Watawattana

JD is right. Europe's been taking the US for granted, and they've been called out now. One thing I haven't seen as yet is Trump/Vance offering to keep supporting Europe's defence as part of a commercial agreement. Not sure what the Agreement would be called though. Perhaps 'Lend-Lease'?

I reckon AI will get much, much better when Skynet starts to develop some of their national security and weapon systems tools.

I already said I get your point. She already knows how to look after herself and judge a situation, and is aware of the possibility of drink spiking. And she's a pretty decent MMA fighter, so good luck to anyone who tries something unwanted. Before, during or after the fact. Someone tried to rob her a couple of years ago in the USA, she put him in a choke hold till the cops arrived.

Yeah, every girl who drinks with a guy should expect to get raped or sexually assaulted (if indeed that's what happened). I don't understand this thinking, but I get your point about what a father would say. I've managed to drink with quite a few women over the years, and no non-consensual activities have ever happened.

Guess she wanted screwed at her bar job (literally), but got screwed in a different way at this 'job'.

Shirt duly lifted, fudge duly packed. 😂

Absolutely. I went to San Diego a few years ago and it rained. I slowed down, left a bigger distance to the vehicles in front, and saw the aftermath of about 20 accidents because everyone was driving at their normal speed, and then were unable to slow down fast enough to avoid the inevitable rear-enders. Same stoopid 💩 happens all over the world. But I agree that too many Thais are unable to drive in good conditions, let alone poor.

Exactly. I wonder if there's an element of not wanting to find and treat the issue effectively when so much money is being made. Far fetched? No. Exactly the same thing has happened to me. Twice in the last 18 months. Nothing as serious as this guy, but an absolute deliberate effort not to diagnose the root cause of a condition to try to extend treatments that were not working, all for a profit.

So, the far right doesn't like free speech? Pathetic. But it does make me laugh. Some western media hammers some asian countries about their free speech laws, whilst some western countries hammer individuals when they speak freely. If me saying this might get me into trouble, then can I claim my name's Bob?

That's a massive over-estimation of the requirement. Another Biden-era screw up. Or was it...? I wonder who made the most money from this over-estimation? As for trashing them, it's a simple arithmetic calculation of the cost of storing them versus keeping them, bearing in mind they may have a shelf life and that nobody really cares about COVID any more.

Seems flu is worse this year than normal, but pollution is similar to normal? Maybe more construction than normal though, post pandemic recovery. The high Thai flu rate is even being reported in Vietnam media! https://baohaiduong.vn/en/so-ca-nhiem-cum-o-thai-lan-tang-hon-10-lan-trong-vong-2-tuan-qua-9-ca-tu-vong-405385.html

What? A British Judge with a political bias? Surely not? Wouldn't happen anywhere else in the world would it?

All proven liars or law breakers in any public role, financed by tax payers' money, should be fired and banned from taking any such role ever again. No matter what colour party they are from. Zero exceptions. Might mean there are none left of course...

I wonder how many 100kg+ folks have used these slides in Thailand and elsewhere, and how many people have come a cropper. I suspect a very tiny minority.

Absolutely spot on. I have zero issues with finding waste and unnecessary budgets and cutting them. What is 'waste' and what is 'uneccessary' in my opinion might be different to others of course. But. Finding waste and unnecessary budgets and cutting them costs money too. In Texas that's a 13-person DOGE team for example; that ain't cheap to set up and maintain. I strongly suspect the cost of DOGE (or COGE or whatever) would be much less than the savings that will be found in the first couple of years, but then I think the balance may tip the other way as savings become more difficult to find. And, someone needs to be sure that the savings are sensible when compared with what each State or Federal Agency is supposed to be doing. Someone needs to look over the shoulder of these DOGEs? And the costs mount up. A classic for me is the FAA. Yeah, find the DEI stuff and cull it. But don't automatically cut their budget to match. The FAA needs to modernise its systems and procedures, and it needs more front-line staff to do that, and then to deliver a better/safer air traffic control service. It needs the budget to do that. DOGE needs to use common sense, and not a testosterone-fuelled race to the bottom. But I'll reiterate, I'm glad this is being done.

If documents get redacted before their release then the conspiracy theories will continue. If they are not, then the conspiracy theories will continue as surely not all of the documents were released? Basically, no matter what, the conspiracy theories will continue. But maybe not if there are smoking guns in there, like it was an alien being held at Area 51 who done it?

Ah okay! No problem. 🙃

Wow. Great idea. Here's some examples of this happening elsewhere in the world for you to look at, so you fully realise what a fantastically brilliant idea you shared on this public group. https://bitterwinter.org/tag/re-education-camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54195325 https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights http://us.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/zt_120777/dmxj/wjbxinjiang1/zaijiaoyu1/202106/t20210625_9039435.htm Think it's the first time I've ever read anything on AN where someone agrees with what China has been doing, and wants the same thing to happen in the USA. Brilliant!! 😂🤧🤩😹

Wow. Must have been an amazing round of cost-cutting to increase the EBITDA by this level. Is maybe why Trump is so keen on getting him looking at the US Government?

I clicked the 'agree' emoji as, well, I agree. I don't have a crystal ball but would hope that DOGE will get to the bits they have not got to as yet. It's only been a few weeks. In corporate-land such cost-cutting activities target what they call 'low hanging fruit' before they attempt the harder stuff. And that's maybe what they've done so far. I won't get into the rights and wrongs of what's happened (there are examples of both I think), but from my point of view the balance isn't too far wrong. I guess there are well-entrenched procurement behaviours in many Government departments, and it'll take time to weed those out. It'll take a big bulldozer to break some of those doors down, and I'm sure there'll be whining about Musk and his ulterior motives, being protectionist of his own contracts or being anti-left. Nothing wrong with that, just free speech and personal opinions, sometimes based on fact, sometimes not. But it's results that matter, not necessarily who gets upset on the way in my opinion. 4 years is more than enough to get the rampant procurement mismanagement (or maybe it's corruption) under control. 4 weeks isn't enough, I don't think that's reasonable. But I hope he is able to get that task done, including allowing an investigation into the contracts that he has.

Yeah, completely agree. Especially in that place in the background of the photo in the OP. Oral House. I'm sure that isn't banned today. Might have misread the name of the place of course...

Sato will go down in hiss-tory as the bravest 3-legged dog ever?

Great to see a Swiss guy getting some plaudits after the behaviour of some others. Can't quite believe the low level of 'wai' given by the other driver.

How do you generally find the air quality in Vietnam? Hanoi, Hot An, Ho Chi Min. I see that Thailand is struggling, example is one of today's AN articles. I'm sure I could find the raw data online, but wondering about the general feeling on this from people who live in Vietnam.