BSR

Maybe not where you live and hang out, but elsewhere ... "Workers at San Francisco's Federal Building located on 7th and Mission streets are reportedly being advised to work from home due to safety concerns over crime." (I couldn't link the original SF Chronicle article because it's paywalled.)

Uh, you must be new to the carpool ...

Actually, a homeless person in San Francisco can shoot up and ignore basic sanitation (i.e., poop on the sidewalk). It might not be exactly legal, but they certainly won't get arrested or fined for doing so.

Shipping the homeless away is a trick done all over. NYC did it in 2009 and on a much larger scale in 2019. Part of the rationale was to send them to places with a lower cost of living, yet the city sent some homeless to Hawaii where the rents are insane. Also, homelessness isn't a crime. You can't lock people up for being homeless, even if it's "for their own good."

I recently saw an interesting interview with a homeless advocate. He works in LA, not SF, but I'm it's true everywhere. He said that many assume that the homeless lost their housing because they have a drug problem, but he said many women become addicts after becoming homeless. Virtually 100% of homeless women get raped. Many turn to drugs to numb the trauma of rape, and many get addicted to meth to help them stay awake and walking around all night, when the risk of getting raped is higher. He didn't have numbers or studies to back this up, just his personal experience, but I can see how it happens.

He had an old school variety show in Las Vegas for a brief time: singing, dancing, comedy bits. I didn't know who was before seeing his show, but was pleasantly surprised. He's a very talented guy.

I'm sure I've heard her songs playing in the background because her music is everywhere, but I couldn't name a single TS song to save my life. I do like her generosity to her crew, which seems to have come as a very pleasant surprise to all recipients. Maybe I'll look up her songs one day.

I used to be a huge Ben Shapiro fan. I still like him a lot but am starting to disagree with him more & more. Don't know if that's good or bad. Anyway, my favorite thing about Ben is his impersonations. I wish Bernie Sanders were in the news more because Ben's Bernie impersonation makes me fall out of my chair laughing.

I can't believe I'm recommending this series, but if you want a guilty pleasure, watch Fake Profile on Netflix. OMG, total trash, I almost felt dirty after finishing it, but only on an anonymous Internet forum can I admit I really enjoyed it *facepalmofshame* A Las Vegas "erotic dancer" (the ultra-high-end erotic cabaret where she dances doesn't exist in the real world, or at least not in Las Vegas) hooks up via Tinder with a Colombian doctor who visits Vegas regularly. After 4 months of dating, she decides to surprise him by visiting him in Cartagena and discovers he totally lied on his Tinder profile (oh, shock!). The single doctor turns out to be a married real estate developer with 2 kids. Instead of crying all the way back to Vegas, the dancer decides to piss her fake profile boyfriend off by renting the house directly across from his. The telenovela unfolds with betrayals, lies, corporate sabotage, hidden cameras, bribes, blackmail, and of course lots & lots of sex. I can't begin to count how many times I said to myself, "omg, this is so awful!" as I clicked on the next episode to keep binging. Oh, and the Tinder liar takes his clothes off a lot, which might have been an eensy motivating factor for continuing to watch this trashfest.

I really enjoyed The Patients of Dr. Garcia, a 10-episode series on Netflix. I was wary going into it because it deals with a loaded subject, the Spanish Civil War, a conflict in which there are no good guys. If you favor one side in the slightest, you enrage the other side, yet somehow the series manages to tell its story without venturing into politics. The first 4 episodes are a bit slow, gotta be patient, because they're more history lesson than drama. But the story kicks into gear in Episode 5 and really engages you. Dr. Garcia gets branded a communist, even though he's really just a doctor trying to save the life of a man who happened to be on that side. The men form a bond that deepens when the former red discovers a scheme to transport former Nazis to Argentina and give them new identities. Great storytelling and 2 really strong actors make Dr. Garcia really worth seeing. I highly recommend.

Who could endure such a psycho control freak? Lemme guess, zero "severance package." The sugardaddy spent money like a rock star as long as sugarbaby was under his thumb, but hyperposessive types make sure SB is penniless once it's over.

Kansas City circa 1980, a super-divey neighborhood actually had a drive-in movie theater that showed porn flicks. When I went with a couple of friends, all of us 16yo, the ticket guy gave us a look but didn't bother to ask for ID. Ugh, they showed the worst porn ever made, but at least I can check "porn drive-in" off my bucket list (not that it was actually on my bucket list).

Wow, I must be too focused on shopping because I've never once seen a hot (or even significantly better than average) guy at Walmart. Costco and Trader Joe's are a very different story, however.

I disagree. I keep hearing 2 more rate increases, 1 this month + 1 in September, because Jerome still sees inflation as a problem. While inflation has declined to 3%, the Consumer Price Index remains stubbornly high at 4.8% I've also heard that Powell doesn't plan to drop the rate until 2025 because, again, he still sees inflation as a problem. Granted, what one hears Powell will do and what he actually ends up doing might be 2 very different things. But if Powell does act as predicted, that would disprove your assumption, "we can all agree there is really no inflation problem in the US right now."

It's hard to know what the truth is. I share your skepticism about Wikipedia. It's great for cut & dried topics, like height of the Empire State Building, but questionable (to say the least) for more politically charged issues, like gay beheadings. Even Iran, which in the past has been brazenly unapologetic about gay executions, has been classifying them as other crimes, usually pedophilia, to avoid international condemnation. If countries are routinely executing gays for the "crime" of being gay, what possible benefit do they gain by letting the whole world know? Both the Saudis and the US desperately need to avoid the public relations nightmare. Better to classify gay executions as "other" crimes so that we can keep buying oil and the Saudis can keep buying military hardware.

Are subtitles available? I kept fiddling trying to get subtitles, but everything I did caused a popup to stop the video.

I googled how to beat a polygraph and found out that it depends mostly on the skill & experience of the examiner. To beat a polygraph done by an expert examiner takes years of training. I wonder if phalometric testing is done along with a polygraph because, as you point out, beating the phalometer (or whatever it's called) alone probably wouldn't be that tough.

I've never heard of cases of legitimate refugees being sent back to their likely deaths, but if you have a source, please post. I do know that the vast majority of asylum applications are bogus, as high as 99%.

I never subscribed but was awfully tempted because the site featured a lot of hot muscle bears. I appreciated Futral's passion for his craft. He wrote on the site that doing this was his dream, and you could see his dedication in the videos. R.I.P.

I think it depends on how the testing is done. If they force you to strip while you watch gay porn, uh, not cool. If they attach sensors (to your hands or forehead, not down under) that monitor your pulse, perspiration, etc., then I think it's fair game. The vast majority of those applying for asylum are denied because the definition of "refugee" is actually quite strict. If your claim for asylum is that your life is in danger for being gay, then the government to which you're applying should have the right to determine if you are indeed gay. Do you think nations should just take the applicant's word for it? How would you verify that the applicant's claim is true?

Hey, I hate to waste food as much as anyone else, but uh ... Burger King assistant manager arrested for serving customers fries from trash can

Are you sure it's 24k? That would be highly unusual for a bracelet or any piece of jewelry because 99.99% gold is so soft. If you can make a dent in the metal with your fingernail, it's 24k. If not, it's an alloy.

Let's hold off popping the champagne until at least October, after 2 more expected Fed rate increases and the resumption of student loan payments. Credit, i.e. borrowed money, fuels the US economy, and bank lending hasn't tightened until quite recently. By October, banks will be lending out far less money at an even higher rate. Apparently the 43.5 million Americans with student loan debt have been living it up during this deferment -- spending money that would otherwise have gone to loan repayment on things like shopping, vacations, and entertainment. When all that "faux" disposable income disappears overnight, consumer spending will drop dramatically. I had an interesting conversation with a guy who worked in ultra-high-end real estate (like private islands) back in the spring of 2007. He warned that the fit was going to hit the shan because properties that used to sell in an instant were stagnating for months without an offer. Shearson filed for bankruptcy more than a year later (Sept 2008), the worst of the recession didn't hit until 2009-2010, and NYC real estate didn’t bottom out until March 2012. In other words, these things take a while to play out. Jamie Dimon and Elon Musk didn't become self-made billionaires by being stupid about the economy.

"Federal Reserve data show that in August 2019 there was $14.9 trillion total in circulation. By January 2022, there was $21.6 trillion." Where did that additional $6.7 trillion come from ... leprechauns' gold? manna from heaven? the mother of all lottery jackpots? Nope, the Fed just printed it out of thin air. And when you print dollars out of nothing, the value of each individual dollar shrinks, thus inflation.

To me, this is like asking how much does it cost to have a car. You can buy a 5yo Toyota Prius, or you can buy a paint-still-wet Lambo. One time at Popeye's, I was able to eavesdrop on the conversation between a mid-50s guy and his 19-20yo companion. Imagine my amusement once I figured out they were discussing a possible sugar arrangement. It took all the self-restraint I could muster to refrain from jumping in and screaming to the kid, "Sugardaddy's treating you to Popeye's?! RUN!!!"