JackGats

Do you own 600k USD in shares? How do you bring that to Thailand?

Indeed this "only some aspects" is what enables some countries to proudly claim "prostitution is legal" while in fact it isn't. In Belgium and Portugal prostitution has officially been legal for decades but local authorities are free to withhold permits for prostitution venues as well as for privately operating escorts, and local authorities do so more often than not. In France or Sweden women are free to prostitute but men are not allowed to pay for a prostitute: what kind of fool does one need to be to consider this as meaning prostitution is legal? And so on and so forth. Meanwhile in some countries like Uganda, Madagascar, Kenya ... prostitution has always been illegal but it is all over the place. P.S. My initial point was that "1st World" countries should not (or no longer) be hailed as libertarian countries in matters of prostitution (nor of hetero sex for that matter).

Lists are all very well but they don't mean much. France is on the list with its Nordic model. You can google "nordic model" if you don't know what it entails. What is the US doing on the list? Yes I know, prostitution is legal in Nevada and Puerto Rico. Big deal. Thailand being on the list in spite of prostitution being officially illegal in Thailand shows what an inconsistent hodgepodge such "lists" are. This is somewhat reminiscent of the lists of "10 best countries to retire in", with 8 of of 10 countries being ones where they tax your world-wide income at an extortionate rate.

What 1st World are you talking about? The US where banning prostitution is state of the union mission statement number one? Scandinavia and the EU where the "Nordic model" (ie the most repressive regime ever) is being adopted by one country after another? You are right if only insofar as legalization means "rendering it inaccessible". Accessible and affordable prostitution is now a feature of 3rd World or emerging countries, not of 1st World countries.

Better criminalised but largely tolerated than legalised but heavily regulated. This is especially true of course if legalisation means criminalising one side of the transaction ("Nordic model").

I suppose you use it with your own crypto wallet? My feeling is that BC exchanges can be as devious as banks when it comes to freezing your account.

Except in Thailand you can still walk into the bank and have your problem taken care of. Which is more than you can say for many banks in other countries. Even non-direct banks, ie banks that have high-street branches, will not do much if you have a technical problem. And if you want cash they will refer you to the nearest ATM, too bad if your ATM card doesn't work.

Ok, so US as bad as the EU. Western countries are now screwing their own citizens. From what I see around me Russians have it easier with settling wherever they want and accessing their money. We are now in an inverted Cold War World. Our beloved "democracies" are restricting our freedom. Soon they will start refusing to issue us with passports.

Count yourself lucky not to be from the EU. At least as a US citizen you can still open a US bank account while living in Thailand. Once EU expats lose their EU accounts, there's nothing for it but to bank only in Asia (how do you transfer an EU stock portfolio to Thailand?), or go back and live in the EU for one fiscal year in order to open <deleted>load of new accounts before becoming moving out again. Yes, setting up call-centers manned with employees who know little and can do little is the new way for bank to cut costs these days. The day crypto takes over and all banks vanish will be a victory for mankind. I'm not even a crypto investor, I missed that band-wagon, but I now understand why long term there's no alternative to crypto.

I have the impression that Google Translate works better on my Galaxy since I opened Live Transcribed in the background (rather than leave it buried within the Accessibility Settings). Could Live Transcribed be an enabler for audio-to-text applications?

I'll give it a try, thanks. P.S. Strange, when I tried to download Live Transcribe, it turned out it was already on my phone. Were other apps using it in the background? However, I can only access it through Google Play Store. The app is invisible in my settings. OK, now I get it. It was tucked away under "Accessibility" in my Android settings! I managed to get it to produce an icon on my home screen.

Google Translator has a major flaw: when used to translate speech to text, it often doesn't start translating after you launch the microphone. It stalls and registers nothing, Arrrgh! If used to practice listening on the headlines in Thai, I'd say it will leave you high and dry in one spoken sentence out of three. Here's a speech-to-text app that seems to do a much better job:

I don't wish for the baht to become too weak. A strong baht keeps the cheap hordes away.

Quote: "A 10% increase in the baht’s exchange rate combined with a 10% decrease in the dollar will raise production costs by 20%." Poor English. "Production costs" should read "export price of domestically manufactured goods".

In life you cheat if you can afford to do so. Otherwise you don't.

DoxyPrep is all the rage right now. Doesn't protect against resistant gonorrhea though.

Some people can't stomach the choking on the smoke/tar emanating from a bong. I fail to see the economic incentive in synthesizing THC. How can synthetic cannabinoids turn out cheaper than THC extracted from weed (given that "actual weed is legal, plentiful and expensive")? A cursory look at the literature doesn't give the impression synthesis is cheap or easy: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2020/ob/d0ob00464b Synthetic cocaine also exists. Only it turns out even more expensive than smuggling the stuff at great risk and cost from South America.

The only way so smooth out currency fluctuations is to hold buffer cash in different currencies. Holding above 1 million baht left over from months ago in a Thai bank account is protecting me - for now at least - from the strengthening of the baht. Not to mention that if the baht strength reduces the influx of tourists, I may get less worse hotel deals.

I sure would like to know what other punters have to say about this. Of course there may be a reluctance to testify given the legal status of said items.

Well, from my limited sample (five or six pieces over a couple of years), they work as they should. I don't think Thai shops are importing fake THC vaping pens. More like importing real ones to sell at a premium.

What do they contain then? Something that works just like THC. Funny how they manage to make fake goods that work just like the real deal.

Edible = delayed onset, longer high (5 hours instead of 3)

I'm referring to kratom "tea", the strong dark orange brew they sell in plastic bottles. After I drink the whole lot I stop passing water until well into the next day, in spite of the added liquid I take into my system. Then during the next day I urinate frequently throughout the day but only bit by bit. What's happening here? It is somewhat reminiscent of rhabdomyolysis, when the kidneys stall owing to too many proteins in the bloodstream. I googled kratom in relation to kidney issues but I could only find kidney issues related to chronic daily usage. Could this be related to kratom's constipating impact, I mean water being retained in the gut rather than absorbed and eliminated?

You mean what does it have to do with another (middle-aged) man being put through hell just for looking at patterns of electrons on a screen.