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That's kind of like saying "I'm sick of this rash, I'd rather have my arms amputated."

Better turn the spell checker off Jerry, it wouldn't be the same without your unique approach to the English language.

Beware of goats standing in clouds

Thanks, Chaps.. Just saw this thread.. Been terribly busy at work.. Still am, but took a couple of days off while the missus and daughter go to London for some culture. And for some reason, they browser spell checker is working again! Back to it on Tuesday, but have a lot of personal stuff to catch up on.

I did.. but this house is taking a bloody long time and draining more funds than we imagined. , so every so often we have to pause to let them build up. Unf, this year, I made a bit of a blue of a decision because I was too busy at work to think things through and that cost be £25K as well.. So that has to be made up, too. But this week, things are back on, and it is some rewiring and all the decorative work.. If I don't sell the lot, I will subdivide, where I can sell the cottage to pay off the mortgage and then rent out the main house.

Like you, OT, I was turned off alcohol and smokes at an early age. My grandfather was responsible. When I was a youngster, my family shared the farmhouse with my paternal grandparents. I can clearly recall my grandfather on the back verandah of the farmhouse giving me a puff of a roll-your-own and making me sick, and at another time giving me a sip of scotch, which I hated.We left the farm when I was seven, so it was before that age. I was never tempted again. My father didn't drink or smoke either. When he went to a hotel, he would drink sarsaparilla.

The main reason for the subs and indeed, the increase in Australian defence spending and mobilisation is the threat of China taking Taiwan. The reason we got second hand ones was America can't make them fast enough. $5 billion dollars each I believe. America needs to make 2 a year but can't keep up. Probably cos China has a stranglehold on critical minerals for the development of defence assets, along with a hollowing out of manufacturing like most western countries. Australia, like the rest of the developed world, will enter a technological dark age if China takes Taiwan.

They are worse now than they have everbeen.both sides

A magnet for people who are sick of the standard of politicians we have now. Surprised people can't see that

Too true. But somehow the world seems to think otherwise.

Wait up , didn't you say that last year, too?

I must say I'm very fortunate to have never taken up smoking or drinking in excessive amounts, from even pre-teen years. I can remember finding a packet of Turf cigarettes on the road whilst riding my bike when I was about 10 - tried one, and after coughing and spluttering for a while, thought, "Why the hell would anyone want to do this??" I threw the rest of the packet away. I guess having bad asthma for many years as a child, made me very wary about doing anything adverse, that would affect my breathing ability or lung capacity. The same went for alcohol. Neither of my parents drank much alcohol at all. They would buy a bottle of Rose or Vermouth and have a little with meals. I never saw them in the bars of pubs, knocking back constant glasses of beer, wine or spirits. My teenage mates were never big on booze, and when I went to parties where beer was offered, I decided I hated the taste of it. So I became a very moderate wine and spirits drinker. A bottle of Whisky lasts me 12 to 18 months, and even longer in recent times. I used have a few glasses every month, of mostly white wine, in the 70's and 80's, but mostly when dining out. I was never a big party-goer anyway, I was always working, trying to build up a business, and operating and repairing machines and dealing with clients. Funnily enough, I worked in industries (earthmoving/trucking/mining) where heavy boozing was just a daily habit. A "carton a day" was common amongst compatriots. Even in the Army, I drank very little, while at least half of the other blokes in the Army were borderline alcoholics, and the lager culture ruled in the military. The more I learn as I get older, is just how much many diseases and body organ failures, are linked back to excessive alcohol consumption and smoking. I have never seen a centenarian who was a heavy drinker, but I've watched a lot of business and work associates, and a few friends, die too young, with alcohol or smoking-related complaints. And of course, quite a few died in alcohol-related car accidents, often self-inflicted. But my elder brother was killed by a drunk in a 5 ton Ford truck when I was 15, and he was 25 and newly married, so I guess that affected me for life, too. Good on you Jerry, for going almost alcohol-free, it has major advantages as you age. I found that as I aged, the adverse effects of alcohol on the day after drinking a few, became harder to shake off.

Speaking as A glider pilot, thay's the best place to put clouds

Apologies for quoting just a portion of a sentence, but I'm just commenting on that possibility. For them to gain any effective power I can only see three scenarios. The first and second are assuming Labor can't form a majority at the next election. In that case, One Nation could either be the senior partner in a One Nation/Liberal coalition government, or the junior partner. For the third scenario, Labor holds enough seats to govern in their own right or with the support of independents, but One Nation does well in the Senate and holds the balance of power in the upper house. I don't know whether that's possible or not as I haven't checked how that could happen given there's eight parties and two independents holding senate seats and it will likely be a half senate election if there's no double dissolution. At this stage, while always possible, it's hard to see One Nation gaining enough seats in the lower house to govern in their own right.

If you think the current crop of Federal Labor politicians are crooked and liars, you must have a short memory. Johnny Howard was a pretty good liar when it suited his aims. He took us into an unnecessary and useless War in Iraq, selling us American lies disguised as Truth. If Hanson gets any kind of power, she'd be right up there with Trump, sending all our Defence personnel and equipment to help in his unpopular, illegal, and unconstitutional Iranian War. I quoted the Hancocks, because Hanson adores Gina Hancock, takes millions from her, and thereby owes her "big-time", and would do whatever Gina insisted, such as ensuring unions were gutted - just like America, where workers rights don't exist, only continuous concessions to huge corporations. This American bloke in the video below points out how Australia is the land of robber barons, enriching themselves annually beyond the ordinary persons wildest dreams - whilst not working any harder than a lot of everyday employees. The corporate control over all over polticians is frightening - but the right wing politicians continually concede major concessions to them, thus making the everyday cost of living harder and harder for ordinary Australians. Hanson would be a pushover for corporate greed, and corporate greed drives a lot of Australia's basic problems. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/other/the-real-power-structure-controlling-australia-s-economy/vi-AA21hRmY

Do you really believe they weren't considering this before the election!! They new, we may as well have ON in. Lying pieces of sh#t. Politicians are a joke! The housing crisis hasn't just apeared since the election. Going out of my way to be as honest as possible, this really bugs me!

Does that mean the cloud will be in the sky?

Gary Larson at his best again, with Far Side humour .....

Mmmmm.. Cheese... Will be sampling the local stuff while out in Aus... It has some competition.

https://anotherconcept.co.uk/insights/ai-overviews-are-affecting-paid-search Indeed - it is worrying.. As AI just does harvest info, with less website content that will inevitably flow, bias is likely to creep into the answers it gives. Hmm... That is odd. The browser should pass everything in the address bar to the server in the URL and provide a valid server response. If you are adding -AI in the google search and not the address bar, the browser should pass it as well formed in the context of a POST or GET request parameter (I don't know off the top of my head which Google uses). It's not just Australia - it is all foreign countries.. And i have a feeling it is to try and strangle Anthropic as they have come into conflict with Chump. On the question of data centre and power usage, AI wil just going to get bigger. But, I have a feeling that while the AI consumption will surge and there will be an overall surge in consumption, as AI displaces workers, the total level of consumption will normalise lower. Firstly, you won't require as many commercial buildings to be lit up, or the IT servers to just maintain the desktop infrastructure, nor all the PCs, etc. Ironially, in the information age, most of the information workers will be put out of work, and that will alleviate the electricity demand heavily (well, maybe except for summer months, when a/c is switched on in the houses). It is not just the building and the desktop infrastructure - we will probably not need as many trams and trains running unless people replace their cars with public transport. Having said that, of course, EV takeup is higher so that may change things, but then again, solar and other localised renewables will take up some of the load. Secondly, enterprise server power consumption will be lower, too. This is because although companies will all need accounting systems, etc, everyone is moving this to the same data centres as AI (i.e. "the cloud"), and therefore, these servers will also house such systems, rather than separate servers, and their marginal use of electricity compared to stand alone use of electricity will be a lot lower. I have heard (not researched - so pls take this with a grain of salt) that SpaceX is looking to develop satellite based data centres - solar power is supposedly easily harnessed and using their satellites for networking, will be offering this as an alternative. However, I can't help but think of nefarious state actors tracking them and right at their most opportune moment, destroying them - something I am sure SpaceX engineers are thinking about. All AI models rely on being "trained" and machine learning. This is basically reading data - and lots of it - the more it consumes, the more statistically (not necessarily in reality) accurate it becomes. For example, if AI was around in 300 BC and it was trained in earth science data at the time, it would statistically deduce that the earth is flat and everything revolved around the earth. That would have been statistically valid, though inaccurate. Also, AI won't have been trained on everything and there just simply may not be the data available to be accurate. AI generally uses machine learning, which is an advanced probability calculation described by Bayes theorem (usually) across a lot of data. So, if the data is wrong, so is AI. But, that is the same for real intelligence, too. What the AI model does if it doesn't have much data on something, is go to the web. I would imagine it can't possibly eek out every tidbit of information, so it probably has some weighting algorithm to determine the most likely accurate sites to rely on. Whilst it doesn't get it right, it at least, in these cases, quotes its sources for you to check, which is a good thing.

Looks like we'll miss you. Driving to Brisvegas in June. Tonight, got a couple of fires going, music and cheap wine & better cheese. Maybe catch up next tine.

I do remember the occasional exploding cigarette from a big lump of saltpetre. I am a beer drinker only, with two half kidneys, I am careful and need the water in beer to process the alcohol. However I do blue moon a exceptional red when my son provides it.

I am travelling to Aus for a couple of weeks - up to a month in mid-July. I am guessing that will become a gripe for you fellas 🙂 It's not the flight, nor the destination, but the purpose. what I call YAMD - yet another mercy dash. At least this time, it is not for a couple of days. I will be between my brother's place in Canterbury and my mother's place in the Yarra Valley - as well as Port Arlington, where my brother has his retirement place. Sadly, my mum has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and I am coming out for the prognosis scan. Then it will be making arrangements after that. Also, both my brother and I want to get her wishes, because, the feeling when my father was in ICU being asked by the doc to play dog was not a good one. And that time will come, so I want us to be prepared - as I have prepared my family for my inevitable demise. All good things must come to an end, unf. But, it will be a recce trip as well, so not all gripes. I will take a look at a parcel of land I intend to build my "retirement" lifestyle on - and yes - it will be GA/RAAA based. In addition, I will try to nip up to Sydney to introduce myself to our Aussie office and see if there may be any offerings in the future move - which is not far, now - end of year max - will explain in the reno thread. I won't have time to do any flying, plus I don't have an Aussie medical at the moment (couldn't get a mygov id in time for my last medical here.).

The only alcohol of any description that I have had since 2017 is the brandy in the Christmas pudding. I had a glass of the house white at a retired bank officer's luncheon in 2017 and that's the only stuff I've had in years. Throughout my entire life, the total amount would have been less than one bottle per year. A glass, or part thereof, on the odd festive occasion. Never red. Only a few sips and it wasn't for me.

My intention is to stay off the stuff completely until the end of September. At the moment, I am planning to return after that - no more than once a month but good wines rather than the table stuff at the moment.. Only with dinner. Which is a pain as I am going to be landing in Melbourne in mid-July, between Canterbury and the Yarra Valley for a couple of weeks.