JackGats

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.

Oh yeah, I'm sure the "children" got abused (whatever that means) especially the 15-year old rugby player who filmed himself rogering the local hoodrat.

Sentenced for harming pixels. Pixels get harmed when human eyes look at them.

At least this time they don't blame cannabis.

Pathetic women? Yeah, but what about men? Men all over the world signing away their sexual rights in their own country, then converging on Pattaya and Angeles City to get laid.

Then what is the point of not losing money to the Thai government if you are going to lose it all to a wife or ex-wife? Men think they are clever doing things "in my wife's name" while all they're doing is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

At last a former beauty who does not disown her own past as soon as she gets older!

I don't trust my own ears that much since I'm sometimes using hearing aids, sometimes not, but I swear Google Translate has a new female voice reading out the Thai. It seems too that the pauses and intonations of the originally recorded speech get reproduced by the voice upon replay (rather than the whole recorded text getting rattled out in one sweep).

Here is a preview of a new smart visa which is in the pipeline for the next batch of new visas to be announced together with the next drawing of the Thai national lottery. Conditions of the new smart visa will be as follows: 1) Having bought 50k baht worth of Thai sandalwood scented candles over the four and a half month preceding the application. 2) Showing a long-term rental agreement of a condo with a swimming pool having at least 160 cm but no more than 180 cm maximal depth. L-shaped swimming pools are accepted. 3) Thai - or Thai accepted - health insurance showing 20k dollars refund against jelly-fish sting treatment (other than box jelly-fish). Visa holders will be allowed to stay in Thailand for 6 months and 23 days each year, with as many re-entries as they like, and their foreign assets* will be exempt of Thai tax. * insofar as they have already been taxed in their home countries.

Definitely worth it. Nasty disease. Some people never completely recover.

Depends on your age. When you reach a certain age your short-sightedness will cancel out with presbyopia. Not having had your short-sightedness corrected may enable you to still be able to read without glasses into old age.