NotEinstein

This was 55 years ago - an alien environment for today's kids I suppose - making a camp out of discarded materials? Where's the 'like' button?

Yes and no - young, impressionable minds need protecting from 'unhelpful' content, but adults are supposed to be aware enough to not be influenced. Having said that, it is patently not the case for a seemingly growing percentage of so-called adults, given the relentless psychologically twisted narratives aimed at them. Banning content that isn't government approved in order to protect is being escalated - 1984 is here.

And there is the big issue - many parents use mobile devices (even without internet access) as child pacifiers, just like the TV 30+ years ago

Yep, it's just business - got to keep the money flowing. The items in particular will be Raspberry Pis. I buy mine from an ASEAN distributor with a Thai office - good luck with shutting down Russian access to the Raspberry Pi worldwide distribution structure. This conflict highlights the depth of infestation of the 'money disease'. It can be argued that it was started in order to destroy the Russian state, so their wealth of resources could ultimately be converted into western profits. The main weapon of sanctions (money warfare) was supposed to be all that was needed. Now we have the MIC being built up as the economic saviour and, of course, Trump is using the conflict to economically cripple Europe in order to, what else, make money.....

Not so fast! Typhoon Matmo is to have its say yet......

The western "disease" of individualism - the Thatcher/Reagan pursuit of self-interest, which shattered the family-centric way of life was exported to the world. While well-to-do western nations had social welfare systems, Thailand, etc. hasn't caught up yet and given the amount of altruistic actions, the government don't see it as an issue. The OP's wife is not untypical.

My wife's family have all been to Lamphun and passed - your wife should try there.....

The inundation of AI media, especially all the TikTok, YouTube, etc. content isn't what AI is about for the big boys. All that is a distraction "bread and circuses" while they build their utopian digital world that they have complete control over.

OK for me, and my raspberry pi has been extracting the data every 15 minutes from https://hydro1.ddns.net/?page=hydroflow_All&fd=main/information_7/hydroflow/ with no problem.

All monitoring stations every 15 minutes: https://hydro1.ddns.net/?page=hydroflow_All&fd=main/information_7/hydroflow/

I imagine that death really hurts - a lot.....

Stewart Lee - e.g.

But the head monk at our village temple (one of the top monks in Chiang Mai) gambles 40,000+ on every lottery - how else is he going to build his retirement nest egg?

They look like the cheapest option of cut plaster board/gypsum as opposed to the normal fibre ceiling tiles. You should definitely fit insulation above them as they provide no insulation, whereas the fibre ceiling tiles give at least minor insulation.

Typical of the wily old fox, he jumped out to improve his negotiation position - deal done, the details to be seen soon.....

The lure of the freedom and excitement from riding a motorcycle in Thailand has always been too great to overcome. As soon as most boys physically can, they are riding, some as young as 10-years old. The police do attend village schools and give talks on motorcycle safety, but the lack of parental/family control means that this will always be a big issue. My wife's nephew is 16 next month - he has been riding motorcycles for 4 years, has had his own, given to him by his grandmother, for a couple of years. He modified it, lavishing his earnings on it - his mother and other grandmother use him as a paid slave, full time now he has just left education. He went with friends on a cruise, got into gang fighting, which resulted in his mother having to pay the police off. He rides into the city early every morning to buy meat and veg. for his grandmother to cook to sell, so she bought a new motorcycle for him to use. Next month he will be going to get a licence.

When some more facts of the situation are reported, the sensationalist headlines are seen for what they are. A substack account by a German I follow provides a better picture, i.e. around 90,000 people are in the multitude of elections and the guys that died, all of pre-existing conditions, apart from the one suicide, makes this a nothingburger.....

Anybody that has seen the 2006 American science fiction comedy should realize that AI means Allowing Idiocracy.....

OK, you have your opinion of Murray, but did you read the fact-based piece? We do not live in a black and white world....... Loyalties? Perhaps you meant understanding of the relevant facts......

At that time people were having to extend etc. at CMI from all over northern Thailand. Just before the Promenada period other Imm branches were opened, e.g. Lamphun, Chiang Rai, so the volume dropped significantly. When 'Big Joke' was in charge of Imm. there was also a huge improvement of service. The IOs were complaining of having to work extra hours for free.....

The 'service area' is not much bigger than in the old building. They obviously needed the extra floors for more staff - nothing to do with responding to volume. Compared to the pre-promenada days, which involved queuing up from 5 to stand a chance of being allocated a 'family extension' slot for that day, then being told 'need updated KR2' and having to do the same again the next day, it's like the difference between night and day.

I had 27 years paid (until 2002 - not worked since) and they told me I needed to top up 3 years, which I did (chose 2006-2008). I activated my claim last month so I will be receiving the 'full state pension' in 3 months.

A couple of years back we had a reasonably sized bees nest in a mango tree that looked a lot like yours. The wife got a guy from the next village to remove them. He covered up, smoked them and then dropped the majority into a bag. There was a clump left, but they left by themselves about an hour later. He did it for the honeycomb - we got some too. The tessabahn may remove them. We had their snake wrangler remove a not so deadly a few years back.

Yep, the end of another civilization - the same kind of things happened at the end of the Roman Empire. Unable to keep the plebs in order, ramp up the 'bread and circuses' and get them to indulge in their hedonistic urges. Thai black magic said back in 2017ish that Trump would be the last POTUS.

Macron is surely aware that France, along with the rest of the EU, is headed for the toilet, so he is going to need troops for national security, not against external actors, but the inevitable internal uprising.