AdamSmith

You just described most of the guys who work for me. Not all of them are gay, but they're all sensitive and intelligent. And they enjoy working in the company of creative gay men. I hire women, too. If you possess strong talent, I'm an equal opportunity employer.
As for sex, I don't do under 30, even though I'll flirt with anyone. Playing "daddy" never turned me on. If I fall in love with a 25-year-old, I prefer to offer him a job instead of intimacy. But that's me. I already have a son, and our love runs very deep.

It is a major shame that the escort board that gets the most traffic is owned by an imbecile and run by a bunch of asshole queens. But if being at a larger party is important to you, then what better choice does one have?
I have been to some AMAZING parties in my day, but I always preferred smaller gatherings in my living room to elevate substance over drug-fueled noise. While this place is not my personal creation, I find Oz a much more reasonable gay board owner to deal with. Oz seems intelligent, funny, patient and highly tolerant. And I can relate more to his politics. Political bias or affiliation is not a litmus test with me amongst friends, but it's nice to agree with many thoughts and ideas expressed.
IMO, Hooboy was the one with the sparkling PERSONALITY. Where he lacked management skill, he had SPLASH. Splash and sparkle died a lonely death over there long ago. And since money in porn has almost dried up, running a board like this must come down to a labor of love that simply empties the wallet every month. Where can you find a Hooboy in today's marketplace to fund and create a truly wonderful gentleman's club for escort lovers? I've crunched the numbers. That's a serious tough sell.

Yesterday, editors of The New England Journal of Medicine made serious news. One of the world's oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals did an unprecedented act: They got political. Signed by nearly three dozen of the journal's editors, they published a letter denouncing the U.S. reaction to Covid, and not very discreetly pointed fingers at the Trump administration without mentioning his name. Some news organizations are reporting on this.
I'm not sure how the software here would handle a PDF, so I copied the text and re-formatted it. This is a must-read by everyone.
 
Dying in a Leadership Vacuum
The Editors
Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy. The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,1 the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lowermiddle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly. We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude. 
Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.2 Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control. Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust. The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts. The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized, 3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4 causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies. Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II. Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.
The New England Journal of Medicine
October 8, 2020

Didn't we discuss One Touch of Venus recently. Didn't I mention seeing Venus in New York about 20 years sgo. Paula Laurence from the original cast was there. She said happened to be with Elia Kazan when Mary Martin died in 1990

Off the original point, I love how this thread has run all over the map. That’s how all good talk ought to go.

Black Flies Matter.
 
(They know a walking pile of shit when they see one.)

I didn't think it did. But a lot gays think of "daddy" when the issue of older/younger relationships appear. I wanted to mention that aspect.
I have always been a mentor to younger guys, even when I was in my twenties talking to a Freshman high school audience. And there are SO MANY younger people looking, searching for wisdom, guidance, and support. And validation, too. I am a person who enjoys listening and giving, especially giving back what has been given to me.

"Hitting the gym" at 80 is a good thing. I hope and pray my body will keep up. RGB and her trainer inspired many. Plus, a gym is a great place to see many naked male bodies. It's often worth the price of admission. There are a lot of younger guys who enjoy playing with older men, especially when the older men appear to be fit and care about their health. Caring about your health can be a sexual turn-on, even if it's just a perception.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed JKane's screenshots. Got a major guffaw from George Takei.
He's caused many around the world to experience serious pain. A lot of people are praying for his death.
It's difficult to imagine the war against Trumpism if Trump manages to stay alive. As long as he is alive, he will crave attention. Trump is the consummate TROLL.
Karma is often a bitch. I wouldn't want to be Trump. In Ancient Rome, "the people" beheaded their emperor(s)-gone-bad and placed the bloody heads on a wooden pile along the edge of the Tiber for everyone to mock and spit on. Maybe Kathy Griffin had something all along.
I, too, was surprised the feature had gone missing, and then noticed the three dots. Code writers are obsessed with "clean" these days, so they're hellbent on hiding almost everything. The game of tech. Since I like clean ass, I can deal with the concept of clean.
It's definitely that. How sad that people, not by choice, must be exposed without their permission. Maybe some Congressperson should make that against the law. There was talk about making laws to hurt gays who knowingly infected other men. At least Trump can't pretend to be Covid-free.
My friends in Europe are simply dumbfounded. And they are angry. Every European business owner I know says, "What happens first in America comes here next."
I was content to be away from U.S. news for a couple of months. But I was glad to return in time for the election. 
Racism is the biggest issue associated with Trump voters. Until we tackle that as a country, there will always be room for Trumpism in America.

Why on earth did they hide it there?
Like storing the toilet paper in the garage. 

*logging in

Awesome article.  Thanks for posting that.
I agree with the author.  It's part of the weirdness of the President Toxic era that Steven "Foreclosure" Mnuchin, the guy who said the fat cat tax cuts would pay for themselves (Oops!), is arguably the most shining light in this Administration.
The other two survivors that come to mind are Pence and Pompeo.  I see both of them as both ass kissers and conservative ideologues who play to Trump's right.  What's interesting about Mnuchin, as the article documents, is that he excels at both ass kissing and centrist pragmatism and compromise.
This is the line from the article that best sums it up to me:
I'll take it one step further.  The saddest thing about Mnuchin as a historical figure is that he symbolizes what a Trump Presidency could have been. 
There was talk between November 2016 and January 2017 about how Trump, having won, might come out of the box as an "art of the deal" consensus builder that lived to cut deals, like Mnuchin appears to. Karl Rove was talking up a big infrastructure bill.  Had President Toxic listened solely to people like Mnuchin and Rove, he might be in a very different position today.  Instead, Steven Bannon wrote his red meat Inaugural address.  Where has that gotten him?
One obvious problem for President Toxic is his conservative base.  But they've followed him off the cliff, anyway.  I have to imagine they'd have also followed him if he'd decided to build a bridge over the cliff, instead.  And then there are all the conservative GOP Senate and House members.  But they've turned into his lap dog, anyways. Even though it likely means many of them are on the verge of losing elections.  Surely they would have preferred to follow him if it actually meant winning.
My theory is that the real problem is just President Toxic.  Steve Mnuchin is everything Trump is not.  Including someone who knows when and how to ass kiss when he needs to.  And how to cut deals with Pelosi, rather than just tweet about her.
I'll leave it to the historians to figure it all out for us.  But it is a tragedy, even before the tragedy of COVID.

Thinking on it, this sounds very much like a side reference to anal sex. 

Oneself knew Mnuchin as a classmate at Jale. Intelligent and reasonably politically moderate. He must feel himself in Hell today.

Steven Mnuchin's Deal Staved Off Catastrophe. Can He Make Another One?
https://news.yahoo.com/steven-mnuchins-deal-staved-off-183653170.html

I'm not a big fan of ignoring people, but wisdom teaches us that certain people in the public square aren't worth the precious time in your day. Life is way too short to waste it. Luckily for me, I respect discipline. Probably has something to do with my childhood and my wonderful parents. 
I guess there's been some changes since my last visit? It's not every day Latbear4blk is speaking openly about his ignore list. So sorry to read the word "shitshow" associated with the changes. If AS says they're bad, there must be problems. Poor Oz. Running a board can be a such a pain.
This is my return post. Let's see if I encounter software issues. I don't have any patience for bugs and glitches.

Very well said!

Yeah, sorry @TotallyOzbut there are too many glitches. The one thing that is working better for me is losing in. Besides that, the boytoy experience has suffered. 

The last few updates of the forum software here have been a shitshow.

I first saw the original at 19 yo. Just starting to deal with coming out.
Thought it was very great, and helpful.
The difficult parts were the best.

I first saw the original at 19 yo. Just starting to deal with coming out.
Thought it was very great, and helpful.
The difficult parts were the best.

Why on earth did they hide it there?
Like storing the toilet paper in the garage. 

ADD New Jersey Gov Chris Christie (Trumps advisor) to the Covid positive list......
Wow, Karma is making a clean sweep !

Well, Trumps greatest accomplishment now seems to be infecting ALL of Washingtons elite and GOP.... KellyAnn Conjob tests POSITIVE for Covid too !   
OK, i'll finally say it "THANK YOU, Mr President".......