Walker88

And you have proof of politicization of the FBI and the courts, or is it just your delicate sensibilities that conclude anyone doing his/her job, albeit against your messiah, is being "political"? You certainly sniff the vapors coming out of trump's backside. It's "politicization" when the FBI investigates stolen classified documents and the guy who lied about it? When the same thief engaged in a plot to appoint fake electors to subvert an election, or browbeat a State official to "just find me 11.780 votes" Perhaps Brits like you call it "politicization", but in American English we call what the bureau and the courts have done "doing their job". Not investigating/prosecuting would have been a dereliction of duty. You are quick to accuse on other topics, yet have a couple dozen comments here trying to play Lancelot, coming to the defense of an anachronism. Apparently your anachronism is a very poor judge of character, as most people needed only one meeting with Epstein---particularly those who went to one of his residences---to understand what sort of miscreant he was. Your boy was a regular.

I'll repeat what I always write about wine. If actually enacted, this will have impact almost exclusively on cheaper wines, such as supermarket wines, Wine Connection wines, etc. Higher quality wines will see minimal to no impact, as they have never gone through Customs where the actual cost was declared. Solaia and Sassicaia get declared as a couple hundred baht plonk. If someone is from the US, and you drink better quality wines, you are unlikely to see any price difference. Something like $30+ Italian wines (e.g., il Bruciato, Le Volte) cost the same in Thailand as in the US. I've even seen some more expensive wines (e.g., Fattoria Le Pupille Saffredi~$125) priced at a Thai restaurant at the same price I pay retail in the US. Folks from the EU or maybe Australia might notice some price difference, but it will be minor, unless it's a 300 baht wine.

Short Version for the tl:dr folks: It is highly unlikely, because there is no physical law to explain it, that sentience exists outside of the physical as a result of a random boom boom.

The Brandenburg Concertos are great for stress reduction and evoke a feeling of optimism. I already noted a personal appreciation of Brahms' 1st, particularly the last few movements, as it elicits the same feelings. I can listen to Bach, Brahms, Liszt, SL Weiss' famous Passacaglia in D Major, Julian Bream playing Sevilla...and enjoy them all, but if I put on Beethoven's 9th (I have the von Karajan on LP), what hits hardest is the incredible complexity of it. It is no wonder the symphony is so famous, as it is arguably the zenith of Western classical music.

Yes, I have studied it. Pre-med who turned down med school for a paying job, as undergrad produced enough debt Some things are written tongue-in-cheek. I am not a believer in any sort of extra-corporal consciousness. I also find it kind of funny that we attribute all sorts of mystery and romance and 'spirtuality' to something that is driven purely by somebody wanting physical relief. As for the post, I was in the mood to write something different than the usual love-Thailand/hate-Thailand, bargirls are dirty/salt of the Earth, Russians/Chinese/Indians/British are bad, etc.

No, that was facetious. Dally at will.

Good for you.

We all know how humans get here, but we tend to cloud the clinical reality with myth, superstition, romance or anything that might allow us to believe it is anything more than the result of a biological urge put into action. The plain and simple fact is that we’re all here because somebody was in the mood. Sure, maybe some parents engaged in the act for the primary purpose of producing a child, but one or both being randy was the main cause. Whether Mozart or Hitler or a guy who pours Slurpies in a 7-11 at a highway rest stop in Keokuk, Iowa…we and they exist simply because somebody wanted to get his rocks off. Life may or may not have any meaning, but it does have a purpose, and that purpose is more life. Living things are driven by instinct to propagate, to pass on their gene pool. In humans, that instinct is given a term: Horny. We’re propagation of our parent’s gene pool because somebody was horny. Kind of gives existence an element of farce. Most of us develop and reach puberty in such a way that certain things attract us. Certainly, the majority of us are attracted to our opposite gender, though that isn’t everyone. As a male, some obvious things and some odd things seem to get my juices flowing. To be drawn to a beautiful face is something easy to understand. Where it gets somewhat silly---though natural---is that a shapely body draws us in. A nice pair of legs. Maybe large bosoms. A tight female backside that defies gravity. Where it gets almost embarrassing is that an orifice framed in different fleshy bits, naturally surrounded by hair follicles, and with a particular hormone-filled aroma emanating from said orifice, makes us hellbent on penetrating that orifice with our specialty male appendage. The desire is almost out of our control, though we learn to sublimate it, when to give in to the urge would be inappropriate. When the time is right, however, the behavior tends to take on a momentum all its own. And so it goes. All of that urge or romance or desire or passion is followed by a wonder of biology and chemistry, though we don’t usually think about it at that time. Instead, we think about snuggling, or doing it again, or going to watch the football game on TV. Despite those unrelated thoughts, there’s something going on inside the female, especially if she is ovulating. At the culmination of the recent act, the male released a liquid filled with millions of motile little sperm, each wiggling a tail and on a mission to be first to reach the woman’s egg, or at least inadvertently or serendipitously collide with it. The waiting egg releases progesterone, which chemically attracts the sperm and causes their tails to wiggle faster. Generally, the sperm that gets there first causes a reaction to occur that creates kind of a barrier or membrane around the egg so that no other sperm are welcome. The two entities’ nuclei fuse, the zygote exits the Fallopian tube and eventually takes up residence on the wall of the uterus. Differentiation then begins, as the initial zygote begins to divide into cells that will go on to form organs and appendages, muscle and bone, brain and neurons. The differentiation and cell specialization, plus growth, continues for about nine months, and then the combined gene pool is ready to make an appearance and join the same path to maturity so that it, too, can propagate its gene pool. From a scientific perspective, there isn’t much more than that….intercourse, fertilization, pregnancy, development, birth,,,,and then rinse and repeat. That isn’t enough for most people. They need there to be more to it than gene propagation. They need meaning. Many also need reassurance that existence is not finite, so they make up stories. Somewhere along the path from sperm-meets-egg to a finished human being emerging from where the male had inserted his appendage, many people are intent on thinking something else happens, such as a “soul” is inserted or the neurochemicals and electric impulses running through neurons create a consciousness that---somehow---has existence outside of the physical body. There is no indication that any of this is the case, but the human need to believe insists, or hopes, it’s true. If it is true, when does this infinite consciousness enter? How does it materialize? What is this “soul” thing, and how does it get there? There is nothing about the chemistry resulting from sperm-meets-egg that in any way suggests some miracle emerges that creates an immortal and non-physical consciousness. No known chemical reactions of proteins or enzymes or lipids yield a consciousness independent of the chemicals that created it. There is no branch of physics that can offer any explanation or proof that sperm-meets-egg creates some essence that exists outside of the physical elements of the body. For those who believe in souls or independent consciousness, perhaps you will offer the explanation as to what atomic process results in this non-physical entity. Methyl groups? Oxidation? Is a catalyst, such as zinc or magnesium, required? There’s a Nobel Prize awaiting whomever provides the answer. I don’t know how either an infinite consciousness or a “soul” are supposed to enter into the physical body. Did this soul always exist and some deity just shoved it into the emerging infant? Or does the deity manufacture a new soul after each successful intercourse and put it in? That would require monitoring every ovulating female 24/7. If these souls always existed, why are they not all here now? There’s about 8 billion humans currently on the planet, but since homo sapiens developed from other human-like forms, there have been about 125 to 150 billion of us. What happened to the other souls? Are they all going to reappear at the same time and be ‘judged'? What about the humans that existed before anybody’s modern deity? Are they shut out of eternity for all….eternity? Seems kind of unfair. Even more ‘unfair’, perhaps, is that deities make no exception for the manner of the intercourse that leads to the insertion of a ‘soul’. Two people committed for life via a legally recognized marriage? That one’ is easy. Pre-marital intercourse? Quite often. A pick-up in a bar? It happens. Broken condom? Sorry! Two silly teens doing it for the first time because their parents are out of town? Sometimes. How about rape or incest? No exceptions, goddamnit! For those who believe consciousness can exist outside of the physical body, has it been in existence since time began, or is there some magic that occurs when sperm-meets-egg that gives rise to this immortal consciousness? It floats away somewhere upon death of the body? Another question is why does this consciousness diminish with the aging of the physical body? Most all humans, if they reach a certain age, develop some sort of dementia. For some it is so severe that by the time death occurs, the human is in a vegetative state. What is this magic that, upon death of the physical body (all human death results from lack of oxygen to the brain, whether because organs shut down, disease destroys the body’s ability to transport O2 to the brain, there’s blood loss from accidents, whatever) all is suddenly and instantly restored? All the memories and personality and everything the person was comes back and then goes….somewhere…Where? Some people are of the belief that the consciousness or soul get recycled into another living form, but if it does, it seems to forget any and all previous iterations (but sometimes imagines it can remember, and usually because it believes it was some ancient warrior fighting a battle in Mesopotamia, or was a princess in some long lost monarchy). Being infinite and immortal would be a wonderful thing, as life---especially in this modern world---is glorious. It’s great fun. It would be nice if it lasted forever, but I think our eternity is defined by our individual birth and death. Life hasn’t always been so good, so I appreciate the need for many to hope there was more to life than pain and struggle. I just don’t see how any of the ‘spiritual’ beliefs make any sense. I don’t see when this infinite consciousness or soul gets inserted into the zygote or developing fetus. Certainly, if somehow these souls or some infinite consciousness results simply from my carnal desires, I should probably be a lot more responsible on how and with whom I dally, because my horniness could create an entity that will exist until time itself ends…..and all that just because I was horny. That puts a lot of pressure on me, and might get in the way of the fun when I’m in flagrante delicto with a woman. If that is the case, the ability to procreate ought to be doled out a lot more judiciously, yet good or bad, moral or immoral, we all have that ability. It makes one wonder.

Job creation under the last two Presidents, including the one who barks about 'best economy ever'. POTUS 45 2017: +2.2 million 2018: +2.7 million 2019: + 2.1 million 2020: -9.4 million President Biden 2021: +6.4 million 2022: +4.8 million 2023: +2.7 million (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics) POTUS 45 was the first President since Herbert Hoover in 1932 to leave office with fewer Americans working than when he took over from President Obama. Obama left POTUS 45 4.8% unemployment (after inheriting 10% UE from Bush), and POTUS 45 left Biden 6.8% UE. Yes, Joe is underestimated. Toss in economic growth (after Biden inherited a Recession from POTUS 45, 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, and finally a bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, and old Joe has done a pretty good job. (As for "blah blah blah" about Covid, note that Covid had zero impact in the US until March-April 2020, fully 38 months into POTUS 45's 48 month tenure.)

The belief in deities has a Darwinian element to it (Dr. Robert Sapolsky). Virtually every human society has manufactured deities. (Obviously all cannot be right, but all can be wrong.) Most cultures have covered all the bases by having more than one deity, but in the interest of efficiency, some cultures boiled it down to only one. That saves time and allows folks to get work done, rather than having to appease every worship-needing entity their minds created. The mere thought that existence is both random and essentially meaningless is too tough to take for most people. It causes stress, and stress can kill. Constant high cortisol levels wreak havoc on the body. Going back hundreds of thousands of years, humans who comforted themselves with a fantasy that there is some entity or entities who control things, and the additional belief that one can petition them for favors, is stress-reducing. Being around others who believe the same thing offers fellowship and a retreat from loneliness. Building rituals around the belief additionally reinforces the comforting belief. Those with reduced stress levels are more likely to survive, thus passing on their genes. They are "selected into the species" in a Darwinian sense. It doesn't matter if their beliefs are wrong, because truth is not the goal. Survival is the goal.

Could be. I've long been partial to #3, the aggressiveness of the cellos and bass hits me in the stomach. I also love the power that von Karajan brings as the piece resolves into the final stanzas. Very German. But other times I'm partial to Brahms' 1st, sometimes called Beethoven's 10th.

I sense some woeful, even debilitating insecurity, on the part of those who claim they are "prizes" or "Alpha" types. It seems almost Dunning-Kreuger-ish. If they're so Alpha, why the need to rant to all of us "Simps" and Betas regarding what we need to do or how we have to view ourselves? What difference does it make to these Alphas? Also, wouldn't it be better if they kept their thoughts to themselves, lest we, too, become Alphas and thus compete with them for the best of the best? Isn't it "good to be the King"? I really am too cynical to think these folks handing out advice to turn us into Alphas Like Us are just so altruistic. In my apparent Simpish-ness, I don't view myself as any prize. I certainly don't view myself as superior to Thai women. Yes, I am luckier...no doubt about that...but my circumstances of birth and the incredible opportunities that afforded me do not make me superior. Maybe the proverbial Isaan farmgirl, had she been born with my circumstances, would have outperformed me. There is no contrafactual data to determine that. I am who I am largely---exclusively, perhaps---because of where, when and how I was born. Dr Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University has a term 'The Myth of the Self-made Man' (Sapolsky does not believe in free will). Objectively I can look at myself and see lots of positives---tall, fit, athletic, multi-millionaire in my 20s, advanced degrees from the US' preeminent universities---but if I am honest, I accept that in a relative sense I began life on 3rd base. I had nothing to do with the traits that allowed me to succeed in this world. It was easy to score from 3rd base, and it's merely an accident of birth. It doesn't make me a prize. Acceptance of my own dumb luck allows me to view each person---to stay with the thread, Thai women---as individuals with both good and bad, having dealt with luck both good and bad. We are equal. Of course that doesn't mean I can let down my guard, but it does mean I would be silly to view myself as some prize. The guy who insists he's a prize, but who really is insecure, is easy to manipulate. A former US President comes to mind as one manipulated by few 'love letters' and gratuitous compliments.) Unlike some here, I could consider a relationship with just about any Thai woman, hi-so or Isaan farmgirl who ended up in a bar, because the bottom line is what she is individually and how she addressed the circumstances of her own birth and life. No matter her background, it's up to me to vett and decide if she has the qualities I find attractive in a person. The hi-so could turn out to be a conniving, self-serving Narcissist out to siphon off my wealth and leave me bone dry, while the Isaan farmgirl could be a salt of the Earth....and vice versa. If I do her any favor it would be bringing respect to any relationship, not me viewing myself as some prize. If I've vetted well, I won't lose. So, Mr OP, you do you and let us do us. Better for you anyway if we're all Simps and Betas, as that will leave more 'good women' for you, in addition to not-so-good women who will subsequently possess our wealth. Maybe you can use those women as middlemen to siphon off the wealth of us Simps, and since you're such a prize and so superior, it should be easy for you to take from those 'uneducated, barefoot, lowlife' farmgirls.

Did you read your own post? A foreigner had a 16 year old girl in his room in 'the early hours of the morning'. If you are arguing something absurd like, "she came to his room at 3 in the afternoon", so what. The article states she claims "The victim’s mother filed a complaint against her foreign boyfriend accusing him of sexually harassing her daughter in the early hours of this morning, January 4. Thus, the alleged harrassment happened in the early hours of the morning. Unless the hotel is a dump, CCTV would have the evidence of her presence at that early morning time. Here, let me give you several chances to disagree, as you always do to any comment anyone makes: I say "up" (Come on, say "down") I say "black" I say "East".

Nothing makes much sense in this article: "in the early hours of the morning".... -a mother allows her daughter to go to mom's boyfriend's hotel room, "because boyfriend is going to take the daughter somewhere to look for a job"...in the early hours of the morning? What sort of job for a 16 year old? -a foreign guy thinks it's okay to have a 16 year old girl come into his hotel room "in the early hours of the morning"? In what universe is that okay? It's either a poorly written and detailed article, or ain't nobody innocent in this sordid mess.

You have a child's understanding of geopolitics. You have a woefully ignorant understanding of the Russia investigation. You are even ignorant of what the Republican-led SSCI concluded and then published in their 1000+ page report. Lots and lots of cooperation with Russia. You have absolutely no proof of any "corruption" by Biden. None. Neither do the R goobers in the House, whose 'key witness' turned out to be a liar, and who is now on the run from 1) violating oil sanctions against Iran, and 2) trying to arrange arms sales to Iran. The clown is not only running from US authorities, but likely Mossad. Despite what you think is his place on the FDA Food Pyramid, that vegetable Biden has accomplished infinitely more than the ACTUAL corrupt trump (remember he is a convicted charity fraudster, a convicted sex offender and a convicted business fraudster, while 91 felony charges suggest there are more convictions to come). trump inherited 4.8% unemployment and a growing economy from Obama, but left Biden 6.8% unemployment and a Recession. Oh, and trump has added Word Salad Chef to his list of titles. Listen to his rallies. He doesn't even know what State he is in half the time. Hey, but at least trump knows Frederick Douglass is an up and coming sort.

You have a child's understanding of geopolitics. You have a woefully ignorant understanding of the Russia investigation. You are even ignorant of what the Republican-led SSCI concluded and then published in their 1000+ page report. Lots and lots of cooperation with Russia. You have absolutely no proof of any "corruption" by Biden. None. Neither do the R goobers in the House, whose 'key witness' turned out to be a liar, and who is now on the run from 1) violating oil sanctions against Iran, and 2) trying to arrange arms sales to Iran. The clown is not only running from US authorities, but likely Mossad. Despite what you think is his place on the FDA Food Pyramid, that vegetable Biden has accomplished infinitely more than the ACTUAL corrupt trump (remember he is a convicted charity fraudster, a convicted sex offender and a convicted business fraudster, while 91 felony charges suggest there are more convictions to come). trump inherited 4.8% unemployment and a growing economy from Obama, but left Biden 6.8% unemployment and a Recession. Oh, and trump has added Word Salad Chef to his list of titles. Listen to his rallies. He doesn't even know what State he is in half the time. Hey, but at least trump knows Frederick Douglass is an up and coming sort.

Not sure which President Joe Biden you're talking about. Biden took the 6.8% unemployment trump left him and has it down to 3.5%. Under Biden, more Americans are working than ever before, while trump is the first President since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer Americans working than when he entered office. Biden inherited the trump Recession. Today, America is growing faster than any EU nation. Biden got a bipartisan Infrastructure Bill passed. trump announced endless "Infrastructure Weeks" but never got anything done. Biden reinvigorated the NATO trump tried hard to destroy (as putin wanted), and now NATO stands united against the heinous invasion of Ukraine by trump's buddy putin. Biden and the Fed even have the trump-generated inflation under control. Pretty good job. Certainly beats the disaster that was trump. Most important, Biden believes in democracy; trump pulled out all the stops to destroy US democracy with his fake elector scheme, fomenting the terrorist attack on 6 January 2021, browbeating the GA SecState to "just find me 11,780 votes" that do not exist. Oh, and trump stole highly classified documents such as TS/SCI, SAP, Codeword, HCS and RD. That represents a major threat to US national security.

Hillary won the popular vote by several million, despite being not so great of a candidate. trump willingly took aid from putin. Read the Republican-produced SSCI report that details trump's Campaign Manager manafort going to SPain to meet with GRU asset Kilimnik, where manafort handed over detailed internal polling data from the campaign. Such data includes extremely detailed info on individual voters, such as income, spending habits, memberships, etc. Kilimnik gave the data to the Internet Research Agency (A GRU entity) in St Pete, and the GRU then microtargeted voters in key swing States with fake news about HRC. Campaign aid Roger Stone was in continual contact with Wikileaks and knew when the emails a GRU asset had hacked from Dem officials would be released. trump even noted an upcoming release in one of his rallies, saying, "Early next week you will see some very interesting information revealed about my opponent". putin's effort to aid trump was multi-faceted. It also included funneling camapign contributions to trump's camapign through the National Rifle Association. It also included funding the camapign of tree-hugger Jill Stein, as putin had learned lessons from 1992 (Perot) and 2000 (Nader). Stein received more votes in WI and MI than trump's margin over HRC, and it was close in PA. Oh, and in 2020, Biden beat trump's flabby "a$$ like a drum....in a total beat down in humiliating fashion".

Very silly post. In case you missed it, 91 felony charges have been leveled against The Bloated Self-Proclaimed Small Kitten Grabber. The indictments resulted from under oath testimony to a grand jury by people who worked for trump in his Administration. There are also tapes of phone calls where trump is implicated in the fake elector scheme, as well as trying to pressure the GA SecState to break the law and 'just find me 11,780 votes'. That seems to violate GA State RICO laws, and with the help of former Administration officials who will testify in GA, trump faces a mandatory 5 years in jail in GA for what he tried to do with Raffensperger. As for Epstein, in yesterday's Epstein article many people noted to this effect: "one flight on the Lolita Express is not proof of guilt, but many flights suggest guilt, as after the first time folks would know the Epstein game" trump had at least 7 flights on the Lolita Express. SEVEN. So either trump is dumb as a brick and clueless (he is) or he knew full well the heinousness of Epstein and still went along with him. Maybe both.

In case you missed it, there are 3 eligibility requirements for someone to stand as a candidate for the Presidency. None requires that a individual prohibited from running first have his ineligibility addressed in court. 1) Must be 35 years old or older 2) Must be a natural born US citizen 3) Must not have engaged in insurrection against the USA #3 is trump. US States have the authority to make determinations re elections. CO and ME have already made that determination. So ironic/hypocritical trump is whining about 'democracy', when he tried to get his goobers to stop the certification process plus he was intimately involved---according to his own Administration officials---in a fake elector scheme. Obviously trump hates democracy.

With the attitude you evidenced in your opening statement? I'll take the other side of that bet.....and give odds.

.....vs delusions of grandeur? "Prize"? Most expats I see, ostensibly 'living the dream', are obese, tatted-up, Chang wife beater-wearing, guys thinking they are doing Thai women a favor. They wouldn't be a prize in a carnival ring toss game. Like I said, be fit, be neat, be clean, have a personality, ideally be financially sound...and just maybe one can be an actual prize, or at least be on a level playing field with lovely Thai women. It's not hard to do. Maybe you might consider giving it a shot.

There's some decent regular mozzarella available that some pizza restaurants seem to use, and there definitely is one good Bangkok-based company that makes Buffalo Mozzarella. I see their truck sometimes delivering to restaurants. The name is Antica Luna, and they also sell through some retail outlets. They import buffalo milk from Italy.

Prize? The value of an appealing/attractive Thai woman exceeds the value of what many Western men bring to market. Her attributes are valued more by the international market than the skills and talents many Western men bring to their own society or the international market. She is more in demand, he is not. She is rare; too many Western men are cookie-cutter cogs in the international low-wage labor machine: nothing special, nothing unique. The prototypical 'farang' retiree in Thailand---fat, old, on a meager pension---is hardly a 'prize'. Thirty years ago, maybe he was. Those days are dead and gone. To be a 'prize', up your game. Be fit. Be neat. Be clean. Have a personality. Be skilled. Be successful. Being a white male is no longer enough. Sorry, losers. Bring something of value to the table, and maybe you will find a partner.

Goodness, I've wandered into the La Brea Tar Pits....full of dinosaurs! The article, as far from 'news' as can be, may be about Thailand, but in the larger scheme of things, the world has changed. Iron your own damn clothes. Tiger Woods, even when he was married and was worth hundreds of $millions, ironed his outfit before stepping out on the golf course. Here's the new reality: in the US, women age 21-30 now earn more than males age 21-30. Female university graduates are pushing 60% of all graduates, and will likely top that number next year. More never-married women own houses in the US than never-married men. 40% of US males under age 35 live with their parents. If men were supposed to be 'success objects', allowing them to have expectations of what a female brings to a relationship, US men are failing miserably. When avenues for advancement opened up for Western women, they hit the road running. Too many males, feeling entitled simply because they had a Johnson, sat on the laurels and have been overtaken in terms of success by women. So many Western males have become losers, offer women nothing, yet expect women to kowtow to them and their desires. Guys, up your game, clean yourself up, hit the gym, study, develop some social skills---and the world is your oyster, better than ever. Here's a secret: guys who are successful, fit, neat and clean, who do more than watch porn, get tatted, and play video games, have never had it better. Guys fitting that description are maybe 10% of the male population. They are sought-after partners by maybe 80% of the female population. Plenty of choice for them, plenty of partners. There's even a term for them: Porsche Polygamists. (For the alliteration...though it might have been Lambo Lotharios.....the left out males might be F-150 Fappers) Guys who cannot achieve, pine for the days when simply having a Y chromosome afforded guys a host of benefits. Now that young women---at least in the US---are on average more successful than their male peers, those with a Y chromosome have to earn their benefits, whether that is sex or having someone be kind enough to do some chores for them. Oh, and the concept of Porsche Polygamy travels well internationally...even to Thailand. Fat old guys on a meager pension are no longer the 'catch' they were when Thailand was an economic backwater. The La Brea Tar Pits is no place to be.