Prawit tells Prayut: We're done
Good grief... the temperature early today around our frequently envied East Nong Ban headqurters was 16 degrees, 61 American.
Fishwrap staff yesterday afternoon completed the task of bringing all brass monkeys inside.
A Happy Hanukkah to all. It's a holiday that celebrates an actual historic event in Jewish history, a victory over tyranny and the miracle of the light that burned for eight days.
THAILAND WEATHER NAVY SUKHOTHAI CORVETTE
The Royal Thai Navy HTMS Sukhothai lost power and sank in 6-metre, 20-foot waves just off Hua Hin.
The last transmission from the Sukhothai asked for permission to take shelter from the rough seas.
As of this morning, 75 of the vessel's 106-man crew were rescued -- all 31 others are officially "missing".
Official Navy spokesman Admiral Pokkrong Monthatpalin:
 The Sukhothai was on a regular patrol in the Gulf, about 35 kilometres off Prachuap Khiri Khan province when it got into trouble.
 The ship listed  sharply and took on water, which damaged its electrical systems and caused the engines to fail.
 Without power, the corvette listed even further and eventually capsized.
At the same time, a commercial cargo vessel, Anuphum, also foundered and capsized, but all 10 crewmen were rescued.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2463995/
U.S.A. Naval Institute reported the incident worldwide.
https://news.usni.org/2022/12/18/royal-thai-navy-corvette-sinks-in-gulf-of-thailand
THAILAND POLITICS
Let's Call This Whole Thing Off
The retired 4-star Royal Thai Army general who wrote and supervised the 2014 military coup that made Prayut a token 'prime minister' announced a complete split.
General Prawit Wongsuwon (left in the photo), long seen as the extremely powerful 'man behind throne' announced that he is abandoning Prayut (right) completely.
If (large word) there is an election in May or so, Prawit will be the single nominee for prime minister. Prayut will not be considered by the Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) - ironically, the political party created to protect Prayut as prime minister.
The obese and corrupt Prawit is considered to be Thailand's most powerful political figure.
He was formerly the BFF of Prayut but yesterday's announcement is the end of their political romance.
The May 22, 2014 began as a conspiracy by four army generals known as The Tigers of the East.
Those Tigers now are extinct. But it's a heckuva story.
Related
Storms bring chaos to South
At least 51,000 families in nine provinces in the South have been affected by severe flooding, according to a report by the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) yesterday.
The floods were caused by heavy rains from a storm that has covered the Gulf of Thailand since Saturday.
 The storm is forecast to clear today.
This red flag, on any beach in Thailand, means "don't swim".
Totally, completely free ProTip, gratis, from Fishwrap - Don't Swim There.
Related
Opinion – Thailand's political parties need to take a stock of situation before showing their pompous plans of the future
https://www.thaienquirer.com/46864/opinion-thailands-political-parties-need-to-take-a-stock-of-situation-before-showing-their-pompous-plans-of-the-future/
THAILAND TOURISM DRINKING CLOSURES
Last Orders, gentlemen
Thailand's token 'ministry of national health' said yesterday that your requests for two more hours for pubs, bars, karaoke, etc. - Denied.
Anutin Charnvirakul framed the decision as "assurance to concerned civil groups" who oppose any such extension of drinking hours.
The entertainment industry has requested that the ruling junta allow venues to stay open until 4 a.m. - instead of the current 2 a.m.
Anutin - who might become a junta-approved prime minister, said extending the operating hours of night entertainment venues is not a sustainable way of stimulating the economy before urging businesses to find an approach which won’t harm public health.
Princess' condition 'stable'
The Royal Household Bureau claimed yesterday that the "overall condition" of heart attack victim Her Royal Highness Princess Bajrakitiyabha Narendiradebyavati is stable. Her heartbeat is controlled with medication.
 Princess Baj's father, King Vajiralongkorn, is visibly disturbed.
 The alleged 'government' of Thailand (i.e. the ruling junta) demanded that Twitter remove all posts on Her Royal Highness except the approved ones from the Royal Household Bureau. In a lengthy letter Twitter told them to get stuffed.
PHOTO shows the princess and her young brother, most likely to be the next king.
Little noticed, but strong message
Migrants from Myanmar gathered at the Burmese embassy on Sathorn Road yesterday.
Officially, they marked International Migrants Day - last Sunday.
In reality, they demanded the end of the country's Tatmadaw dictatorship, and the release from prison of Aung San Suu Kyi.
GLOBAL WARMING EVs VIETNAM
If there were such a thing as a global, mandatory reading list, the editor of Fishwrap would put this next article on that list.
Motoring writer Larry S. Berman of Jalopnik has done a devastating look at VinGroup's big publicity push to get its electric cars into America -- not just the shabby vehicle itself but the entire show that Vietnam's first billionaire, Vietnam's richest man put on for them. The story makes VinGroup and Pham Nhat Vuong look like a parallel government, including surveillance -- a Russian & Ukrainian-trained oligarch.
 But think of Jane Plemmianikov [1972] She and Berman are both never going to be invited back to Vietnam.
The story says:
VinFast VF8 Is Simply Not Ready for America
The electric-car startup brought me to its Vietnam headquarters to drive its first EV meant for the U.S. market. It was the most bizarre experience of my life.
https://jalopnik.com/vinfast-vf8-electric-car-first-drive-not-ready-for-u-s-1849892217
THAILAND WEATHER (more)
Nasty weather in Thailand's South has cut off islands, including tourist destinations at Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao.
 Andaman Sea ialands on the other (west) side of Thailand also are affected - as are tourist destinations in Malaysia.
 Most of the problem is wild wind during heavy rainstorms.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2463294/
Ferries from Surat Thani town to Koh Samui have been stopped.
 This one lies at anchor after the province ordered all vessels to stay ashore because of the bad weather.
 Today's 5 a.m. forecast from the Meteorological Department warned of high waves in the Gulf of Thailand.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2463294/
Thai Airways International (THAI) has big plans for the next 3 months
• Buy 9 more passenger jets, bringing its fleet to 70.
• Refurbish three A330-300s and two Boeing 777-200ER and get them flying again. They are already undergoing maintenance.
• Add new destinations in Europe and Japan. This is under negotiation.
New, optimistic airline acting CEO Suvadhana Sibunruang said:
 We have to meet the rising demands of post-pandemic tourism.
Sure, but NOTE: The airline is still undergoing its bankruptcy restructuring process.
https://tinyurl.com/48ksrsts
TECHNOLOGY
UM: Scientists create world's first 'Vagina-on-a-Chip.' (Notice to Canadians: They don't mean French fries.)
https://interestingengineering.com/health/worlds-first-vagina-chip
The Quantum Factor
If you always wanted a quantum computer of your own but didn't have the millions of dollars and the endless rivers of liquid helium SpinQ has three portable models designed just for you sort of. (Tom's Hardware)
I say sort of because the theoretical capacity of a quantum computer scales exponentially with the number of qubits - each qubit essentially being another orthogonal dimension of parallel universes that the computer can compute in. IBM just announced a 433 qubit quantum computer, and 2^433 is a very big number.
This matters because if SpinQ announced a cheap portable quantum computer with a large number of qubits we'd know immediately that it was bullshit. But the SpinQ qubit count maxes out at... 3.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/spinq-introduces-trio-of-portable-quantum-computers
No, Virginia, shader prefetching is not broken on AMD's new Radeon 7000 graphics cards. (Tom's Hardware)
This rumour was circulating yesterday, based on a comment in the code for AMD's open source graphics drivers. It would be odd if prefetch didn't work on these new RDNA3 cards, because it worked in RDNA2 and indeed in the original RDNA.
AMD has explained what that comment means: The feature that doesn't work and is disabled in the drivers is an experimental new prefetch mode planned for RDNA4.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-addresses-controversy-rdna-3-shader-pre-fetching-works-fine
How to save Canada
