richard_smith237

And here I had always been pronouncing it, and misspelling it...PERVIEW... Well, I will just live and learn, at my advanced age. Don’t knock it, GG - “prevue” is spot on... Most of what you write does feel like a preview: weird, confusing, faintly mad to outright bonkers - we only need the first few lines as a warning not to sit through the full feature... Besides, the actual word is purview - which, judging by the bats, lies comfortably outside yours - especially if you are going to play spelling Nazi !!!

Your attempts to sound like a scatty, eccentric Noel Coward in every other comment rather betray the truth - you are no spring chicken... I'm guessing late 70's early 80's with more than a few bats in the belfry...

Could he? How do you know that? I reckon he was taking a wild guess that even Udon has banks !

I got a prepaid Visa card directly from MRT which is connected to the app and can be topped up by barcode scanning within the app. Alternatively you might consider another prepaid Visa card, Siam Commercial Bank, Krungthai Bank and Bangkok Bank do offer those. I got a prepaid Visa card directly from MRT which is connected to the app and can be topped up by barcode scanning within the app. I remember it was quite challenging to register it within the app last year. Alternatively you might consider another prepaid Visa card, Siam Commercial Bank, Krungthai Bank and Bangkok Bank do offer those. Have you considered giving JTXR the extra one ? 🫣

Jumping in here - some comments / questions (for clarification / correction / answering) a) I assume any Bank Card with the 'wave' symbol works (for MRT only) ? (i.e. as below) b) This looks like MRT only ? (on certain lines) - Blue Line (The main loop: Sukhumvit, Silom, Hua Lamphong). - Purple Line (To Nonthaburi). - Yellow Line (Lat Phrao to Samut Prakan). - Pink Line (Khae Rai to Min Buri). - SRT Red Line (To Don Mueang Airport). - Airport Rail Link (To Suvarnabhumi). c) This and Bank Cars with the 'wave' symbol wont work on the BTS which still requires a rabbit card or at machine QR payment. d) Apple Pay and Google Wallet still not work on the BTS and MRT. From a passenger perspective, this is still fragmented and backwards. In many other cities - London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney - you can simply double-tap your phone or contactless card and pass straight through the gate using NFC. Bangkok’s MRT / BTS network is excellent in terms of coverage and expansion, but the payment ecosystem remains fragmented, largely due to the multiple operators and ticketing systems involved. A unified system would significantly improve convenience, passenger flow, and overall user experience across the city’s public transport network - it needs sorting out. The Mangmoom initiative attempted to fully integrated solution - but the parties involved always seem to come to an impasse. @JTXR if you are a regular MRT user and don't want your existing account littered with scores of sub $1 transactions - could you obtain a 'separate' account used solely for the BTS ? I think part of the limitation of the Mangmoom EMV - is that it requires the 13 digit Thai ID number for registration - With a Yellow House Book / Pink ID card (and 13 digit number) I think non-Thai's can obtain the card under the Pao Tang Pay (digital wallet) system - but it looks like a bit of a faff (setting up a separate Bank account - might actually be simpler !).

Which is fair enough. That said, sometimes the demand for sources drifts into the slightly ridiculous. In a post about the Iran conflict a few days ago I stated that Bahrain was heavily dependent on desalination and as such it was civilian critical infrastructure - a potential civilian target. Someone immediately asked for a source. At some point it gets a bit silly - some things sit squarely in the realm of widely known background knowledge rather than claims that need to be footnoted like an academic paper. Another facet when producing stats is that I can take numbers from various sites and crunch them through Excel to arrive at a set of data that are mutually comparable. The sources of the root information are therefore wide ranging, and listing all of them would take up most of the thread just to quote the base data. These are not publications or dissertations. I’ll quote a source when something is directly quoted, but when the numbers are the result of pulling together several datasets and standardising them, the situation is a bit different. On the fringe sources comment - I get why you draw from them. A lot of what you post is anti-establishment and that sort of information will rarely appear in sources that are more mainstream or widely accepted. Its also why the term “mainstream media” has almost become a slurr in threads like this, as if only information from obscure sites is credible. Which frankly can get just as daft IMO. For clarity, when I say “fringe site” I simply mean lesser known outlets where the information may not yet be widely accepted, independently verified, or even fully proven to be factual yet. That doesn’t automatically mean it’s wrong - but it does mean it probably deserves a bit more scrutiny before being treated as fact. People sometimes forget the internet also has a habit of repeating things until they look true, even when the orginal claim was shaky to begin with.

On that point - it also becomes dangerous. AI can be confidently and spectacularly wrong, yet still present its answers with the polish of authority. The real problem is that it increasingly feeds on its own output. If people use AI to write articles, reports, or marketing copy that contain inaccuracies, those pieces enter the digital ecosystem. Later, AI systems may reference that material as if it were legitimate source content. The result is a bizarre echo chamber - AI citing AI citing AI - where errors are recycled, reinforced, and gradually mistaken for fact. Over time, this creates a subtle but serious risk: misinformation doesn’t just spread - it hardens into something that begins to resemble consensus. It is bad enough when humans circulate misinformation through ignorance, poor education, misunderstanding, or outright malicious intent. But the problem takes on a different scale when machines begin to amplify it. When enough machine-generated text repeats the same mistake, the repetition itself starts to masquerade as evidence. At that point, the distinction between fact and frequency becomes dangerously blurred. What is repeated most often can start to look like what is most true - even when it is simply the product of the same original error being echoed again and again by the machines that were meant to inform us.

Not just Arab Parents with Kids, but a lot of parents don't seem to be able to keep their kids quietly occupied - all nationalities - but the Arabs do kind of take it to a new level sometimes. People always moan about kids on planes. But really - in all the flights I’ve taken, it’s rarely the kid that’s the problem. It’s the parents. A well travelled kid with parents who actually parent is usually fine. When my son was little I had a system. I told him the pilot could see the cabin through cameras in the ceiling. Every now and then I’d have a very serious fake phone call with the cockpit. ... “Hi captain… yes… he’s behaving very well… yes I’ll let him know you’re happy.” Worked a treat. Anyway - actual pet hates. The seat recliner slammers. The plane reaches cruise and BANG the seat comes flying back like it’s been shot by a sniper. Yes yes, it’s their right to recline. But maybe just a quick glance behind first? Just to check you’re not about to crush my laptop or break my kneecaps. Then the people who leap up the moment the plane stops at the gate. Doors still closed. Jet bridge not attached. Nobody going anywhere. But half the plane suddenly stands like they’ve <deleted> themselves. Once I actually had an Indonesian lady basically land on my lap because she was trying to climb over me to get to the aisle. We ended up chatting for a bit which was nice… but that’s really not the point. Baggage carousel huggers are another strange tribe. Instead of standing back they crowd the belt like its the last flight out of Dubai before air-space closes again - its as if they think their suitcase is going to escape. Also the geniuses who put their carry-on anywhere except above their own seat. Six rows behind. Opposite side. Then when the plane lands they fight upstream through the aisle. Bus gates deserve special mention. Absolute misery. Hot bus. Sweaty people. Doors open while everyone waits for the last 4 passengers who were buying Toblerone. Meanwhile the aircraft door is open to the heat and humidity and the cabin slowly turns into a greenhouse. Then you’ve got the crop dusters. Those disgusting pigs who walk slowly down the aisle farting like they’re marking territory. And the snorers. I once had a bloke snoring so loudly he kept me awake. Finally - economy seats. Who designs these things? After about six hours my backside feels like its been sitting on a concrete paving slab. I have to start shifting around like a skeeting dog.

No one should be refused healthcare. Not the vaccinated, not the unvaccinated, and not people who say they’ve been vaccine injured. Medicine isn’t supposed to work on the basis of settling political scores. But the version of events you’re presenting is also a pretty selective memory. During the pandemic most of the debate was about public health measures in the middle of an emergency - vaccination drives, temporary restrictions, trying to stop hospitals getting overwhelmed. That’s a very differnt thing from saying people should be permanently denied medical care. Were there heated comments at the time? Of course there were. People were scared, frustrated, and the internet amplifies the worst takes on every side. But acting like there was some universal movement demanding the unvaccinated be refused treatment isn’t accurate. And the idea that people should now go and “remind” someone who is sick or injured how they felt during an argument two years ago… is a pretty grim way to look at things. Healthcare shouldn’t be about revenge or scoring points. If anything, the whole pandemic should have reinforced the opposite principle: healthcare is there for everyone, regardless of their decisions, opinions, or which side of an argument they were on at the time. Thats kind of the whole point. That said, it also opened a bit of a pandoras box of moral dilemnas - especially when it comes to things like herd immunity, collective risk, and how much individual choice should weigh against public health in a crisis. Those questions aren’t simple, and pretending they are doesn’t help anyone.

So was Jimmy Saville...

As do I... The “AI slop” line is just the latest spin on a very old habit. Before AI became the fashionable accusation, the same sort of people were throwing around “word salad”, “wall of text”, or “pseudo-intellectual waffle”. The wording changes with the times, but the trick is identical - criticise the way something is written so you never have to deal with what it actually says. Longer posts take a bit of effort to read and reply to - its just too much cognitive load. Not everyone wants to put that effort in. It’s easier to wave it away with a label and move on than to engage with the points being made. Calling it “AI” is simply the newest version of that shortcut. The irony, of course, is that the accusation reveals more about the person making it than about the person who wrote the post. You and I have been arguing back and forth for quite a while now - what, a couple of years? During that time I’ve we've exchanged plenty of long verbos posts. Some of them well researched, some of them imperfect, some making strong points, others containing mistakes. That’s what actual discussion looks like. And to confirm the accusations - Yes, of course I use AI tools when researching - Gemini, ChatGPT searches, Google, summarising articles to see whether they’re worth reading properly, pulling out statistics, checking sources. Used properly they’re excellent for saving time and sorting through large amounts of information. Used blindly they can also be wrong, which is why they’re only tools and not substitutes for thinking. But the words themselves are mine. AI doesn’t write my posts for me. Claiming otherwise is just another way of sidestepping the argument. My “word salad” is my own. It may be longer than some people care to read - TLDR is a familiar response. That’s the nature of the internet these days: a world increasingly reduced to one-liners, memes, and neat little binary takes - or, in the case of the anti-vax threads, an endless buffet of memes, Twitter pastes, YouTube clips, and assorted fringe sources, simply copied and dropped into a thread. The result, of course, is that responding properly takes far more time and effort than it took to copy and paste someone else’s material in the first place. Some of us still prefer to write things out properly. So if your criticism is really aimed at those who don’t write their own words, look no further than the author of this thread - copy-paste ad infinitum.

As soon as I read the headline, I was sure this was a GammaGlobulin thread.... I was quite surprised to be wrong !!! GG - you missed an opportunity to post another mundane thread !

“AI” seems to be your all-purpose escape hatch whenever a post contains more words than you can comfortably consume. Congratulations on striving so diligently for mediocrity - whether that’s the fault of your teachers or your genetics, I’ll leave you to decide. Instead of addressing the argument, you simply bleat “AI slop” and toss in a tired Skynet reference - that isn’t even an amusing put-down - try harder at least, make it amusing... All you’re really doing is advertising that you have nothing intelligent to say about the actual point. If you’re capable of responding to the arguments, then by all means do so. If not, the constant cries of “AI” just confirm the obvious - you’re out of your depth.

Noooooo, no - you’ve missed the point, Fredy. The wounds simply weren’t treated properly. It has nothing whatsoever to do with vaccines saving lives. A splash of Dettol, sorry, a rigorous splash of Dettol would have sorted it out nicely.

Is this really the latest attempt at a jibe on this forum now? Any response that isn’t a one-liner or a lazy copy-and-paste from a website is suddenly accused of being AI? It feels rather like the old, tired digs about someone’s wife being “hi-so”, or insinuations that someone must be wealthy - the sort of remarks people reach for when they’ve run out of substance. Is this just the newest form of reverse snobbery - an attempted point-scoring exercise, trotted out because someone was once stung by a fact or a disagreement in the past? There’s no disagreement about the corruption - but do you really think it’s impossible for corruption to exist alongside the ability to deliver genuine benefits to public health? Yes, there are certainly better ways things could be done and clear independent oversight is required. However, the presence of corruption does not automatically mean that profit always supersedes every concern for the wellbeing of the public. Two things can exist at the same time - flawed systems and imperfect motives can still produce outcomes that provide real benefit, and also the opposite is true - but this is not a 'binary issue'.

A bit naïve from behind a keyboard that mike... Take a walk down Walking Street in Pattaya and its difficult to fend people off sometimes - its just a matter of head down, ignore them, head down, hands in pockets on wallet and phone and continue walking through, as they try and reach out, grab your arm, hold you, stand in your way and try and stop you etc.... Its not aggressive - just annoying... in the past they've tried to grope, which means taking the hand out of the pocket to block them... .... Get annoyed with them, they get aggressive... But - its not so easy to prevent 'them' from getting within two meters of you...

I haven’t yet to read the article you linked, but in principle any improvement to adverse-event reporting systems is a step forward. Better reporting, more transparency, and independent oversight are all things I strongly support. I’m absolutely in favour of rigorous, independent research into both the efficacy and the risks of any medication or treatment. That is not controversial - it’s how medicine is supposed to work. Pharmacovigilance systems exist precisely because no drug or medical intervention is risk-free, and ongoing monitoring is essential. That said, it’s also important to understand how these reporting systems actually function. Systems such as Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the US or Yellow Card Scheme in the UK are designed as early-warning signal systems, not as proof that a reported event was caused by the drug or vaccine. As everyone (most) already know by now, anyone can submit a report - doctors, patients, or family members - and the reports are intentionally broad so that potential safety signals are not missed. That means the raw numbers are not evidence of causation until they are investigated and verified through proper epidemiological analysis. This is why large-scale follow-up studies, clinical data reviews, and independent regulatory monitoring exist through bodies like the World Health Organization, European Medicines Agency, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These organisations analyse safety signals across millions - sometimes billions - of doses to determine whether there is a genuine causal relationship. Where I take issue is when fringe websites or advocacy groups selectively present raw reporting data without that context. That tends to create a misleading narrative that implies causation where there may only be correlation or coincidence. Ironically, that kind of distortion undermines legitimate discussion about real safety issues. To be clear - medical history shows that vigilance is necessary. Drugs such as Thalidomide or issues identified with certain medications years after approval are exactly why robust monitoring systems exist. But the solution is better science and better data, not selective interpretation of incomplete datasets. So if the update you’re referring to genuinely improves transparency or strengthens reporting accuracy, then that’s something I would welcome. I’ll read through the material to fully digest it when I have a spare hour.

Fair enough... No rabies vaccination if bitten by a rabid dog. No tetanus vaccination if punctured / stepping on a rusty-nail (thats been in contact with the ground - animal faeces etc) No Hep B vaccination if you getting bitten by a monkey (which may or may not carry the Hep B virus). Got it - No vaccines for anything... they're all one big world wide conspiracy - for Big-Pharma profitability.

This is classic police laziness - No formal complaint made - do nothing. This was not a civil issue. Pickpocketing is theft under the Thai Criminal Code and is a criminal offence prosecuted by the state. Theft is a public offence, which means police have the authority to investigate once a crime and evidence are known - a formal complaint from the victim is not a legal prerequisite for an investigation. While a victim statement is commonly taken to open a case file, presenting it as a legal requirement is incorrect. The police refusing to act without a formal complaint is not a misunderstanding of Thai criminal law its a convenient excuse for doing nothing - laziness.

Only total morons think the evil of the Iranian regime towards their own people is the reason Trump went for this. That’s a very binary way of looking at a far more complicated problem - reducing it to good versus bad misses most of the reality. The issue is layered. It involves regional stability, the risk of nuclear proliferation, Iran’s long-standing support for proxy groups across the Middle East, the nature of the regime itself, and the security concerns of Israel and several neighbouring states who see those factors as an existential threat. Each of those elements feeds into the others. There isn’t a single, neat explanation for why tensions exist. It’s the accumulation of these factors over decades that has created the situation we’re looking at now. Taken together, they form part of a much broader picture of why this regime is widely viewed as a continuing source of instability in the Middle East.

Agreed - but we appear to have a Drivel Engine in our midst who, when faced with reasoned and balanced debate, cannot keep up and so falls back on accusing others of using AI or bots because he lacks the mental tools to follow the discussion.

I don't wish you to get bitten by a rabid dog, scratch yourself on a rusty nail and contract tetanus, contract Herpes B from a monkey bite... But, if you do - you will of course refuse vaccinations, won't you ?.... ... Report back here with your health status and we'll track your progress.... ☠️

I do admire your courage to speak out in the absense of knowledge, its quite interesting what you've done with your education.

Y'reckon... But lets have a 3 page drawn out debate about it !!!...

Bingo! And the award for the idiotic "not a typical white persons name" post of the day goes to ... Bonus points for getting it in early. Its always the same - a forum pattern now - every time a name doesn’t fit the ‘native white’ stereotype, the denial circus begins. Suddenly centuries of national heritage become a magical shield against crime. It’s absurd - but for people addicted to confirmation bias inside their echo chambers, these headlines are cat-nip... Still, credit where it’s due - unlike the UK media- this news article at least had the backbone to print his name, fully aware it would immediately reveal both his race and that he wasn’t ethnically European. Reckon his name was Faisal L’Grenouille....