mike carey

There is an apocryphal story of a new hire at IBM making a mistake that cost the firm $1m. When he said to his manager that he expected to be fired for it, the manager's reply was allegedly, 'Why would I fire you when I've just spent a million bucks training you?'

Again, mentioned earlier.

He was mentioned in a more general London thread a couple of days ago.

But I'm perfect, why should I reflect? /s/

Haha, this Australian read it without a second thought. Torch is THE word for what some call a flashlight.

@sam.fitzpatrick, I saw it last night and echo your assessments. I'm not one for a finer analysis of all aspects of a performance, I'm more a 'like/dislike' sort of critic. I'll leave that to you, B and others. I thought that the blending of real sets with projections into the background worked well, and liked the Moorish character of the columns in some scenes. Whether that was a conscious to portray the 'exotic' of the potion and its purveyor, I can't say but it had that effect. The show was spectacular and fun, but a reminder that eternal life might not be all the fun it first seems to be.

Language inflation is a thing in the US (and elsewhere, of course) that is pervasive when people are offering assessments of many things, not just escorts and masseurs. Four out of five in a restaurant review? Heaven forfend! I can remember over 30 years ago as a foreigner working with the US armed forces, anything other than a maximum 9 score in any of the many questions on an annual report was seen as a kiss of death. There was even a perception that different superlative words had a ranking of which were the best superlatives to use or what each of them actually meant! Yes, everything being amazing means that nothing really is, but consider the alternative of saying that something was 'good' or 'very good'. It might well prompt the question of what was wrong with them that you only say they were 'good'. You can't win

Tenerife, Canary Islands, 1977. One Pan Am and one KLM. I had to look up the 1977 part.

You perhaps should stop confusing the issue with facts.

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The question posed is not so much about the value or otherwise of CoM to escorts, few of them know about it, fewer engage. Rather it is one for those who are here. The fact that some attend the Palm Springs weekend on their own dime suggests the site has some value, and that others engage more widely than to burnish or defend their reputations adds to that impression. I know I've buddy listed guys on RM based on their interactions here, I doubt I'm the only one. Others I've seen on RM and buddy listed them after meeting them here. That's not enough data to answer the question, but it's not nothing.

I thought I'd just post this photo I took from the terminal at Sydney airport when I was waiting for my flight on Tuesday.

Cross posted with the Friday Funnies thread.

AI tells me that:

I just read a Facebook post from Sydney Airport that from 9 Apr American Airlines and CBP have begun a trial of allowing inbound passengers from Sydney with onward connections in the US to skip collecting their checked bags at LAX to clear customs, and then dropping them off again after doing so. The post doesn't go into details (and I guess I could google them) but it sounds like they are doing what happens to international visitors who transit through Canadian airports (YVR being the main one for Australians) en route to the US. I assume that passengers will still clear both customs and immigration at LAX but sans bags. The trial will only apply to flights on AA metal, so just AA72. It's good to see, it will be one less thing to do, but customs was always the quicker part of the clearance process at LAX. Of course, I flew that route on AA on 8 April.

If I recall correctly, Leo was at the pool party at a previous gathering, 2023 I think. Easy on the eye, if that's who I remember.

Good evening, market reading genius here. I went in to San Francisco this morning to revive memories of previous visits, and the sights and sounds of Gold Mountain (gold rush era Chinese name for the city, Melbourne was New Gold Mountain two years later, but I digress). Walking past an ATM decided that as I needed to convert money for ... Let's just say I wanted to buy some USD cash. The bank rate was worse than the always lousy rate that my QF travel card offers (but that becomes competitive when the points on offer during bonus sales are considered). Due to my impecable timing, one AUD bought 2 US cents more one hour later. In other words I spent 5.5 AU cents more for each US dollar than I would have if I'd waited that hour. The Australian stock market went up about 5% on opening Thursday (the announcement came over night in Australia), so both our market and our dollar have appreciated in the last few hours. Nobody can say that the current times are not interesting, whether that's a good or a bad thing is a matter of opinion.

Remember, to the extent that the unemployment rate affects the markets, and could influence whether or not it's a bear market or a recession has begun, unemployment is a measure of the number of people who are looking for work but who can't find it. If one person retires that reduces the number of people in the 'employed' category but not the 'unemployed' category until someone is hired to replace them. (The rate of participation in the employment market, is a separate consideration, although less significant than unemployment.)

Just boarded my AA flight in Sydney. Counting down.

ASX futures were up 0.7% at 6am AEST Tuesday (just over 1.5 hours ago). That's still down, to use a technical term, a shit tonne since last Thursday. That may in part be due to things apparently stabilising wrt China, our biggest trading partner and therefore a big influence on our economy and markets, so not necessarily indicative of Tuesday on Wall Street.

I think there are two things constraining demand at the moment, in the whole economy in the US and elsewhere not just in this specialised business. One is the sudden loss of wealth, which will last until there are signs of recovery. The other is the uncertainty effect that is more transitory, people don't want to do anything when they have no idea what's going on. That should ease when things settle down, for better or worse.

I had an escort block me a month or so back, and when I clicked on his profile it showed this:

As a possibly relevant data point, the Australian market was down over 6% on opening this morning, but has reversed some of the losses and is down 5.3% now at 1130AEST. Our trade on Friday wasn't down as much as the later US trading day was, so some of today's drop is catching up with earlier US losses rather than foretelling further losses there.