FriscoKid

I use a combination of ChatGPT and Grok and spend much less time reading stuff on websites in general. Not because of the spam or the garbage necessarily, but just because it's faster and more comprehensive. But I still do use search engines if I'm trying to locate photos or news articles. DuckDuckGo is good. No ads and no tracking. The only thing I don't like about it is the new articles they give you in the search results are typically from news sites, but then they have been republished or aggregated on MSN. I prefer the actual news website and not going onto MSN so, if I'm searching for news, I still normally go onto Google because it provides direct news website links,. But that's about all I use it for. Even before the chat bots came along, I rarely went onto Google, mostly just DuckDuckGo.

I think those balls have already been well in motion since Trump took office. The UK, France and Germany have already stepped up.

It’s hard to disagree. To me, it’s just spam-packing — pushing out content that nobody really wants or needs, but finding ways to shove it in people’s faces anyway. It’s the kind of junk you get in your inbox that either gets caught by a spam filter or makes you hit unsubscribe the moment you see it. I think we’ve reached a point where, if someone genuinely wants to buy something, there are countless ways to find it online without needing constant content pushing products at them. It’s just force-fed advertising, and it’s completely unnecessary. But as you said, if there’s a way to make a buck from it, then people will do it. It still beats having a real job. Just not exactly the kind of thing that’s going to impress anyone if you bring it up at a dinner party. They will probably even consider you an Internet pest for hire.

Go onto YouTube and search for "digital nomad koh phangan" - It seems to be the mecca for it in Thailand. A low-budget, laptop-packer's paradise. I recall about a year or two ago, one of the news channels, perhaps BBC, did a small video piece on it, but I can't locate the clip now on YouTube.

You'll also hear the Millennials who do this schlock refer to it as online-gigs, side hustles, working remotely, location-independent professional, telecommuter, global freelancer, etc, but in my opinion, unless they're really employed by a company, have a steady flow of incoming paid assignments, or they really are running some form of their own business with an active customer base, then I would say most of them are just living on Hopium.

Sh*t, you've been a troll on this site since 2013, that's longer than tits on a bull, mate.

Congratulations, at least half on-topic, for once.

Projecting. Kettle black.

Influencer!

The following Op-Ed was recently published in the Wall Street Journal by a staunch conservative: Trump Wants to Be Impeached Again It’s already in the cards thanks to his ill-founded trade war, no matter how that war plays out. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. April 11, 2025 5:32 pm ET This week the system worked. Donald Trump blinked. The unwinding is still just beginning. It will be painful and tumultuous. A grief-filled fight lies ahead over whether his trade actions have even been legal and constitutional. Many slips between cup and lip are to be expected. China and the U.S. are rushing toward an unplanned total stoppage of trade. The bond market is signaling a potentially dangerous combustion with America’s unaddressed fiscal-sustainability challenge. The courts will come into play, albeit cautiously if judges and justices believe U.S.-China negotiations by then are pointing toward an exit ramp, justifying a bit of presidential leeway for national-security reasons. A future Trump impeachment seemed all but guaranteed by last Wednesday morning. It seems only slightly less likely now. It may even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners. As sacrilegious as the comparison will seem, Mr. Trump faced a problem Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt solved by dying once their greatest achievements were in the bag. Mr. Trump great achievement was his 2024 re-election, a rebuke to the injustices and insults meted out to him and his fans since 2016, some of which were even real. However, no consensus or even significant coalition exists for trying to force into existence a new American “golden age” with tariffs, which anyway is like asking a chicken to give birth to a lioness. He invented this mission out of his own confused intuition. Of the outcomes still in the cards, the least-bad now may be the Trump proposal on which I bestowed a lefthanded Kewpie doll last year: a universal, nondiscriminatory 10% import tax. It faintly resembles a consumption tax (or a carbon tax). If Mr. Trump can then pivot away from his trade-war dysphoria to domestic tax and regulatory reform, his presidency may yet be saved. With floods devastating his northern counties, Kentucky’s Gov. Andy Beshear has been making TV rounds lately. Americans see an attractive and sane Democrat who might have sought and won his party’s nomination in the completely different 2024 election we could have had. November’s outcome, remember, tells us only how voters reacted to a binary choice. In fact, polls show most voters thought it was a lousy choice. Hence history’s most risible irony: Nobody stands to benefit more now than Joe Biden if the Trump presidency can avoid complete disaster. At least posterity would then have less incentive to dwell on how Joe and Jill threw America under a bus with their craving for a second term. Historian and author Niall Ferguson this week chose the adjective “full retard” for Trump trade policy. I go with “neurotic” for the word’s wider applicability to any leader who, lacking a clear bead on his times, fabricates a gratuitously ambitious mission to meet his misguided sense of importance. The phenomenon is more intrinsic to politics than we might think. Vladimir Putin is a current example. Bill and Hillary Clinton’s first-term grand healthcare scheme nearly broke his presidency. What if Roosevelt had been gifted with 83 rather than 63 years? So many elites were subsisting on his coattails practically from birth, the systemic pressure to invent an agenda to justify a fifth, sixth, seventh term would have been immense. Notice how even the desultory Biden crowd still shapes our country’s trajectory with their clinging to office. Nobody in Mr. Trump’s orbit actually shares his belief in the magical efficacy of tariffs because it makes sense only in a world that doesn’t exist, where other countries don’t retaliate. That’s why you can expect his aides soon to be hinting sotto voce that his China tariffs are really about “leverage” to pressure Beijing to help out on Ukraine. The founders never anticipated today’s instantly responsive trillion-dollar financial markets. And yet these markets neatly adumbrate the founders’ scheme of checks and balances, also known as feedback. Mr. Trump, still sane enough to appreciate what’s good for Mr. Trump, listened this week to their feedback. May he continue to do so. The left’s picture of a proto-dictator never really meshed with his nature as a flighty glutton for attention. Mr. Trump’s politics aren’t poll-based or policy-based. They aren’t strategic. They are ratings-based. From the moment he appeared in 2015, he was a democratic accident waiting to happen for exactly this reason. The wild card that couldn’t be foreseen was the lying, cowardice and self-discrediting of his opponents, especially the press, which afforded him an improbable legitimacy he never would have obtained otherwise. Might something valuable yet come from this accident? As Zhou Enlai was misunderstood to say about the French Revolution, it’s too soon to tell. Ask me in 150 years. Source: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-wants-to-be-impeached-again-6f4ea931

But you were just in Pattaya again for a month about 2 weeks ago. Oh, wait...

A digital nomad is basically someone who travels the world, often grifting, while pretending to hold some sort of gainful employment. They sit in cafés, always purchasing the least expensive item on the menu, with a laptop open and free WiFi at the ready, occasionally typing something just so the barista doesn’t ask them to leave. Behind the scenes, they’re usually living off some form of passive income, cryptocurrency gains, or their parents’ credit card. They post photos on social media of themselves ‘working’ on the beach, even though sand and laptops famously don’t mix, and call it a career. In short, it’s like being unemployed, but with better scenery and a slightly smug looking Instagram feed, while desperately hoping other people admire them. However, it is strongly advised that you do not even consider this as a suitable vocation for yourself. Stick to what you know best. Mop till you drop!

But I can't. I tried to, but it broke my calculator.

Yes, they do both worship Trump like he's a god. It is hard to imagine that there could indeed be more than one like that, but they are actually two separate, obsessed trolls.