impulse

When I look at the price per passenger, and multiply by the usual number of passengers, I'm amazed that they can afford fuel, let alone nanny state standards, (not to mention amortization of the vessel itself.) My company insisted on the boats to our offshore Thai platforms meeting international standards. And we paid out the nose for it. There's no way tourists in Thailand would pay those prices. They'd simply go elsewhere.

And about 3 minutes after that announcement, Ontario dropped the 25% surcharge on electricity they're selling to the US. Someone blinked. And it wasn't the Bad Orange Man.

Call me a meanie, but I'm in favor of cutting Medicaid benefits to people over 150 years old.

I cycled the busy streets of Bangkok for about 6 years when I worked there. On a recumbent after my bypass surgery and I needed the exercise but couldn't risk a fall. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the visits to the Elephant Ear via the Khlong Toei crossing. I found Thai city drivers (in general) to be pretty good about not running me over. But I don't have a lot of road miles in the boondocks of Thailand. In the past 5 years, I've lost 2 friends in the USA to bike/vehicle accidents. I guess it's down to risk tolerance, though some valid statistics would be helpful.

Is the battery removable for charging? Some of my recent e-scooters are lights on whenever the battery is in and connected. But I'm just guessing, having owned about a dozen different e-bikes and e-scooters in China and Thailand. Possibly a safety thing to remind me to take the battery out to reduce risk of fire. They also have a "find my bike" feature that uses GPS and requires power all the time to enable that feature. On those, I just disconnect the battery, even if I'm not going to remove it. It's as easy as unplugging an iron in the house. And I figure it makes the scooter safer from battery fires. The older ones (20 years ago) had lead acid batteries that required some disassembly to remove them, and those batteries were too heavy to bring inside. On those, turning off at the switch turned off the lights. In any case, post back if you do find the real solution. Edit: Apologies that I didn't see the photo in the OP. From China here, it takes a few minutes for the download, and some photos are just plain blocked.

I'm not in favor of killing dealers. If that's their only crime. I'm not opposed to killing dealers who also commit murder, extortion and other heinous crimes in pursuit of illegal profits. The ones that murder their rivals and witnesses and cops and gub'ment officials. The world could do without them stealing oxygen.

No. That's the Russkie leaving, at the door.

“In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you. . . .”

I carry my own bag(s) in my knapsack, and I politely decline the straw. You can blame 7/11, but it's all about personal responsibility. (And being a cheap bastard that hates to pay for something that I'll soon have to bin) What do you expect them to do? Alienate and/or shame their customer base? That's for snooty overpriced coffee shops that will go unnamed. (But they share a name with a Mellville character)

To be clear, "suspect" wasn't a good choice of words. I meant to say that I'm open to the possibility that the statistics may say something different than the tired old "most dangerous roads in the world". Anyone who believes that hasn't been to a lot of much worse places.

Do you have a statistic for deaths per km driven? Either in a car, on a bicycle, or on a scooter? Because I've never seen one published from Thailand. And without that, any contention that Thai traffic and Thai bicycling is more dangerous is just a guess based on extremely limited experiences and a few stories cautionary tales in the media. Is it as comfortable as driving back home? Absolutely not. But Thai drivers are 10x as defensive as we are back in the nanny states, where we assume that right of way and rules (and zebra crossings) mean something. I'm still waiting for someone to produce the deaths per million km driven to prove that it's more dangerous to drive in Thailand. I suspect it may just be because so many Thais ride scooters which are 20-40x as dangerous as a 4 wheeler.

They're about 3 weeks early with that announcement.

Looking just at the trade imbalance and the fact that I can't buy a new ZR1 Corvette in Thailand for anywhere near 125% of what it would cost me in the USA, Thailand is right to be nervous. It's time for reciprocal tariffs and a level playing field for US manufacturers. Not that I'm in the market for a ZR1, but if the doctors gave me a year to live, I'd like that option.

If you netted it all out, I wonder if more Filipinos died, or more were saved by his policies? Never mind that I suspect it was the bad guys dying.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the bicycle deaths back home in the USA. In 2022, there were 1084 bicycle deaths from vehicular accidents. (iihs.org) That's something to keep in mind before bashing Thailand for their bicycle safety stats. With about 1/5 of the population of the US, I'd expect over 200 bicycle road deaths in Thailand to be on the same level of risk, assuming bicycle km per capita is about the same. My best friend from high school just got killed in Phoenix last month when a lady opened her car door without looking and forced him to swerve into traffic where he was hit by another car. So it's not just Thai drivers.

Negotiation. Russia could take a lot more of Ukraine than Putin said he wanted, right up front. Surrender would mean losing Kiev. and Odessa. Ukraine may be able to keep those. BTW, I hear Zelensky is taking foreign volunteers if you really mean it.

Another good reason to come to the table. With reasonable demands. Russia can attack and kill Ukrainians at will, and they don't. They're being very strategic, fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Ukrainians depend on western (mostly US) money and arms to put up what little defense they can. They can't win. All they can do is hold onto what they haven't already lost. It's over, except for futile dying. I, for one, would prefer that we quit spending my kids' money and futures for an unwinnable war on another continent that seems to thrive on wars throughout history. Not to mention all the Ukrainians who are dying, even if you don't care about Russki kids.

That was worse than weak fecklessness. That was evil war mongering. That a weak and feckless president (and a corrupt VP) got snookered into.

That's going to be debated ad nauseum for decades. But it's beside the point. Ukraine is in an unwinnable situation, throwing lives away like they're meaningless. No amount of money is going to change that, only foreign boots on the ground. Which means WW3 and the risk of Armageddon. It's time to stop the killing, and start the rebuilding. The lines haven't moved meaningfully in over 2 years (key word being "meaningfully"). More dead kids isn't going to change that, and it's time to pull US funding to force negotiation.

As I recall, the voting in Crimea preceded the guns and tanks. Massively leaning toward being in Russia.

You missed irony classes back in school, eh? There were a few other deliberate errors in my reply that you missed.

Gory as they may be, I think a proper hanging and the guillotine are the least likely to inflict pain. Or a bullet to the head, as opposed to the heart. But they don't play well for the public. BTW, by proper hanging, I mean from a height that guarantees a snapped neck, even if that means decapitation, too. Gory and ugly, but pretty fast and compassionate.

He's not. He's talking about whether the USA is going to continue spending our tax dollars on a lost war that's an ocean away. Ukraine can keep fighting until the last one is dead if they want. But that would be a tragedy of epic scale. And we won't be paying for it.

Are they talking about crimes in real life, or just in the ether? I'd suggest they focus their efforts on the former.

I want to meet the genius who came up with the name "Sniffies". Well, not really. But the name should say it all. Grindr was funny enough.