Walker88

One really has to wonder what you would consider a crime. The scumball traitor tried to overthrow 250 years of American democracy. Ideally he is charged with Sedition, a capital offense. Sit him down on Sparky, throw the switch, and watch the traitor sizzle like Sunday morning bacon.

So what? She's making some people happy and making herself some money. Lisa Blackpink is a hero in Buriram, but hardly the best looking woman from there. Still, good for her. I like winning stories. Allow something positive. Glass half full is a much more pleasant way to pass through life.

Gotta love stories like that. Don't know her music, but more power to her.

Personally, I enjoy some of the irony around here. --Guys beefing and moaning about stuff (i.e., actual 'snowflakes') calling out others as snowflakes, apparently in need of a mirror. --Guys beefing about all the immigrants ruining their home country, all while living in Thailand As for Thailand, of the many countries in which I've had the good fortune to live, Thailand is among the easiest and more enjoyable. Easy to find what I want and ignore what might not appeal. Some of my Thai friends and staff are pure salt-of-the-Earth and lovely human beings. Re the OP's list: I have come to accept that as a holder of a Non-B Business Visa and business owner, it is my responsibility to supplement the income of underpaid bureaucrats. In the past that was one thing that was irritating, but now it's just a cost of doing business. The cheek those folks show is amusing ("There seems to be something amiss here, but we can fix it; there are ATMs downstairs if you need") On this site I have some fav posters. Heck, I even enjoy Gamma (not every topic, but many), as he's clearly a well-read sort, and his eccentricity is somewhat endearing. Enjoy !

I'm beginning to think he's an Incel. I have a friend who is a Hollywood heartthrob and has appeared in many films (I'll not say his name). Quite handsome mid-20s with zero body fat and lots of definition. Martial arts champion in several disciplines, too. Has several million followers on social media. He came and visited last summer. I took him to Nana. He drew some attention, but nowhere near the attention goat claims he draws, yet I don't think goat is a Hollywood leading man. I'm thinking he has a rich fantasy life, but an actual love life bereft of two-party activity. Legend in his own mind.

I'm well aware of what hi-so means in Thailand and what it takes to get there. It was more a euphemism, obviously lost on you.

The author is pandering, as well as refusing (perhaps for good reasons) to state the truth. How many foreigners engage in unlawful behavior with minor girls in Thailand? Since she makes up data, let me do the same: I'd guess <1% of the abused kids are a result of foreigners. The rest are Thais. Who owns the 'businesses' that cater to Thais? I won't say, but all readers are allowed one guess. The author won't go after the truth, because it might put her in harm's way. As for the women in Nana, they all have a choice as to who they go out with. The old fat foreigner is likely to find it increasingly difficult to contract for the services of a Nana woman. Oh, and >20 years old ID check happens at the Nana entrance. Maybe a woman slips through, but I would guess very few, if any. It may be the world's oldest profession, but in terms of adult women engaging in it, I would bet Thailand has created about the safest environment possible. The women have a choice. I have met women who earn in excess of 300,000 baht/month, own condos and cars and a farm back home, and do that work because if they worked in a 7-11 or a factory they never would have reached hi-so level. The author probably refuses to believe that some women choose to do that work because in an economy where 1% of the population now controls 75% of all wealth, getting ahead is not easy, if one follows a conventional route. Let her write about that, if she is in need of book buyers.

Aren't you the guy who claims you're picking up a different Thai woman every night and schtupping her for free? That nightly fornication allows you to occupy some moral high ground? You're doing ID checks on every woman? Never even buying them a drink? The women have no expectation whatsoever except delighting in the chance to ride your junk because you're such a stud muffin? And your schtupping with these women you've known for 20 seconds or so is tender and respectful? If you really are a Jackson Wang then you are taking advantage of these women, who must be hoping for a relationship with such a catch. Since you are undoubtedly NOT a Jackson Wang, I suspect something else: Delusions of grandeur.

Not sure Americans are alone in that regard. Not anymore. I see lots of land whales waddling around Bangkok speaking English with accents not my own, or non-English. Fat is everywhere now. Even a lot of Thais are porkers. It's becoming two kinds of six packs in the US....one from beer and burgers, one via the gym. I carry a 79cm waist on a 183cm frame and 82 kg. Fat I am not. Quite defined musculature. No roids. If I see a guy or gal who is obviously quite fit and a probable gym rat, odds are he/she is a Yank. My experience, at least. Some of us are obsessed with fitness. We're not all cut from the same Happy Meal.

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.