mike carey

Like most questions about 'What is the best ...' the best answer is 'It depends'. (I recognise that I just contradicted myself, I said that you can't describe something as 'best' then asserted I was offering the 'best' answer.) I'm perfectly happy using WhatsApp. It avoids communications channels tied to the platform of the service you want to use (like RM). It avoids the specific constraints (price, access restrictions etc) of PSTN and proprietary burner phone apps. But it's limited to places where you have internet rather than telephone access. My phone service doesn't differentiate between domestic and international phone services, but that seems to be rather common in the US. The thing to remember about WhatsApp, that at times seems to be overlooked, is that the security it offers is point to point encryption. It DOES NOT offer encryption in either the transmitting or receiving device. That still depends on your own device security. It also doesn't protect you from the content of a message sent via WhatsApp. If someone wants to send you a virus or malware, they still can, but it will be encrypted on its way to you. That is not particularly reassuring.

Fuel prices here have stabilised at around $1.90 per litre for petrol and $2.50 for diesel recently (in Australian dollars). That's slightly higher than they were before the war, but considerably lower than they had been (not the wild gyrations our Manila correspondent reports). The government halved fuel excise at the start of April. The reduction went from 50% to 25% a month ago, and has ended this weekend, so prices will go up (all else being equal) over the next few days as existing low-tax stocks are used up. The government has directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to monitor unwarranted early price increases. In unrelated news, new car sales here in the June quarter (Apr-Jun) show a sharp increase in EV and hybrid car sales, with those now comprising slightly below 50%, up about 20%. Of those, EV sales exceeded hybrids.

The 'international' version of the link so people don't need to log in to the Austrian one. https://rent.men/Blazin_Stardust

I guess the bullet went in-n-out. And his was the third fall.

Interesting stats @SecretProvider. As I read it my initial thought was that the 'return per view' metric is more complicated than it appears to be being portrayed. Things like how readers are channelled to an advertisement may have an effect. How many steps are there from opening a browser or an index page to the actual ad? How do you reach an ad for a dental practice compared with an ad for an escort? Is an ad on rentmen the same as one on your own web site? An example, not to say it's comparable, but just to consider the process. Say I need a new suitcase. I search either with a search engine or find a site that links to relevant retailers. Or I go to a retailer and search their site to see if they sell luggage. If I go to a retailer's ad, is that the point where they should do their evaluation of views to sales? If I'm on that retailer's site, they show a page of links to a range of cases. How much weight should they put on how many of the cases I click on to check them out? As I said, your post is food for thought. Anyone who understands how a market with choices rather than monopolies works know that advertising is to attract potential and actual clients. I check airline fares and award options a lot, some might say obsessively although I do not, with no intention of buying immediately or perhaps even soon. I also check ads for men who are discussed here, knowing that I'm unlikely to be in the same city as many of them in the near future. But both for them and for air tickets I am content to read what is advertised to understand the possibilities.

https://rent.men/GabrielCross

I had a similar experience on (I think) an AA flight LGA-BOS in April. I don't recall who was checking, but I thought at the time it was TSA (clearly not airline staff) although I wasn't really paying that much attention.

You've been quiet, @ArVaGuy! Welcome back.

There's a thread on him in the Spa, but that's about his massage services.

This is two separate stories in the same video. One is of something that is either one of the most significant recent events in civil aviation or the last defiant gasp in a changing world where long distance aviation will no longer survive. The other is one of perhaps overweening corporate ambition without the technical or business vision or capacity to reach its targets. A tale of how far hubris can lead the mighty to fall. There is a long-standing thread elsewhere in these forums asking, 'Will it Ever Fly' into which this post could go, but that would be to elevate the shortfalls over the achievement delivered. Perhaps I'm overdramatising the whole thing. Although it's about the story of this past week, this video has interesting analysis of the development paths of long haul civil aviation over the past two decades and the limits that physics and finance impose on how far further it can go.

An old thread about this masseur:

Nope, this is the right place for all discussions about China as a destination, sightseeing and, ahem, other things. There is no assumption that the 'other' is part of what is of interest.

This is important information, M. Happy birthday!!! Buon compleanno!

I've never watched it, in its Australian version or any other. But I suspect that there's an element of people being drawn to the strangest of things. Maybe they find it appealing. Maybe to measure themselves against what they see, and decide that they are far better than what is portrayed. Psychological analysis of things on the television, or of the people watching them, is potentially both interesting and pointless.

Maybe your second sentence answers the question in your first.

Cue lawyer jokes. On second thoughts, DON'T.

Note, this is apparently a spa in NYC and that's its phone number. It's not in the other Paris (either France or Texas).

Yes, I saw it. The film romanticised Morant in a way that he didn't deserve. He was no folk hero standing up to a pompous English officer class, he was a war criminal who applied 'Rule 303' to Boer women and children as much as to combatants. I'm not sure about when the term concentration camp became media currency but the imprisonment of Boer civilians certainly fit the same description as the later camps that are more familiar to us.

Well, I'm sure it's not Comic Sans.

An old thread, but potentially useful. https://www.companyofmen.org/topic/157112-jackmidwest-in-chicago/

Brevity is the very soul of his writing style.

Flat white is my coffee of choice in a café, but at home I use a plunger (French press, as y'all would say) and add full cream milk (low flat milk is too thin, and skim milk is an abomination unto god). I'll happily drink a glass of milk, or a carton of iced coffee [milk]. Maybe I should branch out and buy a 2L bottle of chocolate or strawberry milk next time I shop. Okay, maybe not strawberry.

You knew this would happen. Now it has!