Comments by From978

Flash: their Facebook page usually lists the roster for the day. It's updated around 1:00 PM, but the last couple of weeks have been spotty. However, it lists only names, and since I'm certifiably bad at remembering names, it's not entirely helpful.

Interesting. That's actually better than I would have expected. The wording discloses that it's summarized from other reviews, and it's not as obviously wrong as some of the reviews I've rejected. The sure giveaway is the disclaimer at the end about views differing.

I see that Muddy has contributed over 800 reviews, so I doubt I can tell him much that he doesn't already know. For less experienced readers, when I have put this question to dancers, they tell me that nighttime customers tend to be young men with time to kill, but no money. In the day, customers tend to be old guys with money who are running out of time (me, for example). These dancers tell me they prefer the guys with money. (But then, they would say that, since it's followed by an offer to help me get rid of money in a hurry.)

Any time they say, "I've found it best if you pay in advance."

Yogi Berra: You can observe a lot by just watching.

It depends on what you want to have happen next. Your basic three options are (1) a dollar or two, if you want to never see her again, (2) as much as anyone else, if you want a few minutes attention, or (3) as much as everyone else, if you want to find out what's the best you can get.

When I moved to my current town, the water commissioner was named Al Piper, and the town groundskeeper was Debbie Parks.

It looks like the State Department is about to apply sanctions on part of the Israeli Defense Forces because they are violating human rights. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/20/us-israel-sanctions-idf-west-bank I doubt that this would have happened without the protests you describe. You may not like it, but I don't think you can argue that the kids are completely ineffectual.

I long ago decided that affection doesn't have to be real; it just has to be good enough to fool me. And under the right circumstances, I'm pretty easy to fool, and I'm even willing to spell out the best way to do it. I've also found that you can accomplish a lot more with a kind word and a $100 bill than with a kind word alone. She may not love me, but her love of paying the rent is completely sincere, and some of that will rub off (if you'll pardon the expression) on me.

The math on the $5 vs $10 house cut is unfortunate but inexorable. If demand falls by less than 50% , the house makes more money with the higher fee. In the long run that can lead to a death spiral of fewer customers and fewer dancers, but I'm sure management's motto is "In the long run we're all dead."

I'm going to take a contrary view here. The physical aspects of a club change infrequently, and are always described in some other review. Dance staff in most clubs change all the time. A bad club with one first-rate dancer will go to the top of my list every time. At my age, I'm going to be able to sample about one dancer per visit (two, if the first was disappointing). Therefore (a) I can only comment on one dancer in my review, and (b) I'm mostly using your review to decide which dancers to look for. I think reviews should be written and judged in context. If previous reviews (including your own) have thoroughly explained that the stage is to the left of the bar, please skip that part. Conversely, if you discover someone who is really good or bad in private, that's useful information.

Autocorrect strikes again. Sorry

Google knows where you are, and they're an ad-supported business. Helicopter probably paid them a couple of Bath to serve you that listing. First rule of the Internet: If you're not paying, you are the product.

The question hasn't come up lately, but I definitely avoid any kind of "special" event. They are aimed at people who don't usually go to the club. For me, it's a distraction from the people I went there to see, and I may have to pay extra for the privilege. I can invariably have more fun with someone whom I know, or at least someone I might want to know.

I'm with Mickey here. We really need the "Ignore" button reinstated.

Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I think you're getting the LDK Special. They might try a lot harder to recruit somebody else.

I'm possibly the only classical music listener here, so I'll limit it to one day, April 13, 1980. The musician was Vladimir Horowitz, one of the great pianists of the 20th century. The place was Boston Symphony Hall. My date was Miss December of a few years before, and my car was a 1936 Bentley. We continued dating until she got admitted to RISD the next year and moved to Providence in the fall. I foolishly thought that was too far to drive and we separated. Fast forward to this year. I found a recording of that concert, and was playing it in the car. My wife heard the applause and said, "Oh, was there an audience when he made this?" The only diplomatic answer I could think of was, "It sounds like it."

This one didn't happen to me, but I swear I saw it: A guy was in the lap dance area getting what appeared to be a long series of dances when a solid looking woman charged into the club. She elbowed the bouncer out of the way (made it look easy), found the guy, and started berating him, I think in Portuguese. She yanked him up by the shirt and marched him out the door, stiffing the dancer about $150. I assume it wasn't an intentional scam, but it crossed my mind that with a good accomplice it would almost always work. You would have to limit it to once per club, since people tend to remember that sort of thing.

There were about 100 contestants; two were transgender. Neither won anything. If you want to get excited about that, go ahead. I have trouble caring.

Of Sinclair's list, I've only been to Camelot in DC, and that was probably in another century. I think I never had a good experience there, but it was a five minute walk from the Mayflower Hotel, so I kept going back. I think my vote for worst is a now defunct club somewhere around Plover Wisconsin. I can't remember the name, but I do remember an extremely irate bouncer barging in to the only lap dance I bought there because the back of my hand had brushed the dancer's butt.

In the clubs I attend, the only safe assumption is that if one dancer knows something about you, they all know. That definitely includes tipping habits. A dancer who knows I'm going to make sure she has a good day is much more likely to make sure I have a good day. So if you're going back to that club more than once, tipping will improve your experience. If you're in the club when I walk in, your non-tipping will probably improve my experience, because she'll dump you and come talk to me, so feel free to keep the extra cash in your wallet. But if you want my advice, it is (1) don't go to a club you wouldn't go back to, and (2) use this visit to improve your next one.

A city clerk in the Philippines tried to convince me that I was getting married in the wrong city. Ten bucks solved it

This doesn't look like a political map, it looks like a big cities map. California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York have nothing in common politically, but they house the largest cities in the country. The data come from a restaurant software subscription service, which seems oriented to fast food, pizza, and food trucks. I'm guessing the high end restaurants you find in Miami and Dallas don't use it, so you're filtering out places with big spenders. In Indiana, Applebee's is a good restaurant. (Not entirely fair; I know a couple of good restaurants in Indiana.)

Both your review and electroman's comment are spot on

I'm not sure whether anyone knows how many illegal immigrants work in strip clubs, but I'm absolutely sure that you don't know. It's not like they're wearing name tags that say Hello, My name is Kandi, and I'm illegal.

I'm not sure who said "don't expect champagne service on a beer budget," but in my experience that's only true about half the time. I'd say there's very little connection between price and quality, especially in the dark. Example: a dancer new to the club, and evidently having a bad day, offered me 15 minutes for $75. She turned out to be amazingly skilled, affectionate, and enthusiastic, and I became a regular customer. "Learn Portuguese" is not exactly a rule, but it has definitely paid off. One Providence Brazilian used to give me 15 minutes of lessons each week. If I did a good job, she would take me in the back room for a "prêmio" (prize). She said if I did badly I'd get "castigo," but we never got around to that. One afternoon I said I wanted to work on verb tenses. She said, "OK, gozer means cum.". She took me in the back, and we went through about 18 forms of it, all narrated in perfect grammar.

Hi, Techman. The answer to both your questions is, "eventually."

I've noticed a related issue with reviews from different states. Terms like "VIP" and "private dance" have no standard meaning. In New England, VIPs are generally timed in quarter hours, and delivered out of sight. I haven't really kept track, but I see reviews from the Midwest where it seems to mean anything other than the main seating area. "Extras", I suppose, is a matter of state law. I think in Massachusetts any contact is illegal. In Rhode Island, any ordinary contact is legal. As a practical matter, the same things can happen in either state, but in more restrictive states people might call more of them extras.

A couple of days ago, The Onion ran a headline saying, "Ex-FDA Official Confirms Existence Of Vegetables". My blogging app included the AI-generated note "Feedly Al found 1 Regulatory Changes mention in this article" There's a fine line between artificial intelligence and artificial stupidity, and we're currently on the wrong side of it.

I've never been able to figure out a strategy for whether to haggle or not. When I try it, it always works. On the other hand, what you get here is highly subjective, and I can't help thinking we would be having more fun if she wasn't distracted by the idea of losing $50 or whatever. And then there's the issue of the next time; Desires, as everyone says, is a regulars club, and your chances of getting what you want next time are directly related to her getting what she wants this time.

I just realized I've been living my life upside down. I've been eating different foods and sleeping with the same woman.

My doctor got COVID two weeks ago (I think: she didn't exactly say). I saw her yesterday, and in the middle of the exam she started coughing violently. She and I were both masked, but I definitely would have been happier if she had locked herself down until the symptoms stopped.

Penelope Cruz and paella, in that order.

I'm one of the 90%. I suppose it makes sense to ask a question that can only be understood by people who might be qualified to answer.

(1). Yes, it's possible. (2). Yes, I've done it. (3). Yes, it's not as exciting as it sounds, and (4). Go ahead and try it; then you won't have to take our word for it. Offering to do them sequentially, on the other hand, will leave everybody happy.

And, presto! Site response is dramatically faster. Thanks to whoever addressed the problem.

@LapHunt. Yes

Deporting people has an effect only after it occurs, so the current rate is kind of irrelevant. I lost a favorite Brazilian to deportation three years ago, which definitely impaired my interest in her club.

I generally adjudicate only two kinds of reviews: (1). I have been to the club. I approve these unless there's a real problem. (2). There's a real problem. If the review is vacuous, or the reviewer sounds like a bot or a jerk, I reject. If anything is not in one of those two categories, I don't vote.

The reviews are moderated by our peers. Just write the review you want to write, and see if it gets approved. (And if you're doing the moderating, approve the reviews you think are helpful.)

And I was looking today for a club that has a Tampa address in its description, but is not shown in the Tampa list

One reason for rejecting a review is that it's too explicit in connecting people's names to actions. A rejected review section would be a roadmap to this information

On my android phone, none of the options on the home screen work at the moment, but the maps entry in the drop down menu works fine, after asking for permission to access location.

Yes. I assume it's because in the old days you could see 3 reviews per day without contributing anything. Since the site revisions, you get zero. I bounced one yesterday that said, in essence, "This club is about what I expected. If you want to know more, go and find out."

Zero dances for $300 is a bit out of my price range

Club information on the header says $35 topless, $45 nude. Another reason I've stopped going there.

I can recall four dancers for whom I was the first or nearly the first customer. Three became IRL friends, and all gave significantly more than I paid for in the clubs. Next time say Yes. Your risk is minimal, and the potential rewards are more than you're likely to get from a random dancer.

If you're being ignored, the best place to sit is in another club.

A site called XSRUS says the median only fans account makes $180 per month. I don't know how reliable that is, but it suggests almost everybody agrees with the posters above that they wouldn't pay much for a subscription.

The upside to Tesla is easy to see: with an advertising budget of zero, their biggest problem is that they can't make cars as fast as people want to buy them. The downside is that 50 million people already know that, and they've bid the stock price up enough to reflect that. What we know now is approximately what we knew a year ago. Today's price is 16% lower than May 2022.

Surveys don't measure stupid but they do ask about education. Not going to college is a very good predictor of being a Trump voter.

It's all Joe Biden's fault. Unemployment for young women is at record low levels, and immigration is a lot harder than it was in the good old days. Women work in strip clubs because they don't have a better alternative. With fewer people blocked from legal employment, what we have left in strip clubs is the bottom of the barrel.

King Arthur's in Chelsea MA. Chelsea is an immigrant-friendly city, and KA was the first stop for a lot of Brazilians looking for work. There were approximately zero extras inside the club, but I got some pretty memorable OTC offers, including one I won by betting on a soccer game.

If you like the dancer, "ruining it for everybody else" is kind of the point. She'll dump you and come sit with (or on) me. A zero tip from me means "I definitely don't want to see you again.". 20 to 40% means "think of me as a customer," and more than that means I'm interested in moving past the customer zone.

It's over on the right of the line below the title

You're probably not going to read a headline that says, "Guy goes broke following advice from AI chatbot.". That's not because it never happens; it's because it usually happens. If you base your view of the world entirely on "news," you're going to overestimate the rate of surprising events. The classic example is crime, but getting rich quick is similarly biased.

I gotta say, "went did not expect much and got so" strikes me as a pretty good review. Succinct, funny, gives the essence.

I'm with Jimmy. It depends on the club. One Providence club gets reviewed every two or three days. The parking lot and interior layout haven't changed in recent memory. One reviewer solves this by saying "skip down to New Information," which is helpful. But I would be fine if most of the reviews omitted the boilerplate entirely. Under the new site design, anybody reading your review has unlimited access, and probably should be reading more than one review anyway. For clubs like these, I definitely approve reviews that prioritize new information. On the other hand, there are clubs that nobody reviews. If you're reporting on one of these, sure, tell us everything. For clubs in either group, what I most look for is vibe and atmosphere. These are a lot harder to characterize than floor plans, and they have a subjective element, so your review is more likely to make a real contribution.

Yeah. I have been noticing a lot more of these under the new format. (Or maybe I'm just becoming even more of a curmudgeon.)

@CJ:. who is this "Google" of whom you speak? And where did he get the idea that "leftist propaganda" would be giving travel advice?

The haughty American nation ... makes the Negro clean its boots and then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the Negro by the fact that he is a bootblack. (G B Shaw)

ATAC dawg says his system has never let him down. I say he's not taking nearly enough risks. My theory is that I learn half of everything I'm ever going to learn about somebody in the first 15 seconds. If she makes a good first impression, I'll spend enough to find out the other half.

I also had trouble getting to the reviews. First it asked me to log in, then it said I needed to be VIP. So I wrote a review offline, and logged in again. I went to the club page to submit the review, and was asked to log in again. I did that, filled out the review, clicked submit, and confirmed on the "are you sure" button. The response was, "There was a problem submitting your review." Given that it's a free site, Founder can run it any way he likes, but I suspect this wasn't intentional.

I deliberately randomize my wallet because my wife treats it as an ATM, and I'm hoping it's harder to notice fluctuations that way.

I like almost everything, especially the response speed, but at my age I have slightly impaired vision. The small font used for reviews and discussions is nearly unreadable for me.

I did. It was a long time ago. I can't remember the best trades, but I absolutely remember a lot of the worst ones. They all started with me paying a few hundred dollars and getting back zero. I understand that that's how options work, but in my experience there were about enough winners to cover the losers. I couldn't see the point of taking on extra risk just to break even, and as a statistician I was pretty sure I wouldn't beat the house in the long run. It's a perfectly reasonable form of entertainment, but it's not an investment strategy for money you need.

Everybody seems to be assuming "criminals" and strip clubs are on separate teams. Without being too specific, I'm pretty sure a lot of clubs have access to Tony Soprano's style of law enforcement. I certainly wouldn't rob one.

What the manager meant was, "I can lie to you, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it." Let us know if he runs for Congress next year.

I would absolutely drive a half hour or more to avoid a club where I might meet someone I know. Most dancers I know follow the same strategy.

A little more than a mile off I 80, but worth the detour: There's a stretch of I 80 in Pennsylvania that used to be marked by a sign reading, "No services next 87 miles.". Lewisburg is about 8 miles south of the highway in the middle of that section. When I was at the US Prison in Lewisburg (don't ask) I discovered Country Cupboard, a nice hotel attached to an Amish restaurant. Simple food well prepared. On the eastern end of Indiana is Shipshewana, which is Mennonite, rather than Amish, but again simple food made well. You will not be surprised to learn that the Amish and Mennonites are not big fans of strip clubs, at least in their own neighborhoods.

Back in the days when computers were powered by steam engines (maybe 1972) my roommate worked for a company that sold route mapping software to trucking companies. The maps were stored in the form of connected city pairs, with time and distance for each pair. They noticed that every route in the eastern United States want through Aardmore Pennsylvania. It turns out there are two Aardmores in Pennsylvania. The trucks would go into the one on the eastern end of the state, get a 218 mile free ride to the other Aardmore, and come out on the west side.

And, in today's Onion: https://www.theonion.com/police-team-building-scavenger-hunt-challenges-officers-1849797280

When Google profiles me (and I'm sure they do) I don't get shot or stopped in the street.

For the record, in this case I agree with Skibum. Medeiros still might win, however, unless the police department is prepared to admit that the real problem was that Medeiros was behind on his graft payments.

@Ski:. You win

Well, my point is that nobody is actually regulating the sex. I think if Mike Pence could somehow get a job with the licensing board, the headline would not be, "Strip Clubs Deregulated."

Hi, Skibum. Am I understanding you to say that progressives are over-regulating Providence clubs with regard to violence? I assume the anti-progressives would say they were being under-regulated with regard to sex.

"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." Blaise Pascal, 1657

What I don't understand about today's market buying panic (up 5% as I write) is that it's entirely in response to something that happened 12 months ago. Month-to-month, October 2022 looks exactly like September 2022, but because prices jumped a lot in 2021, the headline number of year-to-year inflation looks a lot better now than it did before. I would sell this market today, except that people can be even crazier tomorrow.

Lots of math problems have more than one solution. (X squared equals 4 has two, for example.). The first one I thought of was A(B+1), which gives 96, but that certainly doesn't prove that 40 is wrong. If you can explain how you got some other answer, it also is a solution.

According to the betting markets at this point, Trump has a better chance of being a candidate in 2024 than Biden has. (You can buy a dollar's worth of Trump for 42 cants. Biden as candidate is selling for 30 cents on the dollar.)

$20 at the door, $24 + tip at the bar, and $50 worth of lap dances. How did you manage to spend $300 to $500?

What I gather from reading this discussion is that it's getting really hard to distinguish between Republicans and crazy people.

I can think of a couple, but I don't think they did it on purpose.

What you mean "best"? And, for that matter, what do you mean by "northeast"?

Mrs. Kraft is obviously hoping to be his widow.

Definitely not. They all tell me they don't do this for anybody else.

My considered answer is that it beats the hell outta me, and I'm investing accordingly

Cabaret in Peabody Massachusetts. I haven't been to one in years. The amateurs are dancers from other clubs, plus maybe an actual amateur who shows up by mistake.

Despite the complaints that the review is light on details, she nailed it. She says in two sentences what it took me twenty years to learn.

On my map, the airport is 15 - 20 minutes south of where the clubs are. The clubs are generally about 5 minutes from one another. Just start somewhere, and if you don't like it, go somewhere else. This won't work with Mickey's, which is practically in Massachusetts. There's a non-zero chance you would have a great time there, but there's a bigger chance that you'll spend your whole evening in travel and not come home with a story to tell.

Somewhere between one and four million dollars

I know we have experienced divorce lawyers who are frequent contributors here. I'm assuming there's a professional reason none of them have commented. Don't do anything until you've talked to one of them, even if there's a fee involved.

I agree with George; she's in the uncanny valley. Too human to ignore, but not human enough to relate to.

I just remembered that Woody Allen already made this movie. Mighty Aphrodite (1995).

(1). At the start of the story, she has no guarantee that you're not the Tampa Police Department (2). At the end of the story, the "friend" could have been another guy who thought he had an exclusive deal.

Here's a complete guess. Imagine you're selling your old car, and you have no idea what it's worth. You offer it to the first buyer at $2500, and he says, "Yippy! You got a deal!". At that point it's obvious that you got the price point wrong. You should walk away and ask the next buyer for $4500. She's been on the job for two days. The price for what you wanted was probably not explained in the HR orientation briefing, and she guessed wrong.

So far this year, these separations have been running 1.2 to 1.4 million per month with, as I say, no particular trend. I see my mistake: when I asked for "a number" I should have specified "relevant number". In an economy this size, there are always going to be firms adding and subtracting workers. If you think there's something special going on in IT, in January there were 84,000, and in June 38,000. If you want to claim something unusual is happening, you can't generally prove it by listing examples of things that happen all the time

Aside from anecdotes, I see no evidence of trends in layoffs and involuntary separations. Show me a number before you speculate about either cause or effect. (I'm looking at the JOLTS series in the St Louis Fed.)

The premise here is that you're limited to one club "in the country," which a lot of us have rejected. I'm having trouble imagining why one would spend unlimited funds on a person he intends never to see again. I once had an offer of a year's unlimited exclusive OTC if I paid off a $14,000 debt. Admittedly, this was back in the days when $14,000 was a lot of money, but still, "unlimited" should get you a pretty interesting deal. One of the few things I've learned is that money can definitely buy happiness, but not if you spend it on yourself.

(1) Explaining humor to Republicans is hopeless, but (2) I can't for the life of me see how Pelosi thought we would be better off with more enemies.

When I see a guy doing that I assume (1) He's never been there before (2) He's not coming back any time soon, and (3) He thinks $100 is a lot of money. Any dancer will score that as three strikes.

If it's more than four, it's either the wrong club or the wrong dancer.

You're right about the Dominican. I've noticed she tends to use slightly random numbers for prices, and I didn't buy, so I can't verify. A couple of months ago, the house wanted $40 for VIP on weekdays, and $80 on weekends. For my money, $80 for that club is a non-starter.

Spirit is talking to Jet Blue because their last merger partner walked away, and so many customers have said "Never again" that Spirit can no longer stay in business as themselves. I took a bunch of Spirit flights a few years ago, and at least one thing went wrong on every flight except one. Lost bags, cancelled or delayed flights. And they charge extra for everything except using the john.

@25. I don't think Republicans have ever aspired to have the "big tent.". That more traditionally is the Democrats' approach. Example: Liz Cheney has impeccable GOP credentials, and Rs treat her as a pariah. Joe Manchin screws his party just for fun, and the Ds have made him de facto president. I belong to no organized political party; I'm a Democrat. [Will Rogers]

I spent a few minutes looking for sources of guns. It's not easy because most tallies that I found only day "legally obtained" or "illegal.". In one itemized list I did find this: Seth Aaron Ator purchased an AR-style rifle through a private sale, allowing him to evade a federal background check, and fired it indiscriminately from his car into passing vehicles and shopping plazas. (Midland TX Aug 31, 2019) So, yes, you did hear about it from a liberal. I didn't continue on through the list to get a complete count.

The former president of the United States conspired to overthrow the government, and ... HEY -- LOOK OVER THERE!

Tech man: Nude on stage -- yes, if anyone is actually on stage. $20 lap dances -- yes, plus $5 for the house for the first one. VIP ? -- that's exactly my experience. Quotes range from $80 to $350, not clearly related to what's on offer.

^ I'm one of those millions, and there's no mystery in my case. I used to show up for work because it was fun. When it stopped being fun, I retired.

I always look forward to Tetradon's informative comments, but the image of him in shorts is something I can't unsee.

In the clubs I go to, it leads low-earning dancers to switch to another club.

I know a lot of leftists, and probably quality as one myself. Zero of them are anywhere near as well informed on "woke" language as the posters above. I have never heard most of these terms from anyone who was not Fox News or Fox News adjacent.

Can someone explain the math here for me? The linked piece says we saved $2.1T because strip clubs were closed, and there were no new cars to buy. Now we have unsaved $0.1T, and the claim is that this is because of inflation. (1) We're talking about something like a 5% drawdown. Isn't that a good thing if I actually want the new car? (2) Why would you say the spending was caused by inflation instead of the other way around?

Sorry, 25. You're right about Franklin's reputation, but wrong about his watch. https://www.cowanauctions.com/lot/benjamin-franklin-s-pocket-watch-by-thomas-wagstaff-london-35998

@NJB The Brazilians I know might wear jeans and a low-cut top, but that's deceptive. Those jeans are this year's model from a designer store, carefully selected and maybe modified for maximum effect. And I would guess they average 40 pairs of shoes each. I remember one who showed up at the club with a t-shirt saying, "Will work for shoes."

I guess some people have faster learning curves than others, but I'm still having trouble understanding how you get shot down 19 times and still decide to try for the 20th.

I didn't actually count, but it looks like the majority prediction of posters so far is somewhere in the range of "None" to "Indirect only.". My own guess would be no foreseeable direct effect, but unless Clarence Thomas has a heart attack soon, we're about to find out what living in a theocracy is like. Given the record of Catholic archbishops and Southern Baptist ministers, all bets are off.

Most of my lifetime regrets concern money I didn't spend. At my age, it's physically impossible to spend fifty -- or even ten -- percent of my income on a strip club. Enjoy it while you can.

I'm happy to inform you that the club reviews are far more reliable than the discussion above. That's why this thread belongs in the "Politics" section.

What if really means is that she can't remember your name

^PSD. I don't know where you're starting from, but I checked a few flights from east coast airports to Las Vegas. It is possible, but difficult, to find flights around $750. Most are half that, and if your date is flexible and you depart from a major airport, Delta looks like the low $200s. This seems to be a common pattern in inflation horror stories: the outrageous examples are true, but not remotely typical.

@Ski: I remember seeing that car in Providence!

Now that I see how pessimistic you guys are, I think it may be time to move my money from CDs to stock again. S&P 500 ended today at 3750. I'll bet it's above that by July 13.

If you read all the way to the end, it's obviously fictional. (Still funny, though.)

1. "Changed" can be anything. You can't read "changed or cancelled" and think "cancelled." 2. Plans are not actions. In my experience doing surveys, even after-the-fact reports are often not actions.

@Mark has it exactly right. The one policy supported by Democrats and Republicans is, "If we just stopped giving money to those other deadbeats, and gave it to me, the country would be fine."

My default is one dollar every time she does something I like. You'll be surprised by how fast that works.

I was a math major in college, but I'm mystified by the inflation statistics -- at least as reported above. The average price of things urban consumers buy is a bit over 8% higher than a year ago, but all the examples are of prices that doubled. As I understand "average" that means stores must be giving something away. What I want to know is, where are those stores? On a related note, I drive a hybrid car at the speed limit plus 5 mph. I'll be sympathetic with the gripes about gas price inflation when the people driving 18 mpg SUVs stop passing me. Gas prices contribute about two of the eight percentage points in current inflation, and in my view that's a good thing.

@Loper:. Vênus or Uranus?

I've never been asked, but I sometimes provide the answer to open negotiation. On really special occasions, I may even tell the truth.

I looked at the website containing this story, which is 100% clickbait in identical format. I was going to guess the author was not a person with poor English, but an AI. On reflection, I think maybe we need an acronym for artificial stupidity.

I think Shailynn is on to something here. I checked steak prices at my local grocery, and they top out at $28 per pound, so perhaps 25% of the dinner price was for ingredients, and the rest was for the establishment and employees. Basically, what we have here is a guy who eats $300 meals complaining that the workers who prepared them are overpaid.

Wikipedia thinks the last print edition came out in 2007, and the main Google results are nail and hair salons. Does somebody have an actual location, or is this just a low-tech example of those old threads that keep bumping to the top?

I also was there on Thursday, and had four dances with Brooke. I handed her $100, and she offered $20 in charge. After reading the review above, I spent some time making up theories about how dancers make up prices, and eventually decided I'll never know.

My initial guess was that it was the kind of thing that might happen in Tony Soprano's Bada Bing club. Except in that scenario, people generally know who did what to whom.

Bitcoin and antivax are the only social ills I know that have exactly the right victims.

You do understand that the business model for "free" trading markets like Robinhood is that they make a lot of money by selling professional securities dealers the right to bet against you, right?

Spreadsheets At one point, the company I worked for had a few unused offices, so we leased them to a small startup named Lotus. They went on doing mysterious things for several months, until one week the parking lot filled up with Ferraris, and the next week they were gone. The product was 1-2-3, and they sold it to IBM

Reminds me of a friend who crewed on a French yacht one summer. He greeted each woman passenger with, "tu baises, medame?". He would wait for the reaction, and then say, "I am zo zorry. Ze Capitan tell me do zay ziz."

Two minutes ago, on the thread below this on how long strippers stay at clubs.

There's another thread above this on how often we use algebra. The question of how long strippers stay on the job is an example of where you need it. If you walk into any club, you're most likely to see the people who are there the most, and very unlikely to see someone who works exactly one day. In the clubs I frequent, I would say half the dancers I see on a typical day were there at least five years ago, and half the people I never saw before tell me they started last week or last month.

I'm with Whodey. It doesn't matter if I notice it, as long as Mrs. 978 doesn't.

@ Techman: Yes, and yes @ Loper: it depends on the time of day @ Scrub: no, unless you're Robert Kraft

I started a prison riot

I never heard of it until you mentioned it. Now I'm hooked. I hope the link below works. It looks strange. https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/03/05/90-day-fiance-ukraine/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F363c868%2F622398b09d2fda34e7bcd9aa%2F5e1ad247ade4e25a93c8b17a%2F59%2F70%2F622398b09d2fda34e7bcd9aa

@Blah:. Definitely take that safari. I worked in Nairobi for a while and took a weekend off to go to Masai Mara. It's definitely amazing. Sleeping in a tent with the lions outside sounds like adventure, but keep in mind that Kenyans have been in the eco-tourism business for a hundred years. You'll be safer than you would in most American cities.

I don't much notice shoes, but I do remember a Brazilian friend who showed up for work one night in a t-shirt that said, "Will Work For Shoes.". I think she also had a pair that had live goldfish in them. (I'm trying to think of a word for the opposite of seasick.)

I have no idea. Brazilians subscribe to the "You can do anything you want, as long as I don't catch you doing it with somebody else" school of thought. I've found that recovering from an experiment is almost always more trouble than it's worth.

Third world countries have lots of people richer than I am. India has 700,000 millionaires (2021 net worth in USD). And practically everybody in India has had more income this year than I have. I've had a 7% loss from January 1 to yesterday, so anybody with zero is way ahead of me.

I never until this moment realized what a bunch of old farts we have become.

Gob:. Raising from $25 to $30 is a 20% increase. What's the rate for everything else?

I'm of an age where you shouldn't trust my memory, especially regarding the good old days, but I think prices around New England went through a phase of arbitrary increases three or four years ago. Some of them backed off, and some of them stuck. What I'm noticing lately is restructuring fees to give the club a bigger share.

Around here, you're wealthy when you buy a Mercedes so the good cars don't get wet in the winter.

Another one for my ignore list

Oops. (Submitted by fat fingering the text box). I live on the edge of the Boston strip club dessert, and at one point discovered that I did live pretty much next door to a Brazilian stripper. I'm not sure where the boundaries of the Boston MSA run, but the Boston strippers I know dance in Worcester and Providence. Providence has one CLUB per 28,000 residents. Boston real estate is (a) mostly zoned to exclude strip clubs, and (b) entirely priced to make them impractical.

Ah! The true spirit of scientific inquiry that marks the best of the TUSCL tradition. I live on the edge of the Boston s

It means she can't remember what she gave you last year, because there are nine other guys in your situation who you don't know about, who also got a monkey.

Fox:. You ask what's the difference between a lap dance and VIP. A good lap dance might be described as simulated sex, whereas a bad VIP might be described as simulated sex.

If there's only one club in your local area, perhaps you should expand your definition of "local area.". Ryan Air has flights from London to Prague starting at 21 USD. On your budget, you could do that once a month, and have what I assume would be a pretty spectacular time.