stevenkesslar

Steven is really that old? Is he retired? Can we just all for once admit the truth? I hope in the future I can be a role model of what not to do. Ignorant whore doesn't even cover it. Since we're revealing things about each other, I know for a fact @Unicorn is known for his empathetic bedside manner. If I got sick, he's obviously the kind of doctor I'd want making me feel better. So him teasing me about what he thinks he knows about my age is way too kind. He's not even discussing my small dick. @latbear4blk, who is a sweetheart, used to always tease me about that. Personally, I think it's a great thing that a small-dicked escort didn't let that stand in the way. Just like it's a great thing when a small-minded poster doesn't let that stand in the way of how he attacks people. But @Unicorn is simply being way too kind. Somehow, despite being a small-dicked ignorant whore, I was financially successful. Then, being essentially ignorant, I made the mistake of investing in real estate instead of drugs. I mean, I deserve as much slack as the next guy. But how many times can a guy fuck up? My own doctor actually felt sorry for me. A few years ago, he asked me how I ended up retiring so early while owning 13 homes. I said, "Isn't it obvious, doc? I'm ignorant, and I have a small dick." I also have dementia. So I may not have said that, exactly. But it was something close. It gets worse. This has been a cruel affliction to my escort buddies. One was getting kicked out of his condo because the owner was selling it. So I bought the condo so he didn't have to move. Such a fucking asshole! I also have legal problems. Once COVID clears I need to find a lawyer who can tell us how I can legally gift the condo to my friend. So basically I'm a super duper asshole. Empathetic guys like @Unicorn would not even treat his dog the way I treat my friends. And let's just paint the grim ending, shall we? Being a smart guy, @Unicorn knows a lot of things. Like my age. He also knows these 22 cunts in Houston who claim to be "professional masseuses" are basically liars and greedy whores leeching money off a person of means. As @Unicorn posted, what is a person of means, such as himself, supposed to do with all these greedy and lying whores trying to leech off people like him? That goes to the core of his compassionate world view. And I have to admit, I'm both jealous and sad. Before I was pathetically old and wretched, I once hoped to be a person of means myself, like @Unicorn. Instead, fate and bad genetics and my addiction to real estate fucked up my life, and made me the wreck that I am. Not even an extremely compassionate doctor like @Unicorn could cure what ails me. So, @Unicorn, please don't feel like you have to be so kind. It's one of the nicest things about you. But I know who I am.

Both of these points reinforce what I was trying to say. So thanks guys. To Charlie's point, I know someone who contributed by paying for Bill's hotel bill when him came to the pool party. One year if I recall right this guy and I split the bill. Or maybe we decided I'd pay for it that year. It all goes to the point that doing it that way is more complicated. We know for a fact that it worked, because here we are. The very good news, which I take as a community victory, is this site is alive. But I think we also know for a fact it was a bit complicated. And sometimes a bit unstable. My intention was to say if we go that route - meaning both community ownership and community funding - we better be clear that it is going to take some work. And it will need to be a community effort. I'll just randomly pull up an example. Lot's of non-profits have boards where one of the things is everybody on the board gives money and helps raise money. So if somebody asked me if I'd be willing to be on a steering committee for this site and pledge to give $1000 a year and raise money from others, I'd say yes. But if somebody said would you rather do nothing and pay nothing, I'd say yes, yes, and yes. If you throw in a margarita I'd add a fourth yes. I may be an old and ignorant whore. But I'm no fool. @JEC, sorry if I mischaracterized anything you said or didn't say. Bottom line is you are a hero in this drama because you helped get us from point A to point B. And you were clear that you weren't interested in playing a long term role. I'm grateful for what you did. As I said, we met and exceeded our goal. So that is a community victory, too. Nothing I said was meant to diminish a community victory. The opposite. That said, I stand by my point. I don't think it would be easy to fund this website on a self-funding community donation model. So if we are going to do it, we better be clear about that and have a steering committee and a plan. It makes perfect sense to me that @Coolwave35 would say I'll pay the bills, so problem solved. So a steering committee is not necessary or even particularly helpful. It's a generous offer. I have been here and done this before. Sometimes in somewhat similar ways but in one case in a very similar way with Bill. One night in Vegas years ago I took Bill out to dinner and the tone was happy and somewhat congratulatory. I never asked Bill how much money he was actually getting in pledges or donations, and he never told me. But I had a file with names and pledges in it so I had a rough idea. I did softly pitch the idea that we could formalize this donation thing and have a group of people pledging money every year and I'd help keep it going as donors stopped giving and needed to be replaced. I would never have used a phrase like "steering committee," because I think I know how Bill would have felt about that. The bottom line is that Bill said I'd done well, and now I could go home. I'm not the type of person who tries hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. So I decided to leave well enough alone. Which is also what I was hearing from the people pledging money. So we're at another "leave well enough alone" moment. If a bunch of people want to join a steering committee, we'll know that because they will volunteer to join a steering committee. If nobody wants to join a steering committee, that's a sort of answer. Either way I view it as a win/win. And I always think it is a good thing for any community to decide its own fate, one way or the other.

Me too. I view this as a win/win either way. I'm going to use the phrase "benevolent dictator" because somebody else used it. Under that model, I don't have to worry about a god damn thing. I have no problem with that. I have no financial obligation, or legal or political risk. And the problem with that is? The alternative, whether it is a non-profit or an LLC or a corporation, may involve others things. It may involve me giving money regularly. It may involve my real name on a piece of paper, so that if DOJ or DHS or somebody else gets the bright idea of going after this or the escort review website my ass is legally on the line. My radar tells me that funding this website through donations is possible, but a pain in the ass. Anyone who has worked on grassroots fundraising should know that's almost always the case, anyway. The good news is Bill proved that in this case, it's possible. I think we know with Bill it was always at least somewhat unstable. I can attest to it being a bit like pulling teeth from the pieces I was involved in. This GoFundMe is a nice symbol of it. We did meet our goal. But @JEC and I have both posted it took longer than we would have hoped. The last donation I made was actually partly a test in my mind. It was immediately after we survived a near death experience. So I was just curious how many people would rush to donate $5 or $50 if given a good reason to do so. I wouldn't jump to any conclusions. But nobody rushed to donate. Again, this is 0 % surprising. So I think it's good to be explicit about these things. A self-funding community donation model would depend on a core group of maybe a few dozen individuals that are committed to donating to this site for the good of the community. I know that is possible, because I helped do it. But it almost goes without saying that it is easier to have a benevolent dictator like Hooboy. So either way, in terms of the survival of this site, I view the choice as a win/win. Whether the escort review site survives is a whole different issue. I said in a private message today to an escort who I think should be on a steering committee that if that site dies, it is a nail in this site's coffin. Some people may disagree with me. Others may say even if it turns out I'm right it's no great loss. I can view it that way. I made a boatload of money off that site, and made friendships that have lasted 20 years. Long enough for @Unicorn to make fun of me because of my age. So one way I can look at it is I got what I'm going to get out of the site. Why give a shit? (By the way, Daddy once told me when he was editing an article I got published on Rentboy that you have to be very careful when you talk about aging with Gay men. The context is I was arguing that the Rentboy complaint criminalizes being an older Gay man who hires escorts. As far as I'm concerned, it's fun for a doctor to make fun of my age. We all know I'm older than most people here, and I'm practically on death's door. That said, @Unicorn, you might want to be a bit more careful about age jokes. It might hurt the feelings of guys here who are decades younger than me. )

Which is my point. I suspect The Deli was the biggest lure here for a lot of people. People want to talk about escorts who advertise on Rentmen. On Daddy's site, they wanted to review them. Therein lies the problem for both sites. Rentboy was shut down because, according to DHS, it promoted prostitution. Jeffrey plead guilty to promoting prostitution. It's probably a good guess that if the Feds wanted to go after Rentmen, it would be for ................... wait for it ......................... promoting prostitution. Of course, going after Rentmen would be harder, but not impossible, for them. Is the Deli, where thread after thread has hyperlinks to Rentmen, promoting prostitution? To paraphrase a former President, it depends on what the meaning of "promote" is. The reality is with Rentboy and Backpage, the Feds could define things however they wanted. They could even come up with a new law, FOSTA/SESTA, that was designed to go after websites like Rentboy and Backpage. So you can hire a lawyer or an army of lawyers and think it through any way you want. But once you're in jail and your assets have been seized, you may find out that your guess didn't work out so well. So did becoming "Guy Fawkes" somehow shelter a website with a forum like The Deli? I doubt it. I'm not a lawyer. What probably sheltered this site and the review site is that Bill was a bad target, as an elderly low-income Gay man. And even if we assume some bright bureaucrat pondered the idea, if they were bright they might have assumed it would ignite a backlash about free speech and LGBTQ rights. Even more so now that ACLU and HRC are saying "hands off." In part because these actions mostly make escorting less safe for escorts. So we can keep doing things exactly the same. You'll notice nobody ultimately went after this website, or Daddysreview.com. That said, The Deli is our biggest negative when it comes to legal or political vulnerability. I'm not a lawyer. But I could write the complaint myself, just by using the Rentboy complaint as a template and changing some vocabulary. No matter what we do, there is risk. Bill knew that, and Cooper writes about it on the top thread pinned in The Deli. My argument is that the best way to deal with a negative is always to turn it into a positive. Yes, we're for jumping into bed with escorts. (I of course mean the figuratively.) Jumping into bed with HRC and the ACLU makes it much safer for us, I think. Freedom of speech, and health and safety, and stuff like that. But that's a debate, if we want to have it. Whichever escorts or coalition we choose to jump in bed with, I don't think we're jumping the gun. One reason is that the presumed administrators once probate is completed are saying it is now time to decide who owns and runs this site. But the more immediate reason they are saying this right now is that we did kind of jump the gun by moving all the data to a new server. There's a lively debate about whether that's intellectual property theft over at Gay Guides, which a few people here are posting on. I already stated my ignorant whore view. Before Bill died, these websites were the community's websites, which Bill raised donations from the community to run. So now that Bill has died the community is simply planning to run and manage the site as a community. We're not stealing our own data. If some lawyer pops up to say we did something wrong, I'll be happy to be on the list of Gay guys who testify. I'm part of this community, and I helped Bill raise donations to run an LGBTQ website. What's the problem? I don't think we are going to have a problem. But, as I said already, all this is more reason to think some form of community ownership, LLC or non-profit or corporation, makes sense. @bigjoey and I recently agreed on one thing. A good lawyer ought to be able to argue things both ways. I offered the suggestion that a good whore also has to do the same thing. We have to be able to see things from the top down, and the bottom up. Sometimes at the same time. So in that spirit, now I will refute my own argument. Just so it's clear, I cut and pasted that from the thread on forming a steering committee. The prospective financer for this site is basically saying we don't need a steering committee, which turns a fun hobby into an enormous project. As far as I'm concerned, case closed. The guy who will pay the bills is saying this is all unnecessary. So let me play out the most extreme hypothetical scenario. Jeffrey probably viewed Rentboy as a fun hobby, too. As the guy with the money who paid the bills, that made him the target. Could anything like that happen? And would it take 18 years, like it did with Jeffrey? Obviously, we can't say. What we can say is the presumed target of any future action against this site is not worried. Like him, I've always seen escorting as a fun hobby. So I can relate. Why not just leave it that? If this were a democracy and there were a vote on this, I'm really not sure how this would go. But I'm sure lots of people would agree that this should simply be a fun project. Maybe a few legal dots still have to be connected, and that's it. Case closed. Besides, lots of people thought the reviews were too watered down anyways. Why not just let that ship sink? Arguably, our work is pretty much done here, boys. Which is fine with me. The plague is winding down, so I can just go back to having fun.

@mikecarey is one of the smartest guys in the room, from Oz. I shouldn't single him out, but he'd be a great voice on the matter. There are some really bright thinkers here from Canada, which is where about 10 % of our visitors come from. If they want to be on this committee, they can speak up. That said, I don't know that it's important anyone outside the US is formally part of this. In terms of what I will call clients (meaning those who aren't escorts, and probably hire escorts) I don't think that geographic distinctions matter. The most important thing is people who are capable of the purposes @rvwnsd outlined, which have nothing to do with geography. I'd mostly think in terms of distribution of a steering committee based on interests and function. What do people come here for? I'm just going to go on the assumption that we're talking about 6 people, although it could be 9 or 12 or whatever. And I'll assume of those 6 people 4 are clients. Ideally they are people who don't all come here for the same reasons. One person might come here because they are seeking information on escorts in the Deli. Some people, like me, like to rant about politics. Some people just like the sense of community, even if they never meet anyone here. I like that @rvwnsd suggested one role as: Consider suggestions and requests made by the general Forum membership So that would be facilitated by having people who come here for different reasons, and are open to new ideas. That said, in terms of the immediate needs I don't know that any of that matters in determining whether it makes sense to structure as an LLC, or non-profit, or neither. @Oliver is keeping what I suspect is a growing list of people who want to be contacted if this site disappears. That probably is now a less important list than it was last week. That list builds on his list of people who normally attend, or at least are interested in, the annual pool party he hosts. So there's a whole group of people around him, some of whom I used to affectionately refer to as "The Founding Fathers." They drive what is sort of the big annual prom, a pool party, which is always one of the most popular posts here. So somehow that group and their interests should be involved. But I don't speak for them, other than to say that they are older gentleman who would probably be uninterested in formally being associated with management, let alone ownership, of this site. They would tend to agree with what @Coolwave35 just posted. We just want to have a pool party and post pictures and discuss escorts with ads on Rentmen. Can't we just do that? Why make it so complicated? For people who feel that way, a steering committee probably makes no sense. To make the opposite point, I think it would be great if younger people got involved. Because this is a site oriented to people who hire escorts, and those people tend to be older, it makes sense that there is a natural age demographic for this site. But that's why the idea of somebody like @Coolwave35 who in his 30's seemed appealing on the face of it. So I think it would be good if there was somebody or a few people younger in this effort who who would like to see the site gradually updated, both technologically and in terms of content. There's also a debate happening about why have any escorts involved at all. Which is why I suggested something like a 2 to 1 ratio of clients and escorts, meaning 4 clients and 2 escorts if it is a 6 person group. Here's some whining related to why I suggested that. It's another tug of war here that in my experience can be both playful and irritating. So at one point due to extenuating circumstances I ended up hosting the annual pool party at my house, at the request of its permanent host, a client and friend. The next year I ended up hosting it again, mostly because his kitchen bitch is actually a bit of a bitch. He insisted he wanted to create his wonderful culinary delights in my kitchen again. Especially when I had it at my place a second year in a row I got some serious pushback from some regulars about how escorts are supposed to attend the party, but not run it. My solution was simple. I told the host and his kitchen bitch, both clients and friends of mine, that they better not even think of having their fucking party in my house again. It was a cute story, to me at least. But I'm telling it because it does reflect a dynamic I think is real and pervasive. If it's a 6 person steering committee, probably 4 of them should be "clients" or people who are not escorts. That said, the escorts I still know are ones who have escorted for a long time and have been friends for a long time. I think it's mostly accurate to say they see both this website and the review site as next to useless, in terms of how their businesses actually work. Some of that may be who they are. Some of it may be that they are on the back ends of their escorting shelf life. But they're well known and well liked people. My strong sense, which I can't say from experience as a current escort, is these sites are not as dynamic and don't do for escorts I know what they did for me in their heyday. Even if that's true, that may be perfectly fine to people here. But it's not a growth strategy. When I started escorting I quickly figured out how to use the review website, especially, and to some extent this one as well to grow my business. So it would actually be great to have an escort who is doing that right now on the steering committee. Because he'd probably have some good ideas. I was that guy 15 years ago, but I'm not today. We all age. Ain't it a bitch? (Sorry to disappoint you, @Unicorn. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky guys who never grow up. ) And since I'm letting my inner bitch run free, I'll say something else. I think Bill thought he was being clever about steering around FOSTA/SESTA and what happened to Rentboy. I don't think he was as clever as he thought he was. Whether he was Guy Fawkes or Daddy would have made no difference to the Feds, if they had in fact arrested him and seized all his assets. I think the reality is that he would have made a horrible target. He joked to me about how a jail cell would be bigger than his apartment. He was a low-income elderly Gay man. In addition to a chorus of how the homophobic law was picking on older Gay men, there would have been massive freedom of speech pushback. But I don't think various things "Guy" did to literally try to mask his websites are models we should necessarily continue. If somebody asked me what is the one thing that could be done to the current website to better insulate it, that's a no brainer. We should eliminate The Deli. Get rid of the whole thing. Anybody who posts a link to any Rentmen ad should be banned permanently from the site. If you are not immediately clear on why I say that, go reread the Rentboy complaint. Jeffrey, who ran Rentboy, and the guys that founded and ran Backpage thought they were being clever, too, I suspect. But the complaint says that whether you use the word "rentboy" or "escort" or "prostitute" they all mean the same thing. At least according to the people who wrote the complaint. And whether you agree or disagree, what matters is that once they seized his assets, Jeffrey was in a weak position. So he ended up pleading guilty to "promoting prostitution." You can make any argument you want about the significance of those links to Rentmen ads. But so can the feds. News flash. Turns out they have more power and money. This is partly why I think this would be a good time for some younger clients and some younger escorts who think about these things differently to step forward. If HRC and the ACLU can be for decriminalization, we can be, too, I think. Are they going to shut HRC and the ACLU down? My point is that these are the things I hope a steering committee is thinking about when they are talking about whether this is an LLC or a non-profit, and what the basic purposes of having a website to talk about escorting are. That said, if everybody feels everything is just fine the way it is and nothing needs to change or improve or adapt, a steering committee just makes no sense.

My main thought about that is simply it should be escorts and the people who hire them. You could break it down further than that, but for our purposes if there is to be a small steering committee I don't think it's necessary. If it's reflective of who actually posts here it's like 2 to 1 clients to escorts. So if you want me to suggest a number I'd say 6 people, of whom 2 are escorts and 4 are people who hire them. And those 6 people should be working with @RadioRob and @Coolwave35 and Team Washington to make sure what they are doing fits with that the people who are taking a leadership on technology and fundinf have in mind. I'll keep repeating this just so that I don't create any misunderstandings. The stuff I'm most interested in at this point are things like decriminalization. But that's just me. The main reasons people come here are to talk about escorts in the deli, post pictures, chat about anything. The thing I'm very sensitive to is that while lots of people here would agree with decriminalization, they don't want to be personally associated with it. So this website can be lots of different things for lots of different people. A (501)©(3) would be no problem for the kind of political activity I'm talking about: promoting the health and safety of escorts and those who hire them, including by decriminalizing. The main thing a 501©(3) can't do is election activity. Here's a helpful summary: The Restriction of Political Campaign Intervention by Section 501©(3) Tax-Exempt Organizations So as a simple example as a 501©(3) we could promote the idea of decriminalization and go meet with Sen. Weiner if he is pushing a bill to decriminalize. Or go meet with members of this decriminalization coalition, or join it. We can't actively work to elect Sen. Weiner. If there was a decriminalization bill on the ballot we could not work for that. Although that's not black and white because "voter education" would be okay. All of this is way beyond what most clients would do. But there are probably a bunch of escorts who would do it. An example of where I could have gotten in trouble was when I was state organizing director of a non-profit and the organization took money from unions relating to a ballot initiative on taxes. If it's something on the ballot, that's when you are at the line. We defined what we did as "voter education" about taxes, as opposed to taking a specific position for or against the initiative. There's an advantage of being a 501©(3). With several of the organizations I worked for there were always candidates seeking endorsements. Being non-profit gave us a great excuse to say, "Sorry. Can't do that." But we could and did work with them on getting legislation passed. What I'm suggesting, at least in the short term, doesn't go within a mile of any of this. As part of a sentence, it's "information and education about the health and safety of escorting, including decriminalization." It seems clear that's the level that that big decriminalization coalition including HRC and the ACLU that has formed is at now: education, and basically promoting the idea. My hunch is they would welcome connecting with people and a website actually involved in the thing they are trying to protect. Maybe they are involved in some local or state initiatives, like the escort safety law I posted on in California. But any or all of that would be fine within the context of a 501©(3). That said, this is all stuff a steering committee should be batting around, I think. I'm sure there are merits to every option discussed so far, like ©6 or an LLC or a corporation. I think any form of community ownership would be a good thing compared to the position Bill was in. I'm curious if anyone knew Hooboy well enough to know his risk calculus on these issues? I never met him. But from a distance he seemed very willing to put his ass on the line. There were all kinds of very specific reviews written about me when he was in charge. At least from the people who've written reviews I know, people would love it if we could move back in that direction. It would be interesting if anybody who knew Hooboy could speak to Hooboy's perception of his own risk, particularly on the review website, and how he mitigated against it. Or didn't.

I for one think a steering committee, or what @RyanDean called an exploratory committee, make tremendous sense. My own experience is this type of thing is driven by a CEO, an Executive Director, or a Board Chair. I'll give a few specific real world examples I know of. A former CEO I know reconstituted the board of the company he ran so it would include higher profile people like former US Senators. He drove that process, including figuring out who the right people might be. With non-profits I've worked with it's usually the Executive Director or Board Chair that would drive that process, including simply figuring out new board members to replace old ones. The half-assed thing I attempted years ago was based on the idea that Bill might be persuaded to do such a thing, and have some kind of informal steering or fundraising committee or whatever he chose to call it around to help in a situation like this. I bring this up because in a situation like this Bill would be the best one to figure out or bless a small planning group. But he is no longer in a position to do so. In my experience I've never known a board or steering committee to appoint itself. This is where I'm thinking you might play a role, @Orin. You've been incredibly clear that you're playing a transitional role and you're nor interested in any permanent leadership role in this community. Which is presumably what a steering committee would be figuring out and making recommendations on. Assuming there are people of various skills and interests interested in spending some time being part of a small steering group, @Orin is an objective outsider who might play a role, along with @RadioRob and @Coolwave35, in saying, "Yes, this sounds like the right group of people to figure out how to put a structure around this." Things like LLCs and corporations and non-profits have been mentioned as options, and I'm pretty sure we could come up with a small group of smart people to figure such things out. It would make sense to me that like a CEO or ED or Bill, you and @RadioRob and @Coolwave35 would essentially "bless" such a small group to go out and do some homework and come back with some recommendations. Speaking for myself what I've been saying to a few people privately is I'm happy to be part of a steering effort, or to not be. There's a specific escort, not me, who I think should be part of it because I think he has the best thinking about what to do about the review site. @sam.fitzpatrick has noted he sees several gaps, which I think is correct. One of them is that everybody, including me, is elated this site still exists. But we have no plan for the review site. It's not even clear whether a steering committee would focus on that. But since people like @Orin and @RadioRob are trying to save it, we probably should have a plan. Another factor is that at some point if we have an LLC or corporation or non-profit, some individuals have to put their real name on it. So I think I'm in a weird situation because I'm probably the opposite of most people, certainly most clients. I'm probably not as good to be on a steering committee if a major goal is to form an LLC, because I have never done that. I have helped form non-profits. Meanwhile, I'm happy to be part of a group using their real names as part of some LLC or non-profit, which I'm guessing many other people here would not be in a position to do. So that needs to be thought through. The easy default is to have one owner, which I guess could be @Coolwave35 or @RadioRob. I think @RadioRob has already said he does not want to own the equipment or site. And I think he said he wants them in a stand-alone island accessible to others, which makes great sense. My own view is that having one individual owner is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. Including that it makes him a target if anybody ever does get the bright idea of shutting down this website. Or the review website for that matter. On the political stuff, decriminalization/escort and client safety, my main immediate goal is to plant a flag that I think this should be part of our long term vision. I'm assuming if it were put to a vote most escorts and those who hire them would say decriminalization is a good idea. I think before you get to changing policy or law it is best to start with information and education. So, for example, Congress actually passed the first bill ever to study the health and safety of sex workers. There's a few things I am guessing. First, there was a lot of pushback from FOSTA/SESTA. Second, often when you introduce a bill like that it's to lay the groundwork for legislative changes. So this is all potentially good news. To further paint the picture of where we might consider going, here's something stated in a private message to me: "I don't see HRC being receptive to that but I do see the ACLU being willing to do so." I responded that I would have said the same thing five years ago. HRC was radio silent on Rentboy. I'll keep posting this coalition report that says decriminalization now has narrow majority support. Happily, HRC is in fact part of a national decriminalization coalition. Meanwhile, they are pushing their own escort health and safety legislation in CA. As I said in another post the chief legislative sponsor is somebody I was a precinct captain for when he first ran for Harvey Milk's seat. If HRC and guys like him are now in the middle of this, promoting it, decriminalization has moved from fringe to center. Which is very good news for us. To put it bluntly, we'd be fools not to reach out to these people. And probably be part of this coalition. I think it helps protect both websites. It's very hard to attack and shut down websites that promote ideas you don't agree with. Including ideas prominent LGBTQ groups like HRC are publicly advocating for. This is NOT front burner. But I do think it involves how we restructure as a community. One idea I've been floating is I think we should consider adding a Decriminalization/Escort And Client Health And Safety forum to provide information and discuss what is happening. An escort buddy texted me this story a few days ago: "Manhattan To Stop Prosecuting Prostitution, Part Of Nationwide Shift." Sucks, huh? We should be talking about, if not promoting, ideas like that here. Having a dedicated forum to do it in might help. There was one pool party in particular right after FOSTA/SESTA where everybody was glum and felt this site may be gone in a year. I think the climate has changed, and we now have a great opportunity to get ahead of the curve. This isn't as urgent as forming an LLC or a non-profit, if we go that route. But escorting health and safety issues, including decriminalization, could be one reason we are forming an LLC or a non-profit. I think we'd benefit from a big picture and vision, other than can we log in to this website tomorrow? I'll pass along one part of a private conversation that goes to all this consideration about the big picture some steering committee could be looking at. This individual said he thinks Rentboy fucked up with their DHS visa application. I agree. That was probably a fatal error. He took it further and said Jeffrey was basically to blame for his own problems. I don't see it that way. On balance, I think Jeffrey was way more right than wrong. Rentboy existed about as long as this website. Losing Rentboy was a real loss. Losing the review site would be a real loss, too. But I think Jeffrey - not unlike Bill - was isolated. In Jeffrey's case, we know he was ultimately relatively easy to target and take down. This site and the review site, unlike Rentboy, doesn't profit from escort advertising. But either could be portrayed as "escort websites." In my mind that plays to whether we want to be for-profit or non-profit. I completely see why people experienced on the corporate side might lean to an LLC. If that's the recommendation, I'm for it. If you need a name, put mine on it, as long as it's an informed and smart group. But a non-profit might be better, for the reasons I just said. How do you go after a non-profit committed to escort health and safety, including safety from arrest? Again, all this needs to be thought through before any application for an LLC or non-profit or anything is submitted. Even if we have a private owner, that should be thought through, too. On a more technical level, which is what ignorant whores like me suck at, somebody needs to figure out where this "island" @RadioRob eventually wants to local the servers on is. And is that the server for this site, or the review website, or both? Inquiring minds want to know. And I think we want a steering committee to provide some answers.

That's the interesting thing. Without disclosing anything about the plot, the character Bozeman played wasn't exactly the best person in the rehearsal room. After the ending I was suffering from a mild dose of reverse White liberalism, and I had to think about it. What I decided is that when I see a sort of message movie I like being beaten over the head with the message. August Wilson was too subtle for that. So he communicated a message through that character's actions. Some of that subtlety may have been lost to the voters. The powerhouse in that movie IMHO was Viola Davis. It was an ensemble work, and Bozeman was great. But it was her show, literally and figuratively. I haven't seen The Father but I'm guessing Anthony Hopkins dominated that film in the way he has other ones, and in a way Bozeman did not dominate Ma Rainey. That may have had something to do with the outcome as well. If there is a reason for a Best Ensemble Oscar a movie like Ma Rainey is it, because that's what made it so fun to watch for me. It was in fact one of the five nominees for the SAG Ensemble Cast award. What you said about Bozeman is why I was rooting for Andra. The interviews I've seen of her, like on Trevor Noah talking about her work on the Equal Justice Initiative, left me feeling like she's a really good person who should be a rising star. And that she is, whether she won the Oscar or not.

You're probably right as always, my Beloved Sister In Cock. But there is an alternative explanation. It's about time that Hollywood chose someone who could represent the wolf demographic.

The huge drop this year is typical of what happened with the whole awards seasons, as the Variety article you cited noted. I didn't watch any of the other shows. As awkward or flat as some of this year's Oscars was, it was way better than three hours of Zoom. Here's a tidbit from a very similar Hollywood Reporter story that caught my attention: So the real driver seems to be the general fragmentation of audiences and the decline of awards shows. Although younger viewers perhaps lean to music rather than film. If we get to the point where an award show for Tik Toks is more popular than the Oscars, I want to be dead by then. Thinking about what the various categories for "Best Tik Tok" might be seems like a great way to spend a few years in dementia. I apologize to anyone young reading this who loves Tik Tok. And to Glenn Close, who would at least win a Best Tik Tok even if she never wins an Oscar. There was an irony to me. Let's stipulate for a minute that Hollywood knows how to do two things well. Put on a show, and put on a liberal conspiracy. At one point I think it was Lil Rel Howery who blurted out, "This is the Blackest Oscars ever!" Having the star of Hillbilly Elegy do Da Butt was a nice way of symbolizing that. Nomadland and a Chinese American woman winning Best Director fit nicely into that diversity picture. (China apparently censored Chloe Zhao's winning the Best Director award. So much for ethnic or national pride.) But the logical conclusion to the Hollywood conspiracy would be either Andra Day or Viola Davis winning Best Actress (I love Frances, but I was rooting for Andra) followed by a moving tribute to Boseman. I agree with @purplekow that either a tearjerker speech or a moving film tribute or both was likely already in the can. So if we go with my conspiracy assumptions, how did liberal Hollywood manage to fuck up the ending to their own otherwise relatively entertaining and diversity-promoting show? This is why God is a Black woman, and she made rewrites.

I moved that quote from the "New Home" thread because I thought this discussion would fit better here. I'm not sure I should ask this question @Orin . But me being me ................. Does moving the message forum and review site to a new server have any impact on the legal process involving things like probate and a small estate exemption? I know you may not know the answer, or you may want to wait until you've hired a lawyer to answer it. My non-legal, ignorant whore answer is that a year ago this website was owned by the community that it served, and exactly the same is true today. Guy was the steward before. And now the community will play a more direct steward role. This is exactly why I favor some kind of community ownership structure. Like the LLC or corporation structure @rvwnsd and @Woofiecmh mentioned above. Or a non-profit as you have mentioned. That said, I'm assuming sooner or later this process goes through probate. And if we go the way @RyanDean and @sam.fitzpatrick have recommended, which I hope we do, that will take time. Both to put a committee together, hash out their recommendations, and then implement them. So I'm wondering how that fits together. And on the topic of working as a team. Of all the beautiful things you did in the last day or so, @RadioRob, this statement is the most beautiful thing to me. If we can take that idea and apply to every problem we have to solve this website will be better than ever.

Remembering Daddy I'm posting again the link to the donation website. We already exceeded our initial goal. A number of people gave over the last 24 hours. @RadioRob and @Coolwave35 have been and plan to be generous with their time and money and technological wisdom. That may cover all or much of what's needed once we are in a safe harbor. But what seems clear to me and others have mentioned as well is that we still have a lot of work ahead of us to put two websites on a secure technical, financial, legal, and political footing. Some of that will be volunteer, but some will require paying for services - like lawyers. So for all of you who, like me, are grateful for still being here, now is a particularly good time to invest in the future of our community. And if you've already given, please give again. The very good news is it seems like it won't be your last chance.

When I got my first COVID vaccine shot last week I posted that I never felt so good just being part of the herd. I guess for the first time in my life I have to say it's never been so great to feel like a worm.

Which is exactly why this ownership thing should be thought through by something like a steering committee, I think. A simple and obvious option is that @Coolwave35 is the owner, if he is the money guy. My view is that's a mixed blessing, since it also makes him a target. That's more his decision than anybody else's, of course. Again, whenever I think about this I think of both sites. Because for a lot of people the review site has as much or more value. My view is that Bill felt he had to play defense. Especially right after FOSTA/SESTA the scales tipped toward doing things to protect himself and both sites. Now the environment around us has changed, and I'd rather we play offense. One way or the other I think things should be set up with an intention to insulate people who fund the site or house or sponsor its equipment. My own main interest has been and continues to be what I'll call the "political" parts. I'll use that word, but I actually think they go to the fundamental goals of this site as Bill articulated them in the TOS he wrote. While it's not the most immediate concern, that's something I'd hope a steering committee would be thinking about as well. The way I'd frame the question is this: what do we want this website and the community it serves to look like 5 or 10 years from now? What do we want the environment around us to look like for escorts and those who hire them? And do we want to use this website to drive those goals? That's steering committee stuff, in my view. Some of what a steering committee does could be thinking about how maybe we want a new forum on some new topic. Or how we use of a new technology. But I'd also argue we have an opportunity to be part of and help shape the bigger political environment we operate in. I'm really encouraged in particular to see HRC is now openly promoting decriminalization. Bill agreed with me years ago that it would make sense to reach out to them and try to get them to weigh in. Now they have. That said, my read of the room back then was that the people I knew were all in "keep your head down" mode, which I understood and respected. I just tuned out completely, since I don't believe in fighting lost causes. But I've been tuning back in. Things have changed. It seems like we have lots of opportunities, and coalitions are being built around us that could impact our core interests. I asked @Coolwave35 what he thought about decriminalization, and he said he thinks it will happen in 10 years. I sure hope he is right. And I assume most people here think that way, too. So the question is do we want to be part of that? Meaning be part of a coalition trying to make it happen, and be a place people come to read and think about it? My own bias is obvious. I would love to see this website be at the center of such a coalition and debate. I had discussions about all these things with Bill when he was, in effect, the steering committee. First and foremost, he was trying to figure out how to navigate past the dark clouds over his (and our) head. It would be very exciting to see a group of people carrying that forward, about where we want to be 5 or 10 years from now. Again, I know these are NOT the most immediate concerns. But one of the things I respected about Bill is he had a vision and a sort of road map about where he wanted to help drive things. My hope is that beyond just keeping both websites alive we pick up that torch and choose our vision of where we want to go as a community.

I was just about to post something similar. When I was raising donations for Bill 5 years ago or so the idea I floated around was a sort of soft steering committee. My own view was that 1) it could intervene if something like what just happened to Bill did, and 2) it could shape the future direction of the site if something happened to Bill. There wasn't much interest at the time, but that was driven by the perception that Bill was in charge so it was best to leave well enough alone. I don't think this site runs itself in terms of, for example, what its goals are. When Rentboy was shut down and FOSTA/SESTA happened that definitely caused Daddy/Guy to rethink some things and make changes. So while it may mostly run itself on a day to day level, I think it makes sense to have some group steering the ship. One simple way to do that is just say that is what the moderators do - if they in fact want that role. But even if we do that, that should be a conscious decision, I think. My other suggestion is such a group, if there is a need for one, should be small and representative. Mostly what I mean by that is it should include both escorts and those who hire them. If the review website survives, which I hope it does, the other thing that should be thought through is what the relationship between the two is. They were started joined at the hip, which was the way I liked it. Bill performed some surgery in response to FOSTA/SESTA. But I view this as an opportunity to both restore and improve. I think for active escorts, which I no longer am, that review site is of greater interest. But my perception is that everybody likes it when the two sites and what they do play well together. Team Washington thanks again for everything you are doing.

My escort career and all the joy that came from it would have been impossible without both Hooboy and Daddy and the websites and community they nurtured. I never got the chance to thank Hooboy to his face. I'm glad I did with Daddy. And I got to know him and help him celebrate some birthdays and successes. God bless him for everything he did. I will always be grateful for this labor of love that he built.

I love it. Thank you. Sorry, I failed to be verbose on this post. I promise to try harder.

I assume you know this Guy but just in case you don't. I've been intermittently getting the "?" symbol where reactions go today. At some point I could see the new reactions. Now it's back to just a bunch of "?" symbols. I'm on Chrome, so it may have to do with that. I assume it just the birthing process. If so, never mind. But let us know whether it's a boy or girl. And this is just an efficiency suggestion. You obviously don't what the word ***** used. So under "stevenkesslar" you might take out "Just An Ignorant *****" and replace it with the verbose icon. It would save people a lot of time.

I don't disagree with anything you said. But just to be an unrelenting bitch on my point about the economy, let me add the caveats. If you said this is how you see it as a doctor, I'd say great. Those are all the right metrics. If you said this is how you see it as an American, and you care about human beings more than a recession or depression, I'd say fine. As soon as you tell me you care about the economy, all the metrics change. And it gets a lot more confusing. I've read a number of articles about the economic value of life. They pretty much go in one ear, and out the other. But the fact is that we can and do quantify the value of life. It does make a difference that with the Spanish flu, peak death numbers occurred around the age of 30, and deprived victims of decades of life. If Granny is 85 and COVID-19 takes her out, it turns out the value of her life is much lower. Sorry, Granny. That is a gross idea that I think most Americans don't like to think about. More important, in the real world, I don't think it really makes any difference. If for some reason the only people that got sick were over 80, and then it was maybe 1 % of Grannys over 80 % who died, people might reach a different conclusion. Maybe people in their 70's would be careful. But if nobody aged 40 got sick, people aged 40 would probably feel very differently. People in their 40's are scared of getting sick. Businesses that employ them or count on them as customers are also scared sick about what happens to all those 40 year olds. So it is massively depressing the economy, which it will continue to do. Once you cross that line, and start talking economy, it's a whole different world. How many employees can Amazon have out sick? Can they all be out sick at once? How does that work in terms of hosptalization costs? What is the impact of one worker dying in terms of global employee relations? These are all things that are much harder to quantify. I know Amazon is spending a fortune on ads trying to persuade me that their concern for worker and customer safety is ceaseless and unparalleled in the history of capitalism. And I have checked. There isn't much evidence of outbreaks at customer fulfillment centers. When the car manufacturing factory in Michigan or the pork processing plant in the Heartland has one infected employee, they shut down. That may not always be true as this continues. But part of the reason I don't think we have to worry about the metrics is that all the handwriting on the wall is that corporate America is taking this very seriously. The other way that corporate America and Main Street America is taking this very seriously is that pretty much any business in America, but especially small businesses, could be dead in six months. They got that memo. It made them sick to read it. You may be right that the absolute number of deaths is sufficient to understand this very complicated problem. The reason I say that is that, if you believe what you read, all it took was about 10 dead seniors in one nursing home to destroy 90 % of the business at some high end restaurant chain quoted in the Seattle papers in early March. Seniors dying in nursing homes does not normally decimate the restaurant industry. So you have to wonder what that was about? And was it just fucked up? But that actually did happen in Seattle. I would argue that people were not stupid. I can't give you a formula or a metric. But somehow people in Seattle decided that this was a mortal threat. And a few months later, with over 30,000 dead in New York and a bit more than 1,000 dead in Washington, I can't say that all those scared consumers is Seattle were dead wrong back in March. Nor can I say they are wrong today. So once you get to the economy, there are a whole bunch of other factors that matter. And the biggest one is fear. As a very superficial statement, I'll guess you can take about half of all consumer demand in the US and just shove it up your ass until this virus is contained. Good news is if any of you are bottoms, you don't even need to hire an escort to fill your ass up real good. Whatever the actual metrics corporations are looking at are, the handwriting on the wall is incredibly clear. They are going to play this super safe. They do not want to be death factories for their employees or customers. That is certainly true for knowledge industry sectors with upper-middle-class employees. It's also true, so far, for factories in the Dakotas that probably mostly hire immigrants. The thing that the herd immunity crowd has been saying all along that I agree with is that most people won't die. I'd go as far as saying when you factor in who died, and what their ages are, you can make a solid argument that the cure is worse than the disease. Even if you believe that argument, all you are doing is shooting yourself in the foot. Because if you didn't realize that a whole lot of people think the cure is better than the disease, you really do need to wake up. And you need to understand that the best word to describe this group of people is the word "consumers". And as long as consumers don't consume, the economy is fucked, fucked, and fucked. If you need metrics or a multivariate analysis to define what "fucked" means, ask someone who's not a whore. It's above my pay grade. This may explain why Wall Street traders don't seem to have a clue. They are making decisions about US and global consumers based on metrics and formulas that don't exist. That said, they ain't crazy. Take out Brazil and the US, and whether there is a formula or not Wall Street seems to think, not incorrectly, that most of the world is actually getting a handle on the virus so that the economy won't be stuck in the ICU forever.

Doctor, heal thyself. I'm not having a hard time squaring facts with my "disproved suppositions". The facts are very much on my side. So maybe you need to heal yourself. Maybe if there is someone who doesn't want to hear it, it's you. Here are the facts about the number of new cases in the US by day for the last week. June 6th: 22,836 June 7th: 18,905 June 8th: 19,044 June 9th: 19,056 June 10th: 20,852 June 11th: 23,300 June 12th: 27,211 The statement I challenged is that cases in the US have only gone up less than one percent nationally. That statement is incorrect. You seem to want to ignore this. I can't say what is driving you. Other than you clearly are framing an attack on my rigidity or stupidity around your own ignorance of the facts. You seem to have a desire to remain ignorant that in any country in Europe, except Sweden, the number of cases is clearly going down, to the tune of about 95 %. So when I name any other country, you are very consistent. Oh, that's China. It doesn't count. Oh, that's an island. It doesn't count. I looked at Madagascar. It doesn't count. These are all just "isolated countries". It doesn't count. It won't work in Europe or China. I'm not a doctor. Which is why I listen closely to public health experts - like Fauci, or Birx, or Gottlieb. Those three are all pretty much saying the same thing. We do not have this virus under control. Certainly not in the way most industrialized nations in Asia or Europe do. Your main supposition has been very consistent. You don't really advocate herd immunity. You passively capitulate to it. Your argue we can't expect much else, or do much better. You've never said Sweden is right. Your approach has been much more passive. Given the lack of data and the uncertainty, perhaps Sweden is doing the best they can. We really can't say. We really don't know. It may be that you are using the tools that doctors do use, and should use. Like, I'm not going to just guess that you have cancer. Before we operate or treat, I think we need to try to find out for sure. If that is your impulse, it makes you a good doctor. If my guess about you is correct, that's just a difficult fit for a public health crisis that demands immediate action. Even though there is massive uncertainty. From Day One, one very consistent message from public health experts is that speed trumps everything in a crisis like this. I think we now know that as a fact. While the CDC fiddled around making "perfect" test kits that didn't work, this virus quickly spread all over America. That led, within a few months, to tens of thousands of deaths. All of that was more confusing back in March or April. In June, things are clearer. China, which has the largest population in the world, has defeated this virus and it is getting back to work. If you don't believe their data, fine. Look at South Korea, or Taiwan, or Japan, or Hong Kong. Too many islands for you? Fine, look at Germany, or Spain, or France, or Italy. No islands there. A growing number of countries are saying their goal is to essentially eradicate the virus, so that workers can get back to work and consumers can start to consume again without fear of death. Is what I just wrote a disproven supposition? There are only two countries right now fighting the global trend. The US and Brazil. I think a substantial part of of what is happening is that we are fighting facts. Thank you for modeling how it is done. You don't seem to read what I said before you start thinking about how to attack it. You are just wrong. Where ignorance has prevailed, it has consequences. Ignorance is why we have not succeeded, where China and Europe have. What part of a 95 % reduction in European cases do you not get? What part of the use of testing, tracing, and treating in Europe do you not get? You are just factually wrong. It obviously CAN work in Europe. It obviously DID work in Europe. These are the facts: Germany: 6,933 cases at peak (March 27th) to 456 on June 12th France: 7,578 cases at peak (March 31st) to 726 on June 12th Spain: 8,271 cases at peak (March 26th) to 502 on June 12th Italy: 6,557 cases at peak (March 21st) to 163 cases on June 12th Austria: 1,321 cases at peak (March 26th) to 30 cases on June 12th Iceland: 99 cases at peak (April 2nd) to 0 cases on June 12th Adjusted for population, the top four countries had an equivalent numbers of cases to the US at the peak. If we had achieved what Germany did, we might have had 2,000 cases on June 12th, or a 95 % reduction. Instead, we had 27,211 new cases. Sweden gambled on herd immunity and bet wrong. They went from a high of 738 cases on April 7th to 1,487 cases on June 10th. Swedes, the poster children for herd immunity, are now loudly debating whether they got it wrong. We agree about a few things. I would call Iceland an "isolated" country, as you do. I don't know their outcome - seeming eradication - is achievable in the US. Nor has it been achieved in Europe. We mostly disagree. The goal in Europe, which is publicly stated, is to make it safe for workers to work, consumer to consume, and kids to go back to school. Testing, tracing, and treating have driven those goals, and have been more successful than hoped for. Germany once said 70 % of their population may get COVID-19. Now they are openly discussing a goal of virtual eradication without a vaccine. Do you detect that you keep hurling insults at me? And that I keep hurling facts at you? You say, verbartim, that while testing, treating, and tracing "can work in isolated countries with very low burdens of infection, it obviously can't happen in places like the US, Europe, and China" and I respond with facts that prove you are wrong. Do you detect that? Could your idea - that "it obviously can't happen in places like .... Europe", actually be a disproven supposition? This thread is about data regarding COVID-19. I have tried to stick to data, and facts. Of course that's a challenge with a brand new virus. There is a huge amount of ignorance about it. But, as I said, health experts say that in fighting a virus, speed trumps everything. China and Europe both proven that to be correct with this virus. Rapid action resulted in less death. Non-action resulted in more death. That is pretty much a universal that explains why tens of thousands did die, or did not die, in countries all over the world. You seem to be resisting facts about what actually happened, and reaching exactly the wrong conclusion. The facts do not suggest that testing, tracing, and treating was a "disproven supposition" in Europe. Or that these methods can not work in large countries in Europe, or in China, as opposed to in "isolated countries". The facts show that testing, tracing, and treating CAN and in fact DID work in Europe, and China. It is exactly why they are able to reopen their economies, more safely. Maybe the US can, too. Is it a disproven supposition that in states like North Dakota and South Dakota many meat packing plants were forced to close when hundreds of employees got sick, some of whom were hospitalized and died? Is it a disproven supposition that, as a result, those two states embraced testing, contact tracing, and treatment? Is it a disproven supposition that, in this context, treatment often means isolating people who may be sick or are sick, so they don't infect others and cause more closures of businesses? Is it a disproven supposition that North Dakota and South Dakota have more contact tracers (about 40 per 100,000 residents) than any other state, because they found it keeps businesses open and workers employed? Is it a disproven supposition that what works out well for meat packing companies like Smithfield, which is owned by a Chinese billionaire, also turns out to be good for the lives, health, and pocketbooks of American workers? Testing, tracing, and treatment not only CAN and DID work in Europe and Asia. they CAN and DID work in the US, too, where it has actually been tried. If I'm an idiot, and these are all disproven suppositions, please correct me with facts. We agree they were wise. Millions more would have died if we just let the virus keep growing exponentially. You still resist the idea that the virus kills small businesses and consumer demand as effectively as it kills seniors. If we ignore this, the economic outcome will be awful. Again, I think that's exactly what the Dakotas learned. They are proving what DOES work.

I don't disagree with your point. We should of course be most concerned about seniors, and nursing homes. I wouldn't disagree with a fire fighter saying that the priority in fighting a wildfire is to save human lives and homes. That said, the best thing is to either prevent the wildfire, or put it out. Some of the public statements being made about the virus just don't sound factually correct. I heard a statement today that nationally the number of cases is only growing by one percent. Actually, there were 27,211 cases on July 12th. The day before, there were 23,300 cases. Three days before there were 19,506 cases. The day in June that was the highest other June 12th was June 5th, when there were 25,393 cases. So no matter how you count it, that's not a one percent increase. Again, I'm not ready to say that the sky is falling. But when the message I hear is that this is less than a one percent increase, and this is just an isolated local problem, that's just not factually correct. Whatever the intent, the effect is to make it seem like we don't really know what is going on. So of course we don't have a clear strategy, either, other than to think wishfully. The same goes for nursing homes. Here's a math question. Which number is higher: 1) 50 % of 30,824; or 2) 80 % of 8,049? The second number is the number of deaths in Canada, where about 80 % of the deaths have been seniors in nursing homes. The first is the number of deaths in New York, and the ballpark percentage of those deaths that took place in nursing homes. If there's a place that sounds like it allowed nursing homes to become a death trap for seniors, it's Canada. I mean that in the sense that 80 % sounds high. And the Canadian military, who was called in to help due to a lack of adequate staffing, did blast some of those nursing homes. I'm using New York as an example because several people here have blasted New York for policies that they think contributed to the high number of senior citizens deaths. As it turns out, New York had over 7 times the number of deaths relative to population (1,584 per million) than Canada (213 per million). So while 80 % may sound bad (as @RealAvalon keeps saying, that's mostly in two provinces), Canada actually did a much better job of minimizing the number of dead seniors. They did it simply by not letting the virus get anywhere close to them. Like wildfires, once it gets close it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to contain. Sweden is now having loud public debates about their miscalculations in this regard. The evidence is completely clear. The biggest thing that contributes to seniors dying is the spread of the disease, period. If you have over 400,000 people infected in New York, you're going to end up with way more dead seniors than if you have 100,000 people infected in Canada. That's the way the math works in every country, every time. It really is the same principle as wildfires. In the middle of the worst wildfire ever, of course it makes sense to talk about which homes can be saved, and how you get everybody out alive. But it makes even more sense to talk about putting the wildfire out. Nobody actually says that 100,000 dead seniors are less important than the US economy. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that some of the thinking goes that way. That we have to accept certain costs for the greater good of the US economy. Given that, I'd rather talk about how many dead small businesses are acceptable. 10,000? 100,000? How much of the US economy are we willing to kill? Especially the small business part people identify with so much? Because all the evidence is that while Disney and GM and United Airlines may have a bad year, they will likely survive. Many small businesses won't. Because consumers won't patronize them. All it took was a dozen or so dead seniors in one nursing home outside Seattle to shut down much of the Seattle consumer economy. By early March some Seattle high end restaurants were saying 90 % of their business was just gone. So all the evidence suggests that a virus that kills a lot of seniors is also going to be very effective at killing a lot of small businesses. What I find even more mind boggling is that when you get off the 30,000 foot level, and bring it to ground level, the specific pragmatic steps you need to keep seniors and small businesses from dying are the same. Testing and tracing are at the top of the list. Hopefully, people now know enough that anyone with flu symptoms who works in a nursing home will call in sick. Hopefully, anyone who owns a hair salon or a cafe will do the same. But that does nothing for the 1 in 3 or maybe even 1 in 2 who have no symptoms - yet, or ever. So the most likely way to stop an employee at a nursing home from unintentionally killing seniors is to test her. Even better, the best step would be to trace her from the person that infected her, so that before she even gets a test she stays home from work. (Something like half of all people in Iceland who tested positive where already in isolation by the time they were tested, due to contact tracing.) The exact same steps are what we now know, from dozens of countries of all sizes, ranging from Iceland to China, will help small businesses keep their workplaces safe. How do we know this will work in America? Talk to anyone who owns a meat packing plant in North Dakota, or South Dakota, or Texas. They'll tell you why they had to shut down. And what they had to do to safely reopen - test, and trace. At the ground level, there is not a huge difference between the specific practices that keep meat packing plants open, and that keep nursing homes from turning into morgues. I'm just going to repeat myself. I'm not saying the sky is falling. But some of what I hear sounds like wishful thinking. And some just sounds like denial. When I hear that the number of cases is only growing one percent, which I heard on the news today, it is just wrong. It doesn't increase my confidence. It just creates confusion, which undermines consumer confidence.

And one of those articles I posted mentions that SARS is believed to have been transmitted that way - literally from one housing unit to another in multi-family structures. With COVID-19, it's just a theory at this point, I think. On the list of risk factors, it's way down there. If we actually had contact tracing up and running, we'd probably learn quickly. If someone in a dense apartment building tested positive, in theory you could test everyone on their floor. If you did that 20 times and no one else tested positive, you can pretty much rule that theory out. It is implicit, but let's spell it out. A lot of what we know about transmission - like that restaurant and bus trip in China, and churches and call centers in South Korea - is thanks to good contact tracing by other countries. Why we are not all over contact tracing as a massive national priority - if only to save small businesses - is beyond comprehension to me.

That's a new one. Is there any proof of that? Three things come to mind. 1) The restaurant in China where people get infected, because of air flow. But only at the adjacent tables next to where the carrier sat. There was no impact on other tables in the same physical space of a large dining room. 2) The call center in South Korea where many people on one floor sitting close together got infected. The office space was big, but there was lots of person on person closeness and interaction. 3) The bus in China where people sat for hours on a long distance trip. No one wearing a mask was infected. A ahndful with masks did, and that was also blamed on air flow in the bus, which is of course a relatively small and open space. I've not heard that you could get this from breathing your neighbor's air, as in the condo or apartment next door. Logically, it undercuts the whole idea of six feet of social distancing and masks. If we can get this from somebody 50 feet away, in the unit next door, that's a whole different ball game. COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020 Coronavirus: Can it spread through air conditioning? So far, the answer seems to be NO. I know on the Princess ship they found RNA of the virus weeks later. That is the scary thing that still gets mentioned all the time, about how long the virus lasts. But there is no evidence that RNA residue found weeks later was itself capable of infecting people. My impression is the reason it was all over the ship is that people who were infected spread it everywhere. As opposed to it spread through the air ducts, like The Mist. Am I missing something?

Powell's pessimism about recovery is a 'recipe for profit taking:' Liz Ann Sonders I thought that was an interesting article in terms of the point I've been hammering: if you don't want the virus to kill small businesses, you need to stop the virus from killing people. And if all you care about is whether the virus kills people, good for you. Because by stopping it from killing people, you are also stopping it from killing small businesses. First, let's dismiss one thing, which that article mentions. On any given day, much of what happens in the US stock market is noise and speculation. I would never argue that the only way or the best way to understand the real US economy is to look at the stock market. I bring it up here because the people who do make all the points about so-called "wealth v. health" tend to be people that have money in the stock market, and think it matters. So there are two points that Sonders makes that I think are broadly shared by American economists, and the American people. First, a broad and deep second wave of infection will screw everything up. The fact that important people have to speak out, as recently as today, to dismiss or deny this concern proves only one thing. That the concern is deep, and real. Second, this idea of a broad and quick recovery relies on a lot of simplistic thinking. It doesn't factor in lots of "secondary order economic effects", to quote Sonders. How many restaurants can even break even at 75 % of capacity? As she states, whatever government does or doesn't tell us we can do is different than what consumers or businesses will do to protect themselves. Even if we don't have an out of control second wave, there's no evidence that a huge chunk of the consumer economy is anywhere near jumping back in. Jeffery Sachs was on Morning Joe this AM, and he just reinforced all this thinking. Anyone who is expecting a V-Shaped recovery is just dreaming, unless and until we get the virus under control, he thinks. There's a few other points he made, about how COVID-19 has simply accelerated trends that were proceeding at warp speed anyway. First, the digitalization of the US economy, and jobs. This is great news for Amazon. But millions of the jobs we lost are likely never coming back, even under the best case scenario. Sachs didn't say it. But anyone who believes in "creative destruction" might argue that's a good thing. What Sachs did say is we don't have a plan. We certainly don't have a government plan. And, again, for those who see less government as a plus, we also won't have a private sector plan. Corporations can't plan well when they have a huge amount of uncertainty. Right now uncertainty is probably at a century-long high. Second, he talked about how Asia was gradually taking more of an economic leadership role, anyway. And COVID-19 accelerates it. He made a comment that surprised me, but that is correct. He kept saying Asia has basically contained the virus, whereas Europe has been much harder hit and has more problems. I've trained my mind to not even mention China, and downplay Japan or South Korea, since deniers will say, "Oh, that's China. They lie. That's an island. That's ........... whatever." It seems more relevant to mention that every country in Europe, except Sweden, has caseloads down maybe 95 %. And some of them are publicly talking about putting the virus out of business, even without a vaccine. That's all true. But on reflection, Sachs is right. First, Asia was in better shape than Europe before COVID-19, anyway. A lot of Europe was on the verge of recession. Second, they were harder hit. Of the 10 countries with the most infections, none are what Americans tend to think of as "Asian". Russia is # 3 and India is # 4. To Sachs' point, 4 of the top 10 are countries we think of as "Europe": Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK. The "Asian" country with the most cumulative infections is China, # 18, which has 96 % fewer cases than the US. If that means the US is a leader, it's not the kind of leadership we want. I mostly agree with what @purplekow said above about "deniers" who are "inaccurate, repetitive, and self serving." The only question I would add is this: how "self serving" is denial, or even wishful thinking? My sense is that there is a lot of that going on here. By the way, I'm not suggesting the sky is falling. I agree with the middle of the road public health experts, who are saying that a spike in infections was to be expected, and prepared for - with testing, tracing, and treating. I'll keep repeating that that was in fact part of the goal of the lockdown: to stop its exponential growth, and create the infrastructure to contain the virus and beat it back gradually. I'm still hopeful that, like Asia and Europe, we can reopen schools this Fall. If there is a plan to make certain that happens, to the best of our ability, I am completely missing it. It sounds more like we are simply gambling, and wishfully thinking that the bet will work out well for us. The numbers very much suggest we are leaving this to a roll of the dice.

Okay. Good advice. I also won't be so sure about what is still a mystery to me. I will reinforce one thing that I said, based on thinking about that last post after I posted it. I think the harsher the lock down was, the better. I don't think that's a theory. I think that's a fact, based on what just happened globally. By implication, that also usually meant the shorter the lock down the better, as well. At some point, there will be very well researched quantitative analyses of what many countries did in what order and what outcomes resulted. I feel pretty confident saying that countries in Europe that had harsher lock downs than us, and I think generally shorter lock downs than us, had more effective outcomes. These were Western (European) nations that used fines and policing and collective public pressure to enforce compliance. I know there were also protests in reaction to this, like in Germany. But the whole point from the standpoint of science was to 1) stop the exponential growth and 2) crush the chains of transmission. Harsher lock downs seemed to accomplish those goals the best. The harshest, and also most effective, in the world was China, of course. What Europe proved is that capitalist democratic nations could achieve similar goals. But I think what also worked was the idea that this has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And by doing it this way we will all be better off at the end. Moving forward, I think we mostly agree. I posted that data because it's mostly a jumble to me. It's not clear yet exactly what is working and not working in the US. Except for what I said. The thing that seems to have worked particularly well in places like New York and New Jersey is that people just got the living shit scared out of them. That did what needed to be done in terms of changed behaviors. That is not a treatment I would wish on anyone. Which is why I hope we can figure out what the best alternatives are.