impulse

That's my question, too.

Anyone who believes that digging out of a $35 trillion dollar hole is going to be easy or painless (or take less than a few election cycles) is just fooling themselves. Or, more accurately, being sold a bill of goods in anticipation of the next election. By purveyors of free money if you vote for me. Just to quit digging deeper is going to require sacrifices. But you gotta start sooner or later. I'd prefer 10 years ago, but that's not the way that time works. The best we can do is start today. (And thank God we dodged that bullet in November)

It can take them months (if not years) to model the building as it stood when the earthquake actually hit. And at other phases of construction when the mass was there, but none of the internal and external bracing elements. I suspect they approved the building based on their models of a fully built structure but got caught out in the interim by an earthquake when not all of the structural elements were in place yet. My suspicion is that the torsional stiffness just wasn't there yet without the external and internal walls. But you don't need torsional stiffness unless there are torsional loads, and that means a typhoon or an earthquake. But I'll wait for the investigation. With the caveat that if it's a quick investigation, it won't be complete and thorough. And nothing will be learned about the (apparently) new and zoomy construction methods. And I'm wide open to the possibility of shoddy materials, though it's way too early to point that finger before they do the "as it stood" modeling.

Meanwhile, the US job market added over 220,000 private sector jobs last month, blowing past the experts' predicted 140K. Sadly (not), gub'ment jobs are going down. But doesn't that mean more people paying taxes and fewer soaking them up?

You may want to include a photo inside the circuit breaker box so there's no confusion between wire colors and what is connected to what. Also, by "open", do you mean turned on or turned off? I'd interpret that to mean disconnected, but some folks would interpret that like an open faucet, meaning turned on and flowing.

I think Anutin was smart when he said the investigations would take months. Both the collapsed building and inspecting thousands of other buildings for damage. I'm just a mechanical engineer (not civil), but I suspect the reason the building collapsed was the state of construction where not all of the structural members were in place yet. But I'll wait for the full investigation. Though I have little confidence that we'll ever really know. Too many powerful entities stand to lose too much if the truth goes against them.

Perfect choice of words to describe what they are. Yes, pressure test to find the leak No disrespect intended. I worked my way through high school as a grease monkey. "Mechanic" was a title reserved for the experts. I was a grease monkey. I did oil changes, tire rotation, radiator flushes, etc. (and back then, we pumped gas- no self service) The mechanics did the complicated stuff. Pressure testing a cooling system only requires grease monkey skills.

GB in this context is GuoBai. Guo is national... Bai, I don't know...

This is a good example of why God invented action cameras and made them cheap. Plus, they can be put on the end of a long stick and stuck into places where no man can fit. And if you pony up a few extra baht for a good one, you can watch the action live over wifi. Post back if you identify the marauders.

I wonder which cost more, the scooter he stole or the IPhone?

I'm not claiming any expertise since I'm a mechanical and not a civil engineer. But you could start here for hot rolled: GB 1499.2-2024, and here for cold rolled: GB 13788-2024. But as you pointed out, there's no clarification for what standard they tested to.

That's quite a difference between the price of Thai rice vs Vietnamese rice. I wonder how much of that is the actual cost of production, and how much of that is the families that wedge themselves into everything Thailand does and makes and exports.

In Thailand, that's more likely because their fathers had no sons.

Sure it did. Dick Tracy was light years ahead of Apple with his 2 way wrist radio. Jobs just copied it.

The second time was after he was no longer in office. How stupid and syndrome-like was that?

I held off answering because my only experience was with Samsung's Smart Switch app, which allowed me to pretty much clone my Samsung phone onto the new Samsung tablet I just bought. It worked fairly well, though not flawlessly. Most of the accounts and the apps were ported over, with a few exceptions, and I had to log into the accounts that were password protected. Which had me confirm through 2FA, and that required me to have my old phone on hand. There are several apps that claim to transfer accounts, apps, etc. to a new phone. But I think it works best if you do it before you lose your old phone... I Bing searched "phone transfer app" since Google is blocked here. I was (am) hoping someone would chime in with a cloud service where I could park all my accounts and apps and invoke them in case I lost all my devices in the zombie apocalypse. Or an earthquake...

Not to mention that there are corporate jets and private planes departing BKK and DMK (and others) every day with empty seats. Some of them sponsor Angel Flight programs where they offer the seats to patients that need to travel for treatment. But they can't make the offer if they don't know the need. Ya don't ask, ya don't get.

Take it down to the local grease monkey and have them pressure test the system. Shouldn't cost more than a couple hundred baht. It's tough to tell from the photos, especially with everything dry. A pressure test will tell you for sure.

The way I read it is that the son is asking the embassy whether his father will qualify for NHS care if he does get him back to the UK. That seems like a reasonable request for information from the embassy. They should be well versed in issues like that which affect their citizens abroad. I wish the family well.

The problem is the scholarships and other winnings they'd lose in the here and now if they refused to compete. It may be years before this idiot phase is relegated to the bins of stupid history. In the meantime, the XX women lose their scholarship opportunities...

So does having to work for a living, after you've been living on the dole for generations.

I'm not deflecting at all. Now that the election integrity cases are actually winding their way through the courts, the Dems aren't getting their way so much.

Doubt it. JFK's assassination showed what happens when you get between the rich and their money.

Why would that surprise anyone when lefties and Dems are out demonstrating that they'll break whatever laws they must in order to get their way? A better race to follow is North Carolina, where the Dem candidate's 700 vote lead is being tested because 65,000 voters were registered illegally. The NC Court of Appeals has requested that the election officials clean up that mess or remove those 65K ballots from the results.

Neither can I, sadly. It has ever been so- the 1% rip off the poor, at least till the tumbrils await. FDR hit the reset button when he raised to top marginal tax rate to 90%, claiming (and I'm paraphrasing here...) "You rich people broke the economy, you're going to pay the bill to fix it". And America had its most prosperous decades, until they lowered that top marginal rate.