"Unavoidable marketing campaign" makes me glad that I live in Thailand, filter all web traffic through adblockers, and torrent all TV and other media content with ads removed.

Some of my friends here stream live sports, but since a 7PM game in the US ends up being a roughly 7AM game in Thailand I never do that. Torrents can be found for pretty much all NFL games and some NHL games (used to be a private tracker for NHL but it got shut down and I haven't found a real solid alternative) which is all I care about, and I don't care about it not being live. I guess that live streaming including ads confirms that preference for me...

Just remember these are people from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, who likely do not understand the harm they're doing, but are simply doing what they can to feed their families. Those are some hard knock lives.

And then there's us -- the ignorant technocrats who only become outraged when our access to information catches up to us and teaches us that our viral desire for exotic pets has fueled a harmful trade.

It's just ignorance all around. Our ignorant desires and the ignorant workers our desires have employed. Is there even an evil boss/distributer in all of this? Or is it just ignorance at every single level?

Your video, Elephant herd attacks motorbike in Thailand, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Daytime Shooting Star In Thailand, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 52 Badge!

Those were both interesting to see and helped me establish some of the pros/cons of the goalie playing aggressively like that -- thanks!

It is quite similar in many ways to NHL goalies. In hockey, an aggressive goalie will skate relatively far out of their net to cut down the angle on shots from the periphery -- but that can go very wrong if the opposing team can sneak in behind them and get a shot on an essentially empty net. Like the hockey equivalent of the second video there.

And some hockey goalies pride themselves on being able to play the puck; accurately pass it up and out of their half of the ice, contributing to offense (but usually 2-3 or more passes removed from a shot attempt), etc. Some goalies *want* to be good at that, but end up just getting themselves into trouble. In that first video, Neuer looks like one of the NHL goalies that likes to play that way AND is actually good at it -- I'll think of him as the football equivalent of Martin Brodeur from the NHL, maybe.

Thanks again for going out of the way to enlighten me. I've got lots of friends here in Thailand (native Thais as well as Brits and Europeans) that are big into football while I'm usually pretty clueless. I tend to relate to football through the lens of hockey, as I'm sure you can tell. But it is good to get a bit better informed.

Odd ive used my vpn and seems everywhere seems to work although i dont have one specific to Thailand. Singapore is the closest my vpn connects through.

Didn't know -- living in Thailand and not having any conventional source of TV keeps me in the dark about new/returning shows sometimes. So thanks much for the heads up!

...My usual source for TV (eztv.ch) doesn't list it, but looks like I can probably get the episodes from some other "arrr matey" type sources. I'll check it out for sure, thanks again!

Actually, a lot of that is much more positive than I would have guessed...

Heck, I'd be quite a bit more critical than that in my own assessment of "average American tourist outside of the US", even though I am an American living in Thailand myself.

I liked it a lot, but then again I'm in a Western/Eastern mixed marriage also. Maybe that helps.

To each his own, but one thing that really rang true for me was Western PC-ness and being judgmental vs Eastern pragmatism. Last time I visited home (US) with my wife and daughter, *everybody* (strangers on up to family) gave unsolicited advice / criticism of parenting decisions (breast vs bottle, diapers vs cloth, etc. etc.), all acting like they know best. Everybody is a critic / doctor / psychologist / scientist all wrapped into one. Here in Thailand, that never happens -- there is moderate reluctance to step on toes even if you *ask* for advice. There isn't anything inherently "right" or "wrong" about either way, but as someone who has lived in two separate cultures, the video's portrayal of that general mentality really struck a chord with me.

No offense to those that didn't enjoy it; comedy can never be all things to all people.

Blocked for me in Thailand too. I'd love to see the video, but this got me the audio at least:
https://soundcloud.com/comedydynamics/tom-papa-going-to-church

What other language do Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and India have in common?

Jeez, I had no idea. I took off a full week, paid, for my daughter's birth here in Thailand, and could easily have taken two weeks. As the father.

For mothers themselves here, a google search says:
* 90 days of maternity leave
* Full pay: 45 days paid by the employer and 45 days paid from the Social Welfare Fund
* With a doctor's certificate a temporary change of duties either before and/or after the child's birth is allowed
* Protection from termination of employment due to pregnancy


Guess I can add that to the list of things that this corrupt, shady, and highly unstable government does better than my "world's primary superpower" homeland. (not saying it is a very long list, but it is more than a handful of items!)

Thank you very much for your answers -- here's a couple more questions maybe you can give thoughts on if you have time:

Quick googling says the average US home uses a bit under 12,000 kWh per year. Divide that by 365 and get ~33 kWh per day, divide that by 24 and get ~1.4 kW per hour (rounding up in all instances). Of course, that's going to be higher in the day and lower at night, but one of the points of the batteries is to help smooth out that usage curve and make it transparent to the homeowner / user.

Anyway, questions related to those figures:
*Do those numbers sound ballpark to your experience?

*You've got 1kWh of lead acid batteries. Ignoring the fact that night usage would tend to be lower than daytime, an "average home" draw of 1.4 kW per hour would give you about 40 minutes of off-the-grid power (without help from the solar). That would probably require lifestyle changes to deal with; it seems like an average home couldn't get through a night without fully draining the batteries. True?

A 10 kWh pack like shown in the video would give 7+ hours, not accounting for lower drain at night. Seems like an average US house might well be able to go a whole night with that kind of battery without any lifestyle adjustments (assuming solar can handle 100% of the load during daytime PLUS charge up the batteries).

* Could your existing solar cells handle daytime load and charging of 1 or 2 of these 10 kWh packs so that you could be comfortably 100% off-grid?

* How much area do your solar cells cover?


I'm been very impressed with Tesla as a car company, even though I've never driven or even seen one in person (only a very few super-rich people have imported Teslas to Thailand). I thought that electric cars were going to be impractical toys for really out-there tree huggers, but everything I read about the Model S and other Tesla cars tells me that they are the real deal, actually superior to internal combustion for MOST use cases.

Hopefully without sounding too much like Howard Hughes, I believe that baseline practicality will let economy of scale take over and make Tesla and other electrics the way of the future. And this makes me likewise optimistic that Musk can similarly revolutionize the future of energy in general. Pretty exciting stuff!

I'm very late to this, but...

It is definitely Thailand. Every city is a rat's nest of electrical cables, telephone lines etc. just like that. Construction is generally pretty haphazard, and public safety is rather low on the checklist...

I've lived in Thailand for the past 8 years, and speak Thai well enough to give a translation of the beginning of the video, which is pretty funny:
Guy 1: (pointing) Scary, isn't it?
Guy 2: (camera) Jeez, what asshole set this up?

That's a pretty close translation. The guy with the camera refers to the people responsible as "heeah", which literally means "monitor lizard" but is used colloquially as a slur somewhere between "asshole" or "mother f*cker". Thai uses animal words like that as insults in several other instances also, with a softer example being "kwai" which literally means "(water) buffalo", but colloquially is like calling someone a "stubborn dumbass". Sorta like "jackass" in English, but a bit more offensive.

Yes, Thailand. But they have a lot to worry about over there these days :
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27517591