jaywalker2

A bunch of Thaksin gibberish as usual. Interesting that both Thailand and the US have leaders with no official office.

Yes, I do. Look at all the billionaires in Trump's cabinet. He's in awe of them, always has been. A momma's boy with an inferiority complex that he tries to hide with a lot of bluster.

Elon bought himself a president for $277 million. Nobody voted for him. Twitter is a propaganda machine, which cost him $40 million but ended up proving invaluable during the election. Why is he accumulating all this power? What is his agenda exactly?

As you can see, Musk is now dictating terms to the US Congress: No bills should be passed Congress until Jan. 20, when @realdonaldtrump takes office. None. Zero. https://x.c om/elonmusk/status/1869461048828522999

He promised to have fully autonomous cars by 2017. How's that working out? Not much point in going to Mars until you've worked out how to build a self-sustaining colony there. Even then, the rest of the planet will remain inhospitable. A colony on the moon first would seem like a better idea.

A ruthless if dishonest businessman, megalomaniac, narcissist, white supremacist, immoral, chronic liar, somewhere on the autistic spectrum, lacking in empathy, sympathy, poor understanding of social relations and politics. He's completely untrustworthy in my opinion, and I certainly don't want him running the country. Seth Abramson is writing a biography of him. He has loads of material about Elon on his substack (some of is free, enough to get the gist, the rest behind a paywall). Musk comes across as the kind of evil genius you see in James Bond movies but hope you'll never encounter in real life. https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-musk-from-his-biographer

Trump's Cabinet includes 8 billionaires (including Elon, the richest man in the world) and 5 multi-millionaires (some of whom will, I am sure, be billionaires within the next four years). RFK Jr is the poor man on the totem pole. His grifting has only earned him $15 million (and a trophy wife in Cheryl Hines), although I'm sure he intends to rectify that. Draining the swamp indeed.

You're right -- I should have said his first Western. "Misty" was a good movie, though. Another good non-Western was, I thought, "Tightrope" although it doesn't get talked about much.

Yeah, but nobody wants to live like that.

I'd say it's time for you to take your meds.

The first movie he directed, I believe

Unforgiven is a movie I keep going back to, especially the last scene. A lot of great dialogue

Troll

I wouldn't call myself far left but I agree with you. This guy should be shut out of anything to do with government.

That's my whole point. First, I've never had an automatic conversion when using a debit card. Always, I've been asked if I went to use dynamic conversion. Second, I've never had a withdrawal canceled because I refused the conversion rate. But both of these things happened with the SCB ATM at Central Chidlom. At K Bank, I couild make the withdrawal as usual, but, still, the conversion was made automatically and I had to reject it. I think a lot of people won't understand what the conversion is or why they're seeing it and they'll just click on the buttom to proceed with the transaction. I did ask if some change had been made but the staff I spoke with didn't know.

It was a Fidelity debit card. The 5.5 percent conversion fee was on top of the ATM fee. I've used this ATM before without any problem so this is something new.

His point was the law hasn't changed yet. All that's happened is there was an internal memo about assessment changes but no indication of any implementation.

Weekend in Taipei, great movie, has everything, action, romance, car chases, kung fu, and filmed on location in Taipei (a little bit of it anyway). Luke Evans is okay but Gwei Lun Mei really shines.

If you haven't seen Pale Rider or The Outlaw Josey Wales, both are highly recommended.

According to Integrity Legal, this is a tempest in a teapot because nothing has actually changed and people are being stirred up for no reason.

Today, I went to withdraw money from the ATM at the SCB branch at Central Chidlom. The first thing I noticed was that the fixed withdrawal amounts had changed and the highest amount now was 5,000 baht. After that you have to press the withdrawal button and then specify an amount. So I typed in 20,000 and imagine my surprise when the amount appeared on the screen already converted using dynamic conversion. Down at the bottom of the screen, there was the option of continuing without conversion but when I pressed that button, the transaction was automatically canceled. I tried this twice so it was no mistake. I spoke with a bank employee but it was obvious they didn't know what was going on. Next, I went to K Bank. The fixed amounts did go up to 20,000 there but when I made my selection once again the amount appeared already converted. This time I was allowed to proceed without the conversion and make the transaction but I wonder if this is a foretaste of what's to come, if perhaps banks are testing this to see what kind of reaction they're going to get from foreign customers and in the future you won't be given the option. The conversion fee by the way is 5.50 percent, highway robbery. Clearly, a lot of tourists who don't have experience with foreign ATMs could easily be taken in by this trick. After all, when it says continue without converting it does sound like you could be voiding the transaction. Moreover, most people probably wouldn't even understand what was happening unless they had knowledge of dynamic conversion. It just seems like this sort of thing should be illegal since it offers no benefit for the consumer.

Some things I've watched: The new season of Lioness is very good in my opinion. Jo continue to be annoying but the action is hot and heavy and the two lesbian helicopter pilots are coming into their own. Yellowstone has recommenced without Kevin Costner. First episode was rocky but it's strengthened since then. Looks like Kayce is going to step up, which I'm happy about because I quite like that actor. It seems that the cowboys and ranch won't be playing a big role though. Cobra Kai. The second third of season 6 is out. Five more episodes to go. This one is worth watching just for the karate brawl in the final episode. Outlander. Last season for this long-running series. Jamie and Claire are grandparents by this point so the days of steamy sex scenes are over. The first two episode are out and I still don't know where this headed. Cross. I didn't have high hopes for this one but it improved as it went on. The acting was good and the pace never flagged. The plot was absurd but it made for compulsive watching.

That's all they've been talking about. Do you read the news? It's almost 17 percent, first of all, worth almost $50 billion, which is on par with the amount of tourist revenue they generate. Even that percentage is misleading because that's only direct exports. It doesn't count exports to other countries that are used to make products that end up being exported to the US. Moreover, tariffs would not just affect Thai exports. They would also further accelerate imports from China into the Thai market, which are already harming local businesses.

Theyre worried about Trump's tariffs now. If tariff's on Thai exports go up anywhere from 10-25 percent, the export market will be crushed. Corporate profits will plunge and government revenues will follow suit. And they can't stimulate domestic consumption anymore because of the debt burden borne by the middle and lower classes. They should be thinking about strategies to ameliorate the wealth gap in order to stimulate broad-based consumption but of course that's untouchable so all they can think about is how to attract more "foreign investment."