get this in my channel!
*electronica

and *promote the future of music.

sorry sage,your points are valid,but until people get off expecting music for free.we will have to wade through an ocean of remixing.

Well....I guess they don't exist then....I took some (sad, they won't get off the bottom) pictures with my kindle, but can't for the life of me find the file to upload it. It wants me to share it through it's photo app which only lets me email them, print them, or upload to Amazon....I can't copy and paste it for some reason, even after emailing it to myself.
Not having a real computer sucks.

You know, they didn't have this kind of space coverage when I was a kid.

HEY! YOU THERE! GET OFF MY LAWN!

I got interested in the economics of that refurb.

Looks like a new Gressel vice of roughly the same type can be bought for 550 Francs, which is just very slightly more than 550 US Dollars.

Nothing specific is said about time spent on the repair, other than getting off that one plate took "30 minutes of hammering", which is cut down to roughly 10 seconds of video. I figure that was a particularly time consuming caper to end up being the only thing shown where time spent was specifically mentioned. Some tiny bits of what we saw were roughly real-time, where all the work spent on a specific item was shown 1:1 in the video. But, lots of other stuff was probably somewhere between that 10 seconds : 30 minutes and 1:1 range.

I think a very conservative guess would be that each minute of video represented at least 30 minutes of work. So, 17 minute video x 30 = 510 minutes. Divided by 60 = 8.5 hours. As an extremely conservative estimate -- could easily be five or ten times that, particularly with lawyer-type "billable hours" consideration on what constitutes "work time".

But with that conservative estimate, he worked for (at the very least) 8.5 hours to repair something that could have been replaced for $550. Not including the new replacement smooth grips, etc. That's about $65 per hour. For extremely skilled labor.

I'm not mocking that at all -- I actually agree that it was quite satisfying to watch. But I think that just reaffirms that there must have been some real passion for the work there to decide to go through that very fiddly and skilled labor for what was likely much more than 8.5 hours rather than buying a new one and calling it a day. Not much of that kind of work ethic left these days -- and I sure as hell include myself in that!

this is only tangentially related but american music artists need to get off hip hop's dick and broaden their musical horizons.

We need to get off this planet. "I don't want to be on this planet anymore."

I have to agree somewhat. My first comment was about the command they were giving. I can't tell for sure if they are saying "Get on your back" or "Get off your back".

I seem to hear "Get on your back" which he already is. I believe what the police wanted was "Get on your stomach" but if the command was "Get off your back" I can see where confusion might come into play for the black man especially after having continuous stunning.

If the command was indeed "Get on your back" then that makes all the difference as he was already on his back and following commands.

BTW, the black man drove directly to a local hospital where the staff reported to police an ER patient with bullet wounds. They were not aware of the shooting but by law are required to report all gun injuries.

Are they yelling "Get on your back" or "Get off your back?"

a precise answer for a precise society. 30 seconds to get off the train; 30 seconds to get on--at each stop.

I'm not horrified by what was shown in the video. Not in the least. I'm just interested in the gender bias and how it affects application of the law.

With regards to your comment about physical size, what if a young (or just petite) male server weighing 130-140lbs, was groped this way by a heavier woman? Would he then be justified in throwing her down? I suspect the media outcome would still be different and result in the male server being charged. This is gender bias because men are supposed to "suck it up".

As I said, if a man grabs a woman or shoves another man, he should expect to get blasted in the face. I was brought up to never hit a woman (or anyone really) and do believe men need to show more restraint in confrontations with aggressive women because men are typically stronger and, probably on average, more physically capable in a fight.

Getting off topic a bit, but the problem I have with the modern feminist movement is that it is becoming much less about equality between the sexes and more about gaining an upper hand on men. Many modern radical feminists seem to want to be treated equally until it doesn't suit them. So I agree with you that modern society has gone a bit crazy trying to say that there are no differences between men and women. But that is getting off topic.

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.