mike carey

It's not unique to Las Vegas or the US. There is a perception here that the police have quotas to meet, mainly for alleged traffic offences. It's not just revenue based, either, the police seem to have statistical targets that they need to meet to demonstrate that they are out enforcing the law, and also junior police demonstrating to their supervisors that they are doing so. It's messy. Thankfully, sex work is not illegal here so that's not part of it. By way of contrast, I had a burglary/home invasion a couple of months ago, and the police attended at the time. I had five officers attend the next day to ask more questions and door-knock in the area, two forensic officers turn up to see what they could find (nothing as it happened) and two detectives come out to conduct a recorded interview a few days later. They had recovered some of my property, but this was not an exercise in running up statistics.

The key thing from my perspective, and which I infer from Chris' comments above, is the insight that a former* sex worker has from that experience. If it gives them insight that is a plus, any therapist who lacks insight is likely to be unsuccessful. * I suspect a lot of sex workers have that sort of insight and bring it to the bed where they meet you, if you're open to receiving it in that setting.

Appointing an agent may be a very good idea. What the landlord will do depends on their scale (so, whether they have a lot of properties nationwide so they can afford to stiff you in one location). A smaller scale landlord may be more amenable to negotiation. And if your not in a mall, you are likely to be better off.

When you open your messages and look at the page for the provider that you contacted, if there is a small icon to the left of your message that looks like a double check mark, that indicates that he has opened it. I can't remember what the icon looks like before they do that (a sort of curved arrow, I think).

The question that @purplekow asked related to what he would or should do if he discovered that a lover was racist, it was not whether what that lover did or said was racist. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether anyone else agrees that the person was racist. If he thinks they were, whether anyone else agrees with his assessment is immaterial, he neither needs or wants someone else's assessment that, 'That's not racist.' Turning the question around from PK's friend, his question was, if you find a friend or lover is racist (in your subjective assessment), what do you do about that. The question does not ask us to assess his lover's alleged racism, it asks us what we would do if we were is a situation where we perceived a lover to be racist.

I think it makes valid points despite it being in the Post. It will become known that masks protect society from the people who wear them more than the other way round, so wearing one will likely become a signal that 'I care about your health'. I have seen news reports that purport to show Speaker Pelosi wearing fancy masks that match the rest of her outfit, and of people in Paris seeking to make style statements with the design of the masks they wear. I haven't worn one yet, but I can see that in some circumstances I would, and as I have posted in other threads I have bought some surgical masks and also ordered some cloth ones online (including pride masks). If we're going to wear them I see no reason why we would not make the same fashion statements that we do (or don't) with other items of clothing.

Or perhaps in Guaraní!

I agree, I booked a package through a travel agent here when I did it in 2003, I forget how much it was, which included flights to and from BsAs, hotel (Sheraton I think) and transport and guide for three of us. You get a different perspective from the two sides, and as I remember, the grand perspective from the Brazilian side impressed me more. I wouldn't have missed either. We were based on the Argentine side and did a day trip to the Brazilian side. As I recall, that included a more-meat-than-you-could-eat lunch. We did a jet-boat trip on the Argentine side from a bit downstream up to the falls.

As others have said, it makes no sense that it could be safe to eat something cold, but if you want to heat it, you need to heat it to 165°F (74°). I read the advice to be precautionary in case the times in the danger zone had exceeded two hours (or one hour above 32°), or on the presumption that the person reheating the food didn't know how long it had been stored at those temperatures. The notion that the safe time suddenly halves at 32° doesn't pass the common sense test, but it does illustrate the point that higher temperatures in the zone are more dangerous. If you know its history, heating food as little or as much as you want shouldn't be a problem. (The Australian guidelines have the danger zone from 5-60° and the temperature for reheating at 75°, but it specifies that temperature for high risk foods, not as a standard for all foods. The article I read didn't define 'high risk'.)

Well, warmer than it was here today. By about 1.5 degrees. At least it's been sunny here, after the fog lifted. I was in those islands some years ago, and turned the television on in the middle of the weather report. I almost had heart failure when they said it would be 10 degrees. Then I realised it was a Canadian station.

No pictures of cute critters unless you count the black cat in the feature image for the page (or the dog in the thumbnail for the previous episode on the right of the page), but rather an engaging set of talks on the theme of What we can learn from cats. As it says in the web page this was presented at the Melbourne Writers Festival in 2018 and was broadcast this week as part of a week of ABC programming featuring issues about mental health. The first segment starts out with a child wanting a cat, 'forcing' his reluctant mother to check out a newly born kitten in the neighbourhood, and having the story take an unexpected turn before their new cat is old enough to bring home. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/what-we-can-learn-from-cats/12353946

This is posted as part of the ABC Radio National's 'Fictions' feature but it was aired as an account of the experiences of a paramedic in these times. It sounds authentic but it fits into the style of short audio pieces that they post in Fictions. It certainly sounds like a realistic representation of the sort of situations a paramedic would face. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/corona-tales-%E2%80%94-d-is-for-danger/12336230

@xyz48B, I agree with all of that. I somehow doubt that latinx will come into general usage because it's contrived and awkward, especially in spoken usage, but also because most people are unlikely to see a reason for making the point that the word was invented to make.

The term is awkward in speech but serves a purpose in print (whether it's a necessary purpose is a separate question). Aside from that, once a word has moved into English (or a new word created in English based on a word in another language) the rules of the original language no longer have to apply. In some cases they stick, but in others the word is completely assimilated. (Replacing a foreign gender suffix with an x to indicate unknown isn't an English grammatical standard either but an English speaker can see what it's trying to do, and the word is trying to communicate to others in English text, not Spanish.) Transitions of words into English take time and can also happen differently in different regional versions of English. For example Americans do not pronounce the h in 'herb' whereas Australians do. (The Oxford tells me that the US usage was standard in English until the 19th century.)

I don't have a/c. It's going to be 13 today (that's 56F) after 0 overnight (32) but then it's winter here. I have a small gas heater, and have the 'thermostat', such as it is, set to 18 (64F), but I usually only have it on in the evenings and first thing in the morning.

Oh, I understand completely why an American would be wary of such a name.

I think I've said something like this before, but to a non-American that's not the first thing you think of. Aggressive identity Christianity is much less of a thing in Australia, and I think also in Canada, especially from a francophone there (I was going to say, 'Isn't a thing', but there's sure to be a few who are like that), so I would take it on face value rather than attribute such a motive to his choice of nom de plume (acknowledging that might a bad assumption). There is an Australian Nascar driver whose name is Will Power, and it's just his name, not a claim about his attitude.

I've bought some surgical masks but haven't used them yet, my local shops are sufficiently uncrowded that I don't think it is necessary given our low level of infections. But I am still mindful of the need to be ready to wear them. With that in mind, I have ordered some cloth masks from a small company in Nova Scotia. They have a variety of provincial tartans and some other 'cute' cloth patterns in masks at CA$8 apiece. (In case you wondered, they have a pride mask.) https://www.maritimetartancompany.ca/ If you choose to buy from them, let them know you are supporting them.

From what I've read, the prevalence of disease is among younger people now, so that will probably have an effect on the rate of deaths. Another thought is that the recent surge hasn't had enough time to flow through to affect the number of deaths. We should know whether that is a factor soon enough.

I generally identify as gay, but will sometimes use queer as well partly as a way of reclaiming that word from being a slur. For the most part everyone only identifies with one of the initials and the whole LGBT or LGBTQI+ or any version of that is an omnibus term for all the groups collectively. There are some issues that affect each of the parts of that collective identity and fewer that affect only some of them. It's important to have terms that include all of us when talking about us collectively rather than talking about, say gay rights. Of course some of the conversations are about one of the initials, so discussions about trans rights shouldn't be watered down by calling them LGBTQI+ rights. I'm not concerned about which version is used, and nor am I worried about queer being used as a shorthand collective term (I recognise that some people specifically identify as queer and may be concerned about it being given a wider meaning than what they see it as).

[MEDIA=twitter]1277231148234612737[/MEDIA]

Yes, I need to do that. In future I'll keep them separate.

It's somewhat amusing to read a discussion of western pallets. I'm not sure that those wooden items vary much. Now western palates I'm sure differ from those of other cultures.

The potential area of interest in this debate is whether the virus persists in other bodily fluids when it is no longer being shed into the respiratory tract. If it is, and it can be detected in semen, the question then is whether it is active intact viruses or only inert viruses or virus fragments that cannot cause infection. From this sort of discussion, it is possible that sex may involve exposure to the virus that other forms of close contact and making out do not, but if so we don't know whether that exposure carries a risk of infection.

As I recall, the aim is to have clean hands while they do their work. Whether the last thing they do before starting is wash their hands or put on gloves, their hands will touch the same things after that. Whether they're wearing gloves or not makes no difference. In a similar vein, establishments that insist that customers wear gloves achieve nothing if they do not insist that those gloves are sterile ones that their customers put on as they enter.