milesinnz

what we have, in effect, are children in adult bodies, and "someone stole my toy" - this is the mentality and the level of immaturity that is endemic in the males of Thailand.. and of course it's the same in Cambodia. I cannot speak for other countries in the region as I have no knowledge.

14 hours ago, CK1980 said:

nah. 

smartphones and social media are much worse...

oh... do you take them intravenously or do you snort them ?

I wonder what happened to the submarine ? maybe it is a stealth submarine so we won't hear any more about it ?

It would be interesting to know why Chinese need to enter Thailand illegally ?

I had virtually no family from when I was about 10. The story was enough to give a psychologist a full blown breakdown right in front of me. He was covering his face as he was balling his eyes out - so I quietly got up and left the room. I don't really feel that sorry for myself as I have met many people much worse of than me - and they did have family. As younger people we all need mentoring and usually that comes from psychologically healthy parents - but it does not have to be them. I regret there was no one just to give me a few hours of advice and how different my life would have been. Now at 70, I seem to spend all my time mentoring others - and here we are mostly talking adults. I support some long term prisoners in NZ - as a mentor more than anything else. The crazy thing is, when I was a teenager, all I wanted was a girlfriend. Now in my old age - I am surrounded by girls - and no, it most certainly is not for money. I even have a 7 year old Khmer daughter. She is the only person I will call my family. I choose to remain "non family" even when I get offers all the time to be part of someone's family. I have to say for all their good intentions, I do not trust them if the chips were down. I write on crime, social issues and psychology. I am constantly learning. And it has just occurred to me that western children when they become older, as in mid teens and later do tend to have unrealistic expectations of their parents. They expect their parents to be "perfect" and when they are not, they feel they have been cheated. I do see a lot of lonely people in social forums. I think they are often consumed by fear, fear of (further ?) rejection and thus so not try to reach out to people on a very personal level - which means exposing just who you are - and hence they will stay the way they are. When I am trying to teach "my prisoners" how to be heard and express themselves, and they start to do it, and I have to point out where they need to improve, I remind them that it has taken me 25 years to get the communication skills I have and for them not to expect to get there in two years. Another point I like to make is "we spend all our lives learning the lessons we need to learn, then we die and the next generation have to start all over again".. crazy eh ? but then we are only random cosmic accidents made from star dust to which we will return...

I put a question to chatGPT "what is the probability of a Great Depression 2". Initially it replied 50%. But chatGPT is programmed not to offend and upset people so - I cannot remember the exact words, I challenged it with facts, then it changed it's view to 90 to 95%.. and apologizing and gave some sort of explanation as to why it does not look at facts critically which I had forced it to do... chatGPT does carry with it a lot of social dangers if you just take what it says uncritically.. but the one thing it cannot do, is to run away - so you can bring it to account and get some sort of "real" answer. I listed the many similarities to the 1929 Great Depression. Some are quite striking like the introduction of AI. The introduction of the tractor in the 1920's led to a huge loss of jobs as horses were no longer needed - not unlike the manufacturing changes we are seeing now. Nothing needs to be said about the dangers in the financial markets particularly with the very very high levels of private debt... so an economic storm in Europe would be par for the course - and it will not only be Europe. Of course many less than first world countries are already in economic hurricanes.. South Africa, Pakistan, most of South America and and other parts of Africa...

3 hours ago, ravip said:

You mean to say, you by passed your bank (card issuer) and claimed from Visa direct?

I don't know who paid in the end.. I was eventually handed to my Banks Visa department. They told me to contact Visa International (gave me an email address), then I got my refund - but it could have been the Visa International department of my Bank - I don't know for sure - but I kept the email address !!!