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From Coconuts Bangkok Photo: Buakaw Banchamek A Muay Thai fighter has stood up to declare he is indeed Thai amid a widening spat between Thai and Cambodian fans over the sport’s origins. Sombat Banchamek, aka Buakaw, announced publicly this week that, even though he belongs to an indigenous ethnic group called the Kuy, he is of Thai nationality and not Cambodian as some have claimed. “Be proud of Thailand that we have Muay Thai … It is the wisdom invented by Thai ancestors,” Buakaw wrote on social media last night alongside a few very welcome shirtless photos. “Do not forget that it’s our national sport that’s accepted by people around the world. Let’s help conserve it.” Why this sudden need to stress the “Thai” in Muay Thai? Khmer and Thai sport authorities are currently battling over the sport’s identity. Cambodia has said that when it hosts the SEA Games in May, they will ditch the name “Muay Thai” for the combat sport and instead call it “Kun Khmer,” after what they say is the martial art’s true origins. It will be the first time Cambodia has hosted the biannual multi-sport event since it was founded in 1959. Infuriated Thai officials responded by saying they will boycott the so-called Kun Khmer sport. In tat for tit, Cambodia said it will retaliate by not sending any boxers to Thailand when it hosts the SEA Games in 2025. The ongoing quarrel quickly spread online, where sports fans discussed whether the 40-year-old fighter and national prize Buakaw was actually Thai or Cambodian. Continues with photos https://coconuts.co/bangkok/news/im-thai-boxing-superstar-buakaw-declares-amid-latest-thai-khmer-spat/

From Pattaya Mail By Barry Kenyon Although prostitution between consenting adults has been illegal in Thailand since the 1960s, Pattayans have always known that the many laws covering sex for hire, brothels, backroom frolics, pimps and soapy massages are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Some of the arrests over the years have been quite bizarre. A raid on a Pattaya club hosting “indecent displays” resulted in the arrest of two stage-hands playing backgammon, whilst a buxom maiden detained for “provocative dancing in the nude” was released after arguing successfully that she was not naked after all. She was wearing a top hat. Currently, there is mega-agitation by Thai pressure groups such as the Empowerment Foundation to reform the law wholesale by making adult prostitution legal for the first time. Leader Thanta Laowilawanyabul has campaigned for many years to give dignity to sex workers by providing access to social services and health care, whilst protecting them from nasty brothel keepers and human traffickers. Some politicians are showing interest in a parliamentary bill after finding out that paid sex could be taxable. Cynics say the real issue, as in the legalization of casinos debate, is who gets to milk the cash cow. The Pattaya sex workers themselves are far from convinced collectively about legalization. For one thing there’s the issue of zoning. It’s being suggested by government spokesmen that lawful commercial intimacy would be restricted to certain areas such as Walking Street in Pattaya. 25-year old Samantha said, “I and many others get our johns (clients) on Beach Road and not in night clubs. Many men want to cruise in public at night. Forcing us into restricted areas isn’t going to work.” She also claimed that 10 percent of female prostitutes in Pattaya are migrant foreigners – Ugandans and Uzbeckis for example – who won’t be covered by liberalization of the law in any case. They are usually fined 100 baht (US$3) for a first offence and deported if persistently on the game, according to local media reports. A transvestite prostitute, who goes by the name Sunny Side Up, argued it’s a myth that legalization dignifies sex workers. “The whole idea is to copy Germany and Holland and to make money for the top people.” She explained she had visited Australia with her former boyfriend where she found out that in Victoria government-sponsored casinos authorized the redeeming of casino chips in local brothels. Her friend Eggs Benedict said that most girls-on-the-game she knew were free-lancers who certainly did not fancy registration and health checks with the authorities in return for paltry state benefits. While it is claimed by liberalization groups that decriminalization would not result in an expansion of the sex industry, research from other “liberated” countries suggests otherwise. A more likely consequence in Thailand would be an explosion of tabletop dancing extravaganzas, peep shows, phone sex, porno and bondage centers in the zoned areas as they will experiment just how far they can go. Payments to corrupt policemen won’t stop. The situation in gay areas of Pattaya, notably Boyztown and Jomtien Complex, also has to be taken into account. For example, go-go dancers are forbidden in Jomtien which is technically described as a “residential area”. That distinction might be hard to maintain when gay clubs are part of the hank-panky zones. While it is undeniable that human trafficking and physical and sexual abuse are part of the prostitution game worldwide, it is far from clear that decriminalization in Thailand will bring about the golden dawn promised by the legal reformers. Meanwhile, patrols by police and welfare workers found no trace of prostitution in central Pattaya on a well-publicized night march last month. A prostitute later admitted she had hidden behind a tree whilst the procession passed by as she contacted her john by mobile. “What’s the point of changing the law on night clubs when people prefer to use their telephones?” she wondered. Quite so madam.

ChatGPT takes exams from law and business schools From CNN ChatGPT is smart enough to pass prestigious graduate-level exams – though not with particularly high marks. The powerful new AI chatbot tool recently passed law exams in four courses at the University of Minnesota and another exam at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, according to professors at the schools. To test how well ChatGPT could generate answers on exams for the four courses, professors at the University of Minnesota Law School recently graded the tests blindly. After completing 95 multiple choice questions and 12 essay questions, the bot performed on average at the level of a C+ student, achieving a low but passing grade in all four courses. ChatGPT fared better during a business management course exam at Wharton, where it earned a B to B- grade. In a paper detailing the performance, Christian Terwiesch, a Wharton business professor, said ChatGPT did “an amazing job” at answering basic operations management and process-analysis questions but struggled with more advanced prompts and made “surprising mistakes” with basic math. “These mistakes can be massive in magnitude,” he wrote. The test results come as a growing number of schools and teachers express concerns about the immediate impact of ChatGPT on students and their ability to cheat on assignments. Some educators are now moving with remarkable speed to rethink their assignments in response to ChatGPT, even as it remains unclear how widespread use is of the tool among students and how harmful it could really be to learning. Continues with video https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/26/tech/chatgpt-passes-exams/index.html

But you must care a little because you continue to think about me. That's so precious that I find myself blushing at the attention. 🤗

From Thai PBS World The COVID-19 situation in Thailand is steadily improving, with the number of hospital admissions and the death toll dropping by 30%, to an average of 90 and six respectively, between January 15th and 21st, according to the Department of Disease Control. DDC Director-General Dr. Tares Krassanairawiwong said yesterday (Wednesday) that 627 COVID-19 patients were admitted to hospitals, averaging 90 cases per day last week, 277 of whom were suffering from lung infections, including 179 cases requiring ventilators. The death toll in the past week was 44, or an average of six cases a day, representing a fall of 32.3% compared to the previous week. Accumulated hospital admissions this year are 2,593, with 167 deaths. Among foreign tourists, eight were found to be infected, but only one was admitted to hospital between January 8th and 21st. The eight cases include three Chinese and one each from Myanmar, Cambodia, Japan, the UK and South Korea. According the Medical Sciences Department, most of the infections in Thailand were found to be the Omicron BA.2.75 sub-variant. RT-PCR tests on passengers departing Thailand for countries requiring such tests before departure have shown between 300 and 400 cases, including Thais and other nationalities. There were only 10 cases involving Chinese nationals, representing just 4% of all Chinese arrivals.

You're shy. I find that so sexy in an older man, Scotty.

AI will gradually make idiots of all of us, leaving us virtually incapable of writing a coherent sentence on our own.

I'm just lucky, I guess. 😊

Of course you do, you silly boy.

Love means never having to say you're sorry. 💘

Thank you, Detective.

Tell us something we don't know, Scotty.

From Pattaya Mail Motorists who fail to stop their vehicles for pedestrians at zebra crossings face a maximum fine of 4,000 baht and have one point deducted from their driving license immediately under the new law. Deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek said the new law, which was put into effect on Jan 9 increases penalties and adopts the point deduction system to ensure the safety of pedestrians at zebra crossings. Each licensed driver has 12 points. Any drivers who lose all 12 points will have their licenses suspended for 90 days. At the third complete point loss in three years, licenses may be suspended longer. At the fourth complete point loss, licenses could be revoked. Any driver who violates the suspension order will be punishable by a maximum of three months behind bars and/or a maximum of 10,000-baht fine. Deducted points will be restored in one year after the dates of violation. (TNA)

From Pattaya Mail After China approved overseas group tours to resume to several countries including Thailand from Feb 6, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has seen about 25-30 per cent of Chinese tour group bookings. TAT deputy governor of marketing for Asia and South Pacific, Thanet Phetsuwan said that Thailand is among 20 countries approved by China for outbound tour groups. The TAT joined hands with leading Chinese tour agencies to prepare for tour package sales in major cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Kunming next month. It is expected to clearly see an increase in arrivals of Chinese tour groups from March or April. Currently, there are about 25-30 per cent of tour group bookings from China as only 30 per cent of flights between China’s major cities and Thailand have resumed.

Even models have to make a living beyond posing for pics.

Scroll down in this thread for info on this shop.

Covid vaccine jabs are available free to Thais and some expats, but if you have a regular guy from one of the other ASEAN countries who's not adequately vaccinated you could take him to one of the locations offering the vaccine for a price. From The Nation The Public Health Ministry on Tuesday asked provinces nationwide to open vaccination centres so foreign tourists can get affordable Covid-19 jabs. Ministry permanent secretary Opas Karnkawinpong said the move is part of measures to contain Covid-19 as Thailand is a top destination for international travellers. Vaccines procured by the government would be available at the centres, he added. Opas also confirmed that foreign residents such as businesspeople, workers and diplomats can still receive free vaccine jabs. Foreign travellers can receive Covid jabs at Bang Rak Medical Centre and the Institute for Urban Disease Control and Prevention in Bangkok. He added that Covid vaccination is also available in tourism provinces such as Chiang Mai, Pattaya and Phuket. "Several agencies including the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and medical schools have submitted requests to set up vaccination points for foreign tourists," he said. He added that the Institute of Dermatology and Rajavithi Hospital are the main vaccination points for foreign tourists as both are located near tourist hotels and have staff who are fluent in foreign languages. "The department has laid on [hospital] public relations staff who are proficient in English and Chinese," he said. AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs are priced at 800 baht and 1,000 baht, respectively. He added that foreign tourists must pay a 380-baht medical service fee on top of the jab cost. https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40024303

The mamasan(s) owe you an explanation. It sounds like you missed out on a very good experience.

I've had wonderful experiences with guys from all over SE Asia. In my experience, it depends as much on my attitude toward them. I believe it's a mistake to take the "I'm paying and you're doing" approach, especially with Vietnam guys. Actually, that's probably a bad idea with any group of men regardless of where they're from.

From The Nation A 61-year-old Belgian man, who goes by the name Willie, has been earning a living in Singburi by collecting empty bottles. Willie lives with his 32-year-old boyfriend Cherdsak (surname withheld) and the boyfriend’s parents in Khai Bang Rachan district. Apart from collecting bottles, the family also earns a living from gathering raintree leaves to be sold to fertiliser factories for 35 baht per bag. Cherdsak said he met Willie three years ago in Pattaya, adding that the Belgian man left his country after being fed up with life as a family man. He had been forced to marry a woman in his younger years and their son is now managing the family tour agency. "Willie never returned to Belgium after leaving it six years ago," Cherdsak said. Meanwhile, Cherdchai’s father Ping said Willie is a good son-in-law as he works hard and helps with household chores. He added that Willie earns about 1,000 baht a month from collecting bottles, and this covers the family’s power and water bills. “My son asked Willie to stop collecting bottles, but he does not listen,” Ping said.

From Thai PBS World Japanese Prime minister Fumio Kishida pledged on Monday to take urgent steps to tackle the country’s declining birth rate, saying it was “now or never” for one of the world’s oldest societies. Japan has in recent years been trying to encourage its people to have more children with promises of cash bonuses and better benefits, but it remains one of the most expensive places in the world to raise a child, according to surveys. Births plunged to a new record low last year, according to official estimates, dropping below 800,000 for the first time – a watershed moment that came eight years earlier than the government had expected. That most likely precipitated a further population decline in a country where the median age is 49, the highest in the world behind only the tiny city-state of Monaco. “Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions,” Kishida said in a policy speech at the opening of this year’s parliamentary session. Japan is the third-most-expensive country globally to raise a child, according to YuWa Population Research, behind only China and South Korea, countries also seeing shrinking populations in worrying signs for the global economy. Other countries are also coming to grips with ageing and shrinking populations. Last week, China reported that its population dropped in 2022 for the first time in 60 years.

This is a case for Hercule Poirot. After all, a good affair was put to death for reasons as yet undetermined.

The first article places DJ Station in Soi 4. Obviously "ChatGPT" has never been to Silom. From National Public Radio (USA) This 22-year-old is trying to save us from ChatGPT before it changes writing forever While many Americans were nursing hangovers on New Year's Day, 22-year-old Edward Tian was working feverishly on a new app to combat misuse of a powerful, new artificial intelligence tool called ChatGPT. Given the buzz it's created, there's a good chance you've heard about ChatGPT. It's an interactive chatbot powered by machine learning. The technology has basically devoured the entire Internet, reading the collective works of humanity and learning patterns in language that it can recreate. All you have to do is give it a prompt, and ChatGPT can do an endless array of things: write a story in a particular style, answer a question, explain a concept, compose an email — write a college essay — and it will spit out coherent, seemingly human-written text in seconds. The technology is both awesome — and terrifying. "I think we're absolutely at an inflection point," Tian says. "This technology is incredible. I do believe it's the future. But, at the same time, it's like we're opening Pandora's Box. And we need safeguards to adopt it responsibly." Tian is a senior at Princeton University, where he majors in computer science and minors in journalism. Before his recent foray into the limelight, Tian's biggest plans were graduating college and getting his wisdom teeth pulled. Now he's fielding calls from venture capital firms, education leaders, and global media outlets. Over the last couple years, Tian has been studying an AI system called GPT-3, a predecessor to ChatGPT that was less user-friendly and largely inaccessible to the general public because it was behind a paywall. As part of his studies this fall semester, Tian researched how to detect text written by the AI system while working at Princeton's Natural Language Processing Lab. Then, as the semester was coming to a close, OpenAI, the company behind GPT-3 and other AI tools, released ChatGPT to the public for free. For the millions of people around the world who have used it since, interacting with the technology has been like getting a peek into the future; a future that not too long ago would have seemed like science fiction. Despite having studied AI, Tian, like the rest of us, was gobsmacked by the power of ChatGPT. He and his friends used it to write poems and raps about each other. "And it was like: 'Wow, these results are pretty good,'" Tian says. It seemed like everyone on campus was talking about how remarkable this new technology was. Sure, the text it generates is pretty formulaic and not always accurate. But it also feels like the beginning of a revolution. For many users of the new technology, wonderment quickly turned to alarm. How many jobs will this kill? Will this empower nefarious actors and further corrupt our public discourse? How will this disrupt our education system? What is the point of learning to write essays at school when AI — which is expected to get exponentially better in the near future — can do that for us? Stephen Marche, writing in The Atlantic last month, declared "The College Essay Is Dead." He paints ChatGPT and the AI revolution as part of an existential crisis for the humanities. "The essay, in particular the undergraduate essay, has been the center of humanistic pedagogy for generations," Marche writes. "It is the way we teach children how to research, think, and write. That entire tradition is about to be disrupted from the ground up." Edward vs The Machine After the fall semester ended, Tian traveled home to Toronto for the holidays. He hung out with his family. He watched Netflix. But he couldn't shake thoughts about the monumental challenges confronting humanity due to rapidly advancing AI. And then he had an idea. What if he applied what he had learned at school over the last couple years to help the public identify whether something has been written by a machine? Tian already had the know-how and even the software on his laptop to create such a program. Ironically, this software, called GitHub Co-Pilot, is powered by GPT-3. With its assistance, Tian was able to create a new app within three days. It's a testament to the power of this technology to make us more productive. On January 2nd, Tian released his app. He named it GPTZero. It basically uses ChatGPT against itself, checking whether "there's zero involvement or a lot of involvement" of the AI system in creating a given text. When Tian went to bed that night, he didn't expect much for his app. "When I put this out there, I just thought maybe a few dozen people at best might try it," Tian says. "I was not expecting what happened." When Tian woke up, his phone had blown up. He saw countless texts and DMs from journalists, principals, teachers, you name it, from places as far away as France and Switzerland. His app, which is hosted by a free platform, became so popular it crashed. Excited by the popularity and purpose of his app, the hosting platform has since granted Tian the resources needed to scale the app's services to a mass audience. Fighting The Hallmarkization Of Everything Tian says he has a couple primary motivations for creating GPTZero. The first is transparency. "Humans deserve to know when something is written by a human or written by a machine," he says. Along these lines, one obvious application for GPTZero is to help teachers identify whether their students are plagiarizing their essays from ChatGPT. "Teachers from all over the world are worried about this," Tian says. Some in the technology world, however, are not quite sold that copying and pasting what ChatGPT spits out is even a problem. "'ChatGPT plagiarism,' is a complete non-issue," tweeted Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and Internet pioneer, earlier this month. "If you can't out-write a machine, what are you doing writing?" Elon Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, recently tweeted, "It's a new world. Goodbye homework!" in response to reports that schools were imposing strict new measures against ChatGPT plagiarism. Of course, these are just flippant tweets. But it really does feel like we've entered a new world where we're being forced to re-evaluate our education system and even the value — or at least the method — of teaching kids how to write. Many of us lost our will — even our ability — to remember phone numbers when cell phones came along. By outsourcing memorization to a machine, we've become dependent on it to call our friends and family. You might say it's been for the best, and it's freed our minds to concentrate on other matters. Or you might consider it a kind of de-evolution, a dumbing down of our mental abilities. Don't lose your cell phone! Now humanity faces the prospect of an even greater dependence on machines. It's possible we're heading towards a world where an even larger swath of the populace loses their ability to write well. It's a world in which all of our written communication might become like a Hallmark card, written without our own creativity, personality, ideas, emotions, or idiosyncrasies. Call it the Hallmarkization of everything. But at least when we give people Hallmark cards, people know we're giving them Hallmark cards. If you use ChatGPT to write your friend a congratulations or an apology, they might not even know it was written by a machine. Which brings us to the other purpose that Tian envisions for his app: to identify and incentivize originality in human writing. "We're losing that individuality if we stop teaching writing at schools," Tian says. "Human writing can be so beautiful, and there are aspects of it that computers should never co-opt. And it feels like that might be at risk if everybody is using ChatGPT to write." Tian is no Luddite. He isn't trying to stop AI in its tracks. He believes that's impossible, and, he says, he opposes blanket bans against use of ChatGPT, like the one recently announced by New York City public schools. Students, he believes, will use the technology anyway. And, he says, it's important they're able to learn how to use it. They need to be aware of the technological changes that are sweeping our world. "It doesn't make sense that we go into that future blindly," he says. "Instead, you need to build the safeguards to enter that future." As for his plans after college, Tian says, the excitement — and clear demand — for his new app has convinced him that he should concentrate on making it a better, more accurate product. "If you're a teacher or an educator, our team — which right now is just me and my best friend from college, who just joined yesterday — we would love to talk to you," Tian says. So if you encounter some text that you suspect may be written by a machine, maybe run it through Tian's new app? You can find it at GPTZero.me.

These topics are discussed at length so I encourage you to do a more diligent search of the posts. Before you do, however, ask yourself whether you're paying more for air fare than you have in the past and how much more you're paying for food and accommodations in your home country. These expenses have also risen in SE Asia so don't be surprised if tip expectations have likewise risen.

There you've gone and done it. I won't be able to sleep tonight. Fresh Boys in my favorite bar and I'll l be fantasizing about all the way out fantasies that I always hoped I'd have with a Fresh Boys boy but didn't.