JackGats

I'm surprised no one is warning about oil spills. It should be only a question of time before a major environmental catastrophe happens. I wonder who has more to lose in an oil spill, the Iranians or the other countries?

Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism. The fems in Sweden don't want swedish men to come and spend their money (on girls) in Thailand or anywhere else. The war on cash is a war on sex-for-money.

Time for Thailand to call in the Iranian ambassador for a talk?

Pity you transfer small amounts, as opposed to say 10k at a time, for which I find Commerzbank to be optimal.

"Walkable city" means a city with a few hundred meters you can walk. The only extensive walkable spots in Thailand are the shopping malls.

The bunker-buster bombs (ordnance dildos) can carry nuclear warheads apparently. That would be the only way to make sure Iran's nuclear program is destroyed and buried for good. I see the US and Israel up a certain creek without a paddle.

The Western media deceived themselves and their public again, like they did with Ukraine. The Iranians overwhelmingly support their Mullahs and Guards. Not even the "oppressed women" are predominantly against the regime. The streets are full of women veiled from head to foot waving portraits of Khamenei, just like they were waving portraits of Khomenei some decades ago when the Shah was toppled. The West was blinded and trapped by its own propaganda.

I booked my flight to Jakarta and back around Songkran.

Phonak seem to be represented in Thailand: https://intl.phonak.com/en-th/

In the good old days rivalry between mongers in Thailand was unthinkable. There were more than enough young hotties to go round. They were dirt cheap and so were hotels. Things have changed. Tempers run high.

Biggest concern is how to continue justifying that rotten deal called "Life" everyone swears by.

It will become a killing field if it becomes one-way. The two-way chaos is the only thing that slows down traffic right now, preventing serious accidents.

I'm all for disposing of Khamenei, but attacking while negotiations are going on is not cricket

If your knees are not good you cannot really walk for long. Changing your gait and body posture while walking can sometimes help. So can walking on irregular terrain, as opposed to walking flat where the strain is stricly repetitive.

This remind me of when I was taking psyllium (Plantago ovata) daily as an anti-constipation supplement. It makes your turds into floaters.

I often hear such bravado, including from people who have two weeks' sleepless nights in the run-up to a dentist appointment.

As I explained in some previous post, my plan is to simply declare a mid-year remittance as though it were taxable. If challenged I'll say I laboured under the illusion that remittances from same year's money were taxable regardless of LTR (= I'll use the "money earnt in previous years" charade as an excuse). I won't be able to test this before 2027 though, since I understayed the 180 days in 2025 owing to my hassle last year with TRD which made me doubt I was tax-exempt at all. Does a WP-LTR visa allow any domestic income apart from investments?

Alas, from my own experience it seems you need more than simply file. You need to pay some tax however small. The office that sends out tax residency certificates wants to see the receipt of your tax payment (and doesn't seem willing to consider your 10% dividend tax on your Thai stocks).

I wonder whether we are required to present proof of health insurance again in cases where the health insurance said "insured for life".

Question: why did DNA colonize the Earth? Answer: because it could Life has no meaning. It's only apparent purpose is the maximization of physical and psychological suffering.

European exporting companies, which are the ones quoted on the stock exchange, are faced with the same uncertainties as US companies because of Trump's tariffs.

This is perhaps only a consequence of a shift away from big tech and AI. All big techs are US. All big IA players are US.

That's one thing in which I find Thailand lacking. Not only will cab drivers refuse to use meters, but they will scare away app drivers from certain pick up points. I no longer take buses from Suvarnabumi or Ekamai to Pattaya because when the bus drops me off at the Northern Pattaya bus station, no Bolt driver dares come and pick me up there because of the taxi/songthaew mafia. Traffic is worse in Jakarta than in Bangkok of course, but taxis in Jakarta do not scam, and apps work well with credit cards. Ueber in Brazil is super efficient and cheap, with rides booked from the credit card.

Lord Mandelson under investigation over allegations he shared market-sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein. Sources say no suspicion of sex crimes. Exactly what I thought: proxy charges for non-existent sex crimes. Sharing "sensitive information" means some kind of insider trading. Insider trading is how leaders in the US congress get rich. Pelosi comes to mind. All of a sudden this becomes a big thing when the name "Epstein" crops up in some email.

There is hardly any substance to the Epstein scandal. The blackmail operation didn't happen, there was no organized provision of girls to famous men, and it's dubious whether Andrew is even "guilty" of seeing a 17-year-old escort since Virginia Guiffre is so unreliable prosecutors wouldn't even have anything to do with her for the Maxwell trial. They did one interview with her and realized she can't keep a coherent story of any kind of victimization.