Thailand suffers another day of normal weather.
If you're waiting for our construction joke...
please be patient. We're still working on it.
Paris Olympics are about a month away.
Saudi and other Muslim 'officials' in charge of the Haj pilgrimage say "more than 1,300" died of heat strokes.
This never occurred until the mass media discovered GLOBAL WARMING.https://t.ly/-mAJf
Thai travel to South Korea plummets
https://www.nationthailand.com/blogs/news/tourism/40038892
Or, in the more florid Bangkok Post headline
Thai tourists continue to shun South Korea
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2814056/
Why is this?
A sharp drop in the first four months of 2024 is attributed to an allegedly rude immigration official at Incheon airport, and a stagnant Thai economy.
Thais do not require a visa and are a significant part of tourism travel to South Korea.
But Thais alao are a significant part of the illegal aliens, most of them seeking work.
About that 'normal' weather
The Thai Meteorological Department (https://www.tmd.go.th) warns of flash floods and strong winds in 43 of the country's 77 provinces.
Thaiger https://t.ly/mt9es
The best Sunday columnist in East Asia (all languages) writes
The art of rolling out the red carpet
Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to enjoy the red carpet treatment he received in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang this past week.
Over the years the Russian leader will have become quite familiar with walking on such plush carpets, but one wonders if he knows why they are red.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2816019/the-art-of-rolling-out-the-red-carpet
The late American actor William Hurt probably summed it up best with
I am not comfortable with walking the red carpet in a tuxedo and seeing all the women with their boobs pushed up and all the men dressed as penguins.
Hainan durians hit the market
Growers have increased the crop by 400 percent in a year -- but these Chinese fruits, a challenge to Thai farmers and exporters, still sell out.
The sales pitch: Natural farming, no chemicals.
Straits Timeshttps://shorturl.at/r1gXi
20 Kilometres from Death
Nine passengers riding a van in Buri Ram province, including a 3-year-old, were taken to hospital after a close call.
The van had just been "repaired" but the workmen blocked the only air intake -- passengers blacked out or became suddenly tired. Another 20 klicks, they would all have died.
One passenger left the van and called rescue workers from Siam Ruam Jai Salvation. So the story had a somewhat happy ending -- and the horrified owner promised it will never happen again. No legal charges were pressed.
https://www.nationthailand.com/news/general/40039035
RIP DONALD SOUTHERLAND
After a lifetime of motion picture and TV acting, the Canadian actor died in Miami (a city in Florida state), aged 88.
His parting words, on U.S. TV in 1998
I love to work. I'm not as crazy as I used to be, but I'm still a little crazy.
His son Kiefer (right in photo) wrote on the social platform previously known as Twitter
Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.
Despite not being American, Donald was a driving force with the anti-American Jane Plemiannikov in FTA -- a campaign against the U.S. Army and all U.S. servicemen. That was 54 years ago. It is still unknown if canoodling was part of Jane's lure. He was a green-carder but never was drafted into a U.S. military force.
Khao Sod(Frersh News)https://t.ly/wVyP1
[Tuesday MorningJoke]
When a woman goes into labour with her first child, she is immediately terrified, in a lot of pain and not entirely sure what to do. She asks her husband for help.
He makes the decision to call the hospital and ask what his wife should do to make the pain stop and to get ready to go to the hospital.
When a nurse gets on the phone, the man says, "Help! My have to send help! My wife is in labour!"
The nurse very calmly asks if this is the woman's first child.
The husband yells, "No! This is her husband!" [h/t Housely]
SPORTS USA BASKETBALL
(takimag https://www.takimag.com/article/34053/)
A terrific sports essay on women's basketball and its successful rookie Caitlin Clark.
Boyish-looking Stephen Curry introduced a conceptual breakthrough reminiscent of baseball slugger Babe Ruth. He backed up one... two... three steps and shot undefended three pointers.
So did Caitlin who is rewarded with a subsistence salary and thuggishness as if she were an Asian woman standing alone at a New York subway platform.
And horror upon horror! Caitlin isn't lesbian!
SPORTS BETTING
The CFL is two games in and the bookies have set the Grey Cup odds:
For safety, take the Alouettes and the Blue Bombers.
https://shorturl.at/CDtRg
Was Legalizing Weed a Mistake?
A Debate with two leading advocates both for and against the legalization of marijuana: has decriminalization worked? Or should it be reconsidered with more sober eyes?
By Bari Weiss
From the Comments
Do we need more stupid people driving, walking the streets, raising families, voting?
We were assured, almost daily, that it was good for us*.
Pot use seems to contribute to more severe cases of Covid-19, study finds.
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2024/06/21/COVID-marijuana-complications/2461718930660/
*An example, for example
OPINION EDITORIAL
Hemp's potential goes up in smoke
Although hemp, or ganchong in Thai, belongs to the same species of cannabis as ganja, it is non-psychoactive. In short, it is not a drug.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2816049/
USA POLITICS
Welcome to the Trump Veepstakes!
Trumpland is dangerous. Who will be willing to risk financial ruin, humiliation, or jail time to be the presumptive nominee’s running mate?
By Peter Savodnik, senior editor, The Free Press
TECHNOLOGY
NVIDIA closed out the week above $135 -- and is the world's most valuable company.
Eat that, Huawei/ZTE!
https://www.anandtech.com/show/21453/nvidia-closes-above-135-dollars-becomes-worlds-most-valuable-company
The Commerce Department has banned the sale of Kaspersky software in the US, because Russia. (Tech Crunch)
We are not claiming that they're wrong, merely noting that their analysis of the problem is perhaps incomplete.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/20/us-bans-kaspersky-software-security-risk-russia/
Is there life out there? (thefp)
There's a planet, 120 light years (a long distance) from Earth where there might -- just might -- be life.
(Insert standard mandatory joke about No Intelligent Life Here)
Western Digital has announced a 4TB model of its Blue SN5000 SSDs. (AnandTech)
One catch. Two catches. Three:
1. It's QLC where the smaller sizes in that range are TLC, so it's potentially slower and has lower endurance per GB.
2. It's DRAMless, which is not a good combination with QLC flash.
3. At the MSRP, the SN850X is not much more expensive and much faster.
Details galore at this link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21454/western-digital-rolls-out-updated-wd-blue-ssd-sn5000-4tb
A $99 OCuLink GPU dock from laptops and mini-PCs from Minisforum. (Tom's Hardware) [3,600 baht in real money]
You didn't need a power supply, right? Or a case?
https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/docking-stations-hubs/minisforum-deg1-egpu-dock-launched-at-dollar99-open-air-device-supports-up-to-rtx-4090-and-oculink-connections
Writing a video game like it's 1987. (GitHub)
Not a very sophisticated video game -- it's Minesweeper rather than Minecraft -- but it's 300k and runs on modern systems.
https://gaultier.github.io/blog/write_a_video_game_from_scratch_like_1987.html
Probably True: If you meet a developer over the age of thirty-five, and they're not constantly angry, they are either:
1. Working in a very narrow technical field like x-ray diffraction crystallography that hasn't been poisoned by the latest fads
2. Heavily medicated, or
3. Dangerously incompetent
Headline, America's newspaper of record https://t.ly/zpEY8
White House Asks 'Migrants' (aka illegal aliens) to hold off on raping and murdering any more Americans until after the presidential election in early November.
