mike carey

Quite so, it is for socialising. People chat, people hire, people just enjoy themselves. It ain't no orgy.

I didn't come to terms with my sexuality for a long time and being in the military I didn't try to explore it. When being gay in the defence force became legal in 1992 I wasn't in a hurry to accept or pursue who I was. Moving forward, I started exploring and engaged with some gay guys in the defence force, but then I retired. I don't have a workplace to be out (or not) in. I have come out to family members (my parents have died, and my sister is also gay) and I have joined gay social groups. I don't have an Inca flag in my front yard, literally or figuratively, and I don't advertise my sexuality. That said, I don't hide it, it just isn't a subject of conversation for the most part. Should I be more 'out there'? Probably yes, but I don't see the urgency of it (and I'm not active in the community as a 'not out' man). Typical closet case, you may well say.

Noting @GregM's suggestion that we pass Christmas before talking more about this, but also bearing in mind that people need to book now to make sure of flights and hotel reservations! There will be a number of working guys there for the weekend, but many, like Kurtis won't be going. Most who plan to go will post somewhere that they will be there. Some of those who go will be there with a client who pays for their travel and the whole time, others will be there on the strength of some pre-bookings and some will go there to make themselves known. In all cases, if a guy will be there, ask him. The worst that can happen is that they will say no. Even if they are booked out, you will be able to talk to them at the functions and work out whether you want to arrange to meet them somewhere else. I made one hire that I had arranged more than a month out, but I chatted with him at the functions and at the Canyon Club during the rest of the time, and also chatted with others (and I'm sure I could have arranged time with some of them). It's flexible and informal, the working guys know they are marketing to a greater or lesser extent. It all works well. But of course you can contact them and arrange meetings beforehand. Just ask.

I don't much care who represents whom, but if people come here and state the reasons for their presence I tend to take it on face value until I see persuasive reasons to believe otherwise. 'Rentboy.pro' as a domain name potentially describes characteristics of the site or of the subject matter of the site. The name does not either state or imply which of those possibilities is correct. Text copied from Irish69's profile here, 'Recruiting, Marketing & Promotions For Rentmen'. ['I’m glad you @guyfawkes' means 'I'm glad you mentioned Guy Fawkes.']

Generally it the symbol for the Brazilian real. Why an Argentinian in the US would quote his rates in reais is beyond me.

All of them in the Pacific Gyre perhaps?

I'm not all that surprised, and I don't think they go into these careers thinking of that. I think it is purely a matter of entitlement and what they thought they could get away with. When #metoo became a thing, a prominent Australian journalist tweeted asking for women who had personal experiences to come forward, expecting maybe 10. She received over 500, naming over 50 different men [mainly] in the entertainment industry. One prominent television personality was named by over 6o women. One newspaper chain with the national broadcaster did an investigation and went public about a week ago. Executives at the TV station he was on said they always thought he was a sleazebag, but 'there were no complaints'. After the piece aired on the ABC and was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, more women came forward. Apparently the next in line will be publicised in the coming weeks. This whole thing has a long way to go, and almost inevitably there will be some untested and unfair allegations that come forward. The contested motives in the Franken case are a case in point.

This was on the wireless here yesterday (Thu) afternoon. As the article noted, glitter is essentially microplastic, which is increasingly recognised as an environmental hazard. The item here noted that there is a eucalyptus based material coated with aluminium that can be used to make glitter, and is not an environmental issue.

*Takes notes* 'Likes beer ...'

Ocean currents are the same the world over. West coasts have cold currents (north to south in your part of the world) and warm on east coasts. There are local variations in relatively closed areas in bays and gulfs. As already noted, the Gulf Stream super charges that effect in the North Atlantic mainly to the benefit of NW Europe. West coast mid-latitude areas like southern California and southern western Australia (and Spain and Portugal) have what is generally known as a Mediterranean climate, hot dry summers and cooler wetter winters, whereas similar latitude areas on east coasts (Sydney/Brisbane, Durban, SE US) are more sub-tropical with humid wetter summers. Vladivostok, where the port freezes in winter, is further south than Marseille, on the Riviera.

This afternoon the Senate passed the Equal Marriage bill. The vote was 43-12 in the 76 seat chamber (some senators were absent on business or personal leave [one Canberra senator was at the children's hospital in Sydney where her child is undergoing surgery] and had 'pairs' [a agreement under which does not vote]). Some senate positions are vacant, and some abstained. The bill was passed as it had originally been presented to Parliament, with a raft of 'religious freedom' amendments all defeated. The bill will be debated in the House of Representatives next week, as it isn't sitting this week.

No. Next time look at the whole sign on screen and see if there's a 'keep me signed in' box to check and make sure that you have checked it.

Correctamundo, but it's my term it wasn't an official one. There was no single day when everything changed. Road signs, for example, changed in 1974. Milk, delivered in reusable glass bottle at the time were first labelled as 568ml, and gradually the bottles were replaced by 600ml ones (now only sold in shops in 1, 2 or 3 litre plastic bottles).

Yes, when we are socialised with the view that it is an inevitable scourge it is hard to come to terms with the advances in treatment and what they actually mean. To me what is important is not whether as individuals we can accept the newly accepted science, but whether society at large can come to terms with it. And importantly what it means to HIV+ people. Specialists know what is happening, and that U=U (to all intents and purposes) but from the article, the general medical community is as yet unaware or unconvinced by the current specialist consensus. It's important that even if there is one case where the consensus is wrong that such a case isn't seen as disproving the science on which that consensus was based. The strongest message I took from the article was the one in the last couple of paragraphs: “I’ll never forget him saying those words, ‘You can’t transmit the virus if you’re undetectable,’ ” the 47-year-old substitute teacher recalled. “And I said, ‘Wait, what?’ “It was like the sky opened. Are you kidding? There’s, like, zero risk? I don’t feel like I’m a threat anymore. I don’t feel like I’m dirty. I don’t feel like I’m a dangerous person.”

As far as I'm aware, management can control who can be members of the forum (and hence who can post) but there is no way of controlling who reads it. So, everything we say is, to all intents and purposes, fully in the public domain.

But it's not. A pint is 20 fl oz in the UK (and was here before M day). And unlike the actual or implied set measurement of talking about a pint of berries, a punnet is the container, and there is no set weight/mass that it holds, nor is there a standard size.

Oops, divided by a common language again. Yes, a small basket (or similar container). Usually about 300g of fruit [c. 10 ounces].

The jam would certainly work, although I would be inclined to use a punnet of fresh raspberries or a cup of frozen raspberries (thawed) folded through the chocolate. [Half kilo or even 1 kg bags of frozen berries are readily available here, so I assume they are in the US too. And now at the start of summer you have to fight your way through the shelves of fresh berries in the F&V section.]

Happy Turkey Day everyone!! (From a country where it passes completely without comment or mention.)

Can't be too careful about Kansas City. Oh, no offence @bigjoey.

This is a start. https://m4m-forum.org/threads/411-aj-irons.126231/ I've read a lot of good and very little bad in here over time.

Canberra's newly painted roundabout ... [ATTACH=full]14526[/ATTACH]

The British were in India for 250 years. It's entirely possible that if you have British antecedents there could have been an Indian link in there somewhere. Those liaisons happened and are not always remembered beyond a few generations. In less enlightened times I can remember older people (such as my grandmother, who was born in 1893) referring to others having 'a touch of the tar brush' meaning they allegedly had some indigenous ancestry. The timeframe in Australia is far shorter than the British history in India, and there are first Australians who know of, and identify with their ethnicity but do not 'appear' to be indigenous. As noted above, there is also the possibility that it's an error in the margins of the test.

There is a news announcer here, Kumi Taguchi, who was a mainstream news announcer on ABC TV but is now hosting another program. Her mother was Anglo and her father Japanese, she grew up in Australia. Kumi presents as an archetypal Australian, but she does acknowledge her heritage. For the most part, no-one notices her, or other presenters who are Asian or of Asian descent any more than they notice Emma Alberici. One of them, Jason Om did draw attention to himself though, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-15/same-sex-marriage-how-my-dad-changed-his-mind/9152518

Umm, there have been posters who identify as Asian posting since the thread was opened.