BootmanLA

Agreed - as I said, for most people, their immune systems recover enough to be effective. And hopefully, you're among them (or, rather, that you'll continue to be among them). But I know of cases where the immune system in the patient simply couldn't recover, even as his viral load fell to (the old) UD levels. It may be that this isn't ever going to be a problem with the most recent drug innovations. I'd hope so. But unless the CDC or some other equally respected health institution confirms that becoming undetectable *ensures* recovery of the immune system to at least above-AIDS level, I'm going to assume that's still a (thankfully rare) possibility.

My point was not that people use these AS running shorts, but UNDER running shorts (yes, as underwear), when the running shorts themselves have no pockets. When the outer garments have no pockets (whether for an ID, cash, credit card, lube, or whatever), and you need one or more of those items, they have to go somewhere. Some people use the top of their socks, but with ankle-high socks being popular with running shoes, that's not an option. T-shirts, too, often don't have a shirt pocket that's usable. Even if the running shorts DO have a pocket: most running shorts I've seen have been loosely cut in order to allow freedom of leg movement. The pockets - if they exist - are likely not deep as they'd be in pants or longer shorts, meaning greater odds of something falling out while running. When those things are gripped against your waist by the waistband in the underwear, they're likely secure and not going anywhere.

I'd only add this: IF a person is HIV+, and IF that person foregoes treatment until his CD4 count is abysmally low (whether deliberately, or through not knowing his status), HIV meds can (and almost certainly will) bring his viral count down, and they SHOULD enable his immune system to recover and boost his CD4 counts, BUT... if there's enough damage to the immune system, it may never recover sufficiently, such that even ordinary infections which a healthy, non-immunocompromised person could shrug off without notice might prove serious. This situation is rare, and I suspect the odds of it happening are getting lower and lower, as more people go on medications immediately after infection or early in the process, and as medication efficacy improves. And by rare, I mean probably not more than a few dozen cases out there. And before anyone asks, that's not to suggest that becoming infected by such a person puts you in the same boat; the issue here isn't how strong the virus is, but how much damage was done to the person's system by not being treated.

This is simply not true. Alligators do outnumber crocodiles in Florida, but south Florida *is* within the northern range limits for the American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus). See, for instance, this page from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission: [think before following links] https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/reptiles/american-crocodile/

I generally agree here, except that I'd say it's OK for two attendees to swap contact info IF they want - though everyone should be forewarned that badgering someone for contact info will result in swift ejection. I'd also suggest setting aside an area for clothes storage, and getting a bunch of large grocery or trash bags for people to stash their clothes (and keys, etc.) in. And this is where those "assistant" hosts become really helpful - divide the party time into shifts, and make sure one of them is in the room where belongings are stored, making sure nobody goes "shopping" through other people's wallets, etc. One way to keep tabs on these things: get a supply of full-sheet (8.5 x 11 in the US) labels, and cut them into halves or quarters. When a participant hands over his bag of clothes, etc., write his name on a label and seal the bag with it. That should eliminate arguments about "I had $200 in cash in my pocket and now it's gone" - if the label is undisturbed, nobody went into the bag. (And I suggest those large ones because smaller labels sometimes "pop loose" or can be dislodged, while these sections of full-sheet labels are much harder to tamper with.)

As I understand it, it's not so much a dollar amount as it is a temporal quantity. For instance, any single illness or injury has a limit of 90 days hospitalization. But that's per illness or injury, so if you break both hips in February and spend 80 days in the hospital, and then in June you come down with Covid, the 90-day clock starts over (because it's a different illness or injury). For longer stays, Medicare includes up to 60 days in what it calls a "lifetime reserve" - days you can tack on to a stay over 90 days. But that's a lifetime limit of 60 extra days. There's a lifetime limit of 190 days in psych hospitals. And so on. Another thing to note: most Medicare coverage includes a portion for which the patient is responsible (typically a percentage, like 20%). There is no annual or lifetime out-of-pocket cap on this amount, which can be substantial if you're very sick or severely injured. Most regular insurance has an OOP cap where it pays 100% of costs above that level - there's no such equivalent in Medicare.

I know this probably goes without saying, but there's a slew of other factors to consider for retirement housing, and for gay men they're sometimes not the same as for straight people. For instance: some gay men have children from a previous straight marriage (and some adopt or go through surrogacy), but the vast majority of us don't have kids, and we're not having to think about leaving the next generation "set up" for the future. So an area where housing prices are rising faster than average, or faster than inflation, isn't as big a deal if you're not worried about your kids getting to split the profits from expensive real estate. For another: geography and climate, and I don't just mean climate change. Some people want to be near the beach or ocean, and some people can't stand the sand for more than a day or so. Some of us love mountain vistas, while others want the flatlands and anything more than a slight rise is too much. Some of us can't stand the heat, and some of us can't stand snow and ice. And whatever our preferences are now, those may change by the time we're, say, 75 or more. That's not to downplay factors like politics for the region or the number of potential sex partners. But those aren't the be-all, end-all, do-all of retirement life, either.

Part of the problem with polls is without knowing the entire set of questions asked, in detail, you can't know what prompted the responses. Bear in mind that in 1994 the Republicans had been hammering "welfare reform" into the public consciousness for more than a decade with spurious attacks about "welfare queens driving Cadillacs" (and more recently, food stamp people with iPhones). When one party creates a huge public perception of anything - even if that public perception is based on fraudulent PR - then a poll can be engineered to generate almost any response you want. But yes, Clinton was attempting to co-opt a popular idea (even though it was popular based on a fraudulent stereotype) to preserve his own, and his party's, political fortunes. I suspect that "81%" number was really soft, and if you'd actually explained how welfare payments worked in reality, the polling would have been different.

Actually Medicare became sacrosanct on the right long before Bush II. In 1988, Congress passed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, which significantly expanded benefits (including a prescription drug benefit, hospice care, and a lot of other things), but it also imposed some income-based premiums that more comfortable retirees would have to pay. The senior citizens' lobby went apeshit and there were literally protests in the street, with seniors banging on the doors of congressmen's vehicles every time they tried to go anywhere. Who did these legislators think seniors were, citizens with shared responsibilities as well as rights? The horror. Congress returned ASAP in 1989 and repealed the entire Act before it could take effect. Ever since then, even the far right in Congress has known this isn't something you can cut. (There are fringe elements on the right, of course, who still insist we can uproot the entire thing, but their position has never been even remotely close to the Overton Window.) The 1983 SS reforms only passed on the right because they screwed the working class while exempting the capital class. In any reasonable system, things like unearned income (interest, dividends, etc.) would also be taxed to provide for retirement, but SS only taxes *earned* income - wages and salaries - and there's an earnings cap. So someone with a $5 million salary pays the same amount in SS taxes as someone making $150,000. And someone who has no salary at all, but who lives strictly on unearned income, pays nothing in SS at all. Actually the "old guard" Republicans were out of the driver's seat in Congress from 1994 on, when Newt Gingrich and his bomb-throwing tactics seized control of the party and drove them to victory in the 1994 midterms on lies about the Clintons. It's true that there were some non-rightwing (aka "MAGA" in modern parlance) Republicans still in Congress after then, but the reality is that they ceased to hold sway in the party long ago. 2018 may mark the end of moderate GOP members as a small fraction of the loyal opposition, but they only existed to pad the GOP's numbers in the House into a majority.

To everyone asking about Chat - If there were easy workarounds for the problems that this buggy, problem-ridden module has, I'm sure that the staff would have long ago publicized them. I know it's tedious to read through an entire thread, but if you do (and this has been discussed ad infinitum on here, the code that runs the chat software is unlikely to ever be fixed - the owner of THIS forum has no access to that code, and it doesn't appear that the company that provided this module is going to do anything about it. Sometimes it functions, quite often it doesn't, and about the only option this site has, beyond telling you to try it periodically, is to remove the software entirely and not provide any chat feature at all. Is that what y'all want? I get that it's disappointing, but bear in mind that live chat is NOT the primary purpose of this forum; it's to provide a space for discussions, ones that people can come behind and read after the fact. Use the site for what it's intended, and if & when the owners can develop their own, supported chat feature, I'm sure they will.

The thing about the Overton Window is that the extremists on either side seldom shift the window in their own direction. It's not impossible, but moving a political position/option from the fringe to the mainstream of acceptable options usually comes from the opposite side opening itself up to a previously unacceptable option. The left has done a lot more of that in the last 40 years than the right has, and the window has shifted rightward as a result.

It's true that all the Republicans you mentioned definitely moved rightward from previous GOP positions. But that, in itself, doesn't shift the "Overton Window" - and it might help to refresh our memories on what the Overton Window actually is. It's the range of policies acceptable to a majority of people, not just the fringes on either end of the spectrum. So, with respect to, say, traditional welfare programs - like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the primary "cash" benefit program created for poor people during the Great Depression but expanded significantly during the Great Society - for a long time the Overton Window didn't really cover a lot of options. Many on the right wanted to end such programs entirely, but that was never going to wash with more than about 20% or so of Americans. Conversely, on the far left there were people who believed such programs ought to provide a minimum basic income for everyone below a certain poverty level, not just a small cash stipend - and that, too, was always unacceptable to a majority, because the assumption was if you pay people a guaranteed minimum income, a lot of them will just not work (an assumption, by the way, that does not always hold up). Bill Clinton, with his famous (or infamous) "triangulation" strategy (adopt some of your opponents' ideas, claim credit for them, and insulate yourself from criticism about your party's general stance on the issue), did, in fact, shift the Overton Window rightward. By agreeing to gut AFDC and convert it into the Block Grant program we know now as TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), Clinton essentially made right-wing ideas like lifetime time limits for welfare and work requirements for assistance acceptable to enough people that the Overton Window expanded rightward. That doesn't absolve the right wing of responsibility for right-wing ideas - but they've always had those. But pre-Clinton, liberals wouldn't entertain most of those ideas, and that left changes to the basic structure of political programs outside the Overton Window - and there were, in fact, very few substantive changes to those programs from the end of Johnson's term to the early part of Clinton's. Change came around the edges of programs - until Clinton and a GOP congress took a broadax to them. Nowadays, the idea of returning to an AFDC-style check-writing guaranteed assistance program is so far outside the Overton Window it can't even be discussed - when just 30 years ago, ENDING the then-extant program was outside the O.W. That's what we mean when we say that Clinton (and later, Obama) shifted the window rightward. And it's notable that neither Reagan, nor Bush I, nor Bush II, nor Trump did any sort of similar outreach to the left to coopt a liberal position on anything. In fact, on the handful of liberal shifts that HAVE occurred - same-sex marriage, for instance - the right fought tooth and nail against those shifts and, in large measure, is still fighting them. If anything, they've tried to push the window even more dramatically rightward, like with abortion, and they're discovering to their shock that, in fact, 10-week (or less) abortion bans are simply not acceptable to the majority, anywhere. Their own efforts to shift the OW rightward (remember, we're talking about public opinion of acceptable range of policies, not what the party can actually force through) are, in large measure, failing.

That's actually an open question. In traditional commerce, for instance, if European Company A sells a product directly into the US market, even if the company were based in, say, Germany, the fact that it's choosing to enter the US marketplace makes it subject to at least some US laws. By contrast, if Company A only sells to wholesalers outside the US, and one of those wholesalers sells to the US market, then the wholesaler might be the entity subject to US laws. The law is still shaking out around the internet. With respect to online sales, for instance, for years the US courts' policy was that out of state vendors with no physical presence in a given state couldn't be forced to collect sales tax for customers in other states and remit those taxes to the customer's state. But jurisprudence in that area is shifting, allowing companies that market via the internet to be held accountable for collecting state and local taxes. And right now, the EU holds foreign-owned commercial websites to EU standards for data privacy, etc. - if you have customers in the EU for your online service or business, you have to give your EU customers a certain level of protection. What this suggests, of course, is that regulation of online content that reaches into a jurisdiction may well be subject to that jurisdiction's laws, at least in part. The problem is finding a way to enforce compliance.

But there are lots of gym shorts, running shorts, etc. that have no pockets. Wearing these underneath provides a spot for your ID, credit card, bus pass, maybe some emergency cash, etc. Not as visible as sticking those in your sock, for instance.

That really won't have any impact on any of these state laws. The Comstock Act is a federal law, governing what the federal government prohibits. Even if it were repealed, and thus the federal government didn't prohibit anything (in terms of this type of content), that has no bearing on whether a STATE can prohibit it. And as RawTop has noted, these laws are unconstitutional (at least as precedent goes), and that applies whether they're federal or state laws, since the US constitution protects against encroachments by either.

Sinema is no longer a Democrat and has not been since December of last year. That said, she still caucuses with the Democrats, so we can evaluate her as one, I suppose. Neither she nor Manchin is "crazy". Both are more conservative than the average Democrat, but that's not a sign of craziness. Both are beholden to their donors (Sinema to the Wall Street crowd, Manchin to the fossil fuel industry) and both vote accordingly, but again, that's not crazy the way calling for a repeal of the entire welfare state is, on the GOP side, or calling for withdrawing from NATO, or repealing the income tax, or any number of other nutty ideas from that side of the aisle. First, the President is not the "boss" of any US Senator. You seem to not understand some basic concepts of how our government works. It's true that President Biden is the highest-level elected Democrat in the country, but to call the tier right below him, in terms of elected officials, "mid-management" is just stupid. This is not to defend either's voting record. It's true that each has been responsible for tanking some of Biden's more ambitious policy goals by refusing to back them in the Senate. But then the people of West Virginia are, by a significant majority, far more conservative than those of California or Delaware, and Manchin represents their views pretty well. Sinema, too, is from a state that is trending blue but historically has been GOP dominated, so she's not far off base from her constituents' views, either. We tend to think of politics in national terms, because that's how it's portrayed, often, in the media; but in reality, a lot of it is local, and what will sell in one place won't in another. And in particular, senators (who represent entire states) often have legitimate local concerns, on behalf of their states, with a federal policy. I am as disappointed as anyone that Manchin and Sinema don't always support the Democratic position on legislation, but that's how our system works.

First, let's clarify some terms. "Full blown AIDS" isn't a clinical term, for starters. An HIV-positive person is diagnosed as having AIDS when he either (a) has an AIDS-defining condition or (b) has a CD4 count of less than 200/cubic milliliter of blood. That said, a person may be diagnosed as having AIDS, but nonetheless cease to meet those criteria if he undergoes treatment (which may boost his CD4 count), and in any event may render him undetectable or nearly so. In other words, AIDS is not necessarily a "final stage" from which the only exit is death - though if left untreated, it's likely to be fatal. Medication resistant strains, on the other hand, are rare, and almost none are resistant to all medications. So the chances of even encountering someone who has a strain of HIV that cannot be treated by any current medication is highly unlikely. Not impossible, to be sure, but unlikely. Now, as for PrEP: remember that the purpose of PrEP is to aid your natural immune system in preventing HIV from gaining a foothold in your system. IF a person who has one of those extremely rare all-meds-resistant strains of HIV were to have sex, particularly as a top for anal sex, with a person on PrEP, he might or might not infect that person. For one thing, resistance to medication isn't necessary linear; it might be that PrEP is only half as effective against a particular strain, slowing down its infectivity rather than halting it entirely. It's possible that PrEP plus the natural immune response might clear even such an infection. Or maybe not - it's not like this is something easy to study. In any event, adherence to PrEP regimes is key - and it's why I strongly believe that the daily dose regimen, if a person can stick with it, is better than the on-demand regimen. And no, I'm not a health care professional, but it seems to me that if PrEP is going to fail, it's more likely to do so if there's less of it in your system while it's fighting off a potential infection.

FWIW: I do not believe it is possible for the GOP to return to "classic" Republicanism, because I do not believe the base will stand for it. Nor do I think the GOP base can be salvaged from the train wreck that is Trumpism. And personally I see no Republican on the national stage - including Christie - who stands a chance of unifying the various wings of the Republican Party. The House Speaker's race is shaping up to be a fight between a white supremacist and an enabler of pedophiles, both from the crazy wing of the GOP in the House. Separately, I'd also disagree that there are any notable crazies in the Democratic Party in Congress. There are some who are more liberal than others, certainly. But crazy? I can't think of any. Even Bernie Sanders, who I consider a doddering idealist with unrealistic goals, isn't crazy - not in the sense that Gosar, Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, Good, Perry, Luna, etc. are.

Possible? Sure. Safely? That's a good question. The biggest medication risk with poppers is with things that lower your blood pressure - which includes not only classic BP meds, but also many erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs like Viagra and Cialis. Technically, blood thinners aren't designed to lower blood pressure. That said, if you are on a blood thinner and you were to develop bleeding, the blood thinner might make clotting difficult, and thus your pressure would drop as you lose blood. You'd have to lose a significant amount, of course, before it would drop your blood pressure dangerously. This isn't to say it's safe - anytime you mix medications and other chemical substances, you run the risk of bad interactions. I'm just not aware of any, SPECIFICALLY, between this pairing.

Bear in mind it's not just where you're physically located, but where your ISP chooses to "route" a connection in that location to a more central location for handing out IP addresses. For instance: my home ISP in Baton Rouge, LA is Cox, which services much of south Louisiana. IP addresses are apparently doled out (at least some of the time) from one of its southwest Louisiana offices, rather than here in the (much larger) state capitol. So services like Google Maps, for instance, when trying to figure out "where I am" to center the map on loading, usually place me 50-60 miles west of where I actually am. (But not always: sometimes I seem to hit a DHCP server east of me; I'm guessing it has to do with network load balancing, etc.) With Foley being right between MS and FL, I'm not surprised that on occasion infrastructure from one of those surrounding states might get involved - which, in turn, could trigger the block from MS. That's the beauty of a VPN that lets you choose the site you connect through.

🙂 Actually, I know some very experienced young men who are vastly more experienced than a lot of guys in our age bracket - this is one case, I fear, where the blunt truth of chronological age is the relevant factor more than, um, the mileage.

You may actually be connecting through VA, if you're close to the border, even if you're physically in Maryland.

Honestly, if the masseur is providing a "happy ending" for the massage, it's just prostitution with longer-than-average foreplay. That is: if what people are actually paying for is the orgasm - or at the very least, genital manipulation - then it's sex work, not really different than a hand job.

They could, but like almost any other subscription model, it's likely doomed to fail from a financial standpoint. Subscriptions survive as long as customers perceive they're getting more value from paying a flat, ongoing, lower price that covers typically unlimited use than from paying for actual usage. It works when it's something we can't really effectively do without (like a cell-phone plan with unlimited data and minutes). It falls apart when it's something we can easily opt out of (like meal subscriptions, which just can't seem to turn a profit no matter what they try). You can only get cell service, ultimately, from one of the big providers (even if it's via a smaller provider reselling their network). You can get food almost anywhere (quality varying, of course). For the average gay who doesn't travel to cities big enough to even have a bathhouse in the first place on a semi-weekly basis, or whatever, there won't be any value in a subscription. Pay the $50 for the holiday trip and be done with it. The handful who do use such facilities on a steady basis will end up paying even less to support an already under-supported business.

I'd love it if every form of legit, non-exploitative entertainment could survive and thrive (ie yes to bathhouses and gay bars, no to shooting galleries and cockfights and dogfights). But the history of human culture, in general, shows things wax and wane, and sometimes never come back after one of those waning periods. Others, like bowling alleys and the rare drive in, survive as niche options.