Society Blogs (898)

When I was a kid, it was peanut butter & jelly on white bread, coffee with cream, wine with cheese and crackers, rednecks and Confederate flags. Sure there were variances to those selections, but mostly they could be found together.
A generation ago, I predicted that tattoos being a fad would go out of fashion and no one would want one. How wrong was that observation?
Walk through the mall and you will both young and old with tattoos AND body piercings. I'm not sure of the connection. Maybe they were all reading National Geographic magazines when growing up.
Today at a red light was truck with lots of bumper stickers. Two of the largest stickers were Trump and guns.

Some things that go together...

This blog is a long time coming. The definition expat or expatriation definition can sometimes get cloudy, but it's often when someone formally renounces allegiance to his/her home country and actually gives up his or her citizenship, or something different from simply moving to another country. To some, expat could be used as a derogatory word. Cat has a current blog about Traitors and Deserters and clearly states his blog is not about that.

Here's a snipped of his statement:


I heard the term more than 20 years ago where some of the English speaking dating site members were retired in a Spanish speaking country. The main reason was financial. The economy of a simple lifestyle and improved weather was better suited for them.

Honestly, I don't know if they gave up citizenship of their country of birth, or retained it in the event they traveled back to the homeland.

I know one guy who has extended trips to Costa Rica, he says it's because the prostitutes are like 'groupies to a rock star' and often stay at his place for for free.

I have a son-in-law who came to the US from Italy and became a citizen in less than a decade. There was talk he has dual-citizenship, but I'm not certain.
I guess that's another grey area of countries who allow dual-citizenship.

Winter is coming and already I see the trailers off-loading cars with Canadian license plates. They only stay for 6 months out of the year. Why? After 6 months, the US wants to be able to tax their income!

Sometimes how the human race acts and reacts make me wonder if there really is a difference.

How about a new social media called something like Chatter which will allow you to select the categories in which you have an interest, and will automatically join you to everyone else in that category. This will instantly give everyone several million interest-sharing friends. Loneliness efficiently banished ...

I suspect CS is now far too serious a place to be weird and whacky but hey. It's Sunday and the sun is shining, worth a try.

There's sport and politics (the dream teams), and food and income and travel, all need some outside-the-box thinking. Fill your boots.

Horrific

Mike Benz explains the government funded and coordinated censorship apparatus that has been used to crush citizens' free speech rights

A must watch

Wise analysis from Colonel Douglas MacGregor


What's going to happen? How do we come back from this? From Ukraine to now the Middle East, our 'leaders' in The West seem utterly incompetent and utterly oblivious to the reality of the world in which we now live. In the matter of a few short years we have gone from peace (at least comparatively speaking) through strength to reckless abandon and expanding conflicts. Where (and how) will this all end?

I think ?? people will not have sex with each other ,in the next 70 years ,or less , only Cyber sex , what do you think ??,, Terry

"PLEASE HELP STOP ISRAEL/ PALESTINIAN WARS!"
ALL THE INOCENT PALESTINIAN WILL BE DEAD! WHY?
WHY? DO NOT CATCH & PANiSH THE RESPONSABLE WHOS KILLS THOSE ISRAELI PEOPLE !
WHY? WHY THEY GOING TO PANISH ALL THE PALESTINIAN?
PLEASE? AMERICAN GOVERMENT
HELP TO STOP THIS WAR PLEASE?

THANK YOU!
From falicia.


What Is Your Opinion?

By definition, a Touron is a derogatory term combining the words "Tourist" with "Moron" to describe any person who, while on vacation, commits an act of pure stupidity.
There are several websites with videos documenting such activity.

Hot spring geysers can reach temperatures over 300 degrees Fahrenheit, but that doesn't stop some curious tourists from going over the safety railings to actually touch the boiling waters making them tourons...




Story link:

Website link:

Profits from Real Estate make up about 30% of China's total Gross Domestic Profit (GDP). Currently most of the Real Estate development companies in China are showing huge financial loss as the market has collapsed and the largest company (with over 181 Billion dollars of debt obligations) has gone into default. Many of the directors have been arrested and face possible execution because of criminal fraud charges. Other larege Real Estate companies with holdings in places such as Malaysia and Bermuda are also tottering on the edge of default and bankruptcy. The way the Chinese judiciary handles the bankruptcy of a publicly traded country is not the same as how courts of the Western world handle such cases. In China the penalty for going bankrupt can include execution and some CEOs have in recent years already been executed. 34 of the top 50 Chinese Real Estate developers have already gone into default. The77,000 acre Chinese Market Gardens complex in Malaysia is currently tottering on the edge of default and it's owner is hoping the government of Malaysia will somehow provide capital and bail them out. This is unlikely. The payment on Market Garden bonds is due in mid October. If the firm can not raise the capital it too will join the list of Chinese development companies that own miles of half built high rise complexes that will forever sit empty and unoccupied. China in the past 15 years had encouraged Chinese banks to issue as many development loans and mortgage loans as possible and encouraged recipients to borrow more and use the money to develop and sell as much as possible. This allowed much of China's population to engage in bidding wars for apartment homes in buildings that were never built (or even started) while instantly assuming a mortgage debt on the not yet completed (or even started) future home. Because of the bidding wars the dollar (Yuan) cost of the future properties shot for the sky. Smart borrowers were permitted to sell their mortgages on not yet built properties and after paying it off re-enter the market and receive on paper profits each time. The sudden lock down policy China implemented during the Covid crisis literally prevented many from even going to work much less make mortgage payments, while also halting all construction work. This assured their (not built yet) homes would go into foreclosure with the banks assuming Title and ownership of properties that did not exist. Meanwhile the banks continued to issue new speculative development loans until recently. Developers plowed forward, but after Covid ended the buying market had ended.

This video provides more information. It is possible China's belt and road initative may soon basically experience a major down scaling.