Leaderboard

There was this computer security type on an air trip, one Chris Roberts, who casually speculated on twitter on the possibility of hacking into the plane's electronics systems. On landing, he was escorted from the plane by the FBI, questioned for hours and all his gear (iphone excepted) was confiscated. Further, the following Saturday he discovered he was on United's No Fly list. What bothers (surprises) me about all this is not the our guardians appear to have over-reacted to a bit of idle tweeting by a security expert. It's that the Feds have developed the capacity to monitor electronic messages in real time. Think about it. A dude hits the send button in mid-air between Denver and Syracuse; the Fed's AI plucks it out of the jillions of tweets clogging the ether and pings some cubicle dweller who gives it a once over, assigns a priority and sets the bureaucratic gears in motion. By some supreme miracle of cross departmental cooperation the FBI boys get the word in time to meet the flight. When did the Dept. of Homeland Security develop this ability? Well AS has been dropping hints all along, it was just hard to picture how it would all come together in action. ==== I certainly hope that nothing said above will be misunderstood as a criticism of DHS, or any other arm, agency or branch of the USA government. I am entirely a patriot to my last fiber and, even if I weren't, I'm too old and ill, feeble and addled to get up to any mischief. Besides it's AdamSmith you want, not me. He's the suspicious one.

Oops, Grandma posted this Twice. Damn those after work Happy Hours

"Mr. Smith, we have so been looking forward to you clarifying a few technical details for us."

Stay in Rio longer than SP if this is your first time so you have time to tour one place per day in Rio and give your time to spend a day at the beach drinking fresh coconut and feel the water. The next time you come back you can stretch it to another place like Porto Alegre and check out the famous Mezzaninu. I just came back a week ago for 10 day trip, this time as a solo traveler. You can fly TAM using Travelocity to buy your domestic trip for multi cities in advance so its cheaper, it cost me like $89 for each leg of the trip. I cant wait to come back to Lagoa, where u can find the most or hottest garotos, model looking men in my opinion and experience. Have fun in your trip!

Hi All I might be heading to Amsterdam next month for business and I was wondering if anyone had any info about the scene here? I couldn't find much. From what I heard, this place was great in the eighties / nineties - I never got to experience this - but now everyone is saying that all the old bars have been closed, and that the place is finished. I believe boysclub21 is still open, but the few reviews for this place have been poor. Does anyone know if there is anywhere young hustlers still operate? - eastern european / romanian / turks? Or is it only online? Any info would be appreciated. Even if you would prefer to pm. Thanks

Make mine a double.

International House of "ManCakes"....

Well, they're not the only ones. I'll match my snooping paranoia with the best of 'em, but even I don't believe you need to be James Clapper to read somebody's tweets. In fact, he may be one of the few people in the world who know how to escape them. And, once you've read one, what do you do about it? It will probably take our twitchy ol' world some time to figure it all out.

In Brief to Justices, Former Military Officials Support Same-Sex Marriage The New York Times WASHINGTON — The most influential friend-of-the-court brief in living memory was filed by a group of retired military officers in a 2003 affirmative action case. When the case was argued, the justices echoed the brief’s argument that military preparedness would be threatened if service academies could not ensure a diverse officer corps. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority opinion, allowing race-conscious admissions at public universities, quoted at length from the brief. The law firm that filed the brief, now called Sidley Austin, has filed a new one by former military officials in the same-sex marriage cases to be heard next week. Their message this time is that the patchwork of marriage laws around the country hurts military families and threatens national security. Most workers can turn down transfers to states that do not recognize their marriages. Members of the military, who are more than twice as likely to relocate than their employed civilian counterparts, do not have that choice. Forcing service members to move to places where their marriages will cease to be recognized creates a tension between service oaths and wedding vows that hurts recruitment, retention, morale and readiness, the brief said. “Those willing to risk their lives for the security of their country should never be forced to risk losing the protections of marriage and the attendant rights of parenthood,” the brief said, “simply because their service obligations require them to move to states that refuse to recognize their marriages.” A second friend-of-the-court brief, from groups that support gay members of the military and their families, said the current state of affairs put the military at a disadvantage in competing with the private sector in recruiting and retaining good people. “No legally married couple would look fondly upon a move from a state where the couple’s marriage is recognized to a state where their marriage is annulled for state law purposes,” said the brief, filed by lawyers at Chadbourne & Parke. The differing treatment of marriages also damages the core military principle, vital to morale, of equitable treatment of service members, the second brief said. The interests of military personnel figured in the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to strike down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that barred the federal government from providing benefits to same-sex couples. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the Obama administration’s top appellate lawyer, who urged the justices to strike down the law, began his argument with a vivid image. Under the law, he said, “the spouse of a soldier killed in the line of duty cannot receive the dignity and solace of an official notification of next of kin.” In his majority opinion in the case, United States v. Windsor, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy bristled at the unfairness of prohibiting same-sex couples “from being buried together in veterans’ cemeteries.” Since then, the Obama administration has worked to ease the burdens on same-sex couples in the military. It allows them, for instance, to take leaves to get married in states that permit same-sex marriages. But it has hit a roadblock, one that gay rights groups say the government created. The law granting veterans’ benefits determines whether a marriage is valid by considering “the law of the place where the parties resided at the time of the marriage.” The Department of Veterans Affairs has interpreted those words to mean that couples who live in a state that does not allow same-sex marriage and get married in one that does are generally not entitled to benefits like disability compensation, loan guarantees and death benefits. “It is perverse,” the Chadbourne & Parke brief said, “for the government to grant leave to enable a same-sex couple to travel to a state where they can legally marry, for the government to recognize that marriage as valid for however many more years the service member continues to serve, and then suddenly ignore that marriage as soon as the service member retires and obtains veteran’s status.” A federal appeals court in Washington is considering a challenge to that interpretation, but the Supreme Court’s decision in the four same-sex marriage cases to be argued next week, among them Obergefell v. Hodges, No.14-556, may make the challenge moot. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/us/in-brief-to-justices-former-military-officials-support-same-sex-marriage.html?hpw&rref=politics&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

So last night MsGuy posts the above note outing yours truly. This morning, ostensibly in follow-up to a tech conference where I spoke on Friday and met a guy from NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), I get an email from his higher-up inviting me to come visit and give them an informal talk about the technology that I spoke about. Putting the two together -- if I suddenly drop out of posting here, send a search crew to look for me in the shallows of the Chesapeake.

truth.....

On April 16th, a retired gay man was found murdered in his apartment in Sao Paulo. He had met a hustler from Lagoa and allowed the hustler to stay with him in his apartment. After three days of staying with the man, the hustler took the cord from the man's land-line telephone and wrapped the cord around the man's neck and strangled and killed him. The hustler took only the man's cell phone and credit cards and a little cash - - plus the man's life. The police claim that they are hunting the killer but I suspect that not much work will be done to look for the killer. The murder of a gay man in Brazil does not garner high priority for the police. I presented this report only to keep visitors to Brazil in perspective. Usually, visitors to Brazil have such a wonderful time they tend to forget the ugly side of life. It is not uncommon for gays to be killed even in gay-friendly Brazil. It just takes one bad guy to cause something like this to happen. Then, we get shocked back to reality. For those who read and understand Portuguese, here is a link to the event reported in the Brazilian news - http://noticias.band.uol.com.br/brasilurgente/video/2015/04/16/15443479/aposentado-e-enforcado-por-garoto-de-programa.html

i cant watch the video unless i am in Brazil it says...

Scott Walker one ups Rubio and attends a gay wedding reception. "Anything you can do, I can do better. "I can do anything better than you."

Yes to a Manbun=YUCK... However there is this beauty to re-consider. He can let that bun down any time his little heart desires.

Most of us don't think about bad things while we are in Brazil. I have been lucky during my many trips. The only thing I lost was a cheap cell phone that someone picked from my pocket while I was on the Metro. However, with so many expensive smart phones in use today, anyone who uses them in public is at risk. Here is an article that discusses theft and shows that even Brazilians can be targets of thieves. http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/opinion-editorial/letter-such-crimes-affect-brazilians-as-well/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRioTimes+%28The+Rio+Times%29# So, the message is - use your phone but not in an area where you can have it taken from you either with force or grabbed as one runs past you.