Lacessit

Once or twice a day, my service provider of the internet connection to my laptop I am typing this response on freezes. According to the wireless connection, it's fine. Green lights all over the router I use. I then have to disconnect power from the router, and reconnect after a minute to reset the system. So yes, I have multiple experiences of internet failures, and it's not my imagination.

I have back problems. Standing in line at a checkout causes increasing pain, which is only relieved by being able to sit down. That's why I find waiting for imbeciles so inconvenient, and reject your assertion people with phones don't fumble. My experience says otherwise.

I am wondering how many Ayn Rand disciples are on this thread.

I love anatomy, especially that of women.

Small shops don't.

Nice of you to convert my adequate motor skills to superior ones. Twist other people's posts much? So to satisfy all you advanced technological wizards, I am supposed to fumble out my glasses to read the screen, select the app with over-sized fingers, and wait for my service provider to boot up a system that has more holes than Swiss cheese for any hacker or skimmer. Why do people like you want to foist an inconvenient and unwanted technology on others? As far as record-keeping goes, I can tell you how many baht I have spent each month for the past 7 years. I start with a cash amount on the first day, count the cash I have left on the last day. It's not rocket science. Your post does nothing to resolve my problem of incompetents paying with phones.

We all hope that, but don't get much choice in the matter. Except for psychiatrists, where attendance is optional.

A countervailing effect in Greenland and Antarctica is albedo. Being white, ice reflects solar radiation. Black rock exposed by ice melting absorbs it. Between 2002 and 2023, the Greenland ice cap lost 270 billion metric tons of ice every year. Greenland is currently 20% exposed bedrock. It's another tipping point.

I have two debit cards, Australian and Thai banks, as a last resort. I am sufficiently organized to never run out of cash in one day. My motor skills are good enough to hand a checkout chick the required amount in cash in a few seconds, which is why morons with phones irritate me. I live in hope a hacker will breach banking phone apps, so I can enjoy the subsequent wailing Greek chorus on ASEAN.

My urologist in Australia has the qualifications FRCS, FRACS. That's as high up the medical tree as one can get. He's also one of the nicest people I have ever met, Malaysian Chinese. Every time he performs a cystoscopy on me, "obstructive prostate" appears on the post-op report. I have been on finasteride or dutasteride for about 8 years, for BPH. I pee about 2-3 times a night. I asked him if having a TURP would be a preferred option. He said in his experience, 90% of TURP patients develop one or more complications. It did not matter what ablation procedure was used. His advice was to stick with the medication for as long as possible, and regard surgery as a last resort. This is a surgeon who makes over a quarter of a million dollars a year from surgery. My only annoying side effect of finasteride/dutasteride is a significant reduction in libido.

My oncologist sits in a chair all day talking too. I would probably be dead without the medical science she used.

Quite true, scientists are usually not well paid. One has to enjoy the work one does. I did it well enough to get paid above the odds, after saving the company I worked for a lot of money. I made myself quite unpopular with several engineers and one purchasing manager, when my findings conflicted with what they had down as holy writ.

If that's what you learned, you did not become a scientist. You became a PR guy.

Not just the islands......

While the Cambrian period was great for plant life, we are not plants, and we don't have exoskeletons. False equivalence. You post omitted to mention the Cambrian era ended with a mass extinction.