Lacessit

Thais will shun any dwelling where someone has died, more so if the death was violent. Up the top of a hill in my GF's village, there is a quite palatial but neglected large house. Looks like it has been abandoned. I was driving past it with my GF one day, and wanted to stop for a closer look. My GF pleaded with me to drive on, saying the house had bad spirits. So I did.

Putin will never be able to move outside Russia again, except maybe to China. The threat of arrest or assassination with a long rifle is too real. Russians should be students of their WWII history. If it was not for the Arctic convoys from the West, and the threats of a second front there, it is highly probable Hitler would have overrun Russia. Putin might not know it; however, he is fighting a war on two fronts, just as Hitler did. The Molotov-Ribbentrop peace accord demonstrated the reliability of such agreements between dictators. Permit me to doubt Russia is withdrawing troops from the Amur River anytime soon, to help prosecute the Ukraine invasion. In addition, Russia could rely on Western efforts to cripple the Nazi war machine with bombing raids, even before Normandy. Now, the West is doing the same to Russia with damaging sanctions. At the height of the Cold War, Russia was importing about twenty optical emission spectrometers from the USA every year. The diffraction gratings in the equipment were used for Soviet ICBM guidance systems, the rest was discarded. Russian technology capabilities were not competent enough to make or copy them. History repeats itself, this time it is the microchips of refrigerators and washing machines.

I suspect Vlad66777 won't be posting for a while, if at all.

Russia is being destroyed too, just not as visibly. Politically, economically, and militarily. Politically, it's a pariah state. It's reduced to begging for ammunition and missiles from the North Koreans, of all people. Economically, no-one is going to trust it as a supplier for a long time. The EU oil and gas market was 70% of its export income. Replacing that income with Chinese and Indian buyers has huge logistical problems, as well as those countries screwing the Russians on price. Most of the Western companies who operated in Russia have departed, Russia's domestic aircraft system will become a lottery as to whether a passenger gets to their destination intact. Militarily, there are few countries that will buy Russian armaments after seeing how easily the equipment is being destroyed on the battlefield in Ukraine. Who is going to want military advisers, when the command structure has been shown to be so incompetent? The reputational damage is massive. IMO Russia will either become a failed state, or a vassal of China. The Chinese probably can't believe their luck, cheap fossil fuel and free lessons on how not to invade a country. The real tragedy for ordinary Russians is it should be one of the most well-off countries, even with endemic corruption. Instead, it is being led back into Cold War privations by a single man, obsessed with restoring an empire which is in the dustbin of history.

Given the average age and income of posters on ASEAN, perhaps the OP should be looking elsewhere to advertise.

The cachet of being a member of a society which has arcane rituals and a dash of elitism appeals to some. Rotarians and Buffaloes are the same. It's really all a bit silly and jejune. Provided it does no harm, no problem.

The landlords would say that if they have to pay for purchase and installation. If the tenant pays, they would want a split system. Window systems are definitely inferior in terms of noise, vibration and efficiency.

Agree, the OP used the term moderately differentiated. Is that Stage 4? I used the term overall, which is the average of all stages.

Overall, you have a 63% chance of surviving 5 years with treatment. I would suggest a PM to Sheryl with a full description of your diagnosis, she can advise the best options inside Thailand for treatment, and their cost. IME pathology and medical feedback in Chiang Rai is very slow, it depends on where you are. Good luck.

"Time crystals do not violate the laws of thermodynamics: energy in the overall system is conserved, such a crystal does not spontaneously convert thermal energy into mechanical work, and it cannot serve as a perpetual store of work. But it may change perpetually in a fixed pattern in time for as long as the system can be maintained. They possess "motion without energy"[16]—their apparent motion does not represent conventional kinetic energy.[17] Recent experimental advances in probing discrete time crystals in their periodically driven nonequilibrium states have led to the beginning exploration of novel phases of nonequilibrium matter.[14] Time crystals do not evade the Second Law of Thermodynamics,[18] although they are the first objects to spontaneously break "time-translation symmetry", the usual rule that a stable object will remain the same throughout time. In thermodynamics, a time crystal's entropy, understood as a measure of disorder in the system, remains stationary over time, marginally satisfying the second law of thermodynamics by not decreasing." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal

Quote: "This article was amended to make it clear that fluctuations in solar activity are in no way linked to global warming. A clarification has also been made as to how significant the drop in solar activity is likely to be."

IMO you are confusing heat and temperature. If the oceans on earth warm by 2 degrees C, it's an insignificant change in temperature. On the Kelvin scale, about 0.7 %. It's one hell of a significant change in the amount of heat stored in the oceans, which in turn causes melting ice, and more violent storms.

Humans and volcanoes produce heat too, about 2%.

Wrong. The sun contributes about 98% of the heat warming the planet. It's the interaction between constant levels of solar radiation and increased levels of CO2 that result in more heat going into the oceans. Warmer oceans accelerate the melting of ice, and also make storms more violent.

There probably won't be another ice age, unless humans manage to create a nuclear winter. Ice is reflective, the term is albedo. When ice melts, it exposes dark rock beneath. Said rock is more capable of absorbing more solar radiation and heat, following the Stefan-Boltzmann law. As permafrost melts, compounds in the ice called clathrates decompose. That reaction releases methane, which is 100 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. There are billions of tonnes of clathrates locked up in permafrost. As Randy Bachman said, you ain't seen nothing yet. It's not a natural cycle of ice ages, it is something humans have created.

Places such as Siberia will probably become more inhabitable. The real problem of climate change IMO will be the mass migrations of humans seeking places where they can grow food, as desertification of arid areas advances.

I guess hitting a tree at 20 km/hr has better outcomes for the driver and passengers than hitting one at 100 km/hr.

TBH, I don't think I was ever a really hard drinker. i think I have been thoroughly plastered about 3 or 4 times in my whole life. I seem to have some internal clock which tells me when I have had enough, be it half a dozen beers or a bottle of wine. I just don't like the feeling of being out of control. Maybe you are right, I can't understand a full-blown alcoholic. We are all are different, if you supplied me with oral demerol you would be hauling me down from the ceiling every day. Oddly enough, morphine as a pain-killer has zero effect on me.

Done deal.

Adults cheerfully send their children to Sunday School or madrassas to be brainwashed, I don't recall children consenting to that either. IIRC, it's the right wing which is most fervent in its support of the various brands of religion.

I don't want to inflame this topic any further. If you don't like my opinion, I have others. Return of sarcasm serve.

I am aware alcoholism is regarded as a disease. I don't buy it, any more than I can buy the proposition smokers can't give cigarettes up. I quit smoking 40 years ago. I have also given up pharmaceuticals such as anti-inflammatories, gastric reflux inhibitors, and blood pressure medications, via diet and exercise. I simply do not need them anymore. Humans are capable of astonishing feats of will. My most vivid memory of my youth, with respect to will, was watching Vladimir Kuts in the 1956 Olympics, grinding his opposition into the track in the 5000 and 10,000 metres. I can appreciate some are not capable of this, and if they find AA helps them, that's fine.

One can't use their sword hand. Most people are right-handed.

IIRC, you have interacted quite intensively with many 30 yo Thai women. They are part of Thai society too.

It is entertaining watching the pro-Trump supporters cluster around anything to do with the name Biden, like crows around an empty rubbish bin. At least the Bidens are not raising funds by selling NFT cards to goobers, which has to be the apogee of tacky.