mike carey

The same reason there was a photographer there to capture the scene.

I was chatting about this with an escort I was seeing a few days ago. He has worked here and in the UK and has had a couple of issues with clients reversing Paypal payments (not with Paypal itself), which he said he was able to resolve. He now won't see clients who want to use it, although he will use bank payment methods. He didn't actually say whether he prefers them or cash.

This isn't so much 'funny' in a laugh out loud sort of way, more 'makes you laugh' in an smh way.

So, Channel 9 News here is making this confident prediction about the Prince's funeral. I suspect this may not have been what they intended to convey, but I fervently hope that they are correct. Even at the funeral for a man of his age, such a thing would be unbecoming.

Not everywhere. We've had no cases for about six months other than those that could be traced to people in quarantine hotels. Same in New Zealand, and we will finally be able to travel to and from there starting Monday without quarantine. Despite our relative success in containing the virus, our vaccine roll-out has been excruciatingly slow. Some might say 'botched'. We won't see our borders open for some time, and our vaccination rates will be a bigger factor in the decision than those for potential arrivals. Businesses and those who used to travel widely will soon become restive, but most people are very happy to keep the borders closed and the virus out. As a big country with a wide variety of places to travel we are taking to the skies (and to the road) domestically in increasing numbers. Qantas expects to exceed pre-covid levels of flying within the country in the coming months. All that said, it's widely recognised that we can't live in a gilded cage forever and we'll have to accept the higher risk that comes from more open travel sooner rather than later. I'll be over the moon if I can make it to the DC forum lunch in January, but I ain't buying tickets just yet.

Meta AF!

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

I don't send photos but I do have an RM account with one non-explicit photo. I do almost invariably make my first approach using the RM chat function, but I don't ask anyone to view my profile, and some I've hired didn't look. At an intellectual level, I know that the ground rules are, or should be as you and @HoleTrainer set out, but from reading these forums it seems that it's not unknown for escorts to operate differently, so I err on the side of telling a prospective hire more rather than less about myself.

The DC event is different. For a start it's January in DC so the pool party takes on a whole different ambience. (Spoiler: there is no pool party.) The forum event there is essentially a brunch in the Du Pont Circle area. It is timed to coincide with MAL and many of the forum members attend some MAL events. In addition to the brunch, there is usually a contingent who would meet at a strip club, and some meet informally. The last time I attended, in 2019, about a dozen of us went to a bar on (IIRC) P street for a couple of hours after the brunch. Another significant difference is that for the Palm Springs weekend, most people stay in two or three resorts, so there's a degree of collegiality lacking in DC where people are scattered between numerous hotels across the District. (There was extensive discussion about both the 2016 and 2019 events in these pages, both about the preparations for them and the post-match reports, that would give you a good idea about what happened.) That said, I have enjoyed both my DC trips (even in a perverse way enjoying the three days I was snowed in in 2016). As you would expect I made each of them pretexts for longer vacations in the NE.

Usually the boards of companies have had their way on things they put to shareholder meetings, many shareholders being passive investors. In Australia there has been a growing trend for large shareholders to become more closely involved in the management of firms they own shares in. This is largely due to the rise of what are known as 'industry superannuation funds'. These are not-for-profit retirement savings funds managed jointly by unions and employers in different industries (such as construction, retail, hospitality) that since the introduction of compulsory superannuation savings have come to manage billions of dollars of members' funds. Unlike the for-profit retail management funds (run by banks, mutual funds and the like) they take a long term view of the earnings of the money they manage, and thus are interest in the long term viability of the firms they own. For example they look at the future exposure to fossil fuel industries, which is becoming risky not just because of climate change but also because alternatives are becoming cheaper all the time. If companies aren't looking 20 years into the future on issues like that, the super funds will push them to do so by talking to the companies but if necessary by voting their stock against proposals put to shareholder meetings. Perhaps the most potent weapon they have under Australian company law it to vote against the remuneration package that has to be put to general meetings. A 25% vote against it in two consecutive years results in all board positions being declared vacant. These funds are successful because they have lower fees than retail funds and have consistently earned the best returns on members' money.

I'm sure there are people eagerly anticipating pillow talk about the relative merits of Apple and Android phones.

I am shocked, shocked I tell you. Who would have thought?

A little bit clever.

Saturday afternoon and here I am in the Qantas Lounge at Sydney airport about to board my flight. Well, in an hour or so to be precise but you get the idea. Unfortunately my flight is to Canberra, not to the place I would rather be right now, and I think you can guess where that is, but still, these are my first flights since last January. I have so far seen one report of how @David-SF's party went (thank you @PeterMxM), and hope that the tree-planting went off with suitable solemnity. I wish you all a convivial weekend together (and whatever other activities you choose to undertake), I shall certainly be thinking of you. xoxoxox

Strongly agree on this ferry trip. I spent a night on one of the islands on my trip through there.

Kia-ora Aotearoa! Time for me to get my passport renewed! We are about to be able to take our first tentative steps into international travel. From 19 April, the one way travel bubble between Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand will become two way. Travel will be on 'green' flights which will be limited to people who have been in one or other of the two countries for at least 14 days. Anyone who does not meet those requirements, for example people transiting through Australia on their way to New Zealand will have to travel on 'red' flights (I have no idea how many of those there will be) and will have to quarantine on arrival. The NZ government has said that in the future if there are any outbreaks that cause a lock-down in an Australian state, they will close travel from that state and not from the rest of the country. We have faced similar conditions here for interstate travel for months now, where states usually just restrict travel from hot spots in other states as they occur. As we have been seeing domestically, sometimes recent arrivals from a newly identified hotspot may be required to be tested and temporarily isolate pending results. Qantas and Air New Zealand will be resuming close to pre-Covid levels of flights across the ditch but Virgin Australia will not be renewing services until later in the year. On its Sydney to Auckland route Qantas will operate an all A330 service, previously a mix of them and B737s. They will be making their previously seasonal flights to Queenstown year-round and adding services from Cairns and the Gold Coast to Auckland. For the first three days Qantas will have all seats on all their services available as award flights. Neither prime minister gave any indication that other countries will be added to the bubble any time soon, but at least this is a start.

Some interesting titles in that list, @Rod Hagen. I've come to extensive use of podcasts from a slightly different angle. Although there were a very small number that I sometimes listened to at the outset, my main 'conversion' to the format was from radio. The ABC (and from what I've seen, the BBC and CBC) have quite a number of spoken voice programs on broadcast radio that I have enjoyed over the years, many of which I would arrange my schedule to accommodate. Some of them have become more interactive with the live-to-air versions accepting and incorporating text and twitter comments. In recent years most of them are being posted as podcasts and I've welcomed the chance to listen to them that way when it suited me. Since then I've expanded the range of podcasts I listen to. I don't regard them as being read to by someone, rather either as a conversation I can listen in to or as someone talking to me. That said, I don't mind being read to, to the extent that I'll sometimes listen to the spoken voice version of Economist articles that interest me. They use real people in these, I'm not so keen on the automated voice simulations some publications use.

I wasn't sure where to post this, but decided here in the 'Uncategorised' part of the Comedy and Tragedy Forum, because despite it focussing significantly on two of Josh's television series, it ranges far wider than that exploring his treatment of his homosexuality in Please Like Me and his slow realisation that he was on the autism spectrum even as he was filming Everything's Gonna be Okay, a series that features autistic characters. The article itself is great in the way that longer form New Yorker pieces so often are. As Josh himself notes in the twitter thread it was a long time coming.

Bon anniversaire, Eric!

Yes, that's him, thanks. I didn't think of checking that spelling because my recollection was that he spelt it with a k. Seeing PS and LA in his travel on the profile would make it one hell of a coincidence if he wasn't the one that Oliver was talking about.

Another cause for regret. (The link to William came up 404 when I tried it.)

Sydney. Hyde Park and Liverpool Street.

Sydney. Hyde Park and Liverpool Street.