connda

My guess is that this will be the same as large corporations which need fresh water to create its profits. Take public water, make water scarce, pollute it. Less water for the commoners means higher water costs if water is available at all. Privatize the profits; socialize the losses. So - what kind of breaks does MS get on the massive amounts of electricity that will be needed to be sucked out of the current (soon to be "green" we're told) grid infrastructure to power an AI-based data center which need enough power to power a city? I can't count the number of times our power goes off each year. So I wonder - will MS get to tap into the current grid at a discount? Yeah? Do they get guarantees of consistent service even if the surrounding public areas lose power perhaps? Less grid capacity means higher prices for the commoners? Privatize the profits; socialize the losses? Just wondering. These public-private partnerships are often spun as a win for society but are more often a win for the rich and wealthy, and table-scraps for the commoners and the public in general.

Hallelujah brothers and sisters - It's A Miracle! (but completely expected)

Break out the golf clubs and tennis rackets - the medical props have come off as Tony's miraculous recovery is right on schedule!

Is that why there are so many forest fires up here in Northern Thailand? "Ignite Thailand." Asking for a friend.

The "green energy" trope is a house of cards waiting for a gust of wind to blow it over. As the Thai government is planning to force the commoners to give up ICE vehicles and all purchase EVs, the fact is that the Thai electric infrastructure - especially an infrastructure where coal, gas, and oil are no longer allowed as sources of electric power - will not be able to handle the massive new load of existing electric demand - PLUS - electric vehicles - PLUS - new data centers - PLUS - industrial expansion. Heck - look at any city in Thailand. They are still in the stone-ages when in comes to electric cable infrastructure. They are going to magically change all of this? I've been here 17 years and it still looks like it did in 2007. Another 16 years gets us 2040. "We fix all electric by 2040. Jing jing!" 💩 Of course! They are going to upgrade all of this to support electric vehicles? AI data centers? Manufacturing infrastructure? No - they are not. Nor will a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines produce enough constant, uninterrupted power either. It's magical thinking. And now we are talking about Thailand becoming an AI hub? This is from a speech by the CEO of Blackrock, Larry Fink, regarding AI given at the World Economic Forum1 (highlights are mine for emphasis): "I do believe to properly build out AI we're talking about trillions of dollars of investing. So data centers today could be as much as 200 megahertz - and they're now talking about data centers being one gigawatt. That powers a city," Fink also referenced a discussion with the head of an AI data center who told him that their data center needs 5 gigawatts of power which will increase upwards of 30 gigawatts by 2030. "The amount of power that's needed to use AI has a huge impact on society." And here the situation summed up by Fink: "The world is going to be short power - short power - and to power these data companies you cannot have this intermittent power like wind and solar." Yep, Thailand will have a green future where deforested mountains and agricultural land are covered with solar panels and wind turbine in order to "Save the planet from the scourge of CO2." Freaking think about that. 🤔 Cutting down forests and covering up crop producing land (plants and trees being natural CO2 to O2 scrubbers) to install solar and wind (it's already being done and it's a hot topic [no pun intended] within state legislatures like Rhode Island1 ) So debt burdened, inflation ravaged Thailand is going to spend how many trillion THB on "green energy" and promoting AI data centers and all the other futuristic whiz-bang technology that requires massive increases in electric power - and run it all over electric infrastructure that was built 30 or 40 years ago and has been upgraded when? Like Fink stated, "you cannot have this intermittent power like wind and solar." Which means <drum roll> nuclear. So - how many nuclear power plants does Thailand have in operation? None, nada, zip, zero, "0". Yeah - there is plenty of lip-service about how they are going to do this and that with nuclear3 and usher in a sustainable wonder-age for Thailand - but how often in Thailand does "lip service" turn into actionable results? Within budget, on schedule, and within scope? How's that few kilometers of High-Speed Rail coming along up North? More electrically driven whiz-bang tech of course. Of course! While completely renovating the electrical grid to handle EV and AI with "green energy" while turning off "fossil fuel" generation power plants - by 2030, 2035, 2040 - Thailand will be a power-house of electrically run manufacturing and futuristic technologies and blah blah blah, yada yada yada <more hot air added to the atmosphere> Whatever. One thing I've learned in 17 years here in Thailand. Thais live in the present moment, which is great for meditation practice, but totally sucks for project management and long-term planning. The only place those plans will take fruition is after a hit on an opium bong (soon to be taken off the Schedule 5 drug list for medical purposes) as the rosy-glow of an "Green Electric Utopia" to rival a Philip K. Dick novel shapes up as nothing more than essentially another Thai Hi-So, ruling-class pipe-dream. 1. Speech by Blackrock CEO Larry Fink at the WEF regarding AI and the need for new electric infrastructure, https://youtu.be/PoRVYFHNc6k?t=2787 2. Leveling Forests for Solar: Advocates for Green Energy Square Off Over Trees vs. Panels, By Mary Lhowe, ecoRI News contributor, June 22, 2022 3. Thailand To Adopt Nuclear Energy To Achieve Carbon neutrality By 2050, NBP, Apr 19, 2024

Couple in Bangkok arrested for illegal online ammunition sales @CharlieH 🤔

A bicycle. Things that fly (kites, balsa airplanes). Chemistry kit. Models (no, not the 18 year old Thai girl variety) as the kind in hobby shops. Or an experience, like take him to an archery range or bowling or (if near the ocean) rent him a surfboard and an instructor for the day, or swimming lessons. Think outside the box so the kid will think outside the box.

As cooler minds understand, most of this will be resolved by the Supreme Court of The United States before Nov 2024. However, there aren't too many measured, "cooler minds" in this forum. Most of the members here are angry, bitter binary-thinking ideologues who can only see the world wearing either Blue or Red tinted glasses.

I'm voting for Taylor Swift POTUS 2024. In the meanwhile, Democrats work overtime to get Trump in jail (which will simply backfire imho), and both sides of the Uni-Party want to eviscerate the First Amendment protections of free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the (alternative) press, and freedom of religion (Muslims bad) on college and university campuses (government funded educational institutions ARE public institutions where First Amendment protections apply but send in the National Guard - Remember Kent State?) and Gen-Z students find their political teeth and protest genocide in Palestine - just like anti-war, Boomer vets like myself protested against the Vietnam War. Remember the 1968 Democratic Convention? I do. Aug 19 - 24 in Chicago is going to be a very interesting historical "rhyme." Then come November 2024: Trump in prison (Orange man is the New Orange) and Gen-Z in near revolt? Break out the popcorn and keg and party like it's 2099!

With gold at 40K THB per baht weight and the Thai economy flirting with a devalued THB and increasing inflation making it more and more difficult for average Thais to subsist? Only status-hunger fools wear bling in public. I have no sympathy.

Why do people wear gold? Status seeking Get drunk and pass-out on the street while wearing your bling? "Stupid is as stupid does," as my mama always said.

Just wait until the government fulfills its vote-buying promise by handing out 10,000 THB to every Thai adult in Thailand. Can you hear that sound? "Bbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" The sound of new money injected into a weakening Thai financial system. And then the screams of Thais as inflation decimates the economy and average Thais. <Fills cheeks with air> "PUFF"

Baht Slides: Economic Impacts for Thailand Happy farang ex-pats.

I spent 24 years in IT. Part of maintaining a server farm is understanding and implementing server and operating system security. Granted, OSs like Android and iOS were just coming on the scene when I took early retirement, but you could easily see that these OSs were literally built to harvest user data and they were not built to be "locked down" by the end-user seeking security. Then you have to trust developers and whatever proprietary code they are using in their applications - like banking applications. Buggy non-secure OSs on your phone + questionable financial applications = good-bye money. No thanks.

Works until the internet goes down, or your phone breaks, or you forget to charge it, or your phone gets a virus, or Truemoney gets hacked, I could go on but why bother. Cash is king. And 7/11 is where I break my 1000 THB bills for change.

Just send your wife over the Channel from Calais and have her utter the magic words: "Asylum." Then? Bob's your uncle.

I've seen "tourists" killed by a machete wielding tuk-tuk driver for less.

I agree 100%. Not because I have like or dislike about Trump, my feelings about him are neutral at best. Nope - it's the Lawfare being wielded against politicians. This is fun to watch. Fun in the sense that once the Lawfare Genie is completely out of the bottle in the US, there will be no way to put it back in. And then? Let The Games Begin as the US political system and system of justice descends into third-world irrelevance. But "Oh?" Ya'll think it stops with just Trump? Nope. Lawfare will be the cudgel and the baton used to beat political opponents by whichever Uni-Party Swamp-Critters whom manage to ooze to the reeking surface of the US ruling class. The US will rip itself apart. As the USSR's Chief of Secret Police, Lavrentiy Beria said, "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime" Yeah - I can't wait. <pops popcorn and grabs a beer> What those who fail to study history simple never comprehend is that the evil Genie who grants them their wishes today becomes their tormentor tomorrow. Until then? Dance in the streets like there is no tomorrow. "Oh!" And then read the history of the French Revolution. It's a great example about how "turnabout is fair play."

The beauty of these halcyon days of "migration" to the West is all that a non-farang has to do is to get within the borders of a Western nation and then utter the words - "Asylum."

And then they try to economize by purchasing cheap goods from Lazada and Shopee only to get hit by a 7% VAT on Chinese goods. On top of inflation. Yep - keep the ol' government foot stamping on a human face forever.

Here that sound? It's the suck! Embrace The Suck kids.

There are a whole set of tropes that are being spewed by Pro-Israel stakeholders. Most are variation of the smears and tropes we heard in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the anti-Vietnam protests but upgraded and changed to spin a tale that supports only the far-right Israeli settler-occupier side, just like the smears and tropes spun a tale of the global march of Communism world-wide if Vietnam should fall 50 years ago. Vietnam fell and the much vaunted Domino Theory never materialized. The Domino Theory was propaganda and was never what the Vietnam War was about which went decades back from before the US involvement or for that matter, the French involvement. If you don't understand the nature of propaganda, and you don't study history, then you just suck it all down and wipe your mouth with your Covid mask. I'm a free-speech absolutist, and a US citizen, and a supporter of the US Constitution - including the rights of free speech, the right of assembly, and the rights of religious freedoms...including Islam. Palestinians -- whom are also original "Semites" and include Palestinian Christians, Palestinian Muslims, and Palestinian Jews too -- all have the right to exist between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The protests have a purpose - to end genocide of Palestinian civilians which is unconscionable. Like the 1960s, a new generation has just found its political teeth and its power. I'm aghast at those who claim to support the US Constitution as they at the same time are urinating on its protections. Regardless of what people are saying on college and university campuses in the United States right now - It Is Protected Speech. And I've heard all of the arguments against protected speech back during the Vietnam War protests when the authorities tried to break up those protests too. And you'll hear them again. And like 50 year ago, they're rolling it out again. Wait for the Democratic Convention in Chicago. It will be 1968 Two-Point-Oh. And for all the same reasons. And probably ending in similar results. Yeah baby - we live in interesting times. And at this rate, soon to go mushroom-cloud shaped. A whole lot of powerful people want to see WWIII come to fruition on multiple fronts. And like the last world wars, everyone will get sucked right up into the vacuum unless people start finding their common humanity.

...working for the Zionist cause. I'm sure he'll be well rewarded, like Abbas. Until he's no longer useful.

Grab it by a branch. If you come away bleeding, it's a lime.

I only pay cash. So I always have cash.