jas007

Do you agree that if the value of the dollar decreases, the price of oil will rise? If so, then at some point, the $600B might not be so much any more. Right? Surely you don't believe that if the dollar is slowly depreciated over the next 10 years by money printing, then the price of oil will drift lower as well?

It's not as if all that money will be invested tomorrow, right? It's a long term strategy. As for the price of oil going higher? No problem. Of course it will. Let Trump be Trump and watch him continue to destroy the value of the US dollar. Of course the price of oil will increase. Or rather, the purchasing power of the dollar will decrease. Either way, the Saudis can afford it.

I think you can hire a car from Pattaya for around 3300 baht. Or, you can go to Bangkok and take a train to Hua Hin. The cost of the train ticket is almost nothing. I was actually thinking of doing that just the other day. There's a new express train from Bangkok. The only drawback is that the train leaves early in the morning? You would have to spend the night in Bangkok. A guess you could call it an adventure.

I remember one time in TQ on Beach Road, back 25 years ago, there was a girl dancing during the day that was supposedly 49. She didn't look it, though.

That seems to be the prevailing wisdom. But the people that think like that seem to be focused on the US dollar as the world reserve currency. But will it collapse all at once? Or just fade away? If history is any guide, it'll just fade away. Little by little, it will become less relevant. My only hope is that I won't be around for any sudden collapse.

Breakfast today and tomorrow: Australian grass fed ribeye. Maybe some eggs, a naval orange, and some coffee. I was at Tops in Central Festival the other day and the girl behind the counter looked at me like I was nuts when I ordered three. I forget the cost , but I bought those and a bunch of other junk and the grand total was around $108 US dollars. I guess the three steaks were half of the total. I can live with that.

Trump is just being Trump. And anyone with a brain would know that Trump would always be Trump. Your best bet would be to pay no attention. Does that make any sense?

Yes, but if you get repeatedly "divorce raped," how do you take care of your kids?

But that's exactly what it is. It's a contract. Unfortunately, at least for now, a contract with no expiration date. To be sure, some people have all sorts of rationales as to why it's more than just a contract, but that's all they are. Rationalizations. Anyway, at this point, none of this affects me. There are still girls chasing me around, but I have a conscience. I could have a girl living with me by tomorrow. And I could get married, have kids, and have lots of fun. And I would surely drop dead long before any of them turned into old ladies. But how would that be fair to them? Or any kids? I'll pass.

I understand, I really do. I lived through that as a kid. It happened to my mother. My father was one of the best in the world in his field. One of a handful in the world. My mother was as good, if not better, in the same profession. And yet she chose to marry my father and stay at home and raise two boys. Her choice. And when there was a divorce 15 years later, she had a problem. It never affected me, financially. My father paid child support in an amount that would be considered humongous, today. And he paid to educate myself and my brother. No questions asked, at least through undergraduate school. Anyway, my point was this: what if marriage was redefined? What if there were no lifetime contracts? That may sound unfair, but would it be, if everyone knew the deal going n?

Yes, I live in Thailand, and yes, I've experienced power outages and internet outages. But everyone knows those are just temporary glitches. Small localized outages. Just the other day, my internet went out. It was fine on my phone, but the 5G in my condo wouldn't work. I finally just turned off the computer and went to lay around the pool. By the time I got back, everything was working again. One time in Phuket, the power was out for the better part of a day. But they told everyone that was going to happen, in advance. They were doing some work on the electricity in the area. In America, that kind of thing doesn't happen, but for a natural disaster or a grid failure. Hurricanes, tornados, floods. All understandable. But sometimes, it's more widespread and can mean trouble. Anyone remember the 1977 blackouts on the East Coast? Lightning hit a power station somewhere and a cascading effect shut down a large section of the power grid. It was a mess.

When you talk about marriage, you're talking about a contract. And in most cultures and for most purposes, that contract never expires. It's a lifetime contract. Let's suppose I don't have a problem with the concept of marriage, as such, I just object to the terms of the contract. Let's further suppose that I might be OK with a contract that expires after five years, let's say, with an option to renew if both sides are agreeable. Get married and see what happens. It the contract is not renewed, that's it. Over. Done. Finished. As if it never happened, for purposes of the legal system. Not unlike a longterm apartment lease that the landlord doesn't want to renew. In the case of a renewable contract, I'd be fine with the concept of marriage. My problem is with the legal system and its enforcement mechanisms. My guess is that you wouldn't like a short term marriage contract. You rolled the dice and won, and you want to lord that over everyone else as if you had a crystal ball and would always have been able to choose correctly. Don't kid yourself.

To be sure. There's lots of blame to go around. Different legal systems. Different cultures. In any event, I was at work one day and had a moment of clarity. There was no way I would ever trust my freedom to chance. No way I would ever turn my life over to a legal system that was rigged. If that meant never being married in this lifetime, then so be it. And here I am, almost 50 years later and I don't regret it at all.

You're probably right about that, I hope. But it is a very real possibility. Have you ever been in an area that had a power blackout? One minute, everyone is in the grocery store, ready to check out. And then, nothing works. And so you leave your groceries in the cart and drive home. And on the way home, no traffic lights. And when you get home, no electricity. No nothing. That happened to me one time. Fortunately, the situation resolved after a few hours, but what if it hadn't? No one was really prepared.

Fine. I'm pretty sure, though, you haven't seen what I've seen. What kind of childhood did you have? How many times did your father lose half of everything he owned in a divorce settlement? How many divorce cases have you looked at? The legal files? The reality of what happens when two people decide they hate each other. Maybe you dodged the bullet. Misogyny? Not really. Just someone who recognized a broken system early on. I won't go into too much detail, but in one of my very first jobs after law school, that's all I dealt with every day. Divorced people. Divorced people who hated each other. One time I counted the file cabinets. 75 file cabinets filled with divorce paperwork. And every six months, half of those file cabinets had to be emptied out and the contents placed in storage, simply to make room for all the new cases. For me, it was just a job. They paid me money, I did the job, and at the end of the day, I went home. But I did notice what was happening to men, primarily. They were up against a rigged system. And for them, there was no escape. One time, I sent a guy a letter about his divorce, and when he received it, he went into his back yard and blew his brains out. I could sit here all day and tell you crazy stories, just from my own person experience. One of my friends was once handling a simple divorce case. The man was not from the USA and didn't want to comply with a court order giving his wife custody pf his kids. He wanted to take his kids back to the Middle East. What did he do? He killed them all. Wife and two kids. Problem solved? If your life turned out OK, great. You dodged a bullet. But I'm sure if it had turned out otherwise, you'd be one of the first people to complain.

I understand. You may be right, but I think I have a point as well. Extreme maybe, but possible. Do you take medicine? Do you need anything made of plastic? Do you consume anything that was transported to your place? Where does your pension come from and how is it paid? What if your Thai bank account was worthless and could no longer be accessed? People seem to think they can disconnect from an irrelevant grid while the grid continues to function, providing them with banking services, medicines, and other of life's necessities. We saw how that played out in America, during COVID. People with office jobs stayed home and played around online, collecting their stimulus money and paychecks. And yet some people continued to work, collecting the garbage, driving the trucks, keeping the power grid operational, picking the crops, and so on. Everyone pretended that wasn't happening, but those people were there, keeping the world from collapsing. Many of them illegals who had np real choice.

Maybe, but it's probably the other way around.

I must be one of the only people here to have never fallen for the marriage trap. I almost did, about 24 years ago, but I came to my sense before it was too late.

And what do you do for money? How do you pay whatever bills you have? Let's assume that, beginning in a few hours, you had no access to the internet, no access to ATMs, and no one would be depositing any money into your accounts ever again, especially from any source in America or any source reliant on Central Bank functionality. Maybe you could barter with the neighbors. Maybe trade a few of your chickens for some rice or whatever. And you had to go to bed when there sun went down, because there is no electric grid and no electricity. Unless of course, you have some sort of solar electric supply, but even that requires batteries that can hold a charge and occasionally need replacement. Could you handle all that?

I understand what you're saying. Self sufficient countries. But the world is now global, and it might not be so easy to go back. Sure, globalism can be rolled back somewhat, but that's about it. Whether you know it or not, you're still dependent upon it. There are some parts of the planet that have indigenous populations with no prior contact to civilization. They might as well be living in the Stone Age. But that's not you.

Any dog can snap and turn into a wild animal at the blink of an eye, ready to kill. The only question is, how much damage they can do. I once had a crazy cocker spaniel. 99% of the time, he was OK. But he was also certifiably nuts and could turn into a little monster that would kill you if he could. He was banned from any place I ever took him. Groomers, kennels, etc. Anyway, pit bulls really can kill. And they do, on occasion. They might as well be a dangerous explosive, ready to explode. The people who think they're nice dogs and whatever problems exist are the fault of the owner? They haven't been around to see what happens when the explosive device detonates.

I just looked at the list. Looks like a joke to me.

Believe me or not. If I come across the information again, I'll post it. If not, don't believe me. I don't care. Sooner or later though, you'll find out.

I don't think it's an either/or situation. For example, Trump may well think he's thinking for himself, but maybe that's not entirely true. Perhaps he's just a "useful idiot" as the saying goes, being manipulated by the machine? Some people think that, I'm sure. Anyway, the larger discussion here is about artificial intelligence, its progression, the advent of Quantum computers that actually work, and the significance of Quantum entanglement, etc. Einstein called the supposed theory of Quantum entanglement "spooky." He understood the concept, but he couldn't explain it. At the time, Quantum computers didn't exist to investigate. In 1935, a physicist named Schrödinger came up with a thought experiment. Anyone that's interested should look that up. It's important. Also interesting is the "Double Slit" experiment from 1801. Anyway, the world now has Quantum computers that can reliably analyze data and can prove some of the earlier theories. And apparently, the universe can spawn intelligence independently of any human interaction. Or perhaps, that intelligence is always there and we're ll just receptors.

Unfortunately, there's probably no good halfway solution. It would be nice if there was, but how would that work? Electric, water, petrol, fresh organic fruits and vegetables? Where do you think all that stuff would come from? How would it be manufactured and transported? And what about all the people who could no longer afford to live without a first world economy and its industrialized agricultural production? In the USA, those people are already living on borrowed time and borrowed money, and the country is still functional, more or less. But it's slowly slipping away from them. Take away the existing structure and all hell would break loose. Whatever "prepping" anyone did wouldn't be enough. It would be Mad Mex on steroids. Even for the people living in Thailand, out in the sticks and away from the rat race. They, too, would be affected. What would they use for money? How would they protect it?