impulse

I'm pretty sure that pardon thingy is "all she wrote" on the topic.

I have perused factories that rebuild buses from the chassis up in Thailand. Between Bangkok and Kanchanaburi, if I recall. They look nothing like the original when they're done. But I was appalled at the plywood frames and the thin aluminum skins. They looked like they'd either burst into flames or turn into matchsticks in a collision. Or both.

When my female co-worker wanted to visit the USA (pre-Covid), we hired an agency to help her get her tourist visa. I consider it money well spent. Nothing dodgy, They just made sure her paperwork was complete and there were no red flags. They did suggest she not mention my name at any time during the process. She had a good job in BKK and some Australia travel history, but no real $$ assets in Thailand. She got a 10 year tourist visa, first try. Stayed with me in Texas for a week to get over jet lag, then headed off on her own for another 2-3 weeks to visit Las Vegas, and relatives in California. A few months later, I got photos from her next trip, on the East Coast. From Florida to Niagara Falls.

What agency (if any) gets called in from Europe, given that it's an Airbus?

Good info. Thanks for the reply.

Out of curiosity, how much did that increase your monthly deposit? (Apologies if you covered that 4 or 5 pages ago).

Unless you count the problems due to low GDP per capita, crap wages, and not enough money to adopt nanny state standards...

To me (as just a curious Yank) that would be the $64,000 question. If your experience is true, seems like moving to the Phils (or even back home) for 6 months every 5 years or so would pay out...

I certainly understand the numbers, whether I agree with the policy or not. A GBP sent to a UK resident probably circulates through the economy several times, with taxes and salaries being paid each time it changes hands. A GBP sent to a resident of Thailand is lost to the UK economy. Fortunately, I don't have to form an opinion, agree or disagree. Sure sucks for someone who's been here for 10+ years, though.

Do you think for a moment that, if the USA were 110% consumed with a hot war in Ukraine, and too broke and militarily engaged to back up Israel, that the surrounding Muslim countries wouldn't band together and get rid of the Jewish state in their midst? Then they'd turn on each other, sure. It's US money and US military support that keep that from happening, with help from the UK (out of historic guilt). If the USA and UK get dragged into WW3 surrounding Ukraine, all bets are off for Israel (and some other places around the world).

Yeah. It looks like the even hose Ireland, shifting their profits to Bermuda. https://www.itpro.com/business/361667/google-settles-tax-payment-in-ireland

For some reason, a lot of the brands seemed to standardize on a white wire. I've been to about a dozen e-scooter factories in China, and quite a few trade shows where they sell all the components you'd need to start your own e-scooter company. Pick the components and just do assembly. The internal parts for most of them are pretty much standard. I decided against getting into the biz when the battery fires hit the news. Too much liability for this boy, though the margins could be great. Among the electric scooters you can remove the speed limiter by cutting the limiting wires is the Joyor brand scooters, Zero 8, Zero 9, and Zero 10X electric scooters. After you open up the deck casing, simply get a pincer and cut the white cables. You can also remove the speed limiter on the Speedway Mini 4 Pro electric scooter by unplugging the white cable from the controller. https://www.ridester.com/how-to-remove-speed-limiter-on-electric-scooter/ If the white (or whatever color) wire on the OP scooter is cut or unplugged, that tells a story.

I've seen some of the shops where they take a 50+ year old chassis and add a plywood shell with tinfoil skin to make it look newer. I'm appalled at how flimsy the bodies are built.

Yeah. It all looks great, until the AI displaces 10x as many workers with robots. Edit: Then they cook the books to shift all the profit to Ireland, to avoid paying local taxes.

Genius. I'd be curious whether the control unit was modified to make it go faster. On a couple of my e-scooters, all that required was snipping one white wire.

They make a lot of sense if you expect to be digging up the sidewalk next year for bigger pipe, then the year after to bury the power lines, then the next year to bury the fiber optic cables. The photo in the OP sure doesn't look like a final product. Just a temporary fix to allow pedestrians to walk until they finish whatever that opening leads to, then they'll install the less temporary brick pavers. Which will be dug up soon anyway for the next project.

So the driver is basically a scapegoat.

I was thinking more like 5 years in TH, then 180 days in the PH to do the reset. Then back to TH at the new and improved rate. And that's without doing anything dodgy like getting a visa and an apartment, but not living there...

If you move to the Philippines (or any other country with a social security agreement with the UK), then your pension will jump up to the current value paid out to UK pensioners and increase each year. Good info. Another hypothetical... Would it stay at that higher rate if you moved back to TH after some time, or would it get knocked back?

Question... If one moves to the PH, are the increases backdated, or do you start out at the number you had when you left TH?

You can educate the beejeezus out of people and they'll still misbehave if they can get away with it. When I was a kid, I was more afraid of the cops than dying in a fiery crash. So I practiced driving to avoid tickets. Not so coincidentally, that was good practice to avoid fiery wrecks. They need to send some Thai cops to California to ride around with CHIPs for a few weeks, then buy them some of those Dodge Challenger chase vehicles. (Better yet, send them to ride with that cop that does all the PIT maneuver YouTubes, Kentucky, I think?) The only answer is to make it too expensive to drive like an idiot. That means enforcement, not more wienie education.

Just $4,000? That's not much. She could get 10x that much for a signed bra. God only knows how much for a pair of....

3 words. Judge Joe Brown. Edit: And the accurate term is malinformation. Not misinformation.

If they don't work, why is FEMA making such a big deal out of sending a couple of dozen of them? Meanwhile, Musk has donated 500 units, sending them to a deplorable (a NASCAR driver, even. Yuck), who is going to distribute them using his own helicopter. https://www.pcmag.com/news/elon-musk-uses-starlink-access-in-north-carolina-to-slam-fcc-support-trump https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/10/500-starlink-kits-donated-for-post-hurricane-north-carolina-communications.html

Exactly. Approved under Trump. Rescinded under Harris/Biden. And now, lives are being lost because they're not available. And FEMA is boasting about providing a few dozen, against the 20,000 that should be available.