Walker88

Absolutely ! We're number one ! And you know what our very American solution is? MORE guns. Many, if not most countries, have a heinous past. We're a young country, so we have to play catch up. We'll never catch the golden days of Colonialism and Imperialism perfected by the UK, Dutch, Spaniards, French, etc., and nobody is going to beat Nazi Germany for unspeakable horror. Still, we're covering ground. I have noticed, however, that NZ is trying to catch up with mass shootings. On a per capita basis, they might take the crown.

I've seen larger age gaps here, and unless the women are future Oscar winners, they seem smitten. I have to assume sometimes people just click. Also, sometimes there might be daddy or grand daddy issues. Not for me to say or judge. If it works for them, great.

You didn't ask me, but.... Sam Adams Summer Ale, Brooklyn Beer Lager, Erdinger Weissbrau, or Pilsner Urquell.

Companies, yes. And the US remains the fount of innovation and technology. Besides, I'm trying to be polite. I was just lucky materializing on the planet in the US when it was the premier economy and military power. I had nothing to do with it, of course, but for those who need it, it comes with bragging rights. It also can elicit contempt. I try to stay out of the arguments for or against.

It won't be long before we Americans are going to have to learn, as many nations already have learned, what it feels like to be a Has-been Empire. Maybe it's now, but it takes time for it to be patently evident. While some nations never were and never will be, others have their day of reckoning. Such is life.

Victoria's Secret long made the mistake of marketing to men. Eventually they realized their target market is women, in all shapes and sizes. It's not 'woke'; it's business.

Here's one for all the amateur psychologists out there......... This Margot is okay, but wouldn't give me whiplash. Too Caucasian. As a young man I dated a good many lovely blondes, especially during my university summers, when I worked a large ocean beach as a lifeguard. It's either 'been there, done that', or else it began to seem incestuous. I became attracted to variety and 'different'. I think it's instinct....spreading my gene pool far and wide. Maybe it is, maybe not. Give me a Black Olympic sprinter, then I'll go American. Tori Bowie (sad, RIP). Allyson Felix. In my business school class, the only woman who attracted me physically was Chinese. Bedroom eyes. A blonde in my class was my best friend. She was sought after by every other guy in my class. To me, she was like a sister. All of the above is why Thailand is a little slice of heaven. Toss in the concept of 'sanuk', and it's paradise. Just never show them your bank accounts, and you can still pretend they're actually attracted to you. The challenge has been presented in this thread: somewhere around 2075 I'm going to set a record for Greatest Age Gap. That's extra incentive to keep hitting the gym. I want to hear: "You're old enough to be her Great^5 Grandfather!"

I'm American and I can barely understand Texans. Plus, my hair turns gray waiting for them to finish a sentence. We have a range of accents in the US and make fun of the best of them. Here's Boston:

What does 'socially acceptable' mean? We must live OUR lives according to what others think or believe? No thanks. There will come a point when I no longer exist. After that, I will not exist until time itself ends. What anyone thought of me, good or bad, will be absolutely meaningless. Since I know that now, while I still exist, I feel free to live however I choose. Following the laws of society is one thing, but no one is obliged to follow the laws of convention. If a connection is made between two people, age is irrelevant. Maybe it's close, maybe not. As for 'things in common', since this is a Thailand Forum and most posters are Western, there is already a wide cultural gap that limits 'commonality'. Music, politics, popular entertainment, belief systems....these are going to be quite different even if the ages are similar. Two people will be forced to find other things that bridge gaps and meet on some common ground. That can be possible if the age difference is a year or 100 years. As I age I will do what gives me pleasure, and as long as it's within the law, no problem. I have no intention of ever propagating my gene pool, not now nor when I'm elderly, so I won't be leaving any kid fatherless. I like a woman who is positive, has a sense of humor, can dust off after any setback and move forward. Thai women can be sanuk-seeking missiles, and that's attractive to me. Maybe she's 21, maybe 41. As a man, however, I do rather prefer the feel of youth, and I do my part to remain as youthful as possible and not get flabby or weak or require a pill to be able to do the needful. Anyway, it's up to me, not any other person's view of what's 'socially acceptable'.

They wouldn't be censored, they would just broadcast your gullibility. It was a plane. it's on film. Many people watched it from the Mil golf course nearby. Believe what you want if it makes you happy, but what you believe is quite far from reality. Knock yourself silly. If it gives you pleasure to believe nonsense, enjoy.

Our part of the galaxy is about 5 billion years old. Our section of the Universe, with Andromeda and other nearby galaxies, is of similar age. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. It took that long for us to even develop powered aircraft (120 years ago). Any alien life near enough to us so that we might be of interest would be about our age, and assuming the development of living, and eventually sentient beings, is on a similar scale they'd be as advanced as us. The top speed we can muster is about 20,000mph, so just to get to the nearest star would take 220,000 years. That long ago we hadn't even evolved into Neanderthals yet, much less space travelers. Unless nearby civilizations advanced at a much more rapid rate, they haven't been here. On a trip of that length, aliens would likely make sure they had decent pilots, too. In this world, there are several million airplane flights be year (commercial). Maybe one or two crash nowadays. Even Earthling commercial pilots are pretty good, as is the equipment. Aliens would be even less likely to crash, so unlikely any bodies would be found. If an advanced civilization from one of the older galaxies was out and about, they would have 200,000,000,000 galaxies to choose from, and each galaxy has around 1,000,000,000,000 stars. The odds of them choosing to visit our solar system are greater than me picking out one grain of sand on one beach on Earth and asking you to guess which one. The sun is one of maybe 2 x 10^23 stars in our universe. Odds are slim any aliens who choose us.

Here's the secret...there may be mutual hate between putin and the US, North Korea and South Korea, China, or in the past Qaddafi and Saddam, but all agree NOT to broadcast information about all the alien visits, crashed spaceships, dead aliens, etc. We'll go to war with each other and slaughter each other, but we'll never violate our oath of secrecy on all the alien visitations. People might panic !!!!! LOL ! Always 'unnamed officials'. Here's another secret: 'unnamed officials top out at about $200K a year in compensation. Pics of aliens would fetch them millions from TMZ or even a major cable network. That would be a bit better than a pension, plus allow them to move to a country with no extradition agreement. The reason no one has done that is because there are no alien bodies being hid anywhere.

Maybe you couldn't do it, but plenty of older civilizations did do it, especiallly those with no OSHA workplace safety laws and almost unlimited slaves. Advanced civilizations maybe would have left a cellphone or piece of kevlar behind. They didn't, because they were never here.

Oh, I think it will, and be explained in the lifetime of most people alive now, at least those under 70. A great many aspects of existence discovered purely from mathematics have now been proven via the use of the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs Boson was a mathematical construct, but the LHC found it. Physicists and astrophysicists such as Nima Arkadi-Hamad are at work uncovering the absolute basics of existence, and are on the brink of developing a theory for everything. No deity required, but the concept is as difficult to understand for most people as gravity was to those who absolutely knew the Earth had to be flat. Even when science can fully explain everything, there will still be those who need to believe in deities. They need to believe their collection of atoms has some special meaning and a special friend to watch over them.

Good for you that you've found something to make you happy. That you buy into it is great, but don't be surprised if others are skeptical. I took just the opposite path to happiness: I realized when I was a teen that it was all just nonsense to make some people feel better, while allowing others control over weaker personalities. My pursuit of science and things that are real made me appreciate my finite existence much more, so that I endeavor to enjoy the here and now, and try to make those around me enjoy their here and now. I think any faith, which folks are free to believe, should be required by law to have an omnipotent god, not a psychopathic or incompetent god like all faiths currently have. For one thing, an omnipotent god wouldn't need anyone to pray, since it would already know what you want. Second, it would not have all the worst features of Narcissists, like demanding praise for everything from food to one's kid passing a math exam, but get excused for its eff-ups, and getting all vindictive and vengeful when folks don't praise enough. It wouldn't need its followers to do its wet work, such as executing infidels or removing love buds on females. It would have better quality control, so that post-birth modifications like clitoris removal are not necessary. If it was "all loving" it wouldn't put kids in horrific pain from cancer. It wouldn't wipe out millions with earthquakes and tsunamis. It would have a much better 'master plan'. Also, it would deliver more than parlor tricks like feeding many with a few bread and fish (while historically letting millions starve to death) or walking on water (where I grew up we call that 'skating'). Nobody's deity or deities would have to knock up a Earthgirl, then play deadbeat dad until sitting back and watching the kid get nailed...all supposedly as some bizarre initiation ceremony so others can get in his celestial country club. As for the kid, he had 33 years to say outright that owning other humans is wrong. He never did. In fact, through a couple of his followers he supposedly just made rules for treating owned humans well. That makes him a bad guy and a useless deity. Science has provided most of the answers to existence, and especially since the Renaissance has chipped away at all deities' supposed powers. Science is now on the verge of ending the discussion once and for all, both by uncovering the very nature of existence via quantum field theory and gravity, and also explaining the purely physical nature of consciousness. No 'souls' needed, except in poetry or love songs. People will still be free to arrogantly believe that in a Universe of 200 billion galaxies each with an average of 1 trillion stars, most of which have planets, that a single person among 8 billion on one planet orbiting one star in one galaxy are somehow of significance to a deity. Such people won't understand the science of consciousness or quantum fields anyway, anymore than Flat Earthers never could comprehend a force called gravity. The Earth absolutely HAD TO BE flat, lest we all fall off. If that made them happy, good for them, just as it comforts people to think they are significant in ways other than what they make of themselves in their interactions with those with whom they share time and space.

I think this lends too much credence to faiths made up by folks who knew nothing, but did know reality must be complex. Nothing scientific comes from meditation, but rather---per Francis Bacon---only from a method of test, repetition, and peer review. Insights are possible, but without testing and repetition, they mean nothing. They are merely superstitions or conjectures. Folks who started most ancient religions began with an assumption that is increasingly suspect, which is that human consciousness is anything but material. Then most dressed it up with hopes, opinions or outright delusions about continued existence or repeat existences of something that looks like nothing more than chemistry and electromagnetism. The brain was just a pile of mush to them, unaware of its microscopic structure, electric charges, hormones and other chemicals, etc. Their 'insights' were at best, dumb luck, and more likely meaningless. Those who believe human consciousness is more than material must get baffled by dementia and other forms of cognitive decline, or things like brain injury, lobotomies, brain tumors, etc., where often an entire personality changes as a result of physical destruction of neural pathways. Some people would believe that a person in severe cognitive decline, who forgets names, daily activities....eventually even how to swallow, instantly becomes fully cognizant again at the second the neurons stop firing.

I understand Bill Maher does not appeal to everybody. He is quite intelligent, so the lesser IQs out there might find his brand of comedy over their heads. He also is a true moderate, taking shots at both extremes in right-left ideology. That upsets some on the left, hence he is partially 'cancelled'. He appeals to those of higher intellect and higher levels of education. He loses that demographic who occupy space a standard deviation or two left of the mean on the IQ Bell Curve, the area now known as trumpistan.

There's a famous quote from the Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg, which goes: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion."

BTW, Feynman was a promising grad student who was seconded to Los Alamos to work on the bomb. He wasn't at the level (at that time) of Hans Bethe or Fermi or Teller or von Neumann or Lawrence or Rabi, but apparently worked out a lot of the complex math. In the new movie Oppenheimer, I suspect the director made passing reference to Feynman by one or two short scenes where someone is playing the bongos. In this photo, Feynman is behind Fermi, and to Oppenheimer's left.

Personally, I think the Universe consists of teams, like the Premier League, or the NFL. Every few billion years another team gets a chance to create a Universe, then every other team gets to sit back and watch how it works. When each team has had its shot, one winner emerges. One team decides to make Planck's Constant this: 6.62607015×10−34 J⋅Hz−1......then see what happens. Some other team 'jiggles' (a favorite Feynman word) the digits, sets Planck's constant at a different level, then everyone gets to see what happens anew. Then the teams vote on who made the best Universe. The season ends with one winner, then rinse and repeat. Oh, and my teams always existed, so nobody has to ask where they came from. Now some of you might be agnostic to this team system, or heaven forbid, even atheist to it. There is equal proof (none) to my system as any of your gods, so at best you can only be agnostic to it. Don't buy into my Team System? Oh, ye of little faith!

So I guess you think Moses came off the mountain with his stone tablets, gathered the guys around, and said: "Bad news, guys...we can't steal, murder, or goof around" ????? "Morality" arises when people choose to live together. Civilization. It requires no belief system, such as sacrificing virgins, dressing women like giant eggplants, not eating pork or shrimp, etc.

There's a ton of new research in the last few years that indicate the best way to maintain healthspan. According to Dr. Peter Attia. the absolute #1 factor is limiting all cause mortality (ACM) is a high VO2 Max. In terms of exercise, sleep and diet, the order of importance is exercise (specifically weight training), then sleep, then diet. Lots of research that has been peer reviewed has gone into the various diet fads, and the major correlation is not keto nor time restricted feeding nor intermittent fasting, but just caloric restriction. Keto seems to have its own set of problems, which research is now suggesting. Re weights...it helps to vary the workout. Many reps with low to medium weight is good for conditioning and definition. Low reps with near max weight makes the body produce more testosterone and HGH, as well as strengthening bones and ligaments. It also maximizes strength. If one lifts properly, balance and pliability come naturally, though it doesn't hurt to do additional balance exercises and some stretching. Exercise also helps with insulin resistance. Balance deteriorates for 2 reasons. One is that all of the small muscles involved in balance, when not used regularly, atrophy. The 2nd reason is that the hairs in the semicircular canals harden or break, so the signals generated by fluid moving over the hairs in the canals are not as clearly read in the brain. Running can do more harm than good. When running, the knees absorb 12x the body weight with each stride. That is going to lead to issues over time. For reasons of vanity, one should know running also stresses the collagen in one's face, which leads to drooping skin. With age, collagen production drops dramatically anyway, so adding running to the mix just ages a face even faster. Strength is also a function of protein utilization. After about age 25, the body's ability to utilize protein diminishes, so as one ages, one needs to consume more protein. After age 50 one should shoot for as much as 2 gm/kg of body weight per day, spread out over several meals. Amino acids remain in the blood for about an hour after consumption, so no one should worry about activating mTOR continuously, as when one sleeps, mTOR is deactivated. Two last things to help with cognition and brain health....it seems creatine not only has benefits in terms of muscular endurance, but also has brain benefits. Creatine is a first source of energy, so it makes sense that the organ that is 2% of body weight but consumes 25% of one's energy (brain) benefits from creatine supplementation. The second thing is making sure one gets plenty of Omega-3. As one ages, the blood-brain barrier develops leaks which allow toxins in the blood (such as from breathing Bangkok air) to get into the brain. Omega-3 helps repair the blood-brain barrier. Not everyone can, or will, follow all of the recommendations all this new research is uncovering, but for those who can and do, the benefits are substantial.

Actually, he is 100% correct. Mental health professionals agree almost unanimously that he is a self-serving, insecure Narcissist. His corruption is evidenced by his conviction for running a scam "university" and another conviction for running a scam 'charity'. He was found guilty of sexual assault and told to pay damages of $5 million. He is under indictment for bank and insurance fraud in NY State, based on wildly different 'valuations' of assets. He even lied about the size of his condo, claiming it was 30,000 sf when in reality it is 11000 sf. He is under indictment for stealing classified documents and lying about returning them. He is likely to be indicted for election interference in Georgia, where he was caught on tape pressuring the SecState to 'find me 11,780 votes'. He will likely be indicted for trying to fraudulently overturn the 2020 election and fomenting the terrorist attack on the US Capitol. He could well be charged with Sedition for that, which is a capital offense than can carry the death penalty. He is a serial philanderer and a pathological liar, as the documented >20,000 lies while POTUS, along with his affairs with Stormy and Karen McDougal evidence. Oh, and he got a doctor to claim he had bone spurs, which did not prevent him from playing tennis, but kept him out of being drafted. To falsely claim something in order to avoid the draft was called a "dodger".

You might want to check some official govt statistical and data sites, because Biden inherited a mess. Obama worked through the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, had to address a failing banking system and 10% UE. Obama forced banks to recapitalize, sell off bad debt, and lower leverage. UE fell to 4.8% and millions of jobs came back. trump inherited a growing economy and that 4.8% UE. He ran up $7,800,000,000,000 in new debt, messed up Covid, left Biden 6.8% UE and a Recession. It was the worst economic performance under any POTUS since Hoover. Biden now has UE down to a 55 year low of 3.4%, has manufacturing growing in the US again, got a bipartisan infrastructure Bill passed, mobilized NATO against russian aggression......and believes in democracy. trump was an abject failure as POTUS, as a businessman, as a husband and as man.

He certainly gave it his best shot.... -Organizing and fomenting a terrorist attack on the Capitol during the official certification process -Helping arrange the selection of fake electors -Pressuring the SecState of GA to 'find me 11,780 votes' All of that constitutes Sedition, a capital offense and the worst crime ever committed by a sitting POTUS in 250 years. For that alone, execution if convicted is a must. Rid the planet of that vermin.