Jonathan Swift

Nonetheless, legal casinos will be like money trees. Historically they became major tourist attractions. My opinion? It will attract a significant number of the total gambling population INCLUDING tourists, who might prefer not to get arrested, and will likely bring in a lot of newbies, many of whom will then proceed to gambling addiction and become lifetime customers who squander every cent they have. This is what happened on the American Indian reservations. On top of that, it's likely that organized crime will try to latch on in one way or another, such as loan sharking to the gambling addicts. It's all the same playbook, but, just my opinion again, the pros usually out weigh the cons. I heard they were going to bring in Bobby Deniro and Joe Pesce as consultants

"to sort the snafu swiftly." WWII era military slang. Who knows what snafu actually means? Hands? (no fair looking it up) Bzzzzzt time's up. Situation normal, all f________d up

nature abhors a vacuum, something will fill in the gaps. I do my own cooking except when I travel, and get food delivered from Tops. They're pretty good but they don't keep a very big inventory in their online location, many items are out of stock and still listed. For 99 baht/month you get free express delivery within an hour. I'm also fortunate in that there is a cheap Thail/Burmese restaurant on the 1st floor of my building along with a mini mart

I have a good "recipe for intestinal issues" passed down from my great grandma. Oh, wait, that was chitlins.

Based on my 68 years on this planet such statistics are of little real use. Except to start arguments between mόrόns (in the case of this forum)

And that means what exactly? Do you actually know the difference between a sitting president literally anyone else? "far behind every other 21st-century president at a similar point. Trump’s approval rating is 44% at almost 100 days in office, compared with 54% for Joe Biden, 62% for Barack Obama and 63% for George W. Bush at the same point." Maybe you should go back to reading the funny papers until you can get into your big boy pants and grasp adult topics.

My scout troop wasn't NAZI, the scoutmaster was a racist redneck ɑsshole, used to talk about n****r camps, which in fact were the temporary housing for the migrant workers who came up from the south to work in the tobacco fields.

Thanks for mentioning it

jeez, get an education

I'm sure that if an American is in Thailand the last thing he'd be thinking about would be the US. That's why I came here 12 years ago, amongst many reasons, and as far as I'm concerned the US doesn't exist. And if he's a stupid drunk American he's likely not aware of much outside of the drink in his hand.

Nice topic to read about over my morning (Thai) coffee

In the case of 7-11, the parent company is, I believe in Japan, the Thai business is a subsidiary owned and run independently. I imagine this is a common model.

I don't know how wide a variation there is, but all of the Thai coffee I've ever drunk has been fabulous. I'm drinking my triple latte as I sit here.

You can still eat their candy bars as well, and drink their cocoa

You gotta love that dime store novel dramatization style!

He's from Sri Lanka, not India. So do tell us all about Sri Lanka. You've obviously been all over the world, oh wise one.

Of course, your home country does nothing of the sort.

That's actually not how economics work. Food and commodities are not the stock market, they don't rise and fall because someone scared somebody. Prices drop with less demand because they otherwise would have too much inventory and not enough buyers and they have to move their inventory by dropping prices. With increased demand prices will rise until buying drops off, and then prices and supply/demand bounce back and forth until they reach reach equilibrium. The simple law of supply and demand. That's your economic lesson for today. What happens in America is also more complicated than you think. Did you actually take some time to research this? It might be worth your while. But expect to spend more than 30 seconds skimming through clickbait headlines. Go back and look what happened to the supply chain during Covid. There were many complicated cause and effect events that overlapped and reinforced shortages and price rises. There were then opportunistic greedy distributors in the middle that gamed the system in their favor, but it still boiled down to supply and demand. That's your college education in economics.

This is price fixing among the chicken cartel, who are deliberately laying smaller eggs to cause prices to rise

They also sell 12 packs so as to not traumatize too many farang

So the world is defined by you as the lefties vs you (and your kind). That is the real problem. Stυpid people who can't understand the world around them who are unable to define that great big baffling world except through simplifying it into an impossibly one dimensional construct. You see and think in only one dimension while the rest of us live in 3 dimensions, including your enemies the lefties. There is simply no way for you and those like you to even function without your construct full of malice and bigotry. Except for the other real problem which is your willful and insensitive ignorance of the meaning and realities of racism and bigotry, and of the suffering of those ethnic groups. . In the past we (including me) laughed at those jokes because we didn't understand how painful and derogatory it was to the people those terms referred to. Most of us eventually grew up to be responsible, respectful, and compassionate individuals and in so doing we learned why those things have no place in modern society. It makes me sad when I see someone like you stuck in a neanderthal world of 100 years ago. Sad for you because you will never know what it's like to be an evolved person who has chosen to grow rather than live forever in a cave of ignorance, and sad for the people around you near and far who have to take in your poison.

This is my 2¢, admittedly this topic has many nuances and hard to pin down if you weren't actually there. I will address the use of the word farang, because some people have made some pretty stυpid references to it based on this story. My experience with Asians has caused my cultural awareness to evolve by way of similar blunders. My view on this story is only based on my own experience, and my view is therefore limited and probably of little value. I think the bottom line is being sensitive and aware of what might be offensive. Overreacting doesn't help. I've never been told by Asians that anything I said was offensive, I made my own determinations after the fact. I have in fact made some stupid blunders in the past. I did quite a bit of research on the word farang, as well as paid close attention to how it was actually around me for the last 12 years. I have found nothing anywhere that indicates it is a derogatory word in and of itself. 99% of it boils down to how it is used, what context, and what the intent is behind it. I never felt disrespected by it, and I accept that Thai people may use it any way they feel and want. As to ni hau, I've learned not to use greetings in other languages unless I know the proper nationality of the person first. I don't see any reason for someone to have an outwardly hostile reaction to the phrase ni hau under any circumstances. It's not inherently anything but a polite greeting. A dirty look would have been sufficient, or the person could simply have been corrected on the spot.

So, are you one of the ones who cries "racism" every time a farang is pulled over fro a traffic ticket?

Pretty straightforward. There are not that many parts that can fail. Brake fluid leak, failed wheel cylinders, ruptured brake line, possibly failed power steering. I've done a lot of brake jobs on all kinds of cars, drum brakes, disk brakes, cylinder replacement, new brake lines. It would be obvious.

I'm an American, this subject is so done to death, it's mentally unhealthy to let any of it occupy your mind. First and foremost nobody on this side has any clue what's really going on there unless they've lived there. Have your opinions, OK, but keep them to yourself. A lot of Americans need to get counseling. More than ever before. Americans in the US are suffering great anguish over what this guy is doing, what they know he will do, they are trapped and screaming at the top of their lungs, they can't stop reliving the horror 24/7, but can accomplish nothing with their protests until the next election. We all know who and what he is, what he promised to do, the revenge he has sworn to inflict which he is doing now, none of anything is any real surprise. He has set fire to everything, he will burn it to the ground. He will pave over democracy and turn the white house into his own casino. I came here 12 years ago to have a nice happy life unstained by the toxic disease consuming America, I'm 68, and I'm not going to save the world by giving this topic a minute of my time. I do good wherever else I can whenever I can. As of this moment I go back to kicking that topic out of my mind, and investing my energy in worthwhile things. To you Brits and others, try to resist the temptation to bring this topic up with any Americans you might meet. Very bad idea to stir up this pain.