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Florida is such a litigious state that the big insurance companies will no longer insure homes there. So now he wants to accomplish what by creating more phobias about vaccines? De Santis complains about misrepresentation. It's ironic because he had a 2-hour televised presentation with the three academics promoting the Great Barrington Declaration which advocated that unvaccinated people get infected while isolating old and other vulnerable people. Experience with infected nursing homes, long Covid, and multiple infections of the unvaccinated showed that Great Barrington was bogus, yet De Santis gave these people another opportunity to mislead ignorant Floridians.

I read the JHU article and reviewed the referenced Science article . The inference of early cases in proximity does not take into account the other virology lab located 300 yards from the market. These articles are by no means a "death knell for any alternative theories". It seems too late to uncover any smoking gun on site, but further understanding of differences between wild strains and the Wuhan virus may help to understand how the Wuhan virus emerged. This review is a good analysis of spillover vs lab leak: https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2022/02/11/book-review-viral-the-search-for-the-origin-of-covid-19/#more-16352 Here is another that has generated a lot of interest: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/10/covid-origins-investigation-wuhan-lab

There is no firm evidence for zoonotic transmission, and direct transmission from bats to humans was known by Batwoman for several years before the pandemic.

The last time I looked, Fedex was going to cost around $100, so I was going to try USPS Priority Mail International ($42 and up), said to take around 10 days. It was sent instead by regular international mail and finally came a month or so later. While waiting for that and being in a hurry I tried Priority Mail Express International ($71 and up). That took just a few days, and there was tracking. https://www.usps.com/international/priority-mail-express-international.htm#2 https://www.usps.com/international/priority-mail-international.htm

Just to maintain the context, we are discussing Lindsey Graham's proposed Federal law limiting abortion to 15 weeks. The Court could just as well declare an Act of Congress unconstitutional as declare a previous opinion of the Court as wrongly decided, since it has now created a precedent based on originalism and the power to regulate abortion now goes to the states by default (10th Amendment). So the law formalizing a right for same-sex marriage was drafted so as not to infringe on the newly created Dobbs precedent. The debate about states' rights go back to the beginning. The original attempt to unite the states was the Articles of Confederation, in which the states were sovereign. During the drafting of the Constitution, there were concerns about the Federal government being a threat to individual rights, so the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were passed in 1791. While the main concern was individual rights, the 2nd and 10th Amendments clearly concerned the rights of the states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#To_maintain_slavery Court decisions (until recently) and Federal law have generally tended to protect individual rights, in conflict with state laws that were/are oppressive. This is a total turnaround from the expectations when the Constitution was promulgated. After all the machinations of the Republican-controlled Senate in preventing Obama from appointing to two Court vacancies, I suggest that it's no longer the GOP but rather the ROP, the Reactionary Opportunist Party. Just as with the Senate, the "principles" that you mention, can be flipped by the Court depending on the opportunity presented by lower courts. I'm not clear which decision you are thinking of when you mention "voting rights" (Voting Rights Act of 1965?).

The Court just threw out Federal regulation of abortion with the rationale that you mention, among other reasons. It has devolved law regarding abortion to the states. It's the same issue whether the time frame is 15 or 26 weeks. I must admit not having seen the text of Graham's bill. It could contain a workaround, but then that would open the door for the states to override this proposed law, as some have preemptively done in their state constitutions. It was anyway grandstanding to get out the vote for the midterms.

It's ironic that Graham was pushing a Federal law so that all states would have to limit abortions to the first 15 weeks. That logic would be unconstituional under the Court's thinking.

Since Trump was in power there have been quite a few cases that were designed to reach the Supreme Court. Cases under the remit of the 5th Circuit Appeals Court (e.g. Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas), whose decisions reliably support the reactionary line. Trump appointed 6, Bush Jr appointed 4, and Reagan appointed 2 of the 16 current judges. Especially where there would be competing cases brought in other (liberal) circuits, the Supreme Court has to get involved to resolve contradictory decisions. With the newly installed reactionaries on the Supreme Court, the Court has killed two birds with one stone. Besides not deciding the issue at hand and opting to overturn Roe outright, they have elevated states' rights to a new level. This turns the clock back to the 1890's and the Jim Crow era. The gay marriage law was worded in such a way as not to give the Court the opportunity to declare it unconstitutional, based on their originalism line giving the states sovereignty over matters that were previously subsumed under the Commerce clause of the Constitution. So now we may have states where God's law is sovereign over secular law. The gay marriage law does not block states from prohibiting gay marriage in their law even though they have to recognize gay and interracial marriages performed in other states. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404/text

Support for upholding a woman's right to choose was 77% (including some who favor additional restrictions). https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-to-keep-abortion-legal-but-they-also-want-restrictions

There was a great program on BBC World recently about Christian Nationalism. Evangelicals in the program said that US laws should conform to the injunctions of the Bible, so will Barrett, Alito et al stop at their Dobbs coup?

Marriage rights could not be on the agenda while Rowe was still out there. Until now, challenges to gay couples were limited to whether a bakery had to serve gay people wanting a wedding cake.

Sorry, only 12 Republicans voted for this bill. Of the other 47, 36 voted against.

The Supreme Court declared state laws forbidding mixed-race marriage unconstitutional in 1967. After their recent anti-abortion decision where Thomas opined that under the same logic mixed-race marriage, same-sex marriage, and contraception decisions could be similarly reversed, Congress is now moving to make laws to protect these rights.

Banks and brokers I deal with give the option of text message or email to send authentication codes. The ones in the US generally don't have fields to enter foreign phone numbers, so I use the email option. Some years ago, with a US regional bank I would periodically have trouble logging on from Thailand because of my Thai IP address, but now they identify me by the computer I'm using, besides then sending an authentication code by email. I usually use a US address with US financial accounts.

SCB and Bangkok Bank have offices in NY, so it used to be possible to wire to the NY branch of SCB/BBL for credit to one's account in Thailand. For many years I did that, but then the originating US bank (JP Morgan) stopped that method, and I started using SWIFT via Citibank.

With ubiquitous mobile phones and social media spreading delusion, it's hard for monks not to be drawn in to meritless amusement including drugs. Maybe society needs to start by reforming the schools. What is happening in the temples is a reflection of society at large.

No, the tax would be $100. It's not much. How much is the broker commission?

Maybe the farmers should open a co-op market and with some profits form their own distribution company to get their produce to the traditional markets. Supermarkets would be much more difficult because of established relationships between Chinese families, I suppose.

The OP could get an account at Citibank in the US. OP could check whether their Thai bank has a correspondent relationship with Citi beforehand, but it is quite likely.

It would make sense to ask the Thai destination bank which are their US correspondent banks. If your account is in such a correspondent bank, the SWIFT transfer is quick and easy to resolve if there is a snafu.

The ARIS IAEA SMR book has over 200 reactor designs. On pages 255 (actually 265) and 267 (actually 277) are thorium designs. Bill Gates has a project in the works, but the Ukraine war is a complication: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/bill-gates-nuclear-startup-wins-750m-loses-sole-fuel-source

No, trade the reactor for the immobile Chinese submarines. Maybe no secrets in the export model, though.

It's normal in the US to inquire about a doctor's success rates in major surgeries. The one time I asked in Bumrungrad, I could feel that the question was not appreciated. Answer: 50-50, while the Johns Hopkins surgeon claimed a 90% success rate, without a robot needed. In the US it can make a big difference where or by whom you get treated, just as here.

The triads go back hundreds of years. Logically, they have been operating in Thailand for a century or more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(organized_crime) This seems quite informative: https://books.openedition.org/irasec/327?lang=en

In Chiangmai I transferred stamps to my new passport, then went to the 90-day drive through window to do the first 90-day report. The next report was rejected anyway, so it might be advisable to do the first report by mail. After the rejection, I sent in a 90-day report by EMS mail and am waiting today for delivery.