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-THE BORACAY ISLAND LIFE- 
BANGKOK - Bangkok has been ranked the world’s most visited city in 2025 in the Top 100 City Destinations Index released by Euromonitor International.
The Thai capital recorded 30.3 million international visitors, making it the world's top destination.
Bangkok ranked ahead of Hong Kong (23.2 million visitors) and London (22.7 million). The remaining top 10 included Macau, Istanbul, Dubai, Mecca, Antalya, Paris, and Kuala Lumpur, reflecting intense competition among major travel hubs worldwide.
The Thai capital continues to attract travelers with a broad mix of offerings, from street food and cultural landmarks to major shopping districts and an active nightlife scene. National tourism promotion efforts have also supported steady year-round visitor inflows.
Euromonitor’s annual index tracks international arrivals to cities worldwide, providing insights into global travel trends. Bangkok’s performance points to sustained demand across multiple markets.
The top ranking reaffirms Bangkok’s status as a leading international tourism destination and its continued appeal to travelers worldwide.
"Pure signal,no noise"
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BANGKOK - Bangkok has been ranked the world’s most visited city in 2025 in the Top 100 City Destinations Index released by Euromonitor International.
The Thai capital recorded 30.3 million international visitors, making it the world's top destination.
Bangkok ranked ahead of Hong Kong (23.2 million visitors) and London (22.7 million). The remaining top 10 included Macau, Istanbul, Dubai, Mecca, Antalya, Paris, and Kuala Lumpur, reflecting intense competition among major travel hubs worldwide.
The Thai capital continues to attract travelers with a broad mix of offerings, from street food and cultural landmarks to major shopping districts and an active nightlife scene. National tourism promotion efforts have also supported steady year-round visitor inflows.
Euromonitor’s annual index tracks international arrivals to cities worldwide, providing insights into global travel trends. Bangkok’s performance points to sustained demand across multiple markets.
The top ranking reaffirms Bangkok’s status as a leading international tourism destination and its continued appeal to travelers worldwide.
"Pure signal,no noise"
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GM ☕
💜
“Too Much Too Young” live:
The Specials lead singer Terry Hall passed away on this day in 2022, aged just 63 (December 18)
Terry Hall was the face of the 2 Tone and ska revival legends since 1977, and continued to front the Specials until his unexpected passing.
Hall was inspired by the likes of The Clash and The Sex Pistols, who he saw on tour with some friends in the 1970s.
The Coventry-born singer then joined The Coventry Automatics in 1977, who later became The Specials.
He was charismatic (in a non-popstarish way), and still retained the non-conforming individual sensibilities of The Specials from back in the day, as the band continued to play their trademark danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punk's energy and attitude to fans around the world.
And his voice was still excellent.
I had the pleasure of catching one of their brilliant shows with Terry up front a few years ago…
Hall also found commercial success with Fun Boy Three (with fellow former members Neville Staple and Lynval Golding) after the Specials first split, and co-wrote the Go-Go’s song “Our Lips Are Sealed” with Jane Wiedlin.
A sad loss…
#terryhall, #thespecials, #specials, #ska, #funboythree, #2tone, #stupidmarriage, #toomuchtooyoung, #leadsinger, #messagetoyourudy, #gangsters, #dailyrockhistory, #thisdayinmusic, #onthisday
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On December 19, 1986, Oliver Stone's "Platoon," starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, and Willem Dafoe, was released, earning Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director.
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$87,068
market price of bitcoin in USD.
1,148
value of 1 USD measured in satoshis.
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GM 😗
A morning swim in the Infinity pool.
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On this day in 1971, the America single “A Horse with No Name” debuted on the UK Singles Chart at #49 (December 18)
It was the iconic 70s folk rock trio’s first and most successful single, topping the charts in Canada, Finland, and the US, and peaking at #2 in Australia, #3 in the UK and Russia, #4 in Ireland, #5 in New Zealand, and #12 in the Netherlands.
Originally called "Desert Song", "Horse" was written while the band was staying at the home of studio musician Arthur Brown, near Puddletown, Dorset, England.
Songwriter Dewey Bunnell says he was channeling his childhood travels through the Arizona and New Mexico desert when his family lived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and explained that "A Horse with No Name" was "a metaphor for a vehicle to get away from life's confusion into a quiet, peaceful place".
#america, #horsewithnoname, #70srock, #70smusic, #folkrock, #deweybunnell, #dailyrockhistory, #thisdayinmusic, #onthisday
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Heron Hood Ornament.
The Heron Hood Ornament used on Cadillac and LaSalle models between 1930 and 1932. Designed by John W. Hession. Jr.
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In the turbulent presidential election year of 1936, in an America gripped by the Great Depression, a homespun demagogue seizes the Oval Office and begins the systematic dismantling of American democracy.
This is not just a political novel; it is a chillingly plausible blueprint for how liberty falls, constructed from populist rage, patriotic spectacle, and the quiet cowardice of those who believe it cannot happen in their own country.
The story follows Doremus Jessup, a liberal, aging newspaper editor in the small town of Fort Beulah, Vermont, a man devoted to reason and the Constitution. He watches with first skepticism, then dread, as the folksy, charismatic Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip campaigns on a platform of nationalist revival, promised handouts, and scorn for elites and intellectuals. Windrip wins the presidency not through a coup, but through a democratic election, exploiting the genuine fears and economic desperation of the masses. The air is already thick with grievance, and the paramilitary "Minute Men" in their silver shirts are waiting in the wings.
Before the nation can catch its breath, Windrip moves with terrifying speed. Congress is cowed, the press is muzzled, dissenters are branded as traitors, and the Constitution is suspended "temporarily" for the sake of security and stability. What emerges is the "Corpo" state, a fusion of corporate and government power that crushes labor, jails opponents, and turns local officials into petty dictators. Doremus, his world and principles crumbling around him, is forced from observer to reluctant, fearful resistor.
Each new tyranny is justified by crisis and wrapped in the flag. As Doremus navigates the new landscape of informants, propaganda, and violent intimidation, he realizes the key to Windrip's power lies not in strength, but in the cultivated weakness of the people. The dictator’s genius is in making complicity feel like common sense, and resistance feel like futile madness.
At the heart of the collapse is not just Windrip, but the American people themselves—the neighbors who join the Minute Men for status, the businessmen who collaborate for profit, and the vast majority who shrug and adapt, whispering, "It can't be that bad." The novel’s central duel is not between two men, but between two ideas: Doremus's eroding faith in democratic humanity and the regime's brutal efficiency in proving him wrong.
It Can't Happen Here is a savage, darkly comic warning shot. It is a gripping tale of one man's small defiance, a profound dissection of the authoritarian mindset, and a terrifyingly prescient study of how fascism adapts to a native soil. Sinclair Lewis explores the mechanics of downfall with brutal clarity, delving into the vulnerabilities of a free society: its economic inequalities, its media, its deep polarization, and its dangerous national pride.
The famous, devastating trajectory reveals that the murder of democracy is committed with a thousand small surrenders. The regime’s ultimate victory is not measured in battles won, but in the death of civic courage—the moment a people willingly trade their birthright for a promise of order. In the end, Fort Beulah, like America, is left shrouded in a gray, conformist tyranny, a potent symbol of how freedom lost is not stolen in a day, but relinquished in a daily chorus of "It Can't Happen Here."
In the grim new normal, Doremus is left sifting through the ashes of his former life, trying to hold onto a fragment of truth. The novel's ultimate lesson is that the price of liberty is eternal, active vigilance, and that the rose of freedom can wither in the most familiar of gardens, killed not by a foreign blight, but by the homegrown poison of fear, apathy, and arrogant exceptionalism.
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