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Married to a Thai lady. Applied in 2021. Docs went to MOI around Oct 2022.

Any idea if meetings will start to be held more regularly now?

Thanks for the encouragement. For me the issue is the WP as I will lose it in 7 or 8 months. Another company got wind of the fact that I will retire and they are talking about consulting. And my current company is also saying they might be open to me consulting on a few projects. They were not open to the idea previously. So, if either of these things can happen, then using something like the service offered by iglu could be viable. We will see. The work permit is the sticking point and I don't know anyone who can just keep me on their books and get me a WP.

Why is it OK for countries like China, Thailand, Vietnam, etc to have sky high import tariffs and it is not ok for the US to do likewise? For all the talk of tariff doom and gloom in the US, why is it that the countries with high tariffs haven't tanked their economies? Why is it that tariffs seem to only be a problem when the US imposes them?

It isn't outright lying. Vaccination shots up to the age of 18 are between 30 - 40, many of which are combination shots. Add in flu shots and COVID shots and by the time you are 18 you will have had well over 50 injections. True that not everyone gets that many shots, but many do.

These are actually good points and I use them when arguing with some of my friends who claim that vaccines are all bad. But the 60 - 70 year old smoker probably had fewer than a half dozen vaccine shots when he was younger, and maybe got a couple more for travel and/or COVID. This isn't the same as kids today who are being subjected to literally dozens of them. We don't know much about the long term safety profile of some of the newer vaccines themselves, and almost nothing about interactions. We know literally nothing about the long-term safety profile of mRNA vaccines. The mRNA vaccine rollout was fraught with lies, incorrect information and coercion. And now in Japan we have thousands of people volunteering to be guinea pigs for self-replicating mRNA vaccines. No thanks, and excuse me if I remain a skeptic.

Even if all vaccines are perfect, what isn't known and cannot be known, is how all of the up to 80 shots people receive between birth and 18 years of age interact. This simply cannot be analyzed given the combinatorial nature of the problem. Maybe someday when quantum computers are a real thing, but not with current tech. Anyone bleating about how vaccines cannot be questioned hasn't thought about the issue in a deep and meaningful way. Vaccine skepticism is not cultist. And everyone should be skeptical about mRNA vaccines. So many things we were told about the mRNA payload itself and the lipid nano particles that deliver them to the nucleus of our cells has been shown to be incorrect. Given that, why should I trust the info supplied by pharma companies on more traditional vaccines? I deeply regret having got the two shots back in the day, and I will never submit to taking a booster under any circumstances.

Thanks for the reply. I am 63 years old, and the head of the data science dept at a multi-national. Data science/AI is hot now, so consulting after I retire is a definite possibility, but they won't keep my WP going after I leave. I looked into iglu.net, and it is possible to keep my WP going with them, but it is way too expensive to self-fund. Opening a company would be the only practical way forward I think. Then again, I am currently two years into a four-year visa and WP, so copies would still appear to be valid if called to the MOI in the next couple of years. Maybe just hope for the best?

Who cares if he said dumb stuff? Who cares that it "can't be erased"? Have you never said anything dumb, held an opinion your friends or family didn't like? Did they shoot you for it? Are you sure he said dumb stuff? Have you followed up on the supposedly racist/homophobic/transphobic things he said? If you do, you will find that virtually all of the things the left claims are hateful, are anything but. Context is important, but more important are the actual words used. It's not that we don't want news outlets quoting him. We don't want his words being manipulated and edited to support a phony narrative. Saying transgenderism is a cancer on society is not the same as saying transgender people are a cancer on society. And indeed, in this example, he was talking about the pipeline that encourages the removal of healthy body parts from confused individuals who have not yet reached the age of consent. There was no hate in that statement. And it is not dumb. It is something that people are free to agree with or not, but claiming it is hateful and dumb is disingenuous at best, and hateful and dumb at worst. The other thing he said about wondering whether a black pilot on an airplane is qualified is in response to United Airlines announcing they would fill 40% of pilot jobs with minorities and women. This is bad idea for obvious reasons. Merit is the only thing that should be considered for positions such as these. That policy does a terrible disservice to the many qualified black, minority and women pilots currently flying for United and other airlines. His comments were meant to highlight exactly this fact. These are only two examples, but they are the ones being cited most frequently in the lefty fake news. There is a video of Kirk debating an actual far-right kid who was taking Kirk to task for having gay friends since God considers that a sin, saying gays should not be allowed in the GOP. Kirk's defense of his gay friends was based on reason, and surprisingly, scripture. But I guess since his gay friends are also conservatives, they don't count and Kirk, therefore, is homophobic. We have created a generation of functional illiterates, unable to parse meaning and nuance and unwilling to entertain ideas that may be contrary to their own. This is a bill that will be coming due soon.

Yep, look at the arial shots of the rally. Yuuuge! Musk is pissing off all the right people. Keep it up!

I will check that out. Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have PR, just been married for 38 years.

Well, looks like game over for me. I am being forced to retire at the end of May next year. Been waiting for the MOI interview for three years now. Some have been waiting longer than me, so even if they start the MOI meetings up again pronto, it's very unlikely my name will be called before I a have to leave the company I work for. I dread the idea of starting a company and paying myself just to keep a work permit for a couple or three years. Has anyone had to do something like that? How much of a hassle and cost is it to start a company, maintain a work permit and then close the company?

Try pulling the same stunt here. Then you can say "With Thais, cruelty is the point" They overstayed. They broke the law. They got caught. Boo hoo.

Really? And what would you expect it to show? (As if I cannot guess)

Not for long

I use AI and deep learning tools at work extensively for programming. I have been writing code for over 30 years in diverse fields. Since late last year I have not written a single line of code. Once you know how to interact with these models, there is no going back. I can code up in an hour now what used to take months. In probably less than a year from now all you will have to do to write an app is talk to your computer and explain what you want. We are using AI agents to automate genomics data analysis and results evaluation with users now describing the analyses they want performed in natural language rather than scripting something in a language like Python or R. Software engineering as a career is over. At home I use multiple AI models for for music. I have a pipeline that can recognize guitar chord progressions, perform a complete harmonic and rhythmic analysis and suggest alternate song parts based on the input chord progression, a sort of AI composition assistant. There are tons of things you can do with AI that go way beyond asking for recipes, summarizing a document or testing for lefty/righty bias in a model's training data. That stuff is a sideshow. I lead the data science group at our company and I would bet money that within a year or two my job can be automated away with AI. Tesla and other companies in the US and China are poised to begin selling extremely capable humanoid robots at affordable prices. Over time they will be automating away even blue collar jobs. Google just posted a job opening for a senior scientist to explore the societal implications of ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) and machine consciousness. If that does not spook you, then you simply are not paying attention. AI is the most significant development in our time. And while the tech is amazing and has incredible potential for good, what it will become is something we cannot predict. I am with Dr. Geoffrey Hinton on this: there is a very good chance this will not end well. Buckle up...

Thanks for that. I will definitely stay close to home this year!

Really? Can I ask how you know that? If there is any possibility that my name might be called this year, I will axe any international travel plans.

Oops. Just saw this. I submitted in June of 2021.

This is not completely correct. I thought like this for a couple of decades. My wife and I have been married over 30 years and we also have 2 properties. I always believed that if she passed before me the properties were mine to dispose of as I see fit within 12 months. The law actually says that in the absence of a will the properties will be divided equally among the wife's heirs, of which a spouse is potentially only one. So in theory, if your wife passes before you, her immediate family (children, brothers, sisters) can lay claim to a part of your properties. Whether they would do that or not is another question. But to be safe, get a will. We did as soon as we learned our assumptions were wrong.

Could, maybe, might, raises questions, suggests, blah, blah. Totally useless "article". It doesn't even qualify as an opinion piece. And the first rule of medicine has been broken for ages. Just ask the folks who wish they still had body parts that physicians and psychiatrists convinced them to have cut off. Or the people forced to take COVID "vaccines", or everyone forced to pay more than the rest of the world for prescription drugs. Is RFK Jr. the right guy for the job? I don't know. But all the folks before him were clearly the wrong people for the job.

I applied with my digital work permit. I had to go to our HR department and they either got a printout from the labor office or they already had it on hand, not sure which. But the printed copy has a lot more info on it than is shown in the app. If I ever get the call for the MOI interview I will get a new printout since I have renewed my WP once since the application.

Thanks for that. Please do let me know if he gets a call. So far nobody has shared anything with me, given any updates, etc. The only reason I know my docs made it to the MOI is I called them myself and asked sometime last year. The person I talked to sounded very annoyed that I had called, told me I wouldn't get my interview in 2023 and probably not in 2024 either. He then told me to never call him again. Maybe he was having a bad day :-(

My company is only extending my contract another two years starting now. My docs went to the MOI around Sept 2022. Not looking good....

For sure I'm not doing that :-)