impulse

Good question. I'm only replying to the post.

I don't know about him, but I'm interested in Israel because I don't see a way out of the morass that the UK put that region in after the World Wars. I can see an end to Ukraine war this year. But I fear Israel will still be fighting in 50 or 75 or 100 years, barring a complete ethnic cleanse of the disputed areas. They're in an intractable situation, and it could all go tits up if Iran gets a bunch of nukes.

Of course it was just a lie. Their explanation was manufactured after the fact. How did the penguins manage to export $1.4 million worth of goods to the USA in 2022? (World Bank numbers, reported by The Guardian and others) United States Product Exports and Imports to Heard Island and McDonald Isla 2022 | WITS Data https://wits.worldbank.org/

Someone catch me up. Is the minimum wage still 300 baht? I keep reading about proposals to increase it, but they never seem to go through. Or am I missing something?

A lot of times, that kind of limitation is specific to company policy as opposed to Microsoft dictates. My employers have often limited what I can do on company assets and through the company network. It's probably programmable by the network administrator. I got "the email" from Microsoft this past weekend and try to will move over to Teams as soon as I get to a location where the link isn't blocked like it is here in China. I'll be in Thailand next week and give it a whirl (assuming I can do it from Thailand and not the USA where my MS account is billed) The Skype features I rely on are caller ID set to my US cell number, and a per minute charge as opposed to a spendy subscription for a lot of features I don't need. I'm still waiting to hear from someone who has actually made the switch on a personal account (as opposed to a business account)

All I hear is screeching.

Other than that one Covid year, he increased the debt half as fast as Biden did. About the same rate as Obama. Not great, but better than Biden.

And others who think they're authors and geniuses, but they're not. They're being led around by the MSM. And it shows with some of the trigger words and phrases scattered through their lengthy screeches.

I usually start nodding off at the 2nd or 3rd paragraph.

Oh, I don't know. Getting out of the way of a crazed psych patient making all that noise is probably a good idea too. Too many of them seem to have machetes.

You mean the guys and gals who got us $35 trillion in debt? Something had to give. And it seems that around 70 countries already have delegates on planes and meetings scheduled to renegotiate tariffs and trade agreements.

I'd have just gotten a new tube.

When I first started working in Thailand, one of the old timers warned me that the best paid, most secure job available for a lot of Thai women was "mother of some expat's kid". Those wise words stuck with me. I had a couple of colleagues in their 50s and 60s who were raising their 2nd surprise families.

But that's not unique to Thailand.

Like it or not, English is the language used in the vast majority of international trade. For that reason, it's probably the second language of more people than any other. I'm always amused in the airports and hotels when I see 2 people conversing in English and neither one is a native speaker. But it's the one language they both know. France can accept that, or loose bigly in the global trade world.

Where did you hear the tariffs are delayed 90 days? That was in the news, debunked by the Trump admin. The wingnut conspiracy guys are claiming it was fake news released to create a momentary uptick in the markets which the Banksters could then short.

I've had my fingers crossed for that since the USS Liberty. They'll keep fibbing, then backpedal when the evidence comes out in spite of their Herculean efforts to suppress it.

That's the optimism of Americans now that Bidenomics are in the rear view mirror.

That's what I used to think, until I bought a couple of phones that looked good but had wonky operating systems and real crappy batteries. My current phone is a Samsung A05s which costs around $150 nowadays, 1/4 of what I paid for my first Samsung S2 smartphone, and that was almost 15 years ago when $600 was a lot of money. The idea that a 50% tariff will drive up the cost by 200% is another example of the syndrome in the media, especially when the tariffs are only levied on the transfer price, which is a fraction of the selling price. (And Apple doing what Apple does)

Sounds like the victim only gave the wife a ride to her ex's house. But I do pretty much need a program to keep up.

You forgot the 70 year old guy pushing a baby stroller with his bouncing baby "surprise".

That's the problem. Too much of a chance of mistake, misunderstanding and general fooknuttery as idiot influencers get involved. They'd grass up their Mom for a few clicks, even if she did nothing wrong. If they did the deed, string them up by their 'nads. But don't go creating circumstances that may go sideways, when nothing would have happened had you not created the circumstance.

They weren't "mistakenly entered" into a database as having a trade surplus. They're listed in the USITC HTS code as discrete exporting entities, and have been since long before Trump. Who's being lied to? Here's from the 2011 version:

I gave up on finding reasonably priced, decent quality Thai beef and went to making pork and chicken burgers. I ground my own at home with a $15(USD) meat grinder and had excellent burgers. I added condiments and veggies to the burgers in lieu of putting anything into the ground meat. I also made my own Italian and Breakfast sausages using the same materials plus spices available in several marketplaces and online recipes. I didn't use a sausage stuffer and casings, I just fried them up. BTW, I also got a few bad batches of ground pork and that's why I started grinding my own at home. I bought a patty press from Lazada to keep them consistent and froze some for cooking later.

It's not just tariffs. It's also IP protection. Imagine Thailand having to actually pay Adidas, Nike, Apple, etc. even a tiny royalty each time someone buys a (usually fake) branded product. That would result in $billions remitted to US companies. Which would go a long way to balancing the trade numbers. Thai companies can protect their trademarks through the courts in the USA. US companies can't in Thailand.