lookin

True enough, Doc, just ask my agent

You rang? Someone may have floated the idea before me, but I mentioned it a few days ago in response to another poster asking about a path of least resistance for preserving Daddy's site. I tried to recall the time fifteen or so years ago when I heard OZ was interested in buying the site after HooBoy's passing, but found the family wasn't interested in what happened to it. My thought was that, if OZ were still interested after all these years, there might be a way to do the deal. As far as I know, OZ has all the resources and experience needed to fold one site into another, or to run it separately. Sounds like you're a lot smarter than I am on how estates are settled and what becomes of assets. All I know is that there's probably a court somewhere that will figure out what becomes of the website. But there seem to be other plans unfolding, so I've got back to an earlier project.

These days it's hard to find a drug ad where the manufacturer doesn't offer a bargain price to those who "have trouble affording their medications". You'd think they could do a little something on Veuve Cliquot.

According to this calculator, she's a hundred years old. Not sure how old a cat has to be before she's entitled to jump on her owner's balls, but I'm thinking she's gotta be getting pretty close.

Gosh, OZ, glad as we all are to hear you’ve thought of every contingency and made every plan, I hope you know that we are united in wishing you a long and happy life with many years of adventure, joy and pleasure yet to come. Still, I can’t help noticing no mention of a small token for some of us - OK, me - to remember you by.

So far, so good!

What's different these days is that, while it used to take some effort and expense to track someone's whereabouts and therefore be limited to someone 'important enough' to warrant tracking, these days there's no measurable cost whatsoever to track someone's every move. The data's collected routinely and stored as bits and bytes somewhere in the Cloud. Could that information ever become useful to someone or some entity? Not that I know of, and not that I'm especially concerned about. But if you asked me to write you a guarantee that no one would ever find a use for knowing everywhere you've been this year and who else was next to you, I couldn't do it. And if you asked me to promise you that you'd always be happy with the use of that information, I couldn't do that either. If there's a benefit to me from Apple knowing where I am, like when they steered me turn-by-turn to Palm Springs recently, I turn tracking on. If there isn't any benefit, then - just to be on the safe side - I turn tracking off. And, yes, I'm aware that someone could still figure out from cell tower data where I was any time of any day. If you're interested in learning more about the tracking of people who probably didn't consider themselves 'important', take a look at the Uighurs in China after the government decided to take an interest in their whereabouts. All the data was there, just waiting to be analyzed and acted upon. Uighur men in a reeducation camp in Xinjiang - in the days even before AirTag

Somehow, I've never been able to figure out Apple TV. My current TV has internet connectivity, so I don't need that especially. It's a Sony and the user interface is kind of kludgy, so I'm thinking Apple's would probably be better. I think the thing I'm missing most is a way to get a few local channels so I can get all of my content off the internet and get rid of my cable box and, most especially, the 30-foot HDMI cable I need to run between the cable box and my TV. But I can't tell if the Apple TV would make that any easier than the same app running on my Sony TV. At $29, the AirTag has some appeal, but I have a real aversion to Apple - or anyone else - tracking my whereabouts - or my car keys' whereabouts - every minute of every day. It's not that I go anywhere particularly secretive these days, but I haven't totally given up hope.

For me, it's a question of how much my time is worth. When I was working, I used DOS and Windows computers but we had technicians to do the upgrades and data migration. At home, I used Macs. When it was time for a new computer, I plugged in a cable, answered three questions in the Migration Assistant, and waited a couple of hours to see everything transferred exactly where it belonged. Last time, I got it to pull a backup from my Time Capsule. These days, even without much dollar value on my time, I just don't want to spend it figuring out why something doesn't work, hanging on the phone with tech support, or downloading software drivers. I have a friend who would sometimes spend days setting up a new Windows computer for her or her husband. It seemed she never gave a second thought to other things she could be doing. Don't get me wrong. Apple isn't perfect. My previous laptop, a 2013 MacBook Pro, had connectors for every conceivable peripheral device, an SD slot, and a built-in drive to read and write CD's and DVD's. This 2017 version has four "lightning ports" and needs a separate adapter to hook up anything besides my iPhone. On the plus side, this is the first computer I've had that responds instantly. The spinning beachball is a thing of the past and the extra time in my day is much appreciated.

I got my first computer, an Apple ][+, in 1980 and have upgraded - on average - every three years. So that's about a dozen upgrades, and only the first one - from the ][+ to the first Mac in 1984 - was done out of a desire for something new and better. All the other upgrades were because my hand was "forced". And most of those were because something crapped out and I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars or wait a week to get my old computer back. After all those upgrades since the first Mac, there wasn't a single time when the newer model was irresistible, nor was there a single time when I regretted getting a new model. So, for me anyway, there really isn't such a thing as a "bad" decision. I'm currently getting close to a "forced" decision, as the battery on my 2017 MacBook Pro is showing signs of fatigue. I'm not looking forward to this transition, as I'll need to upgrade to the new Catalina operating system and leave behind a few favorite 32-bit applications. Looking back at all those dozen computers, I'm struck by the fact that nearly every one of them cost right around two thousand dollars. With my first Apple computer, I got an 8-bit processor running at 1MHz, 48kb of memory, and a 5 1/4" floppy drive which could hold 160kb of data. My current MacBook Pro has a 64-bit processor running at 3.1GHz, 8gb of memory, and an SSD drive that can hold 500gb of data. And both computers were around two grand. Sorry for the trip down memory lane, OZ. I guess where I'm ending up is that, if your experience is anything like mine, you won't have a terrible outcome with any decision you make. And, if you do, you can probably bail yourself out for the price of a dinner at Mar-a-Lago.

Wish I knew. For some reason, the R0 number, despite its predictive importance, doesn't seem to be widely tracked in the U. S. One thing that complicates matters is that the transmissibility of the virus varies by strain, and I don't think the U. S. has ever had a testing program robust enough to track individual strains very well. From what I can tell, the vaccination rate in France is around 15%, and full immunization won't happen until August. So France has a long way to go before getting to roughly 70% for "herd immunity". That would make the R0 number more critical than for countries currently approaching that magic number. The area where I live reports a hodgepodge of vaccination rates. Roughly 40% of the total population have got at least one dose. 50% of the population over sixteen years old have got at least one dose. And 25% of those over sixteen have completed a full course of vaccinations. Add to that around 5% of the population who have already contracted the virus, and we have a little over half of the riskiest population with some level of immunity. So, while we're a few months from "herd immunity", it's getting progressively harder for the virus to find someone vulnerable to infect. I expect our R0 number is significantly less than one, and our case numbers are trending down. Plus our area is pretty mask-friendly. All-in-all, it's been a while since I've felt highly vulnerable, knock on wood. And that's especially true since I'm one of those who has completed my vaccinations.

1. Downtown Brown 2. Guiness 3. Boddingtons Pub Ale 4. Old Rasputin 5. Corona #2 and #3 make my favorite Black and Tan.

One of the funniest and brightest lights on the Forums. And a kind man in real life. He was always respectful of other posters and he didn't have a mean bone in his body. He'll be missed. From one of his heroes: Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires. Sunday Morning, by Wallace Stevens

I live in an old cabin in the woods and, every few years, something crawls into the attic and dies. Over the next week, I'll get an influx of fat lethargic flies that invariably take up residence on my kitchen windows. After running a quick breath-on-the-mirror check to make sure it wasn't me who drew them, I haul out the canister vacuum and suck them up. More arrive in the afternoon, and overnight, and again the next day. In a few days, they're gone and I put the vacuum away till next time. I don't currently have a pet but there are a lot of living things around, so I wouldn't use an indiscriminate pesticide. Every time I see them, I recall staying with a friend up in the Gold Country in a cheap room next to the Coke® machine. Right outside the door was a well-used fly strip. I told another friend about the cheap room we had and he reminded me that the really cheap rooms don't have any fly strips.

It was from this recent ad, so probably not too long ago. You are the Condé Nast of gay travel.

Glad the new site is up and running like a Swiss watch! I started infesting the HooBoy site just before he left, and this one when it was still MER. Both sites had - and have - their charms, usually owing to who's posting at the time. Before this latest Gay Guides incarnation, Boytoy and my browser seemed to have declared war on one another. For a few months, I couldn't log in and then, for a few more months, I couldn't log out. The last message I got at the top of my sign-in screen was: Warning: require_once(../index_forum.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/boytoy/public_html/forum_top.php on line 6 Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '../index_forum.php' (include_path='.:/opt/cpanel/ea-php73/root/usr/share/pear') in /home/boytoy/public_html/forum_top.php on line 6 No matter what I did, the message wouldn't go away. It seemed to have something to do with a Forum_Top and I figured perhaps OZ was off in India interviewing some new programmers. I made a little puja that it wasn't really a fatal error and figured I'd check back from time to time. A few days ago, somebody posted directions for getting into the new Gay Guides site but, in spite of assurances that the new site would recognize me, this was not the case. My posts were all there from days gone by, but the sign-in screen said it had never heard of me. And my avatar was nowhere to be found. I had been ghosted by a bot. Good thing OZ was on-line, as he knew just where the problem was and what to do about it. So, year after year, site after site, bug after bug and post after post, we persevere. Kind of amazing, really, to think of what keeps us coming back.

This article helps firm up the numbers. Of the $200+ million raised so far, very little of it is being spent on the lawsuits. Somewhere I read $6 million. Most of it is going into Trump's new PAC, and much of that is being shared with the RNC. He's by far the Republicans' best fundraiser. So, as long as the lawsuits bring in the money, most Republicans will support them and it makes no difference that they're crazy. That is, the lawsuits are crazy. The Republicans are crazy like a fox. And, ironically, it was Fox that did the original reporting on the scheme. How crazy is that?

He was always kind and had a playful sense of humor. I'll miss him.

Lately I've also been thinking about some additional disengagement. Although I got my first computer forty years ago and went on-line a few years after that, I've never wanted to become so immersed that I couldn't survive without connectivity. Even so, the pull to be ever-connected is stronger than I'd like. I live in an area with regular power outages and spotty cell phone coverage, so I do go cold-turkey from time to time, including three days last week. Thirty years ago, that meant walking to a friend's house, taking some long hikes, and pulling out a handful of votive candles to read after dark. The world always returned a few days later and I hadn't missed all that much. Last week though, I was getting anxious enough by the end of the first day that I wandered around till I got a cell signal and checked for the latest power outage update. Pre-Covid, I'd have gone to the local library and used their WiFi connection. I found I really don't enjoy being off the grid as much as I used to, and that's a concern. Having avoided Facebook and Twitter and all the social apps, I'm not hooked in as much as most of my friends are, but I'm still too tethered for comfort. I'm wondering what gradual steps I might take to further cut the ties. Thanks RockHard and AdamSmith for voicing some of the same concerns. I wonder if a small support group might be in order. This has indeed strained the credulity of even your most ardent admirers.

Guess I'm one of those who finds this more humorous than horrendous. Are there other western countries where a paucity of prudence and a dollop of diddling would crater a career? What I can't figure out is what kind of camera setup he has. I've been on a few Zoom meetings recently with my laptop in my - er - lap and the camera pointing up at my face. Had I done a 180 and turned it down toward my pudenda, I couldn't have seen the other folks. Not only do I hope that he returns with his luster intact, I also hope that the suspenders at the New Yorker will adjust themselves and not go all hypocritical about a little erection tampering.

The thing that annoys me about these life-begins-at-conception folks is that they don't put their money where their mouth is. Like letting folks take a tax deduction on a zygote. If Amyconeybarret's right, I'm nine months older than I've been letting on. I should immediately get twenty grand for the Social Security they started late. And it turns out my insurance premiums were way too high when I started driving. And when I think of the months of senior discounts I missed at the Golden Corral, it makes my stomach turn. Of course so did the pot roast at the Golden Corral but at least I'd have saved a couple bucks.

As I've posted before, I understand authoritarianism as a psychological construct. And, while it has social and political implications, it's an enduring characteristic of a subset of the population. I also believe it has a genetic component as (a.) it has persisted throughout human history and (b.) it exists in other species besides humans, although not in all species and to differing degrees when it does. My understanding is that about 30% of humans are authoritarian followers and the key to activating them is to stoke their fear of "the other". So, yes, authoritarianism is a global phenomenon and, no, it's not going to disappear from the human race anytime soon, and I think the way to change authoritarian followers is through reducing - rather than fanning - their fears. My take is that the persistence of authoritarianism in the human population, probably passed through the genes, is sometimes necessary for the survival of the species. There have been - and likely will be again - times when outside threats are real and immediate and the need to obey a leader fast and without question is necessary for survival. But there are times - like the times we've been blessed with since I can remember - when unquestioning obedience is not required. Not only is it not required, but it can be downright harmful as we are seeing today. Naturally, that doesn't mean that authoritarian followers disappear overnight from the gene pool. They're still there - and still here - and when they are gathered together and manipulated for ill intent by an unscrupulous leader they can destabilize a society. I think about this every day and, since I last posted, I've revised the definition of the problem away from the fact that we have a large number of authoritarian followers among us and toward the fact that we're not very aware of it and we don't know how to minimize the harm they can do when they are misused by a leader for his own antisocial purposes. Angela Merkel is aware of this and so, I thought, were most Germans and most of us who can remember the last time authoritarian followers were used to bring down a society. Currently, the US seems to have lost this institutional awareness and we're watching the German playbook being repeated page for page. And we seem to be nearly as compliant as the German citizens were when their rights were finally stripped away by the Enabling Act. Nearly, but not quite. I think we still have time to learn from the past but it's rapidly slipping away. With that redefinition of the problem to "lack of awareness", I'll suggest one solution might be a House subcommittee to evaluate the risk of authoritarianism to our democracy. The Committee would answer the questions: (1.) How big a risk is authoritarianism to our democracy?, (2.) What authoritarian forces are there in the country today?, and (3.) How should we reduce the threat of authoritarianism to our democracy? And I'd publish interim findings as they come out of committee. I'd like to see the issue of authoritarianism become public discourse at the speed of light.

A Modest Proposal (with props to Jonathan Swift) Seems the Democrats are constantly under bombardment for "wanting to take our guns away" and perhaps it's time to put that one to bed for good. I'm thinking of a plank in the Democratic platform promising to put forward a bill that would send an AK-47, complete with a hundred rounds of ammo, to every household in the good 'ol USofA. For starters, it would deprive the Republican party of one of its perennial pieces of propaganda duping its base that Democrats are "coming for your guns". Not only would the wind go out of that one overnight, but Wayne Lapierre could hang up his bullhorn and spend the rest of his days fighting the insider lawsuit that accuses him of looting the NRA. As if that weren't enough, such a program would even up the ballistic odds. According to this survey, Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to have a gun in the house, whites are 50% more likely than Blacks and twice as likely as Hispanics. With everybody packing heat, the promise of democracy could finally be fulfilled. Elections would be fairer too. Anyone concerned that there'd be a militia member at the polls making sure you aren't voting twice would find there'd be at least two well-armed folks making sure you got to vote at least once. And talk about our right to peacefully protest! Imagine those folks who stay away from protests out of fear of being shot suddenly having enough firepower to shoe away anybody who tries to stop them. Folks would be safer in their homes too. Far fewer break-ins and unexpected knocks on the door when there was most certainly an assault rifle at the ready. But, lookin, you say, wouldn't giving every household an assault rifle bankrupt the country? Not by a long shot, you should pardon the expression. Somewhere I read that an AK-47 could be had from Northern Mexica for just over $1200. Add another hundred bucks for ammunition and every one of our 130 million households could be extremely well armed for just shy of $170 billion. Hell, Trump's deficit was four times that much his first year in office, and six times that much last year. If he can spend that much making his fat pals that much fatter, why couldn't he spend a fraction of that amount defending the one constitutional amendment his base can recite from memory? He said he would and now's his chance to stand and deliver. So to speak. PS: I'm aware there may be some Republicans out there who would consider this a bad idea and would come forward to rail against it. I might even send them a modest donation. But it wouldn't stop me from watching them try to squeeze the shoe on their other foot.

Good gosh, @stevenkesslar, I wasn't sure I'd even finish reading your post before the election let alone conjure up a way to reach authoritarian followers by then. I recall that you're a long-time political operative so I know you appreciate the importance of data as opposed to just slinging opinions. And I'm sure you'd join me in looking over the psychographic research on Trump's followers so that we'd understand what their fears actually are. However, in the absence of hard data, I wouldn't give up on Covid-19 just yet. Of all the things Trump followers should be fearing, that one bubbles to the top for me. And it's also one where I don't think the Democratic messaging has been nearly as simple as it needs to be in order to break through to single-issue thinkers. For example, I haven't heard too many folks mention that our "war-time president" is halfway to losing as many U. S. citizens as we lost in World War II. With another thousand lives being lost each day, he most likely will - through his lack of leadership - hit the 400,000 lost lives mark by April Fool's day. And the 200,000 deaths we've recorded so far are more than our World War II allies and enemies have reached when all their Covid-19 death totals are combined. If you ask me, that's something to be afraid of! If his authoritarian followers can grasp one more fact, it would be that he's already tried taking away their health insurance so that those who survive, along with their pre-existing conditions, will be on the hook for health problems that may last a lifetime. And, if they can comprehend one more thing to be fearful of, it would be the damage he's already done to Medicare and Social Security which rely on payroll taxes and well-paid jobs, both of which he has undercut. I've never felt comfortable setting out, as Trump has, to instill fear as a political strategy. But, if anyone needs the raw material to do so, it's there in abundance.

Honestly! Us old members were here first. Speaking of frustrations, how I envy you guys who can't log in! Starting about a year ago, I couldn't log out. I tried it from the Forums, I tried it from the Main Page, I reloaded the pages before, during and after and I even tried it standing on my head. No matter what I did, I was still logged in. If that weren't enough, each time I returned to the Forums, I got a beep notifying me that someone had just responded to a post I made a week ago. I figured this was something deep within the site's plumbing and maybe if I stayed away a few months it would heal itself. No such luck. On my return, logging out is still hit-or-miss but I did stumble on a workaround that seems to improve my odds a little.