mike carey

I last heard from him a month ago today. We had a long phone conversation about the big commemorative para jump he organised in Oregon in April. He sent me a shit tonne of photos and videos of the event. He seems fairly busy with those sorts of activities. He was last on WhatsApp 36 hours ago so he's still around, but we haven't spoken or exchanged any texts.

Then it must be rocket science.

The OP edited the post to convert them to live links.

Australia usually gets off to a flying start (well, not literally) in the medals tally and then tanks as the games go on. We have always been strong in the pool but other sports not so much, or at least not as much as other big sporting countries. So a top four place after three or four days is not unusual but ending up three or four places lower. This year after 12 days we are still at number three (based on number of golds with silver and bronze as tie breakers, not total medals). It is already our best Olympics ever with 18 gold, passing the 17 at Athens (2004 not 1896) and at Tokyo in 2021, and yesterday was our best day with four, in the men's 4000m team pursuit, sailing, men's skateboarding and women's pole vault. That could well be all, but those of us who pay attention are nevertheless in a state of mild euphoria. I posted previously about the heart-warming back-story of the women's BMX win, but another set that caught national attention was sisters Jess and Noemie Fox (born in France to a French Atlanta bronze medalist mother and fourth-placed GB Olympian father who both moved to Australia to coach in the lead-up to Sydney 2000), who between them won the three women's canoe-slalom gold medals. Our usually strongly-performing men's and women's hockey teams and the perennially hopeful men's basket-ballers all lost in the quarters, but the women are into the basketball semis.

What's the saying, a pitch in time saves nine?

When you write a review on RM it gives you the option of whether it appears on your profile. Some may choose not to for whatever reason. Maybe they don't want to be contacted, or don't want anyone to have a ready list of how many guys they have reviewed. I wouldn't say it means they are not real clients, or that they aren't credible reviews, but it can mean that others don't have the perspective of whether they are consistently positive or negative, both of which can be ways for others to read between the lines in the text they have written.

And then there was only one.

He was in San Diego when I was planning my post forum weekend stay and was impressed. Of course he was only visiting and wouldn't be there by the time I was. *Sad face*

This was a climate-related comment but not a random one, it's a reference to the second stanza of Dorothea Mackellar's famous poem My Country: I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror – The wide brown land for me! Perversely, many of the subsequent years (although not immediately after this 2018 comment) were more notable for the second part of that line, featuring record breaking floods on the east coast and in the Kimberley.

https://x.com/masonsixtencox/status/1819613509627576493 This morning Saya won the women's BMX gold medal. Kai's response when asked what it felt like was a simple 'Awesome'.

https://rent.men/PoseidonXXX

Well, there are some very tall buildings in New York that would offer that high level experience he seeks. He could even add some world trade to the experience.

Bon anniversaire!!

Welcome to the forum, @luccaalpha. It can be fun and there is a huge range of people and interests here. It can also be a place to build a good reputation for your business, and you seem to be off to a good start.

Being Carmelites, I'm not surprised they were having none of it for so long.

I recently saw an article in the NY Post, quoting another in the WSJ. It reported an increase over five years in the price of female sanitary products. Both articles referred to increases of 36 and 41 percent, but the Post's article referred to the prices as 'nearly doubling'. Why am I not surprised that their sub-editors are innumerate? Not to dismiss the significance of the price increase in sanitary products, or any of the other prices that have increased over the past five years, but a doubling of prices, or even the almost 50% increase in these products over five years says exactly nothing about price rises this month or over the last year. Since the topic of this thread is Inflation continues to fall, it's well to remember that it does continue to trend down despite an occasional monthly increase. Whether that will continue is anyone's guess. Regardless, saying that inflation is going down (disinflation) is different to prices going down (deflation). Once most prices go up with inflation they don't go down. Manufacturers can control their rate of production, suppliers can withhold inventory to prevent that. There are exceptions, like perishable items such as fresh food, goods where a producer reduces their costs and wants to increase market share, or fire sales, but mostly a period of inflation ends with new price baselines, and price relativities may have changed.

Save it so you have some solace when they lose your bags and don't send an e-mail.

I hadn't watched it until now. It's amazing. (And so is he!)

It is sweeping on one level, but it's not a simple assertion and it's not implying binaries of either rich/not or hire/don't. It's more a question of when they do hire, why? They hire for similar reasons to all of us: they can afford to, it cuts out the need to woo a sex partner, they can get a particular type that they can't by other means, it can remove emotion from an interaction and it limits the engagement to a specific amount of time. And offering specific recompense is 'hiring' whether it's through a website that lesser mortals might use or a direct approach either personal of via a fixer, it's still 'hiring'.

I agree with the general tenor of the replies so far, but I think to some extent it can be context dependent. If it's a new provider, certainly 'you tell me', but if you have an established relationship and the situation is out of the ordinary and unexpected, then you might take it as a reasonable question and make a reasonable suggestion but it might turn out to have been an unintended test if your answer is risible, or the provider had a preconceived idea that your offer didn't meet. Perhaps making something of a joke of a response such as @nycman's suggestion could be the best approach.

I've been a paid up magnum subscriber for a few years, but like @Rod Hagen recently listened to it less. I first came across him some years ago when he was a speaker at the Sydney Writers Festival, and also appeared on a number of discussion panels on TV. I still enjoy his podcasts when I do listen, and also his commentary on LGBT issues.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 as it flew over Eastern Ukraine en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in 2014. A total of 298 people were killed, most from the Netherlands but 38 were Australian citizens or residents. About 100 of the passengers were delegates to an international AIDS conference in Melbourne. A solemn commemorative service was held this morning in the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra. Those in attendance included the Governor-General, senior members of the government, members of the diplomatic corps from countries whose citizens had been on the flight, the then Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, the Chief of the Defence Force and members of Parliament. Most importantly, family members of the Australians killed. There were tributes offered by the Governor-General, the Foreign Minister, the then Foreign Minister who was Australia's lead in our joint campaign with the Netherlands to have the United Nations Security Council adopt a unanimous resolution condemning the shooting-down, and the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police which provided 500 personnel to security and forensic operations at the crash site and in later investigations. Following the service, a wreath was to be laid at a new memorial in the Parliament House rose garden. Later today, another commemorative service will be held in The Hague. The Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus KC MP will represent Australia at that service.

In- and out-calls are priced differently for whatever reason the provider decides, and where an out-call is more expensive it may be for one of the two reasons you cite. Or maybe not. He may just want to incentivise in-calls.

It's two years from the most recent comment, so this thread would have timed out around 10am AEDT on 3 March 2025.

From the Ku-ring-gai Stealers Baseball and Softball Club. And yes, it is 'Stealers'.