John Drake

The most effective countermeasure would be to ban the burning right now. Today. Arrest those caught burning and confiscate their land. Anything less is not a serious response.

After 1960.

National news is hard to avoid. As for the local news out of my hometown, I have no idea what is happening.

Myanmar's military government is about to become the most vulnerable "group" in the country. Unless someone sends them some "aid."

Sure glad I got Sinovac, instead of Pfizer/Moderna. I will never take a booster.

Which one goes where?

These people are the end of it all. This is what national collapse looks like.

I suspect that both carry the odor of the nursing home about their person. That things have descended to this state of affairs in American politics is depressing.

Trump and Biden. The two biggest turds left in the bowl.

Do hospitals do so? What if someone dies in a hospital. Do doctors inform the embassy?

Depends on if the death is reported to the embassy in the first place, doesn't it?

Why would major companies committed to clean air standards want to come to Thailand? Would be nice if some grinning idiot somewhere, sometime would do something to stop the burning and turning the air poisonous.

Might look at John Lloyd Stephens' Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, from his and Frederick Catherwood's journeys to the region in 1840-41. What's interesting, aside from the documentation of Maya sites, is the written accounts of just how difficult it was to acquire sufficient amounts of water. The descendants of the classical Mayans were still using their ancestors' extensive systems of underground cisterns and water collection. In some cases, during the dry season, people would need to walk 2 to 6 miles to get water. The area was subject to drought. Even as Stephens and Catherwood were traveling through Yucatan, many, many sites and locales were already in the final stages of disintegrating. This was 1841. Systematic surveys of Mayan archeological sites weren't undertaken until the end of the nineteenth century. How much disappeared between 1841 and 1900? And just to return to the original subject, what goes for Mayans in the Yucatan is at least doubly so for the Amazon.

It's the big Thai agribusiness conglomerates who profit most from the burning.

Want to bet he isn't?

An additional discovery that is only part of an ongoing revision of the study of the Amazon that has been taking place for decades. But another interesting find. This from 2009. .

That, and the American lifestyle leads to inactivity. Air conditioning is everywhere, so there is no "penalty" for being fat and uncomfortable in the heat. And I suspect that a good portion of the population doesn't walk even 100 meters per day. Maybe 5 meters to their car; 10 meters from the car to the workplace, reverse all that; and include 10-15 meters per day from the kitchen to the lounger/sofa in front of the TV. The "workout" comes once per week when they go to Walmart to shop for groceries. (I know this sounds exaggerated, but is it really?)

Where are you going to start? And how much are people willing to pay for increased safety? Many of the people who voice fear over safety concerns would be the first ones to complain about the increased costs of making Thailand safer. To achieve basic safety, you'll need to do a lot more retroactively than raise signs. You'll also need to: * increase the height of balustrades * maintain crosswalks and police them * enforce laws against scooters riding against the direction of traffic * maintain safety standards and inspections (remember the people killed in hotels a few years ago by bug bombs?) Oh, why go on? The list is a mile long. But the point is, if you want all this stuff, you're going to need to pay for it. Who is the first to sign up for their taxes and fees to be increased?

Many, many freelancers out there. Too much competition. It's a race to the bottom in salaries and fees.

I doubt that's true today. Or at least not so "widely spread." Reason? Most people who eat piles of food like that can no longer afford what it costs to eat out. I do wonder when things changed in the US. Back in the 80s obesity was not so much a problem. I'm betting a lot of this can be blamed on millennials. Read a story a few years back where as a demographic group they had stopped eating cereal for breakfast because they didn't want to clean the cereal bowl afterwards. Those aren't the sort of people to cook for themselves.

Makes me long for chicken fried steak.

Walk slower. Scan farther down stream.

That's pretty much the standard response I've received in Thailand. My wife always says, "Your fault. Watch where you're going."

He'll come out dancing like Gene Kelly.

That's a good link. And he's right about the Ro-tel. And, yes, you can store velveeta at room temperature for ages. Here's the Ro-tel page: https://www.ro-tel.com/products