Jimmy Cargopants

This.

Never been to Thailand for Songkran and never want to. Seems to me a festival of giant fuckwittery for every fuckwit drawing breath. Dickhead farang and bar girl trash. Sorry for my killjoy vibe. I suppose it's okay for 1-3 days. I know it's very hot there. But when it's over and the idiots are sleeping through hangovers maybe quietly take them away and euthanise them.

I have always been one who believes it's not gay to feel attraction for shemales/ladyboys. We're attracted to their female appearance. I'm almost exclusively a top so that helps. Admittedly it's harder to convince myself of the non-gayness of it when I have a lb's throbbing cock in my gob!

I think you are absolutely right. Single issue parties don't last long (UKIP practically disappeared after Brexit) and populist leaders come to grief when they need to address the difficult detail of issues which got them elected. Identity politics are awful. They neglect the majority in pursuit of narrow sectional interests. It's both sides of US politics. It arguably started with Obama but Trump ramped it up to 11. Biden continues it. On another site a Brit guy asked if all Americans are mad. If you follow the politics it seems they are. Yes, the terms and labels mean different things. After a long time on the left I gravitated to the centre-right in my country. But I would still be considered a dangerous lefty by the American Right. Liberal in the US means very left-wing, progressive; everywhere else it means classical liberal, informed by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the caring society. I consider myself a liberal, I think nearly everyone does. But I'm not a liberal in the sense it's understood in the US. I honestly believe the United States has lost its way the last few years, and no longer has much moral authority or leadership in the West ...

She left CIB some weeks or months ago. Sorry, there's no information about her current whereabouts.

I agree. Of all the issues Americans should be discussing trans is about the bottom one. It is a polarising issue in which both sides take extreme dogmatic positions designed to inflame the other. Straw man arguments are thrown into the battle all the time (both sides) ... Perhaps I shouldn't comment, it's not my country, but to the rest of the world America appears mad. The Democrats - the party of pregnant men. The Republicans - gun nuts and cult followers of Trump. They're both mad though I see the Rep's as more dangerously mad. It's become tribal and unspeakably ugly. In no other Western country / democracy do politicians routinely say they want their opponents thrown into jail, but in America you do. On a ladyboy forum none of us can be anything but pro-trans. (Really strange if we weren't). But it doesn't mean that we have to buy into everything the activist cohort sells us. Are trans women "real" women? I don't personally think so, but I don't think they're men either - their whole thinking, intuitive sense of themselves, and of course commitment to living as women is female and total. I wish to hell people would just embrace the term trans woman. I think it's accurate, respectful of how they see themselves, and it's a happy compromise - neither wholly female but not male either. The fanatics at either extreme end don't like it however.

You can make an equally strong case or stronger that it's the far left's culture war. Refusing to acquiesce to every nutty demand made by the trans lobby does not make one far right or transphobic - a term that's rapidly losing all meaning. Most reasonable people believe in the right of trans people to live their lives as they choose and to be left alone. But not at the cost of all basic common sense and the right of women (real women) to their own identity and rights and spaces.

More seriously AI is the nightmare to come. I'm late middle aged. I can't wait to eat the dirt before half the population in developed countries lose their jobs to AI technology. Forget over population, climate change, global war, etc. Fear AI.

Why can't they have some nice guest visitors to Pattaya playing proper music .....I'm thinking an Abba tribute band, Tom Jones, or folkie troubadour sensation Donovan!

That's my wife (fiance) you're talking about!

It's a deep anxiety, and I am completely sympathetic. None of us who aren't one can understand the constant fight lbs have to keep themselves looking feminine. There probably isn't a more insecure group in all the world.

Fair point! but it's been so long now - I can barely remember a time when I didn't smoke.

As high as they're taxed in Aus/NZ I think smokers more than pay for all the health care we need in later life. The thing I hate about my smoking - the damn cost of it. Worked out recently that if I didn't smoke I'd save about 6,000AUD a year ... that's easily a bloody trip to TH every year! Grrr!

I much much prefer Sunny the way she was, QG - pre Dubai. I don't know why she/they do it. There's always something a little masculine about a lb - my current favourite in Bangkok has very wide and point-y shoulders. I still thinks she's sex on a stick..