The Cipher

I should probably delete this comment.

Did you sleep through all of 2018 and May of this year as well? However it's true that the vast majority of voices in the crypto-sphere are shilling for their own advantage. There are some good crypto communities out there, but they seem to self regulate either intentionally or via the birds-of-a-feather effect, so doubt most posters on here will find them and doubt they'd stay if they did. I keep writing that crypto is the wrong asset class for beginners to learn to trade in, but we keep getting threads like this one so knock yourselves out I guess.

But where are these teachers going to come from? Is the Ministry of Education prepared to pay way more than they currently do, and if not how do they intend to attract top talent? This problem is not unique to Thailand and is well known in certain professional circles in the West also. Specifically, the majority of top talent entering the workforce out of college head to careers in finance and tech. Engineering, management consulting, administration, medicine, and law suck up most of the rest. Teaching never even hits the radar, and there's no easy fix. I assume it's much the same in Thailand. Would welcome creative ideas for fixing the issue tho.

When you see stories about foreigners like this is it any surprise that the gov wants to try and move upmarket? I mean, can you blame them?

Strongly suggest doing your own detailed research and understanding the thesis behind anything you buy. But if you really just want to follow other people's trade ideas, this isn't a forum where you're likely to find reliable alpha. At the very least, please ask respondents to justify their reasoning for recommending various coins.

I submitted my application on Tuesday of this week and received my e-visa on Wednesday. I submitted to the consulate in Vancouver, Canada using this portal: https://www.thaievisa.go.th/ Was surprised at how fast the approval process was.

Shoot, I'm tempted to get drawn back into this topic. But my better judgment is telling me to pass. I'll just quickly confirm that my position on this topic hasn't changed, specifically due to big picture considerations in the macro. Ie, what is the best medium-long term move for our societies.

First thing you want to do - (a) figure out how much you think you'll want to spend in retirement per month/per year. Then (b) figure out the amount of your income that you can reasonably rely on in retirement - for most people this would be a pension. The difference between (b) and (a) is the amount you'd need to make up with your savings in some way. Here's an example for easy math: Assume you want to spend $50k/yr. You have a pension that pays $25k per year, so you need to fund the remaining $25k with your savings. You wanna retire at 50 so you need savings that will last you another 50 years in this case (to be safe). If you sell your house at retirement (I realize you don't want to do this, but just for the sake of the example), you could fund 40 years of annual $25k drawdowns without ever investing the cash. That would see you through to 90 years old. Realistically, if you invest that $1M, or if your home continues to appreciate in value, you could pretty reasonably see yourself through to 100. --- Start soon. When invested, money compounds through time. So the more time you have, the more your invested cash will grow (assuming the investment goes up on average). So the sooner you start, the quicker you can benefit from the effects of compounding. Generally, bonds are in a bad place right now. And bank interest is non-existent. So you'd probably have to move up the risk curve into stocks or real estate to try and generate a decent return. --- But I'm not sure exactly what your situation is. If you feel comfortable providing details I'll help you think through the case. But if info is too personal, free to tell me to sod off also ????

Yeah, so am I. We need to decide on one way to end this pandemic and then mandate it. If that means forcible jabs, then let's nut up and do it. If that means living with the virus and some more deaths each year, then let's nut up and do it. I really dgaf at this point. I work pretty hard so that I can live a lifestyle I enjoy, and Covid has forced me to put much of it on hold for almost two years now. I'm getting very tired of having to wait while others muck about. All I want is for either the masses and/or our governments to have the courage to chart a course of action that will put this behind us. But as is usual today, polarization and broken structure of democracy are dragging this out for way longer than necessary.

I'll catch heat for this, but I kinda feel like this should be acknowledged as a valid opinion to have. It should be considered ok to just not care. Not sure when/where it was decided that we automatically owe others a duty of care that extends to the arbitrary and unspecific point of whenever they decide they feel safe, and regardless of the inconvenience this imposed obligation would place on our own lives. Also not sure why questioning the reasonableness of this assumed obligation is seen as heretical by so many. I definitely don't automatically assume that others are obliged to massively inconvenience themselves for my own well being, and so find it hard to understand why others seem to do this.

Not sure, but there are tons of poor people in China. Their government themselves have admitted that 40% of the pop of China earns less than $140/mth. It's almost like you can't apply a one-size-fits-all lens to discussions on the country and its population. ????

I'm going to try and respond to this comment politely and without it coming across as a massive flex. So first off, I'm just gonna quickly rattle off an uncomfortable truth for this audience by citing this Credit Suisse report that shows that China has the second highest number of USD millionaires, and the second highest number of UNHW ($50M+) individuals in the world. Second after the USA in both cases. So there are plenty of wealthy tourists hailing from the country out there. People of means often behave differently than how people not in that position think that they behave. I know many forumers here think that wealth = only doing stuff like spending time on superyachts off Monaco and only dining in 3 Michelin joints, because that's what they imagine they'd do if they were in that position. The reality is usually different. Think - if you're taking 3-9 leisure trips a year, do you only go to <AseanNow Rich People Approved Destinations> 3-9 times per year, year after year? No. You explore a bit more of the world. Adding to that, Bangkok is an extremely famous city and close enough to China to be a comfortable weekend trip. And you want to tell me that only less than 50 out of the millions of Chinese millionaires visited Thailand in 2019? I mean...I guess..? Besides the logic laid out above, and without going into too much detail, I happen to have a bit of firsthand knowledge that I'm correct about this.

Who is spreading these lies? Jesus. Re: Chinese group tours. Agree with group consensus that they are extremely annoying. Group tours in general are lame. I think the group tour demographic is what gets a lot of focus on here because they're loud and obnoxious, but also because that's what's easily visible to the average forum poster here. I think the bad manners of the tour group demographic accounts for 50% of the bitterness here. Re: Wealthy Chinese. No idea where all the wrong info about this segment comes from. Pretty sure it's due to people here projecting what they think the wealthy do, rather than what they actually do. These guys exist. They come to Thailand. You just might not see it because they're way less conspicuous than the tour group demographic. And bluntly, differences in wealth mean you tend to spend time in different places. I lowkey suspect that numerous posters are aware that this paragraph is true and that the resentment it causes accounts for the remaining 50% of the bitterness here.

Pays up to 400% markup for lux goods. Gets called "stingy."

Lmao. Certainly not. I can do math, have good a grasp of the nature of life, and am not a coward.

For my hotel at least, they said the tests for each day are submitted to the lab at 2am and they generally get results back by the next morning. That was their justification for why the cutoff time for check-in was 2am. I guess that makes sense to me(?)

Update on this for those who are curious. I was able to find a hotel that would let me check out by 12pm as long as I arrived before 2am on the same day. Checking in after 2am would require an additional night. If arriving with more than one person, the Test & Go fee is applicable to each individual even if staying in the same room. Normally I would have no fear of making it to the hotel before 2am with a midnight landing time, but I do wonder what the setup at the airport is like now. Hopefully it's faster than usual rather than slower.

One last thing to add. Yes. An aim of mine has been to downplay the virus relative to gen pub's common perception of it. I am of the opinion, which I have articulated at length at this point, that the virus has been over-hyped and that the cost of measures taken to fight it have been overlooked. And the disconnect between virus perception and reality has created problems. Our aim should be neither to view the virus as worse than it is nor less severe than it is. Instead, we ought to be striving to obtain as clear and accurate an image as possible so that we can respond as optimally as possible.

So I'm a private equity investment analyst by trade. I work with some very talented data scientists and we discuss this topic with some regularity. In fact, in that instance I'm the one doing cheerleading for vaccines. And to be honest, the degree of vaccine hesitancy among numerics people surprises me. But I'm pretty confident that there isn't a problem with my math. The broad mortality rate going forward is different than the broad mortality rate looking backwards. Why? Two main reasons. (1) As you've said, cases and deaths are undercounts. But cases are very likely to be more severely undercounted than deaths because it's a lot easier to notice deaths than asymptomatic cases; and (2) vaccine saturation at this point has pushed down severity and vaccines are readily enough available in many places that I don't see any case to protect skeptics that don't want that protection. Besides that, arguing about mortality rate swings of tenths of a percent is irrelevant to my point that measures taken are disproportionate to risk. And at this point they're wildly so. Anyway I'm not going to belabor this point more than I already have. I'm aware that many of you guys are older with backgrounds that make this discussion kinda fruitless for all involved, and it doesn't feel right to me to cause additional anxiety at this stage.

I mean this in the most polite way possible, but I don't believe this for a second. Ever talk to a data scientist or quant? If you have, there are telltale signs you can't miss. Moreover, while you're free to disagree with me, none of your rebuttals have come at me from the perspective that a data guys' would have. I deny absolutely none of the facts about Covid. There's also no fallacy in my writing. I have consistently attempted to put the numbers bandied about on here into context and that's it. My aim is, and always has been, to show that our policy reactions are disproportionate to the threat and to argue that all normalization should occur immediately and without further moving of goal posts. I am aware of where how a person could properly dispute my position, but so far nobody on here has figured out how to actually do it, although I've given hints a few times.

Sometimes I wonder if there are people who are just physically incapable of understanding relative values. It's gotta be like, coded into DNA or something. The 'unable-to-understand-percentages' gene.

Have said this before. Will say it again. Please, let's get used to looking at large numbers in percentage and trend terms. Just spitting out raw figures is extremely unhelpful. There were roughly 2.5B people at the onset of WW2. There are roughly 7.8B people on Earth now. A population increase of more than 200% from the time of the War. As a result the same number of casualties, which by the way we are nowhere near, would be significantly less severe a shock now than it was then. If we assume that Covid has broad mortality of 1%, which might even be a generous assumption in this case, the disease would need to infect approx 100% of humanity to match WW2's death toll. That 5 million deaths is less than one tenth of one percent of population. The other thing I feel compelled to add relates to the death count. So many people seem to panic that the death count is rising, but of course it is. it is impossible for it to go down. Every year the total number of people lost to cancer, or car accidents, or <insert cause of death here> rises too. Why? Because time is passing. As a result we should be looking at changes in trends and rates over time. Final point. Measures to fight the pandemic are not costless. The cost is time, money, and lost utility. What are we sacrificing to save each incremental life, and is it proportionate to the risk at hand? Perhaps that is a question we should start asking ourselves at some point.

Thanks! I'll add them to the list of hotels to investigate. What date are you flying in? Maybe we're on the same flight ????

Sorry for the ping, but can I hit you with one more question? My flight is scheduled to arrive at 12:05am. Do you think I can get away with booking just one night of ASQ (ie, land at 12:05am -> check in at 1:30am -> check out 12pm) or do I have to run it to two nights? Thanks!

You are 100% correct. Too many people fall into the trap of viewing locations as an either/or dichotomy. But the right answer is dual-city/multi-city living. That setup lets you mix and match seasons and benefits of each location and the rotation stops you from getting too frustrated or bored. Can't imagine doing it any other way.