) on the advisability of masking for certain elements of populations.

I have no idea why he thought it necessary to post this.

I wonder what the atmosphere was like on Wednesday evening in the Amalienborg Palace as they watched Denmark in its final game in the Cup. I'm sure we'll never be told. The Crown Prince is an Olympian so I suspect he would have been watching. That said, the final 16 has been interesting in its diversity and in the fall of some titans (leaving aside that North Macedonia had ended Italy's chance of even being in Qatar). Three teams from Asia, two from Africa and South America and one from CONCACAF, with eight from Europe. Two Europeans and two of the 'other' will progress to the quarter-finals. Who they will be, and who the other four will be starts to emerge on Sunday morning our time. I fear that Australia beating Messi, I mean Argentina, will require a miracle, and more than a small one.

And today on Twitter, this: https://twitter.com/raychenviolin/status/1597738928106532864?s=20&t=lN3FPDC5rBQj2ajROgV3Awhttps://twitter.com/raychenviolin/status/1597738928106532864?s=20&t=lN3FPDC5rBQj2ajROgV3Aw

And it would have been cruel to do so. Not everyone is playing in The Great Game, and she was no doubt thrilled to have been able to chalk up that one night. Some of us can strategise about how to earn and spend vast hoards of points (or not so vast) but not everyone is so blasé as we can be about a reward flight or night's accommodation.

Happy Thanksgiving to my US friends!

Bear in mind that the Political Forum is closed until 2 Jan 23.

Good topic, it falls across finance and travel so it'll be interesting to see if @Kevin Slater thinks this is the better place for it. Even though the payoff is travel, the decisions in getting there are financial. Some initial thoughts, with disclosure that I have an American Express platinum ($AU1450) and a few other cards, and FF accounts with both main Australian airlines. My card collection could do with some decluttering too. In Australia I need other cards as there are lots of places where Amex isn't accepted, and you may find the same issue when you travel. All cards are far less lucrative here than in the US because card interchange fees are regulated and low so the companies have less they can pass back as benefits like miles. I find the suite of benefits from the Platinum card to be good value. I just took my $450 travel credit, I can transfer the points to a range of domestic, regional and Middle Eastern airlines (plus Virgin Atlantic for some reason) [it is a completely different and far smaller list than the US card has] and if you fly at the pointy end of the plane Amex Travel has some substantially discounted 'Platinum Benefit' fares (and some in Economy too). The US benefits are different, but like ours some useful and some not. I can't comment on the relative value of the other transferable awards point ecosystems like CapitalOne. It's probably premature to be thinking about how to spend your points before you've earned any but the time will come when you have to, so it's as well to be aware of what that might involve. As far as I know you can't transfer Amex points to Southwest so you'd have to pick another airline to use your points (unless you're happy with the one cent per point you can redeem them for on Amex Travel - I think that return is too low but I know some other disagree). You would also need a FF program to park any miles you earn from foreign travel. If you have to pay more in cash for your tickets on the other airline it hardly makes sense to move your paid travel away from Southwest. (A foreign FF program might be an option if it's for redemptions only - Air Canada, AF/KLM and Virgin Atlantic are among those discussed for this in the FF blogosphere.) We don't have the range of hotel cards you do but from what I read some of them are inexpensive and have readily redeemed benefits worth more than the annual fee, but that's only worthwhile if you would otherwise use the service. I guess the bottom line is evaluate each card you have or think of acquiring on what it offers in isolation, or what it adds to your card landscape.

You should duck for cover after making that remark!

Not ejected, given a yellow card. It's the captain's armband so the whole team can't wear it (they could have devised a different patch or something that the whole team could wear to make the point). The armband was planned by seven European countries and when they were advised of the yellow card plan the national football associations decided not to proceed. The DFB (the German Football Association, or Deutscher Fußball-Bund) has lodged an urgent case to have the yellow card decision overturned in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The DFB also lost a major sponsor over its decision against wearing the armband. A reminder that this discussion could easily become political, so stick to the facts, not commentary on motives and the like.

Yep, so I understand. Also you only have a chance if you're trying to book through KrisFlyer, not through any partner airlines.