impulse

At least until Yingluck comes back.

Catch me up... Did that high quality foreign made rolling stock ever actually get paid for?

A UK tradesman wouldn't even get out of bed in the morning for what HomePro probably paid your guys for a whole day of work. Maybe even a whole week.

I can understand US companies' reluctance to invest in a country where violating the FCPA is pretty hard to avoid.

Reminds me of one of my favorite AA stories, about a widow at her husband's funeral. He had just died of cirrhosis. They asked her if he ever tried AA. Her response: He wasn't that bad.

If alcohol is causing problems in your life, you have an alcohol problem. If it's not, enjoy. You're the only one who can answer whether it's causing problems. Coming from one who took the oath in 1988 and haven't missed it at all. (Except when I go dancing... So I don't go dancing. Life is so simple)

Nope. TMI, but in 6 years of working in Thailand, I never slept with a Thai woman (or man). Partly because my Chinese GF of 20+ years owns ducks and a pair of scissors. (Google it if you don't get the reference) In fact, at the office, I held her out as my wife when she occasionally came to Thailand, just so there would be no temptations. With my part of the company's budget being in the $millions per month, I also avoided vendors trying to "entertain" me at the usual spots. Limited my after hours contact to weekend (stag) fishing trips and I always paid just to make sure there was no appearance of conflict. Speaking of vendors, I had a lot of them and that's where I heard a lot of the stories. They're the guys in their 60's pushing their toddlers around in strollers. Some paying child support for kids they never get to see. And they weren't dummies. It would be arrogant of me to think I'm any smarter. I thought very highly of the Thai men and women I worked with. But I'm also open to the possibility there's another side I didn't see, having mostly dealt with people who had great jobs. Making enough money that funds didn't affect their choice of a spouse. Strangely, very few of them married westerners.

It sounds like that is your preferred outcome. Quite the opposite. I'd prefer to see Ukraine accept the inevitable, quit killing each other and let the newly liberated area (yes, that's a deliberate turn of phrase) take a vote whether they want back into Ukraine, become part of Russia, or become an independent country. Crimeans have already voted overwhelmingly to stay in Russia. I'd prefer the Donbas be independent and a buffer between NATO and Russia. But I'd leave it up to them to self determine. Then (and only then) allow remaining Ukraine into NATO and come down like the Hammer of God if Putin tries to go any further. I don't think he will. He announced before the kerfuffle that his objective was to take the 4 Oblasts (that I collectively refer to as The Donbas, perhaps oversimpl-y) and let them decide whether to become independent or part of Russia. That's what they have and that's why they aren't moving. Problem is, without a definitive thrashing or regime change, Ukraine won't stop trying to take back what they have lost, including Crimea. Which isn't happening, short of a nuclear war.

Personal circumstances have me staying in China, doing monthly visa runs to Thailand. I don't claim any knowledge of quality (other than exterior fit and finish) but every week it seems I see a new BYD design that knocks my socks off on the aesthetics side. They have some gorgeous models. It'll be interesting to see how many are coming to Thailand and what's the lagtime (if any). I don't drive here (because I'm not crazy), but I do take a lot of taxis. And the BYD interior quality is right up there with the predominating Toyotas. I missed my Chinese city's last big car show because of other priorities (and I'm not in the market for a new car where I refuse to learn to drive). But there's another show coming up in a week or so and I'm definitely going. I'm just too interested in the zoomy EV's to miss another, especially BYD.

Or until they all die...

https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/emergency-406-beacons/ I have an EPIRB on my boat. A lot of my bicycling and hiking friends have PLB they keep with them. Others, just in case they're mugged. I gave up flying Cessnas in the '90s when I moved to Wyoming and the winds and mountains exceeded my skillset. Long before GPS was commercially available at a reasonable price.

Yeah, mines different too! I didn't have one. But yes, I'd theorize that Thai women making well over a thousand USD a month (some of them way over) are different from a country girl whose best prospect back home is hoeing rice for 300 baht on a good day.

I think you're being a little harsh there, underestimating the "long game" skills of Thai women. I've even seen YouTubes of Isaan women who get paid to train girls for a life of sucking money out of foreign men. (If the translations were accurate, or they may have been showing how to cook western food). The gist of the ones I've seen is to focus on the end goal, even if it takes years of faking it to get there. One of my favorite mantras is The best paying, most secure job available to many Thai women is "mother of some foreigner's kid" Other than the old snip-snip (or total abstinence), there's no way to prevent a determined woman from getting pregnant, on either side of the pond. I've actually broken it off with western women when I feared they wanted to be married so bad that I had to inspect my condoms for pinholes. So I have a lot of compassion for the 60+ year old guys I see wheeling their toddlers around BKK in strollers. I knew several of them. And though they loved their kids, having them wasn't in their retirement plans. BTW, I'm absolutely not painting all Thai women with that brush. Most of the women I worked with in Thailand were great. But they were professionals with good jobs.

I'm one of them. A couple of days after my 2nd Pfizer, the left side of my face went numb, my balance went wonky (couldn't climb a ladder) and my energy level went into the toilet. Presented the symptoms at the time (during the rush to get everyone jabbed) and the doc said he didn't know what caused it, but it definitely wasn't the jab. 2 years later, the doctors admitted mine is a pretty common side effect. Studies say about 1.4% of vaccine recipients. I'd gladly go back if I could. And still, I'm not anti-vax. Just anti-mandate. You guys do what you want. But they'll have to hold a gun to my head if they want me to take another.

True, but they don't need to be switched on until they encounter some criteria. Like a 50G crash. There doesn't have to be 2 way communication or handshakes, or any other signal. Just a GPS and a transmitter that says "I've experienced a crash and here's my location". Once it's hit the ground, I don't think anyone cares about its stealthiness. That's easy, even for first year electronics students.

I think the NRA and GOP both see this as a diversion, the only charge that Hunter faces that can't be tracked back to the President. (Unless they start charging him for smoking crack while shipping hookers all over the country, which probably can't be traced back to Joe, either). And I don't remember ever, the NRA or GOP supporting guns in the hands of crack addicts. But I stand to be corrected. Most of us don't give a rat about these charges. But he did lie on an affidavit that specifically says (right on the page- I read it each time when I signed mine) that lying can end you up in jail. Even if you don't lose your gun in a trash can somewhere in public.

There is no "the answer".

Shouldn't his >6 million followers be the ones to decide whether to disown him, as opposed to a couple of lefties at YouTube?

How tough would it be to design a tracker that only activates when it encounters, say 50G's? The answer, of course, is that they're already commercially available and cheap as chips.

More importantly, why didn't his accuser(s) report him 10, 15 or 20 years ago when it happened?

October will tell the story. National Holiday along with Moon Cake Festival means extended time off for a lot of Chinese. Taking stats to date is like looking at Christmas shopping numbers, before Thanksgiving.

Most of them. 'Cept maybe Top Gun and Addicted to Love.

I recall a woman from my 30's. We dated for a few months, when out of the blue she demanded a ring or she was leaving. When I declined her kind ultimatum, she was so angry that I'm sure I'd be in rape court if that happened during Me Too.

I'm the same way. I can't even get through the intro to any of his videos. But I'm thinking of a few drunken (and extremely consensual) trysts back in my drinking days and wondering what would happen if I got rich, famous or controversial. Could one of them from 40 years ago put me out of business and even have me locked up just by being more convincing in front of a jury? Or worse, put me out of business before the evidence is even heard...

It was. And I applauded it. Then it got hijacked.