mike carey

It might seem bizarre on first blush, but if you invert the thought process and ponder how often you hear someone speak for the first time and it is jarring because that's not how you thought they would sound, it illustrates that people can and do imagine a voice for people they haven't heard speak. Consciously attributing a particular speaking voice to them isn't a particularly big step beyond having an unconscious expectation of how they will sound. As others have noted there is a similar phenomenon with picturing people you have only heard speak, like radio announcers and now podcast makers.

As I said earlier, this sounds like a good plan. An aside, however, on what maintaining it would look like. I think the practice of it being a review site and not a debate-about-reviews site that applied when Daddy was in charge needs to continue. The client gets to write his (or her) review, the escort has the right of reply and that's it. Reviewers don't get to continue the debate. Should a client have the role of moderating that? There is one feature that RM offers (not that it is taken up all that often) that I think the review site would benefit from, and that is for escorts to make any sort of reply, not just a rebuttal (pun not intended). The thank yous and comments escorts make on reviews can offer insights into their personalities and help persuade readers to hire them. (Or not, but that's within their control.)

I doubt you're alone in that sentiment, but the review site is how I found the forum and I know I'm not alone. (I have only written one review of a now-retired escort.) Having the review site still operating would likely ensure the continued flow of members to the forum, thereby keeping the discussions here vibrant for longer, and providing a larger pool of potential donors if donations are a part of its future. Rob thinks it won't be too difficult to achieve so I'm all for him to continue the effort to revive it.

Those power outlets have me perplexed. The top one looks like a European two pin outlet but the bottom one is an Australian/NZ or Argentine one (I think) although here it would be inverted (the single vertical pin at the bottom). Where do they have outlets such as those? Somewhere in South America? (I don't remember seeing anything like that in Argentina and haven't seen them here.)

In a related first world problem, the former 'verbose' icon in @stevenkesslar's title on here shows as a question mark.

I didn't think you were, and you make the important point that nether 'aspirational' nor 'fanciful' means 'impossible', and that part of our thinking process now should be aimed at working out how far we need or want to go in the 'community' stakes. We (and by that I mean those of us who are talking about this, not the wider body of users) also need to realise that for many users retaining the site and having a say in management (however defined) are separate things and many have no interest in the latter. For me, @Coolwave35's comments, after my previous intervention, on how involvement of members through the admins/moderators would work sounds like a good plan, as does the rest of his conceptual outline of how management would work as part of a shell company, after probate issues have been resolved.

As has been acknowledged we don't have a vote yet (and may never), but so far @Coolwave35 has offered the only firm solution for a way forward (subject to being able to secure a tech expert willing to join the project permanently). Community based solutions are aspirational at best and fanciful at worst. Reluctance to have a single owner (with or without quote marks around the title) is understandable as it would be a new owner, but that is the situation we have been in since the site's inception. I happen to think that a management model (which can be a separate and coexisting thing to ownership) that involves the community would be the preferred option but I recognise that may be difficult to achieve. The priority should be for the forum to survive.

Safe travels to both you and @Oliver. I hope to see you next April!!

Yes, one post ago (I think) at 10k posts. Welcome to the junta, err, I mean council.

Leaving aside the minor snark in your reply, I was commenting based on inheritance law 101 not specifically Nevada law. The site is an asset of the estate and inheritance law determines ownership of assets and leaves how to manage them to the estate's beneficiaries. My comment to which you replied omitted one possibility, and that is that a court could make an interim ruling on the management of an asset pending determination of its eventual ownership. Would this asset warrant any court's attention? I doubt it, without someone with standing requesting a ruling.

The court won't appoint a new owner, it will decide who is to administer Bill's estate. That person will decide what happens to the site.

I agree that any new owner can decide that, but we need to plan for the eventuality (one that is not assured) that the community needs to decide what the ownership is. We can do that as a contingency plan that may become moot if a single owner emerges.

@Cooper, the equestrian events.

Design Matters. And the thread it comes from:

I think that it would be neither good nor bad if they were all from the US. Clearly most should be, for two reasons. Most forum members live there, but importantly the site operates in a US legal environment and understanding US law on the forum's main topic and also the regulatory environment of LLCs and not-for-profits is critical. I am agnostic on whether a geographic spread within the US is important, and have no idea whether the domicile (by state) of the ownership vehicle matters. Thanks @stevenkesslar for the unwarranted compliment, and yes, I had thought of putting my hand up. I still hesitate to do so as I'm not sure I can offer the required level of insight into what is best for the forum, or that I could contribute effectively to urgent discussions given the time differences involved. I think there is a need for community input into structure and future management of the sites that is more focused than the Cabana, but whether that should have a management role, or eventually be limited to an advisory or a focus group role is an open question. I'm watching the evolving efforts closely.

Just say no!

Are you saying that is a bad thing? (Disclosure, I haven't flown anything other than QF (or their codeshares AA, AS and NZ) in at least 15 years.) [i think I may have just answered my own question.]

This makes sense to me. I've had no difficulty maintaining a conversation with several overseas ecorts when I've started by saying I'm in Australia and plan to visit your country in the next 12 months.. That's how my meeting with Alec Andrews was arranged, and he was not the only one. I have also met a number of escorts socially (such as at Forum functions), and followed them on Twitter. I've chatted with several of them by DM or exchanged comments on their tweets, and they seem happy to do that. Of course, in those cases, they know that I travel, so it may seem to them to be time well spent rather than wasted, or they might just like chatting to me.

@Oliver is the organiser of the forum Palm Springs weekend, and is building this list as an extension of the e-mail list he has for sending details of that function to members attending. You can DM him on here.

Do you have a different suggestion?

My heartfelt thanks to @Orin and @RadioRob for the phoenix act on the site. The lights went out at 8pm Monday my time so I didn't have @Charlie's problem of finding a full day of mundane tasks to do, only an evening of having to watch TV undistracted. I share the profound relief others have shared in this thread.

Off topic but in the next postcode, I was watching a doco about the Shetland Islands a few years back.They were chatting with one man who lamented that with his short history there he was treated as a blow in. 'When did you arrive?' His family had only been there since Culloden. That was in 1746.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that much of the market there is western expats and not Emiratis.

I'd been thinking about this clip from Q&A (from 2014), a weekly panel show on the ABC, but only just thought to actually look for it. In it a conservative member of Parliament (some would say, with considerable justification 'idiosyncratic') from the deep north of Queensland is asked a question about his attitude towards homosexuality (he once famously claimed that there were no homosexuals in his electorate). He rambles on for a while before Josh cuts him off to take him to task on the issue. 'There's an app called Grindr, I'll put it on your phone.' It's very much Josh being Josh.

Yes and no. I don't know the status of the institutions affected by the fires, and how far back that status goes, but until 1994 South Africa was two countries. The white part was a first world country surrounded by third world conditions. Funding would certainly be a constraint for any capital expenditures since 1994, although perhaps less so in Western Cape province than in some other parts of the country. If they lacked state of the art fire suppression systems in 1994, that to me would be stupidity, or more charitably negligence. Lack of maintenance or modernising the systems since then can reasonably be attributed to the reasons you cite.