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40
Trump Reiterates Warning to Hamas on Hostage Release
You should know by now that claiming jailed prisoners in Israel are hostages is against forum rules -
44
Juristic want's to ban weed possession in the building - are there other weed free condos?
Sounds like your juristic person has been resurrected from ancient DNA. Roll a fatty, call Jeff Goldblum. -
65
Russia Dismisses Proposed Peace Deal from Trump Transition Team
The US did not invade Cuba. The US let the Cubans struggle under Russian rule, it allowed Russia to deploy conventional weapons on the island for defensive purposes, it allowed communism to rule the place unchecked, it kept sanctions in place and focused on something better, more rewarding and interesting than wasting time with the Castro brothers and their demented, hopeless circus. Problem solved. Can Putin do the same? He could but he miscalculated, and now his past criminal behavior doesn't allow him to acknowledge defeat, relax, retire or let his guard down. He must always seem to come out on top, to project strength to feel secure. In the very moment Putin acknowledges defeat in Ukraine, he would instantly turn into a dead man walking in the Kremlin. To be clear, Putin has already lost. He triggered a war to prevent Ukraine to become NATO member and, even before the war is lost, both Finland and Sweden already joined the alliance. Finland and Sweden added 1,350 km to the border shared by NATO with Russia, a combined population which is half of that of Ukraine, but with a combined GDP of $895 billion, five times bigger than Ukraine. In a democratic open society, genuinely worried about a hypothetical NATO aggressive stance, Putin would have been impeached and forced to retire. Neville Chamberlain is a good example of what happens in democracy when a leader is defeated in the international arena by a dangerous opponent. But Russia is not a democratic open society, and in Russia politics is just about posturing and eliminating one's opponents. In Russia all smart people perfectly know that NATO hypothetical aggressivity is a joke. NATO has no reason to invade Russia and take charge of 140 million Russian citizens, a big junk of whom are destitute, illiterate, alcoholics, troublemakers and/or w**res. Only idiots in Russia (and elsewhere) can truly believe that NATO may have aggressive intentions. Therefore, Putin is left off the hook. He can keep on posturing, pretending to be a world master strategist, while the Russians pretend to believe that NATO is a dangerous enemy, their casualty count mounts, innocent Ukrainians are killed every day, the Russian economy is slowly but securely sliding into a crisis similar to the one that caused the demise of the Soviet Union, and the Russians, as usual, are the ones who will foot the dearest bill, Bottom line Russia is just an immense Potemkin village. Another demented, hopeless circus, like the one the Castro brothers set up in Cuba, only much bigger and wealthier. -
40
Trump Reiterates Warning to Hamas on Hostage Release
wait and see the magic Donny weaves, remember unless cheated, Donny always wins.... -
6
So masks do work after all -- a comprehensive scientific review
No, if certain masks are worn correctly and consistently they may be effective in reducing transmission. Even that is a stretch of logic from my analysis of the paper and its sources. I was going to do a critique of the paper and its sources, but it would amount to many pages and nobody would read it, therefore it would be a complete waste of my time. Mask-wearing is akin to wearing an amulet, you either believe in its efficacy or not. There was never any evidence for their efficacy and this paper sets out with the hypothesis that mask-wearing was effective, using some very poor observational studies as part of the meta-analysis. as someone who has been involved in research, Cochrane Reviews are very useful as an overview of the evidence, though such reviews are really as reliable as retrospective population studies, unless the source material is sound. Give me a Cochrane Study with 10 RCTs and I'll take that over 1000 observational studies. Probably the weakest form of evidence is anecdotal evidence, however when you consider mask mandates did nothing to prevent entire populations being infected, and from my own observational studies in a hospital environment, didn't stop medical staff or patients being infected, then you really need to question whether real-world scenarios fit in with cherry-picked studies. as an aside, a major confounder is that many people just did not become infected. I personally know of an Anaesthetist who asked his so-called positive daughter to cough into his face a number of times a day over a period of a week. All hospital workers had to do a daily test before starting work, and he was never positive. Had he worn an N95 24/7, not even removing it to eat, one could conclude that the mask prevented infection, but he didn't, and he wasn't infected as far as testing was concerned. The bottom line here is for any study that claims masks have any efficacy, there has to be a control group within the population that is measured, against the other population. Like I said, it's more of a belief than an actual non-pharmaceutical intervention, and seriously, you have to question the psyche of anyone who habitually wears a mask, post all the scaremongering, because they are scared of getting an infection with a kill rate so low that the numbers are meaningless, especially for young, healthy people. -
11
What Books Are You Reading ? (2025)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The remains of the day. ( and all his books ) Claire Keegan , Small things like these. Ken Follet , The armour of light. ( and all his books). William Boyd , A good man in Africa. Delia Owen’s, Where the Crawdads sing. Hanya Yanagihara , A little life. ( one of my favorites ) Anthony Doerr, All the light we cannot see. Min Jin Lee, Pachinko. Amitav Ghosh, all his books. So many, I’m never without a book. -
97
Bank of Thailand Boosts Mobile Security with New Transfer Limits
Agreed. But that doesn't solve the problem that we cannot pay a hospital deposit anymore. @chiang mai very few farang have a Thai credit card, for well known reasons. If you use a foreign credit card, you have to pay up to 35% tax on the deposit - even if you later get reimbursed because insurance paid directly to the hospital. A deposit of 100,000 or 200,000 is not unusual, in the tourist south 500,000 is not unusual. ATMs have similar limits nowadays. (Thais don't have this problem, they all have credit cards, and younger relatives who will pay the deposit.) BTW I agree with @mokwit -
335
Jeju Air Flight from Bangkok Skids Off Runway at Muan Airport, 28 Dead
A pilots take which is similar to what I have been saying all along Surely I cannot be the only professional aviator wading through this thread thinking that the whole "berm debate" is...superfluous? In what world does landing unconfigured more than halfway down a runway carrying a tremendous amount of energy NOT have a bad outcome? While airport design of course has a role to play in overall safety, ultimately it is OUR job (speaking to other actual pilots, please, not simmers and enthusiasts) to keep the operation within the lines. This wasn't marginally outside those lines. In that light the endless ruminating about The Berm is pointless when I'd wager every actual working pilot is quietly mulling how they never want to perform this "landing", and wanting to know what combination of technical and human factors led to the aircraft being in the aforementioned state. The placement of the obstacle was tragically unfortunate but the allocation of discussion to it is astonishingly misplaced.
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