FYI...#walkaway is a right wing campaign where they had republican actors (and stock photos) claim they were Democrats who were sick of the liberal nonsense and they, and millions like them, were walking away from the Democrats. It was for right wingers, not left, false verification that they are correct and lefties are finally coming around to their truth, and a counterpoint to the "blue wave" campaign. They were caught on day one, and it never caught on outside right wing websites, mostly because it was a horrible, stupid, poorly implemented, transparent ploy. No surprise that, even though he knows that, Bob still puts it out there hoping to convince someone.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/walkaway-campaign-stock-photos/

Looking into it, I've found that it's reportedly become a Russian ploy.....
#WalkAway has also now been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots, and it is now the seventh most popular Russia-influenced hashtag as of this writing (July 17), according to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian influence on Twitter as part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund. The purpose of this now-astroturf campaign is to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion that this is a popular movement. In reality, #WalkAway has become pure propaganda, a psychological operation.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opinions/russian-bots-2018-midterm-elections-opinion-love/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Just one more time Bob is spreading Russian propaganda.

It turns into a weird combination of French, German, and and Irish Gaelic?

Cool.

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Wow, I always remember seeing those weird patterns on German tanks and I never knew what it was. Cool!

Still hilarious, although I think the Germans would be the last folks to make fun of pee-pee tapes.

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"On Feb 20th 2017 Air Navigation Services Czech Republic reported, that the actual communication for the hand off from Bratislava to Prague at 15:53Z had been correct (frequency 132.890MHz transmitted and acknowledged), however, the crew subsequently tuned frequency 132.980MHz, the crew did not monitor the emergency frequency. Prague Center spotted another Jet Airways aircraft, flight 9W-122 from Delhi (India) to London Heathrow, flying under control of Rhein Control (Germany) south of the Czech Republic, via Rhein Control and 9W-122 an ACARS message was transmitted to 9W-118 asking them to contact (Prague Center) frequency 132.065MHz. When 9W-118 reported on that frequency at 16:26Z (loss of communication thus lasted for 33 minutes), the aircraft was already in German Airspace and was instructed to contact Rhein Control. Czech ATC immediately informed their military counterpart (Czech control and reporting center) that contact had been re-established."

https://www.aeroinside.com/item/9114/jet-airways-b773-near-cologne-on-feb-16th-2017-loss-of-communication-leads-to-intercept

The crew swapped some digits on channel handover that lead to a comms blackout of 33 minutes. Euro jets already in the air intercepted the passenger jet over Germany and escorted to England.

Those boys and girls don't mess around.

Fucking Germans! Is there anything that they can’t do right? Makes me want to dust all off my PS1 and fire up gran Turismo 2.

"We fight brown people"

How far back are we taking this? I had no idea Germans were brown in the 40's.

You're dead on. This was orignally used for self-cooling beer kegs and was developed by Peter Maier-Laxhuber at the Technical University München, Germany (where else? ;-) ) in 1983.

From German Wikipedia:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selbstkühlendes_Bierfass

Brlliant idea to use the technology this way!

Pretty good video. Specific things:

Too many prostitutes: Most of the non-Thai people that complain about this went to the wrong places in Thailand. Pattaya was a tiny fishing village before the Vietnam war. Then, soldiers started getting shipped into the country for R&R. The Thai government didn't really know what to do with them, so they sorta passed the buck and decided to send them to Pattaya to relax. Bunch of stressed out dudes there, nothing to do, high demand for alternate activities ... the market answered.

Fast forward to today, and Pattaya knows exactly what put it on the map. I hate that place -- it is like what would happen if you took the worst/sleaziest elements of Vegas and Tijuana, and then built a "city" around it. Shittiest beach in Thailand, chock full of sleaze, disgusting. However, it is one of the most major tourist destinations. Gee, why could that be? Is it in spite of the nature of the place, or because of it? No false advertising here, you know what you're getting when you book a trip there. And if that is your thing, more power to ya.

Now, I don't want to act like prostitution exists in Pattaya and Soi Cowboy / Patpong in Bangkok, and is absent elsewhere. Far from it. Every town, down on to tiny ones, likely has a red-light district and brothels. The ones you hear about are sex tourism pits like those major ones, but the trade is alive and well pretty much everywhere -- and mostly caters to local Thais.

I've honestly never been to such an establishment or sought those services (in 11 years of being here), but I don't care that they are available. The most significant negative is that they are NOT well-regulated like, say, what I've heard about Amsterdam. Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand. So the de-facto situation is that brothels have to pay protection money to police in order to avoid getting shut down or "inspected", etc.

Corruption is a major problem -- much worse than prostitution, in my opinion.


Too many ladyboys: It is certainly true that there are more trans people per capita here than pretty much anywhere else that I know of. It took me a while, being a country kid from Kansas, but I see that in pretty much the same light as the German narrator in the video at this point. Acceptance is good. You do you, man.

As a stereotype on the flip side of the coin, I think the ladyboys tend to be great in custom interaction kinds of jobs. Cashiers at 7-11, waitpeople at restaurants, etc. Polite, attentive, helpful. And often the most willing to attempt to use English. A lot of the best students that I've taught English to have been ladyboy leaning.


Freedom: I'm with @Mordhaus here. When your personal liberty is mainly due to the apathy / incompetence of the governing authority, and they may choose to get off their asses and revoke that at any time ... perhaps it isn't something to brag about. Very basic stuff like dissenting speech and protesting is met with being carted off for little re-education chats, etc. Pretty scary shit, actually.


Basically I tend to think that just like anywhere on Earth, there's a lot of good here and plenty of bad too. There's plenty of legitimate gripes with cultural elements and stuff in Thailand, but the most common ones (that the video pretty accurately listed) are pretty insignificant in my opinion.

Sounds like he speaks 3 different languages. English, German and... Greek? Spanish? Valerian?

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That was the most German "Oh fuck."