Cory1848

On 8/25/2024 at 9:57 PM, Confuscious said:

Many people will say that Thailand was never occupied.
But, the history books (history books that are banned from Thailand) tells an other story.

 

I think what “many people say” (in your wording) is that Thailand was never directly colonized by a Western power, unlike nearly every other nation in the so-called Third World. Many Thais are justifiably quite proud of this.

5 hours ago, Danderman123 said:

All @thaibeachlovers is interested in is weakening America. He strives for a multi-polar world, presumably led by Putin and Xi.

 

Why any American would pay attention to an anti-US New Zealander is beyond me.

I had no idea he was a Kiwi. (He was probably heartbroken when Ms. Ardern stepped down! ...)

35 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

You changed the meaning of what I said.

 

Next.

You wrote “He’s coming for all those that tried to fit him up.” How that differs from “those who crossed him” is beyond me, but frankly I’m bored by this by now.

You also said that none of this is about responsible administration and leadership and that “the Dems deserve another 4 years of Trump,” leading me to believe this all a game for you, that you are an “unserious man” (here I’m quoting Kamala Harris, not you), just like the candidate you support.

1 minute ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Do try and get it right. I never said ” who crossed him? “

Stop being pedantic. That's why I left the words "who crossed him" outside quotation marks.

1 hour ago, Presnock said:

Met many!  While some like western life, many others still want a change to sharia law - even in the US.

I was responding to someone else, who said that a “vast majority” of Muslims living in the West want sharia law; I would say, rather, that a vast majority simply want to lead normal lives under prevailing (Western) laws, and it’s only a handful who are radicalized and commit violence, as at the recent festival in Germany.

Unfortunately, it’s this radicalized handful who get all the headlines, thus causing an overreaction on the other side who are quick to blame all Muslims for the crimes of a few, and the problem spirals out of control.

As for the growth of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East, I would suggest that part of the problem is economic: young men there face limited prospects in their lives and thus become susceptible. Muslim countries that are better off and provide better prospects to their citizens (Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, perhaps Morocco, the Gulf states) seem to have fewer problems with homegrown radical Islamist movements.

I have many Muslim friends also, mostly assimilated into Western societies, but I’ve never lived in any Muslim countries as you have, so you would have a much better feel for this.

6 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I agree which is why it should not be up to one person.

I also believe that a war should not be declared unless the people that vote for have to enlist their military age children to serve in the front line.

Ideally, yes. There might be issues like, given that the US has a volunteer army, from a legal standpoint how can the child of a high-ranking politician be forced to serve if the child of a bus driver can choose not to. But the bus driver of course doesn’t have a say in policy (other than having one vote out of tens of millions in the next election).

It’s good to look for any possible disincentives. I often wonder, especially in unjust or unnecessary wars (as most wars are), why the soldiers themselves fight, why they shoot at perfect strangers who have done them no personal harm. I’ve never been in a war (never even fired a gun), and it all seems so irrational.

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Why not? If the president can send thousands of other people's children to die, why should they be exempt? If the cause isn't worth the loss of their child it isn't worth the loss of other people's children.

 

In any event one person should never be able to declare war, or dictate how it is prosecuted.

I agree with everything you just wrote. I was only saying that a president is also a parent, and if the president knew that their child would be sent to the front lines, as the original poster suggested, that would necessarily factor into their decision on whether to send troops or not. A parent by nature cares more for their own child than other people’s, regardless of how unfair that might be in a case like this.

There’s no easy answer here. A president should be entirely objective in deciding on whether to commit troops, but because they’re also a parent they can’t be objective with respect to their own child. If it’s a group decision, as you suggest, that might help.

14 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

I have long been an advocate of limiting candidates for president to people who have only served in the military, and I would go a step further they must have children that would be of age to serve, and they would have to sign a pledge that their children would be on the front lines if they ever got involved in a war.

 

How's that for a deterrent? How is that for commitment? 

I love the deterrent aspect of that. However, there’s also a potential appeasement aspect. Sometimes there’s a war that needs to be fought (e.g., from the US side, one that would involve NATO), and I’m not sure I’d want a US president to be weighing their own child’s welfare as a factor in whether and how to engage.

14 hours ago, billd766 said:

If you believe that you must also believe and agree that US citizens should be allowed to vote in elections in other peoples countries as well.

 

Perhaps Russia could vote in US elections and the USA could vote in Russian elections. How about if Israel voted in Palestinian elections and Palestinians voted in Israeli elections, or if Iran were allowed to vote in Israeli elections? Would that be OK with you?

You are definitely on to something. Americans vote for leaders who have an existential effect on citizens of other countries; Russians likewise. Palestinians vote for leaders whose sole agenda is the destruction of one particular foreign country, which has no say in it; Israelis vote for leaders who likewise seek to unilaterally annex the land of their neighbor -- whose own residents can’t vote in Israeli elections. Cross-national voting might make us all a little more aware of our common existence and equality, speaking of humans generally.

I sense that you were being a bit sarcastic; I’m not.

18 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

No matter what, nothing could be worse than Harris.

 

Even RFK JR can sense this.

 

You know, of course, that a week or so ago Kennedy approached the Harris campaign about a meeting, and the Harris people turned him down, and only then did he come up with the Trump endorsement. What this tells me is, Kennedy is mercenary who will do whatever it takes to get a job close to the White House (“one of those Black jobs”); that Trump will take on any stray dog if he thinks it will get him a few more votes; and that Harris actually has some principle, and a fairly clear idea of where she wants to take her campaign (and her presidency).

But, yeah, whatever.

9 hours ago, dingdongrb said:

Based on my 16 years of doing extensions for both marriage and retirement I have never had to endure more than 4 hours at an immigration office......and I have used 3 different ones, Chiang Mai, Nan, and Surin. 

NOTE: All the lengthy times were at the CM office back during their busier era (later years at the old building and at the Promenada) before the new building.

 

I've done extensions at Nan and Surin numerous times and it's never been more than an hour (process and queue times).

 

So in summary, four hours is hardly an issue when I've been stuck in BKK traffic that long before. What's an agent costs 20k-30k? No thanks, 4 hours (at the most) of my time in an immigration office is no big deal to me, I can surf on my phone to easily pass the time. Yes, I understand that I also use my valuable time getting all the paperwork completed.. It's not rocket science. 

To each their own. I renewed my retirement visa myself for years (in Chiang Mai), and as you say I rarely had to wait more than a few hours. Then one year I needed an agent about a special issue, and I’ve continued to use the agent: less than 5,000 baht annually to renew the visa plus do the 90-day reporting. I’ve gotten lazier, the cost is certainly not excessive, plus I can pop in and talk to someone at the agency whenever I have a question about something. For me this works, but I totally appreciate the DIY approach as well.

6 hours ago, JonnyF said:

"Far right" appears to be the new "Racist/Fascist".

 

A throwaway comment used to silence people with whom the left disagree.

 

So overused as to become meaningless.😃

 

Well, no. In the present-day environment, I would define the “Far Right” as those who agree with most if not all of the policy proposals in Project 2025, a lengthy document that’s available to anyone who’s interested. Some of it is racist, and some of it is fascist. So, without intending to pigeonhole large swaths of the public, I think it’s quite possible to make some broad statements about who the Far Right are and what they believe.

11 minutes ago, novacova said:

Alcoholism is a mental disorder that requires the sole mental fortitude of an individual to overcome. If mental weakness is a disease, then so be it.

People can be genetically predisposed to alcoholism; this has been scientifically determined. So, no, “mental weakness” is not the whole story.

On 8/13/2024 at 7:46 AM, KannikaP said:

OK, a Rastafarian! Who do they go to in order to help stop drinking.

AA started out as a Christian-based group and the word “God” turns up a lot, but now it’s usually phrased “God as we interpret him” or “Higher Power as we interpret it.” Religion is not an issue at AA.

On 8/12/2024 at 3:29 AM, georgegeorgia said:

Can we cure alcoholicm?

Is it a disease ?

Right now I'm crying in sadness at my friends cure and his heal from the dangers the mysterious world of drinking 🍾🍾

Crying in joy ...crying in his sadness or mysterious reasons on what this "group" did to make him "healed" 

 

Thankyou for your service 🙏 

Alcoholism is broadly considered a “disease” with both a genetic component and an environmental, or learned, component. It is a progressive disease -- the more you drink over time, the worse it gets. There is no cure for alcoholism, but the treatment, obviously enough, is to not consume alcohol.

AA meetings are not scary, or at least they shouldn’t be, and I can’t say why your friend is reluctant to talk about it. AA as an organization has weathered a fair amount of criticism, some of it perhaps warranted, as being cultish, religiously oriented, and so on. However, I think that such criticism misses the point. AA meetings serve a very basic purpose -- if you want to get through the day without drinking, it’s a place where you can go where everyone in the room shares the same desire. You can take whatever you need from an AA meeting, or whatever helps, and leave be whatever doesn’t. No one in an AA meeting is judging you.

I wish your friend all the best and hope that he continues to benefit from AA, if that’s what’s helping him stay sober, and I believe that you should support him in any way you can. All the best --

23 hours ago, Wandr said:

There's a fairly large pizzeria in Nimman called Pizza My Heart (or Pizza Your Heart).

They have good stuff. However I wouldn't care to judge if it's better than Dukes or not.

Try it out, let us know your opinion.

The Duke’s makes American-style pizza; I think the best in Chiang Mai, though I haven’t sampled around that much. There are other places that serve Italian pizza (or “real pizza”), which is another item altogether. It’s hard to compare the two. I haven’t been to Pizza My Heart, which you mention, but there’s another Italian restaurant in Nimman called “Why Not?” that serves fabulous Neapolitan pizza.

21 hours ago, VincentRJ said:

If you had an enquiring mind and did your own research, ...

 

That’s all I need to know. “Doing your own research” means reading articles on the internet that you like reading, that reinforce what you think you already believe. This reminds me of a meme that was floating around, which addressed vaccines and not climate science, but the psychology is the same. The first picture is labeled “vaccine research” and shows a group of people in lab coats, doing work in a lab setting with test tubes and other equipment. The second picture is labeled “antivax research” and shows a woman with her pants down, sitting on a toilet and staring into her phone.

22 hours ago, VincentRJ said:

"What you seem to be “denying” is the human cause of climate change since the Industrial Revolution, greatly accelerated in our own time." 

 

I don't deny that human activities in total, including deforestation for agriculture, and the building of cities and roads, and the destruction of land to mine for minerals and fossil fuels, and so on, has had at least some effect on the climate. Everything is connected to some degree.

 

A major issue for me is the unscientific certainty, promoted through the media using the 'claimed' 97% consensus, that our CO2 emissions will eventually cause a climate catastrophe, and if we achieve 'net-zero' CO2 emissions, the climate will stop changing, or change for the better, and become benign.

 

This is in complete contrast to the IPCC statement that, "The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." 

 

Surely everyone has experienced how inaccurate weather forecasts can be just a few days into the future. Why so many people seem to believe that scientists can predict the state of the climate, decades into the future, is bizarre.

I think you’re obfuscating the issue. The vast consensus among climate scientists with respect to the effects of human activity is incontrovertible; it’s not something the media just made up. And I think the scientists have gotten pretty good at modeling. Many effects that were predicted decades ago are now happening.

As for your comparing inaccurate weather forecasts with long-term models created by climate scientists, now you’re the one mixing up “weather” and “climate.” Do I really need to point out that projecting the long-term effects of continued CO2 emissions is quite different from predicting whether or not it’s going to rain tomorrow?

12 hours ago, VincentRJ said:

A 'climate change denier' is a person who is so ignorant that he/she doesn't understand that climate is always changing and is never static. Over any chosen period, some parts of the world become slightly warmer, whilst other parts become slightly cooler. Some parts will become wetter, whilst other parts will become drier, and so on.

 

A 'climate change denier' is also someone who doesn't understand that climate change is a chaotic, non-linear system with a multitude of contributing factors which cannot be accurately measured.
Here's a relevant quote from Working Group 1 section of an IPCC report. 
 

"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." 

 

Can you show me actual evidence for the 'overwhelming consensus among actual climate scientists' that the current climate change is very much caused by human activity?

 

Science is not based upon consensus, but on evidence and data. Most journalists and politicians don't even seem to understand the difference between climate and weather, and cause and effect. How often have you read or heard on the media that a particular extreme weather event was caused by climate change. Climate Change is an effect, as a result of numerous influences, not a cause.

What you seem to be “denying” is the human cause of climate change since the Industrial Revolution, greatly accelerated in our own time. For evidence of “overwhelming consensus” among climate scientists on this point, you can start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change

Some scholars I’ve worked with are skeptical of Wikipedia, but this article is well annotated, with 86 endnotes that lead to source documents you can refer to. There may be other causes for climate change as you point out such as natural cycles, but the human factor is undeniable. This is real science; all you have is a lot of “hot air” (pun intended).

Science is indeed based on evidence and data (and there’s a lot of that in the Wikipedia page and its source documents); consensus is what happens when scientists, working independently, reach the same conclusions after examining that evidence and data. And that consensus is 99 percent with regard to the reality of human agency in climate change.

15 minutes ago, JonnyF said:

 

If you think putting tampons in boys toilet's is about the availability of tampons to boys, I would say you are drastically missing the point. 

I don't think about tampons one way or the other. All I know is, I don't need them myself.