Cory1848

No, it's not dying. It's just passed you by.

I would never talk to my wife that way!😆

The cruelty on both sides is unimaginable. My parents (Estonians) lived through the first Soviet occupation in 1940, then three years under the Germans, then fled when the Red Army returned in 1944. According to them, life under German occupation was not so bad (German soldiers were polite enough not to rape local women, and they even listened to classical music!), but Estonia had only a minimal Jewish population; those few whom my parents knew disappeared.

Oh for heaven's sake it's all over the news. But of course, how would you know?

Kubizek’s memoir might indeed be an interesting read, but what are you saying, that Hitler professed some curiosity about socialism during their chats, when they shared lodgings in Vienna in 1908? So what? They were teenagers! By the 1930s, Hitler knew in which direction his political fortunes lay. “Another one bites the dust”? Really? That’s so cute!

Well, a certain present-day US megalomaniac just a few days ago posted that the US did “more than any other Country [sic], by far,” in beating the Germans in the war, and 35 percent of US Americans will fall in line and unquestioningly believe the statement, so there’s that. Said megalomaniac I'm sure has never heard of the Eastern Front.

Who is denying this? More than 3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody. This figure from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's website.

Pure socialism (collective ownership of the means of production) perhaps comes close to communism, and this has been shown to be antithetical to human nature -- or at least, we haven’t sufficiently evolved as a species to make it work. Social democracy, however, can work beautifully -- whereby the profit motive is removed from major societal sectors that provide services needed by everyone (health care, basic housing, basic transportation and the like) while regulated capitalism can be applied to consumer industries. Something approaching this seems to work in Scandinavia for instance, always at the top in various “happiness” indexes.

Maybe driven by present-day politics; calling a liberal administration in whatever Western democracy “socialist” or “communist” and then equating that with Nazis because, well, everyone knows that Nazis are bad. But that’s way off topic for this thread.

No, that’s not it, actually! Rather, it’s that arguing with the sort of stubborn, chest-beating illogic that you seem to revel in is at best a useless activity. Sorry I tried.

Your continued efforts to equate National Socialism with socialism are by this point more pathetic than hilarious. (It’s like calling the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea a democracy because the word appears in the country’s official name.) Here’s a succinct explanation (from Google AI no less): “National Socialism, also known as Nazism, and traditional socialism are fundamentally different ideologies, despite the shared term ‘socialism’ in National Socialism’s name. Socialism generally advocates for collective ownership and control of resources, often with the aim of a more equitable distribution of wealth. National Socialism, on the other hand, is a form of right-wing nationalist and fascist ideology that prioritized national interests and racial purity over individual or collective rights, and used a centralized, planned economy to support its political goals.” And further, “While the Nazis implemented public works programs and rearmament initiatives, which did create jobs, the overall wealth distribution was not made more equitable. Real wages actually declined for many workers.” And, of course, Germans deemed “non-Aryan” were excluded from any jobs programs; genuine socialism at least in theory aims to benefit all legal residents. Antisemitism can emerge among fascists, communists, socialists, liberal democrats, anarchists, Buddhists, or people of any other affiliation, although the extreme nationalism advocated by most fascist regimes usually requires some form of “othering,” and Jewish people over the millennia have tended to be the first to be “othered.” Got it?

What on earth have you got against backpackers? They definitely add to certain segments of the economy, and if they have a good experience, they’re likely to return later in life when they have more money to spend, so it’s an investment. Plus, they are better behaved and more respectful than your average drunken sex tourist in Pattaya or Phuket. Sure, I’m in my sixties have my grumpy moments, but I remember how great it was to be young and free-spirited and have the whole world in front of me -- everyone should have that experience. Lighten up!

Plus, at parks on the signboards they use Thai numbers for the local prices (rather than Western numbers, which are commonly used elsewhere), so foreigners who can't read Thai can't see how big the price discrepancy is.

I've done exactly that, and it usually works! The humor part is key -- if you get them to chuckle, you're in.

Both “ladyboys” and “trans women” are perfectly good words, each in their own context.

Exactly. Trump read the word "transgenic" and thought "transgender," without realizing they are two entirely different words with different meanings. (Or somebody patiently explained it to him, and he lied about it anyway, as you say.) What's depressing, though, is the number of people who will readily fall for this garbage.

Right -- it’s a perfectly good word, although I suppose it can be intended as an insult if the speaker is otherwise angry or hateful. I work as an editor so am tuned into offensive language: the word “ladyboy” *sounds* like it’s offensive but actually isn’t, whereas other words are offensive in all contexts and make the speaker sound like a boorish jerk. Plus, languages evolve; everyday words can become slurs over time, or slurs (like “queer”) can be “reclaimed” by their targets and brought back into common use. In any event, I’ve never seen any problems with the word “farang.”

That is very weird. I speak half-decent Thai, and I use the word farang all the time, whether speaking Thai or speaking English. My Thai friends, many of whom are educated professionals, all use the word as well; I’ve never had any indication that it’s in any way disrespectful. My neighbors call my house *baan farang*; some people in my girlfriend’s family call me *lung farang* (“Uncle White Guy”), entirely respectfully. The word apparently derives from the Persian, originally referring to the (European) Franks. (???)

You should definitely see a gastro doctor, as others here are advising. A hiatal hernia is when part of your stomach pushes up through the diaphragm; they’re often detectable by simple radiology, but to get the full picture you’d need an endoscopy. I had one (and felt no pain or discomfort at all from it), and had the preliminary work done at Chiang Mai Ram. Then I had the hernia repaired at Bumrungrad (Dr. Voranaddha Vacharathit, really great). Bumrungrad is relatively pricey, but I have insurance; failing that, I’m sure other hospitals can do the same procedure at lower cost; it’s pretty routine. But start with a general gastrointestinal doctor.

Exactly. Like the Kyle Reese character said in the first Terminator movie, "[the machines] decided our fate in a microsecond."

Dude, you’ve got it exactly backward. “Wokeism” -- which, boiled down to its essence, is simply the ability to see beyond one’s own nose -- places no requirements or obligations whatsoever on you; you can simply ignore it and move on with your life, which is not impeded in any way. If you want to believe that the world should function as if through the gauze of a spaghetti Western, as per your profile photo, nobody’s going to bother you about that! However, you’re the one who’s sobbing about “Wokeism,” or rather your own gross misinterpretation of what it’s about. Just let it go, man; if other people choose to move beyond Clint Eastwood, it’s not going to hurt you!

Really? So I guess the New Yorker cartoon is true after all: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog!”

There is conclusive evidence that around 6 million Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust; apart from Jewish records, the Nazis themselves (being Germans!) were precise about their record keeping. If you’re “not sure [you] believe the numbers,” that’s either your personal bias, or your reliance on bogus information, or your refusal to accept historical fact. As for your list of other “holocausts” through history in another post, these are all of course horrific in their own way and just as worthy of remembrance and historical accuracy; and as you point out, they happen with some frequency. However, in plain English, the word “Holocaust,” usually capped, refers to the German effort to exterminate European Jews during World War II. Just the same as the word “antisemitism,” in plain English, means hatred of Jewish people, not hatred of people who speak Semitic languages. Webster’s may provide various definitions of the word “holocaust,” but, as the English language has developed over the past several decades, it is commonly understood to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. One cannot place a value judgment on this use of the word, nor is it meant to diminish the horrific tragedy of other genocides; it’s purely a matter of semantics, of how English is spoken and understood.

All of the above. I’ve generally encountered this as a combination of antisemitism (irrational hatred of Jewish people) and a penchant for conspiracy theories (Jewish people systematically invented or exaggerated the Holocaust to gain political advantage). One of my favorites was a fellow who resorted to semantic trickery, saying that those Jews who died (not as many as history claims of course) were “killed” and not “murdered” during the war, turning it into a fog-of-war scenario. He was quite proud of himself at this neat solution that absolved the Nazis of any major wrongdoing. The Turks used (and often still use) a similar strategy in responding to the fact of their wholesale massacre of Armenians toward the end of the First World War.

Absolutely. People should be able to marry who they want. To think otherwise is heartless and medieval.