Walker88

I suspect they mean a baht billionaire, which is about $27 million. Not exactly Forbes 400 level. It's still surprising if she extracted a sizable percent of that, but even the greediest gold digger would have taken her ill gotten gains and disappeared long ago if she pulled more than a rounding error from a dollar billionaire.

It isn't only the military who uses IQ tests in their selection. CIA gives all applicants to its Clandestine Services Division an IQ Test and an MMPI test, as well as running a complete psychological profile. Outsiders can guess or joke about what the agency is seeking, but in reality they look for those with a std dev or two above the mean re IQ, and a person somewhat disdainful of authority, who can think on his or her feet, has a directed sort of charm to the point of being naturally manipulative, and considers life a bit of a game. They seek almost the polar opposite, in terms of personality, of what the military or SEALS or Special Forces seek. The average case officer likely falls within the range of 125 IQ to 175. From the OSS days up until maybe the 1980s, the agency drew primarily from the Ivy League or from universities like Stanford, MIT, Caltech, UChicago or UC Berkeley.

As a male, this is my curse:

There are short term and longer term trends that bode poorly for the world economy. There is about $300,000,000,000,000 of debt in the world. The US has the highest Federal Debt, but as a % of GDP or revenue vs debt service, the US isn't even close. The country with the worst debt service ratio---by far---is Japan. The world is awash in capacity. China added more steel-making capacity since 2012 than existed on Earth before 2012. Is another China going to be built somewhere requiring all that steel capacity? Household debt in most developed countries is massive. AI is going to obviate more and more jobs, including plenty of white collar jobs. Countries are going to have to provide for more and more redundant workers, and this at a time when sovereign debt is already stretched to the limit. Populations in most developed countries are shrinking. Equity valuations are based on, inter alia, growth. Where is growth going to come from if populations are shrinking? The entire world economy and social programs have been constructed based on an assumption that population will always grow and age distribution is a normal pyramid shape. Now the pyramids are inverting. People used to wonder if we'd have inflation or deflation. To put that in Biblical terms, is it "assets to ashes or debts to dust"? Given declining populations but increasingly limited resources, I suspect the world we will see is deflation in assets but inflation in necessities like energy and food.

I'll repeat: IQ is a function of the number and efficiency of neurons in the brain. Some people are born with an Intel 8088 and others with an Intel Core i9. Or think of it as some are born with a Bowmar Brain while others are a quantum computer. Nurture can have some impact, but nature sets the stage for unfairness, just as it makes some people beautiful and some butt ugly, some tall and athletic and some short and uncoordinated. JP talks around it a bit, but what he's saying in effect is that we have to accept and deal with the reality that is, not the reality we might want. We can agree or disagree with JP. The long debate on whether different races have genetic differences devolved into PC vs racists, There may be an objective truth somewhere, but we'll never find it and maybe shouldn't, because group ability can be used to ignore individual ability. In the end, each of us is an individual, regardless of ethnicity. No doubt I'm 100% wrong, but it always puzzled me that traits involving just a minimum of gene expression---such as avg height, avg fat deposition, skin color, hair color, eye color---are accepted as fact and part of the rich human fabric, but gene expression regarding the most complex organ in the human body is supposedly 100% similar across every race, resulting in no difference between populations (even though it is accepted that there arise vast differences among populations). Craig Venter and others who decoded the human genome found that various races mated with primates in areas to which some humans had migrated, such as Neanderthals among future Europeans and Denisovans among future Asians, but we must accept that this had no impact on anything other than superficial characteristics. If such differences do, in fact, arise, then I'm glad humans now accept interracial pairing, because everything will eventually even out.

Abilities, whether intellect or athleticism, are a function of the # and efficiency of neural connections, inside the brain regarding intellect, and brain to skeletal musculature for athleticism. Much of this is a function of heredity. Some is a function of nutrition of the mother during pregnancy. A bit more is a function of environment while the brain is still plastic. Some poor souls lose the Birth Lottery and never have a chance of reaching the level of intellect that would allow them to function at the highest levels of society. One cannot fully make up for the loss owing to bad genes. Depending on whether one is politically correct or Shockley and Jensen, Robert Sapolsky or E. O. Wilson, heredity accounts for somewhere between 20% and 80% of intelligence, Where heredity really sits is lost in confirmation bias and goal-seeking research. The brain seems to remain fairly plastic until about age 25, though the ability to form new neural pathways drops considerably after the first 10 years. A minimal amount of plasticity remains into old age, but not much. I've learned a few languages as an adult, but it was through brute force memorization rather than the ease with which a child can learn. One concern I have about any continued upshift in general intellect is that so much of the brain is no longer being used. Most people of a certain age no longer bother to learn their 'tables' and can do precious little math in their heads. People use GPS instead of actually learning the landscape, so many are incapable of conceptualizing the layout of a city and absent GPS would get lost searching for the bathroom in their own house. We also no longer write much longhand, so spatial orientation skills suffer. Our language ability is deteriorating because we speak in emojis or LOLs. I think there's a 'use it or lose it' experience with brain function. James Flynn has argued that intellect has been increasing because the world demands more interaction and provides more stimulation than in earlier times. His research, however, predates the most recent technology, which removes humans' need to interact so directly with the world, as computers or phones do the work for us. We might lose what we had previously gained. Though there is no research to back this up, it seems to me we are also losing natural curiosity. So many young people know absolutely nothing and don't even care, so long as they can post a banal TikTok and get "likes".

No government debt of any nation is going to be repaid. Everyone buying bonds knows that. All they expect is that it be serviced, which means paying the due interest and returning capital upon maturity. Most debt is just rolled over, so maturity is just an accounting entry. Debt service as a % of revenue is worst in what country? Japan. It's not even close. Even Greece looks solvent in comparison. The US' advantage remains rule of law. Billions in capital can enter the markets or leave the markets with no difficulty. Can't do that in China. Dollar value is based not on something as meaningless as a metal, but rather the ambition and creativity of the people, who can then be taxed. Nixon realized that, so took the US off the gold standard. As others followed suit, the world saw an era where more people were lifted from poverty than at any time since Oldavai Gorge. Money has always been a confidence game. Money only requires one side of a transaction to believe in it. Will it all collapse one day? Probably, but folks have been predicting that for longer than most people have been alive. No point in preparing for that, because if the dollar or the world's financial system fails, humans return to the Hobbesian world of 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short', which is to say hardly worth living.

I think she was booted for doing a bad Floki impersonation.

Yours is a statement built on false logic, or rather no logic at all. Of course religion requires the absence of logic in order to work, so par for the course. What would this 'competitiveness' look like? The breakfast cereal aisle at the supermarket or toothpaste commercials on TV? "Believe in me and I promise whiter teeth and fresher breath !" If these gods always existed, 13.8 billion years is chump change. Perhaps they take turns creating a Universe, putting in a Planck's Constant and all the other things a Universe needs to behave a certain way, then let it play out over a trillion years or so. Then the next team of deities takes their turn and lets it run a trillion years or so. Or maybe one god is looking for praise and thanks (quite human frailties qualities), and an impish competitor god tosses in a major tsunami that turns some people away from the first god. Humans have this provincial view that it is 'progress' or 'civilized' to abandon polytheism and adopt monotheism. The Greek gods got tossed, and then the Roman gods. So did the Scandinavian gods. Hindus have retained 10 million gods, holdouts that they are. Non-believers just eliminate even the last fantasy, and have zero gods. You are a non-believer with respect to Thor, Zeus, Allah, Krishna and all the others. Non-believers get rid of your god, too. Personally, I think the Greek gods were the best, and if I were to believe, I'd go with them. They're on the one hand helpful, and on the other impish and somewhat sadistic. That is how life passes, with good moments and also tsunamis and childhood cancer. Zeus et al can't be trusted, but maybe you can make a deal with them.

I'm going to guess she's the top earner from Buriram. $37.6 million likely tops the Buriram women who instead ended up on Walking Street. Good for her. I hope she enjoys the ride and doesn't become a victim of K-Pop stardom.

Of all the issues facing the US and the world today, it seems to me transgenderism is not high up on the list---save for POTUS-wannabes who want to pander to the trumpist fringe who live for outrage. I accept that for biological reasons, some people are drawn to the same sex, some are attracted to both, and some feel as if their being is at odds with their physical body. It is not a choice. That being said, I do think being what is now been given the term non-binary is a fad. Bill Maher made a joke of the trend by graphing the changes in sexual orientation over the last fifty years, ending with "if current trends continue, by 2050 we will all be gay or lesbian". I don't know the true % of humans who feel they're in the wrong body, but I doubt the % is as high as the number now claiming it, caught up in the fad. I also think some parents are caught up in the fad and want their child to be 'special', as in transgender, so they can boast or get sympathy from friends, post their 'journey' on FB or other social media, etc. I remember being young, going through puberty, etc., and being confused. I wasn't confused about my gender or sexual orientation, I was just confused. Raging hormones will do that. Everyone goes through that period, and I suspect at that tender stage and age many young people could be influenced by someone telling them what that outside person thinks is their issue, when the actual issue is just the rush of hormones that come with puberty. For that reason, I would not think it is a good idea to use drugs or surgery to alter someone's gender physique before the age of consent.

And what happens when you find out it's Allah or Krishna or Zeus? It will be too late. Religious fanatics get all silly when they imply their morality is superior. The 'faithful' think they can be evil their entire life, then repent at the last second, and because they've bought into a superstition, they get a reward denied to others who might have had a far superior morality and rarely if ever 'sinned' while living generous and noble lives----all because they questioned a woman's lie and a plagiarized deity tale (Joey, I swear god knocked me up; I'm a VIRGIN). Pascal's Wager---which you are trying to use to put the fantastical fear of eternal damnation into others---was really a horse race with a very crowded field. You chose your winner, forsaking all the others. Others forsake all of them. Your odds are not really any better; you just believe they are. The joke's on you. As for what the OP asked, this is a free Forum. The OP is welcome to tell me to go to Hell, as you have implied I will go.

If I was Big Joke's PR team, I would argue that, yes, he has long know all manner of dark secrets about the corrupt police, but he had to bide his time until appointed #1, so that he could then go about correcting the wrongs. If he spoke too soon, he'd never get the top job and never be in a position to rout out corruption. Maybe that excuse would wash.

trump is wont to exaggerate and inflate everything, pretending it's bigger or better than reality. Remember what Stormy said: "Not quite freakishly small, but well below average".

Failed? Even McConnell and Ms Lindsey knew trump withheld approved aid to Zelenskyy and was instrumental in the terrorist attack of 6 Jan 21. It's just that they are not an 'impartial jury', but a purely partisan Senate. As for "8 years of Dems against trump", 91 felony charges says they seem to have found something. In contrast, repubs spent tens of millions and years of wasted time trying to get Clinton and Clinton. Whitewater and Benghazi. Epic fails. One wonders how trump would hold up under 11 hours of partisan queries, as Hillary did re Benghazi. He lacks the strength as well as probity.

Let's see....a self-proclaimed great developer and dealmaker says his 11,000 sf apartment is actually 30,000 sf. That kind of suggests fraud, unless trump wants to claim idiocy (which might be believable). trump then claimed the fake square feet made it worth over $300 million, to which his CFO stated under oath "give or take $200 million".

And of course you can prove all that, right? What a joke trumpers are. They got degrees in Sophistry and Whataboutism from the fraudulent trump university.

Fraud is not shrewd. It's a crime.

It's those tsunamis, earthquakes and childhood cancer that have me thinking your god is a psychopath and sadist.

I accept that Thor has many of the worst human qualities, so I trust Thor only as far as I can throw an axe. And Odin, damn....I trust a bargirl who professes her undying and eternal love more than that imp. So long as I get a front row seat in Valhalla, no problem. Oh, did you mean one of the other 10 million gods humans have made up? My bad.

I don't understand. You say 'she doesn't know my real name'. If that is true, she cannot file even a fake police report, and the police wouldn't know whom to blacklist, even if they could blacklist. (Also, the bargirl probably doesn't even know France is a country. Lots of bargirls, many of whom have minimal education in an education system that is poorly lacking in teaching anything useful, know "Ing lan" and "A me ri kah" and maybe Greece or the Czech Republic---because it was a guy from one of those two who got them pregnant and did a runner.) If you return to Thailand, just avoid anywhere she works. It's unlikely she would even remember your face anyway, as she has probably pulled the same nonsense on 50 other guys. And the lesson you should have learned is never even hint at your name, where you stay, any social media, etc., when dealing with a woman in a bar. Better to avoid women in bars entirely, but maybe the temptation is too strong. I can see why some members are not taking your post seriously, as a Frenchman whose name is not known is worried about being in trouble for a crime he did not commit.

The silly kid had to know that 'Face' is much more important that quaint concepts like truth or obeying the law. TikTok is made to order for face-losing Thais to earn a living off of LIKE-seeking Millennials.

This is going to leave a black mark on the reputation of the RTP that will last.......... ......all the way to lunch. Maybe.

I envy his blue Pima cotton boxers. Those are not easy to find anymore. Barney's NY used to carry them, but Barney's went belly up. Saks 5th Ave used to carry them, too, but went the way of metrosexual fashion that men now favor, which is wild color mesh bikini stuff or just tighty-whities. Very undignified. Makes me fear for the species. Boxers allow a man to feel like a man, and junk to find its own level. Also, the Pima or Sea Island cotton never causes irritation. For his undergarment choice alone, I hope Big Joke goes free.

The only way the US would reciprocate is if trump won again and wanted to build a tower on Sukhumvit. The US is not going to supply Thailand with capital gains data, TBill income, dividends, etc.