My friend is a locksmith and if your area is not overcrowded and you can keep a good company running it's really good. People pay a lot of money to get back into their car at 6am but also every building needs a lock and the locks need maintenance.
It's a real business though as the trade aspect of cutting a key or opening a door isn't difficult at all. The challenge is running business, accounting and all the certifications and associated protocols. With all that said, it can get crowded real fast so this all only works if you're one of 3 locksmiths in town at most.
I'm a software dev and that would be my backup trade as it scratches every intellectual itch if you work on more complex setups as well as mechanical fulfillment as you actually see your work published. The community is huge and the demand will almost never decline. The only downside that it's not very mobile but still much more mobile than most other trades.
Thanks it sucked but we made through and the world is all that brighter now!
As for my view on middle-east culture - it might appear like I'm being mean or reductionist with this view but since Quran is literal "word of god" and not interpreted text like in every other religion it has developed this culture that is incapable of growth or nuance since the very base layer is unquestionable obedience. It's a fundamentally broken world model that cannot be redeemed without an absolute revolution that has to come from within the community but you can probably clearly see the catch 22 here that makes it not possible. Thus a failed culture with no clear path to growth.
Mom and I left and she's doing well now but no idea about dad or anyone from that side of family. Though, I've heard that karma caught up with everyone eventually.
My mom ran into one of the dads friends who arranged the acid a few years back and it turns out he got almost fully blinded in an accident of his own and flipped his personality 180° and started doing charity work. It kinda goes against this pop culture idea of bullies being fixed by "understanding and love" when in reality it's usually a catastrophe like this that really sorts them.
Remember my dad spilling strong acid ruining the living room which I later found out was intended for my mom.
To this day I can't help but cringe when people equate middle eastern issues to western issues. This shit is not even the same planet - the whole region is like a century behind at least despite all the money and development and is fundamentally a failed culture.
You mean product that literally makes web unusable for many and tracks your every single step with extremely invasive fingerprinting techniques? That product?
Yeah these days it's literally just a blood sample and it tells you everything you're allergic for. Everyone should do a test even if you don't have problems right now it might save your life or at least make it easier at some point.
Boner pills became widespread in China in early 00s and can be bought online very easily though afaik there's no credible evidence that it reduced poaching :(
It seems to be a stupid cultural status symbol but the association that it's for broken peepee still helps the cause imo. These people are disgusting losers that deserve no sympathy.
SEA is full of stories like this - no animal is safe from Chinese poaching from crabs to lemurs. There's seriously something incredibly wrong with Chinese animal culture and I'm baffled that it still persists in 2025. It's really fucking disgusting.
What's the point of all that technology if none of it is spent on educating idiots out of "rhino horn makes peepee bigger" rhetorics.
The golden mean fallacy is about factual truth not experiences which is just hijacked term by people who didn't understand what Golden Mean means.
Its also not a useful fallacy and contradicts with legitimate truth seeking techniques like baysian thought which is by far the most popular and de facto default way people think about truth.
Sometimes I wonder what's true economic damage here from lack of proper security practices. This shit cascades to millions of other problems from financing terrorists to leaking private data. Don't even know how this could ever be measured but my guess would be that it's very substantial.
Golden Mean - a famous philosphy by Aristotle has been really been big part of my adult life. It's just incredibly handy and applicable to any situation.
Aristotle's Golden Mean is the idea that virtue lies between two extremes - excess and deficiency.
We even see this idea expressed in contemporary sciences and sociology concepts like economic diminishing returns etc. and it really applies to everything. The best parts of life are trully in the middle and if you believe in only one life focusing on extremes is unlikely to get you anywhere interesting unless you're very lucky/unlucky.
I really recommend "How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question" by Michael Schur who is one of the creators of The Good Place and he evaluates many popular ethics and world model views from a contemporary point of view and its really well done if you're interested in practical ethics.
Seriously consider buying another one almost every day and the only thing that is stopping me is lack of free time. Wife and I usually co-op (or just play concurrently) on switch and deck but deck is really making switch redundant.
Thailand legalized it not too long ago and I'd say it's 90% positive.
loads of direct and indirect business opportunities
reduction in alcohol related issues. Stones are generally much more chill than drunks and impairement for vehicle operation etc is much lesser.
There were a few populist issues like catching kids with weed etc but imo that's actually a positive as people starting to actually talk about kid safety when previously they had all these drugs and worse.
Personally I'd say the only danger is high concentrates which are illegal here and not very desired by the market either way. Mostly tourists and locals just want to smoke normal mid tier weed and enjoy the nature and thai food which is a win-win for everyone. I've seen some gravity bongs and a bit of oils (never seen anyone dab) but I'd say 90% of users just smoke mid tier 5$/g weed of 28% thc or so mostly mixed with tobacco too.
My favorite change is just the culture shift. Stoned tourists are just so much nicer and the party scene has changed a lot around this.
Legal weed as been huge for business here. Thai people are incredible entrepreneurs and were really quick to develop the industry to the point where the government tried to reverse legalization a year later but it was too late already.
My friend is a locksmith and if your area is not overcrowded and you can keep a good company running it's really good. People pay a lot of money to get back into their car at 6am but also every building needs a lock and the locks need maintenance.
It's a real business though as the trade aspect of cutting a key or opening a door isn't difficult at all. The challenge is running business, accounting and all the certifications and associated protocols. With all that said, it can get crowded real fast so this all only works if you're one of 3 locksmiths in town at most.