Thai hit-run killer's family sues TV show for talking about it
You are currently reading the Bulldog Saturday edition of Fishwrap, and we welcome you all.
Fuel pump prices are so high I went to the car dealership and test drove three cars just to run my errands.
I got to tell you, there's, I don't say panic, but there's real unease in the party. And you know, sometimes you go years with nothing happening, and then you go weeks with everything happening. It's politics. Anything can happen.
James Carville, U.S. Democratic Party legend/icon says don't bank on Biden being the Democrat nominee for president just yet.
Thailand's second-richest man sues over bribery allegation
Chalerm Yoovidhya, who owns Kratin Daeng and Red Bull, now alleges that a talk show host and an ex-police pooyai defamed him by chatting about a 300-million-baht bribe to save his son Vorayuth, best known as Boss. (right in photo, taken the day of the Sukhumvit Road crash)
The son's Ferrari struck, dragged and killed a traffic police 12 years ago. He is charged but he fled to live the good, dame-filled (and very highly financed) good life, mostly in Europe. And Chalerm and family publicly approve.
But diminutive TV hostess Ubonrat "I Am Thai" Thaonoi and former Bangkok police chief and Lieutenant General Sanit Mahathavorn chatted about the bribe accusations, and Chalerm wants 50 million Thai baht in damages -- about approximately a million 400 thousand U.S. simoleons. And vast national apologies. And a takedown of the discussion from Tik Tok, which is actually a dumb demand.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2801693/
Ampol Kaewpan, Chalmerm's lawyer, said he wants to file criminal charges of conspiracy, which would prove that the process is the punishment.
Asia's best Sunday columnist comments on a common Thailand sight:
Telling fortunes 'a nice little earner'
A recent Thai news story concerned a man nabbed in an online fortune-telling scam. He would inform customers suffering from misfortune that their situation would dramatically improve if for a small fee he made a few prayers on his "direct line" to the deities.
It will come as no surprise that the prayers never seemed to work the first time and the "small fees" became increasingly larger as the customers paid for each subsequent prayer ceremony.
It's not just gullible folks who seek help from the spiritual world. It is no secret that some of those holding responsible positions are a highly superstitious lot and may even have their own soothsayers who are paid handsomely.
Much more of Crutch at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2799474/
The only interesting comment in the entire process:
Sentencing is expected in the coming weeks but could be delayed.
Unrelated
Wallaby escapes from Chiang Mai Zoo
The red female was pushed, chased or most likely pursued by dogs until it fell into a stream and drowned.
Report with horrible photo and inexpert comments https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2802349/
A readable and saveable piece for the files from the online news site Nation Thailand:
Timeline Of Thaksin Shinawatra's Lese Majeste Case
https://www.nationthailand.com/news/politics/40038456
PIER PRESSURE
Biden's 320 million dollar* pier breaks up and floats away --
*11.8 Billion baht in real money
The people who created the useless money-pit pier are trying to blame poor logistics and terrible weather. Sure.
Not one smidgen of 'desperately needed aid to Palestinian people' was delivered in the week it was operational.
CHINA GAZA AID PLEDGE
Xi 'President for Life' Jinping told a mini-summit of Arab leaders that China intends to supply the aid that the American's couldn't.
Xi snuck in a reiterated CCP pledge for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. He said
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has escalated drastically and thrown people into tremendous suffering. https://t.ly/gM-5j
USA ENTERTAINMENT SPORTS STANLEY
MADISON SQUARE: Panthers out-fought the Rangers in a tough last-10 minutes to win the game 3-2, and put themselves one more victory toward the Cup finals agains Dallas or the Oilers, who knows?
It was 30 years ago that Mark Messier, Brian Leetch and the Rangers won the Cup, so it looks a lot like "Wait 'til next year!" for them.
But who knows? Game 6 is at Sunrise but if there's a Game 7, it will be at New York.
Recap (VIDEO) https://t.ly/LkXUn
TECHNOLOGY
Google has confirmed that leaked technical details of its search engine are genuine. (The Verge)
'Heh. Experts believe...555'
Yeah, true! 'Experts believe' this is likely to make Google Search worse, though they were unable to explain how this is possible.
Arm has announced its latest mobile CPU cores. (AnandTech)
Of note, the X925 is claimed to be 36% faster than Arm's fastest cores from last year, when built on the latest 3nm process (where last year's cores would have been 5nm).
That's a pretty decent score, but the best current phones are five generations behind in CPU cores and they work just fine.
ZOMG NO! No, you can't say that! Oh my God, you can't just say that: Construction of Intel's new 1nm fab in Germany has been delayed by "too much black soil". (Tom's Hardware)
To make it clearer, the site that Intel selected turned out to be first-rate farmland, and Germany has soil conservation laws that require all that soil to be... Something expensive and inconvenient. I don't know what exactly.
I know! Teacher, I know! We can let Frogs be in control of the Internet.
Afnic launches IBDNS, the “intentionally broken” DNS (Afnic of France)
Flaky DNS servers are a curse (there's a major Australian website [no name because Australian defamation lawsuits are... tiring] that tries to force people onto its IPv6 address even if they're not connected to IPv6) so they've created one that is deliberately and controllably insane.
https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and-resources/news/afnic-launches-ibdns-the-intentionally-broken-dns-server/
Cheap at half the price: The Khadas Mind. (Serve the Home)
It's decent hardware, but you can get the same specs for half the price if you sacrifice 5% of the build quality.
But an excellent review at
https://www.servethehome.com/khadas-mind-is-a-different-mini-pc-our-review-intel-1360p/
SPACE
Faster, please https://t.ly/JCA22
NASA's newest proposal: A plasma rocket that would get us to Mars in 2 months.
Free Speech or Fascist
U.S. Supreme Court rules 9-to-nil in favour of free speech.
New York state official Maria Vullo has absolute right to criticise and attack the National Rifle Association (NRA) which she hates
BUT
What she cannot do is to use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavoured expression, which she did.
Associate Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor went on and on in her amazingly unkempt and sophomoric majority opinion that Vullo has free-speech rights. Which no one, including the NRA ever said she didn't.
The point being that the process is the punishment. Aside from defamation and slander hurled for even daring to sue a state official, the NRA had to come up with millions of American bucks just to fight the case, and New York state and Ms Vullo simply scooped up taxpayers' dollars to fight (and to lose) the case.
Epoch: https://t.ly/m7xQN