mike carey

I'm not sure someone into wethers is that much of an attraction.

No arguments from me on that score. He seems more closely aligned to the political milieu he operates in than his successor or any of the state or territory senior health/medical officers.

He's a public servant not a politician. The secretaries of government departments in Australia are in effect their CEOs, the politician in charge is the minister. I think the Canadian equivalent is deputy minister.

Probably the same spelling test as for the sub-bation hall of fame.

I think I've hit the jackpot with this thread:

There's some astonishing J-class fares being offered, I can only hope that when travel here opens up again some of the airlines offer deals half as good. These AA fares have been discussed in the One Mile at a Time forum to some cynicism, and some contempt for anyone who is travelling to South America in the pandemic, or even talking about it. While they are tempting, I'm too much of a glass-half-empty guy in this situation: possibility of cancellation, difficulty of getting soon to be mandatory tests and so on, but good luck and have fun anyone who's going to take the plunge.

Yes it is, or any other, but the question was asked after Unicorn posted a pic of his vaccination record that used two different nomenclatures for the Pfizer vaccine. I was aiming to remove any idea that he had received different vaccines.

As far as I can tell, you can't edit who follows you (that's up to them), only who you follow. (For those, hover the cursor over their avatar or name and select 'Unfollow' in the dialogue box.)

And the twitter thread it comes from for your amusement.

Excellent! Something to read while I think about cuddles.

BioNTech/Pfizer is the full attribution of the two companies involved, Pfizer is a short form of the name, so Unicorn's two jabs were the same vaccine (if that was the source of any confusion).

Bon Anniversaire!

The question posed in this thread was about the morality of hiring, not the morality of hirers or escorts. Don't confuse the morality of the particular examples you cite with the morality of hiring per se. There are banking and finance practices that are immoral, but that does not make banking and finance immoral industries (although there are perhaps some people who would differ with me on that score).

Well, if it were accidental, how could I possibly hold that against you. Still, I think it would be unlikely. When would you like to have an experiment so I can confirm that sort of thing doesn't happen?

His ad says, 'Muscle guy from FROM LONDON'.

The origins and the current status are probably related, but is a way the link is no longer relevant. In most societies that are influenced by religions, more particularly the Abrahamic ones, the morality of sex work is tied up with the morality of sex more broadly. Sex has a particular status of being a uniquely special interaction between two people, and anything that seems at odds with that special status is seen as immoral. The Church view that sex is must be within wedlock and must have the purpose of procreation makes anything other than that immoral in the view of the Church, and it's not a view unknown outside the Church. On that morality scale, anything outside married procreative sex is immoral and should be equally so, there should be no tiers of immorality but there are. A lot of it comes down to, 'Things I don't like are immoral', which is not the basis for a system of government. (Keen observers will see what I did there.) There's a lot of muddled thinking and hypocrisy around the issue. If you accept that recreational sex or sex out of wedlock are not immoral it's a bit of a stretch to think that paid sex is. Still it's a relatively cost free way for some people to excuse some of their own behaviours and set themselves up as being moral by condemning something they don't do as immoral. Also it's easy to be captured by an institutional view of a hierarchy of morality and to feel guilt if you transgress it. If you question the idea of sex as a moral minefield, consider the famous 'I did not have sex with that woman'. That is premised on the view that there are times when sex is immoral, and therefore more effort goes into proving that what you did was not sex rather than address the idea that if there was anything immoral it was the whole situation rather than the specifics of which tab went into which slot. (To be clear, I see marital fidelity as part of the contract, and negotiable during the term of the contract, not part of the definition of the arrangement or an issue of morality.) So no, I don't think hiring is immoral, either for the hirer or the provider. The arguments about trafficking are just so much nonsense. Restaurants can and do exploit workers and arrange to have people trafficked for that work. That doesn't make them immoral. Even on the premise that sex work may not be moral, the possibility that some workers might be trafficked would not make it more so. The only truly immoral thing in any way linked to sex work is the army of campaigners against it who buy its services.

A prehensile appendage perhaps?

Maybe I should to. Amongst other things ...

And I wouldn't for a moment suggest that this was not part of the reason 2020 may not seem so bad for them. Still, they had a reasonably strict lock-down for some weeks.

Last night our time I saw someone in New Zealand retweet a 'Thank God 2019 is over' tweet that they had posted a year ago, noting that five minutes into 2021 it was looking OK. It took me aback, thinking after 2020 why could you think back to 2019. I then realised that they had just had the fatal White Island/Whakaari eruption days before and 2019 was the year Christchurch happened. As bad as last year has been for most of us, not everyone might think it was the worst. We can all, however hope that 2021 is better and strive to make it so.

Had red wine, snacks, some sport on TV and in bed before the witching hour. Woke up at a civilised hour on Friday morning, nice day out today. Champagne and sparkling Shiraz still in the fridge for later.

For some of us it already is!And warm and sunny at the moment. So far so good. (Apart from state borders in this country being slammed shut again.)

Yikes! Being fisted would probably be easier.

Me? Keep up? You are sure making an art form of missing the point, but that's hardly surprising. I am fully aware that the world has changed but that not everyone has changed with it.

@marylander1940 I had finger trouble and posted before I had finished writing. Finished post is now up.