honu

I'm not disagreeing that the only outcome possible will be that people ride out whatever is already going to happen.  The Paris Accord controls were a joke. 

It would probably reduce impact to make whatever token start on resolution is going to be initiated now versus in 10 to 20 years but the damage is already done; the carbon dioxide is already there in the atmosphere, and it's not as if shutting down fossil fuel use in a decade or two was ever possible.  If people went extinct right now the same general type of changes would still occur.  It's just annoying seeing people claim that it's all just part of natural cycles of nature, because the opposite has been known to be true for 20 years, and data collected over that period just makes it more and more certain, after already being certain. 

Science denial is absurd, with this issue, rejecting evolution, and flat-earth theories all pretty much the same thing.  And chemtrails too, for that matter.

I've already went on enough in this thread but I'll go with beating a dead horse since the standard completely wrong account of what climate change is keeps getting repeated. 

It's man-made, caused by carbon dioxide levels adjusted by burning fossil fuels, for sure.  It has nothing to do with natural fluctuation in weather cycles.  The time scale is all wrong for that to be the case, and the pattern of changes in atmospheric content.  Everything isn't uncertain, people studying this know what is happening, and it's not going to be ok, at least in the sense of maintaining the continuity of weather patterns experienced over the last 10,000 years.  Beyond that who knows.  It's all not as vague and mysterious as people make it out to be. 

Problems come in when you try to apply ordinary reasoning to problems that aren't in that scope, similar to Donald Trump claiming that he has a good instinct for scientific findings.  It's not about applying how patterns of ordinary experiences relate to climate issues; the two things are separate.  Recycling or not taking a bag at 711 will make absolutely no difference too, on that other side.

It makes sense that people just can't place reading the related climate graphs, because there are completely different patterns happening on different time scales.  A few important points repeat and require more attention. 

1.  Climate only has been stable (not changing) for the past 10,000 years, on the short cycle.  We can't relate to shifting patterns because our history and memory doesn't go back beyond that, but the stability people knew that enabled prior and modern society is over.  It seems like people aren't thinking through what this will mean for agriculture; farmers could only keep growing the same crops in the same places with good results because of that factor.  I guess this is where mixing up climate and weather gets confusing, since they're not the same but of course they're related.  

2.  It was hotter and colder before, and carbon dioxide levels were higher earlier in the earth's history (hundreds of millions of years ago).  The actual increase and decrease in temperature might not be as devastating as dealing with levels of changes, like weather patterns getting worse (less stable, more damaging, relating to sea level change and species die-off, etc.).  Unless you personally die of heatstroke, then that's worse. 

It sounds problematic switching between showing Thai and Western / other nationality passports at different steps but I think we might do that (but my wife is usually handling them and that paperwork).  The main restriction is that you enter a country and leave it on the same passport, that your child gets stamped in and back out using the same one.  Depending on where we go our kids use either a US or Thai version, depending on which gets them out of using an issued visa, and they always come back in through immigration using the Thai version.

In general people tend to say not to show anyone two passports but I'm not sure if that would ever be a problem.  We don't do that anyway; they just need to see the one the kids are using.

It's a mistake for people to assume that they can use their own ordinary forms of reasoning and come to a better conclusion than climate scientists in deciding if climate change is a serious problem caused by humans that will be severe in the short term, over the next few decades.  That would go about as well as diagnosing and curing cancer based on experience with eating a balanced diet and exercising.  It's just not relevant.

I'm into tea myself, oolongs and such, and those would work.  They're not expensive and probably healthy, within limits for drinking too much (definitely no more than 2 liters a day, and even that with plain water as well).

As far as herb teas (tisanes) go pandan leaf is really pleasant.  Any of them just depend on preference but to me there's something really catchy to that particular flavor, even brewed very light, as an extra bit of added flavor to water versus seeming much like a variation of tea.  It doesn't need any sugar.  The typical way to prepare both conventional tea and herbs / flowers (what "tea people" call tisanes) is to add them to hot water and infuse for 4 or 5 minutes, with the potential to do that 3 or 4 times, extending the time as needed to draw out more infusion strength. 

It would also work to just put the herb itself in room temperature water in the fridge to cold-brew for any length of time.  It seems to me it works best to do one round of hot brewed infusion to get the leaves started, herbs or real tea, then if the idea is to mostly use cold brewing to go with that from there. 

As far as where to buy it other types of herbs for infusions turn up in places like Tesco but not pandan leaf as much.  It would be in one of those natural goods stores in some complexes or better international grocery stores would carry it.  It's just a local herb but dried versions might not be around as much as fresh in very local markets, the old-style places.  But then drying it wouldn't be that challenging, probably chopped up a little to help it infuse the placed in a warm oven of some sort for 40 minutes or so.

It's funny how few people posting here seem to even know what climate change is.  If someone has avoided learning the difference between natural cycles in climate versus what we're experiencing now there isn't much point in trying to fill them in.  The idea that Canada or Northern Russia are going to be comfortable, stable climate places to live in the coming decades is equally absurd.  All the same I'll try to help out with explaining two things some people seem to be missing.

In the past climate and greenhouse gas levels were tightly linked (see graph).  20 years ago it was just speculation about how the spike in carbon dioxide going on was really going to follow that, but due to being watched closely by climate scientists now we know (for the most part).  The Earth will get hotter at an unprecedented rate this century, not matching anything experienced before in history, with the possible exception of events like the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, which related to a different form of change.

People miss that the last 10,000 years were an anomaly, the only period of stable climate in the past half million years.  That party is over.  Growing the same crops in the same location year to year won't be possible as it has been for the past 10,000 years.  The 2 degrees of warming in this century isn't necessarily the main problem, or the sea level rise, or the bad storms, or floods and droughts, but along with agriculture becoming much less feasible and what can't be predicted yet it all adds up.  This planet won't continue to support 7 billion people in the same way it is now. 

A bitter, incoherent alcoholic sitting on a barstool can say "let most people die then" but for the rest of humanity it's not that simple.

Good job!  I quit smoking some years back (13 now), and can pass on some of the time-line I experienced.  I'd only been smoking for around 4 years then, so not as long-term as in lots of these stories, but that's plenty of time to be quite addicted.  It was enough to try to quit a couple of times and fail.

The initial worst of the cravings took a month or so to pass.  I was far from over cravings at that point but by then the initial strong urge to smoke was replaced by urges brought on by different triggers (stress, or a connection to when I had smoked before, which was related to lots of daily activities).  At around 6 months it seemed the desire to smoke had leveled off quite a bit but would never really pass.  At around a year it mostly had; some things could still remind me of it but an experience of an urge to smoke became quite infrequent.  It probably helped I wasn't drinking all that much then, which would make urges harder to resist.  After a couple years I never felt any urge at all to smoke, even under stress.

I'm not sure I'd actually recommend it but I'll pass on something I tried at the beginning of not smoking.  A US brand, American Spirit, made an herb blend with a little tobacco in it, and I smoked that for a few weeks initially.  It tasted horrible, like mint and whatever else, and it had some tobacco in it but probably not enough to do all that much for the nicotine craving.  It seemed to sort of work as a placebo.  Really resolve seemed to be the key.  After I decided to quit I never smoked another cigarette, and it became clear enough I wasn't sticking with those nasty herb versions for long either.

He was terrible in Kick-ass and that was some of his best work, now nearly a decade ago.  There is no way this could really happen.

I'm about as far from a doctor as people get but someone just did mention the importance of pro-biotics recently in a podcast.  The idea was that they make such commercial products, designed to restore natural function of digestion by re-balancing internal micro-fauna (gut bacteria).  They also mentioned that some foods naturally perform the same function, eg. kim-chi, due to being fermented, with what is causing that overlapping with what lives in your digestive track.

I have no idea how all that works, and doubt anyone here has a lot of input to offer either, but it would be interesting to hear speculation about it, if it was based on any helpful background experience.

Depending on what digestive track issues someone has different treatments would be appropriate.  My wife's father died from an undiagnosed stomach cancer here, because his doctor kept saying he probably had a mild form of ulcers, for a very long time.  By the time they got the diagnosis right he barely had time left to say goodbyes.

One thing that tends to get lost in discussion of what Trump did or didn't do is what collusion related law he may have broken (did break; the real issue is if he gets convicted).  That follows:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-russia-investigation.html

Was the law broken?

A provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act, Section 30121 of Title 52, broadly outlaws donations or other contributions of a “thing of value” by any foreigner in connection with an American election — or even an express or implied promise to take such action, directly or indirectly.

Depending on how a grand jury interprets the facts the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has gathered about the two Trump Tower meetings, it could find that the foreigners violated that law — and that Donald Trump Jr. conspired in that offense.

Another provision of the same statute makes it illegal for an American to solicit a foreigner for such illicit campaign help — again, even indirectly. If a grand jury were to interpret the evidence about Donald Trump Jr.’s words and actions as a solicitation, he could also be vulnerable to direct charges under that law, experts said.

Notably, the statute can be violated even if the promised or requested help is never provided...

What about making a false statement?
It is a felony to lie to Congress. In his September 2017 interview before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Donald Trump Jr. was asked whether any other foreign governments or nationals offered assistance to the Trump campaign, or whether he had directly or indirectly sought such foreign assistance for the campaign. He said he had not.

In May, after The Times reported about the meeting with the emissary for the Arab princes and the Israeli social media manipulation specialist, Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, raised concerns that Mr. Trump may have lied to the committee...

The latest thing I'm into, beyond trying lots of teas, which I'm passing on mentioning here, is tea tastings.  I held a free, open tea tasting at the Benjasiri Park about three weeks ago, which went well. 

Tomorrow (as of time of posting this) I'll hold a second at the Dusit Zoo, on Saturday the 18th, from 10 to 12 AM at the food court there, beside the elephant pen and acrobatics show.   The idea is to share tea experience, since writing blog posts and mentioning tea in forums only goes so far. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/245314849431085/

We'll probably try a compressed white tea (Gong Mei), a fresh Nepalese white tea, some version of oolong that's not standard, a black tea (maybe an aged Shai Hong, a Yunnan black), and most likely some sheng and shou pu'er, compressed Yunnan tea, with the second type pre-fermented.  Few enough tea enthusiasts would have ever tried all that, and for people not really into tea hardly any of it would ring a bell.  There's no need to bring anything if you do want to join, just try not to run too late, since that place will get really crowded at noon, and setting aside seating after 11 won't work.  I don't plan to accept any donations; the theme is just sharing some tea.  That zoo closes the end of this month so it's a good time to check it out too.

I guess I just took nearly a month off checking in on Thai Visa.  I don't review very many tisanes (herb teas), so I've never got around to talking about bael fruit tea, or any of the rest of what is standard for that range here, lemongrass, roselle, and such.  There was a post about chrysanthemum a long time ago, and I experimented with making papaya leaf tea a number of times, so wrote about that.

On the subject of tea I'll hold a free tasting this coming weekend at the Dusit Zoo, on Saturday Aug. 18 from 10 AM to 12 (kind of far from the theme of which version of powdered flavored tea to buy, but I was just answering this question):   https://www.facebook.com/events/245314849431085/

Someone standing out front of Wat Pho said it was closed when in fact it was actually open; they might look into that.

I was stuck in that queue for the last two days and it wasn't quite that bad there (getting on at Victory monument, off at Chong Nonsi, so transferring at Siam station).  It probably took 45 minutes longer than usual the first day and a half an hour extra the second.  But I could have easily been at that station an extra hour, or more.  Passengers tend to not think about taking the stairs instead of the escalator up to the platform level, even though there was a huge queue there versus not much at all on the two stairs up (they stopped people at the bottom when the top level was full).

Given how hit and miss the operations were for the BTS some years ago it's been nice that it's seemed to work well for a few years now.  The system is a little crowded but somehow that just seems normal.  There is an odd exception:  there's a queue to get on the BTS at Chong Nonsi every rush hour between 5:30 and 6:30, an extra 15 minute wait as lines stretch way back onto the pedestrian walkway area there.  I'm not sure why they can't get that sorted out.

It's definitely artificially flavored tea but that's not much to worry about, or if it seems so someone shouldn't be eating any processed foods.  It's probably a good idea to limit the amount of artificial flavoring and coloring you take in but a moderate amount of Thai tea seems like next to no risk.

As far as the tea being floor sweepings I doubt that.  The powdered version is processed tea, and the loose tea version is low quality machine processed CTC tea, but it's not something that was on a floor.  That idea comes from people not really understanding what CTC processing is.

If you buy 10 kg of tea from any country you actually run an even higher risk.  You can't know how that tea was grown (in almost all cases), and if it turns out there were chemical fertilizers and pesticides used and there are residual contaminants in that tea you'll be ingesting that same version and those same chemicals in high doses for the next couple of years.  The same general idea holds for drinking a lot of one kind of flavored Thai tea for a long time; if it turns out one trace component is unhealthy your exposure would be very high.  Myanmar wouldn't restrict pesticides that would be considered dangerous in developed countries (or Thailand either, for that matter), so it's not necessarily an abstract risk.

I'm not really that familiar with different brands, or the gold and red versions sold by that main producer.  I just wanted to mention they sell loose leaf flavored tea and also tea powder, an instant mix.  I guess it would just depend which one you wanted to buy, or maybe both. 

I write a blog about tea but it's the other kinds of tea, about loose teas, not flavored ones.  You might consider picking up some Thai oolong too; some of it's ok, and it's inexpensive, and brewing loose tea isn't that difficult.

This isn't exactly foodie news, but since the promotion is probably running out soon I'll mention that Dairy Queen now has a Thai tea flavored blizzard.

I'm into tea, usually not Thai tea so much, but that combination works really well, cheap soft-serve and that artificial flavor with black tea.

This version comes with almonds, and I've not tried the one with coffee flavored jelly.

4 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

DHS Secretary Nielsen needs to resign ASAP. And she should think twice before eating in any restaurant.

 

That reminds me of a funny thing a chef I used to work with would say:  "straight from my body to your plate."

On the positive side this could lead to something more substantial later and nothing Trump says is going to amount to any real changes on the US side.  He's just trying to use it as a PR stunt.  The problem is that the intellectually challenged 40% of Americans who support him are buying it and no one else will, and they were already on board, no less happy for him ending trade deals that actually had been benefiting the US.

I'm happy for Dennis Rodman.  He seems pretty much out in space but his intentions seem good, and it feels like a win to him too. 

I'm not as happy for North Koreans.  They're still going to experience three generations of their family being killed or sent to a concentration camp for watching a  Hollywood movie or owning a pair of jeans, or probably for getting blamed for something they didn't do in some cases.  People don't seem to realize that the internet doesn't actually go there, and citizens failing to play out their role in a 1984-like society gets them killed.

Real war never was going to break out anyway.  Kim is crazy but not that crazy.  He can either stay a despotic dictator in an insignificant, isolated country or go out with a bang and see his country all but leveled into a parking lot, opting for suicide or being hunted down and killed.  It's nice that he decides to play nicely but it changes nothing.

I'd agree that most likely after Trump blustering on about getting a better trade deal they'll just renew the old deal.  Or at most fix one special case where an import tariff really is a bit much, but it seems unlikely that kind of review would ever result in a single functional change.

The thing is with Trump you just don't know.  The US pulled out of an Asian trade agreement and the Paris Accord on climate change "just because."  Some of that relates to things that really made a difference.

It's a little like leaving my 9 year old son in charge of the US government.  Whoever he talked to last is likely to sound convincing, unless he has some problem with them, and then the opposite of whatever they said might sound good.

To a Canadian guy I work with (here in Bangkok) it's now more or less his favorite reality television show.  He hates Trump, but he has almost no personal stake in everything Trump touches going badly, so he can take it on that level, as pure comedy. 

It is quickly filtering down to economic problems for the US and for Canada as a main trading partner but that guy is here now, so he's experiencing problems for his country second hand. 

He's aware that climate change is going to shift human experience a lot over the next 50 years, which definitely involves his children, but that guy is old enough that he'll never see it.  Or that bastard Trump, for that matter.

It is nice to see universal disgust with Trump expressed on this forum.  I would have expected less, but this show of a minimum level of good judgment helps restore my faith in expats holding down barstools across this country.

At least in this case one can hope that nothing will come of this. 

What Trump communicated related to meeting with US trade partners was despicable, poorly framed, undiplomatic, horribly uninformed, with no hope for positive outcome, representing no understanding of current circumstances, only potentially leading to disastrous results.  Trump himself says that unless he manages to successfully wing it this time, going in without expectations or any plan at all, or background knowledge of past communication, then he'll just give it up for a waste of time.

As usual the worst of all this is that to 40% of the idiots in the US this is Trump at his best, out there trying to make a good deal as only he could.  Factor in liberal idiots and the US really is a nation of morons.