Leaderboard

Random....

Money spent by the government on overseas aid is not a handout, it's a hand up. It typically goes to health, education and development in poorer countries as well as direct food aid in times of famine. As for people who send some of their money back to their families to help them out, it's their money. They earned it, they work here, pay taxes and also support our economy so they are doing their bit for this country as well. Saying that foreign aid recipients expect a handout as their human right and acquire a distorted sense of their own value and worth because they benefit from the aid is nonsense in my opinion. Trump got rid of USAID, which cost the US a relative pittance in cash but a huge amount in international goodwill. People in recipient countries died as a result. Was that a good outcome? in any case, Australia only ranks 25th out of 32 donor nations measured as a proportion of each country's national income, so you can hardly say that we are an overly generous nation.

You do seem to have range anxiety and that is normal for most people entering the full BEV sphere. When you have 48% of battery capacity left there is absolutely no need for concern. You can stop at any supercharger & just take as much as you need to get to your destination. I was getting low when coming back from Noosa to home near Yamba. Distance was about 100km & range 95km. I could have slowed down & made it but I stopped at a Tesla Supercharger & got 5 or 6 minutes at 130-140kW which was easily enough to get home at 110kmh & then some to run around town the next day. The last 20% of battery capacity takes almost as long as from 10% to 80% & it is considered bad form by most of us EV drivers to charge beyond 80% especially if someone is waiting. Planning long trips is something we all do as the charging infrastructure is still in its infancy. Back in the early 1900s there weren't many petrol stations & initially you had to buy it in cans from a Chemist. EV public charging is getting better all the time. Range anxiety no longer exists in China as they have the infrastructure in place already. I often plan a stop after about 2-3 hours driving and at a fast charger (50-80 kW) at a shopping centre. These are much cheaper than a Supercharger but slower. I then have a bite to eat, use the toilet etc & when I get back after 20 minutes to 1/2 an hour or so the car is back up to about 80% & I carry on. In my old ICE car I did the same but usually did not need to fill up if I left home with a full tank. I still had to fill up at my destination anyway. A lot of hotels & motels have "Destination Chargers". These are slow chargers like the wall charger I have at home. Some have type 2 cables but some don't so having your own is handy. You can charge the car over night and often it is free. The 3 pin charger that comes with the car is called a Granny charger & in Australia is limited to 8 amps. The maximum size portable chargers are 15 Amps & have a 15 amp plug. You can get a 32 Amp socket installed by your electrician but is will require a 6mm supply cable & you will need a 32 amp 7.4 kW charger. It is better to install a 7.4kW wall charger as it has all sorts of functions allowing you to choose to charge from solar or at off peak etc. My MG 4 is now 3 years old & has a maximum of 140 kW charging capacity. At a 350 kW charger I get at least 120 kW up to about 80% full. The problem generally doesn't lie with the car but with the grid supply to the supercharger. Most don't have a supply anywhere near as big as the cars capacity to charge and have a relatively small storage capacity which will be used quite quickly especially if there are several chargers & they are all being used at once. Note in China they now have 1.5 megawatt chargers for use with EVs having 1000 volt architecture. These can charge the EV from 10% to 80% in 5 minutes. The whole issue with having various apps & cards is a pain. Why they can't just all accept a credit card is ridiculous. I do have an RFID card for a couple of charging outfits & that is simple but it still charges to my credit card anyway. The best one is a company here called Evie & once the car is registered with the company I just plug in & it charges without any other requirements. When finished my credit card is charged & I get a notification & receipt on my phone. Way simpler than getting petrol. With no engine noise and effortless power & full torque from zero rpm your stress levels are definitely lower on a long trip. The RWD on the MG & 50/50 weight distribution provides superb handling & booting it out of a corner is magic. No other hot ICE car can compare. I am sure the Beamer is the same, most likely better. I hate driving the wifes ICE car and especially hate going in to a stinky petrol station.

Seems the Globemaster was accompanied by a C130 - probably carring the catering truck. Just in case.

Just got a call from the shop. Apparently the connectors on the loom side of the regulator were knackered (though I thought I checked them... so when I pick up the bike I will see what I missed).. And also, the new regulator itself is a dud. So they are taking a video of it so I can use as evidence to get my £ back... The company that supplied me the regulator should be OK with it though, as the shop is replacing it with one from the same company I purchased from and they have good reputation. Regulator won't arrive until tomorrow and I will not be able t collect until Thursday afternoon... So to London by train this time.

I bet they call it 'Almond Milk', because nobody can say "Nut Juice" with a straight face.

I think I'm drawn to yoga....

Companies who make profits in Australia often have overseas shareholders. I reckon if you compare remittances to the money going overseas to those shareholders, it'd be a drop in the bucket.

Crotchless panties are the most impractical and useless piece of lingerie ever made. Lingerie is meant to tease, hide and hint at what is behind. But these do the exact opposite. They just frame your bits in superfluous material that still has to be removed. Or, if left on, it just gets in the way. Besides, they offer no support at all for your testicles.

If you aid people where they are, there will be less needing to escape to Here.. Nev

Media being what it is, there is also a possibility that the parents may not have first heard anything from an official source. I did hear (unofficially) that the parents were likely present at the search. A sad outcome on all fronts. My heart goes out to all involved.

Being able to get that fancy gadget and HEAR is the most important thing. Nev

Yeah. Not a word of praise for the people who risked injury to carry out the seach, and the effort needed to retrieve the body. I thought the the Police officer controlled his emothions pretty well. He seemed to be empathetic to the fact that the woman had died, and how the parents felt. But he really showed self-control when these hacks kept pushing the mistaken message line. You have to remember also that he wasn't at the command centre, so he was dealing with relayed information and most likely had never been in the area himself. I'm not just sticking up for him because I remember working with him when he was a fresh-faced Constable. I lost track of him thirty-odd years ago.

I had an odd experience at work yesterday. A work colleague and I sparred quite some time ago- around the time of the election - about Chump; he was defending Chump vehemently and of course I took the opposite position. We respectfully agreed to disagree and left it at that. I probably wrote about it on this thread. Yesterday was the first time in eons we were in the office coincidentally. To be honest, I had totally forgotten our conversation, but he dragged me aside and quietly conceded he was very wrong about Chump,, Interestingly, the final straw wasn't the criminal activity nor the corruption, but the invasion of Iran...

Probably picking up his job performance bonus from Putin.

Good thing they don't have almond cream then...

What I if told you, You the read first line wrong? Same the with second line, And also the third...

A belly button is basically a scar from when you got into a knife fight with a guy in a mask after being evicted from your first place.

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse if it's an alcoholic, considering all the bars it frequents, to which the horse replies, "I don't think I am." POOF! The horse disappears. This is the point in time when any philosophy students in the audience begin to giggle, as they are familiar with the philosophical proposition of cogito ergo sum, or roughly, "I think, therefore I am." But to explain that concept beforehand would be putting Descartes before the horse.

Oops sorry, PICTURES.....

A man went to his doctor, and the doctor checked him over before commenting, "It looks like you get a lot of exercise." The man replied, "Oh yes! In fact, just the other day I walked 5 miles over rugged terrain. I climbed over rocks and trees. I waded along the edges of a lake, pushing my way through tall thistles, and even slid down sandy slopes, getting sand in my eyes." The doctor was quite impressed. "Well, you sure are a dedicated outdoorsman." The man replied, "No doctor. I'm just really bad at golf."

No pictures please🤣

Tony said "Don't say my name backwards" I said YNOT?

What you are forgetting is that the money being sent overseas has already been taxed here, and it is the property of the person sending it. The owner can do whatever he wishes with his property. Just think how much money gamblers send into the coffers of bookmakers. My reason for posting that information was simply to point to something that we have never thought about. Is the practice good or bad? It is good in that it must make lives better in the destination country. It is bad because it diminishes the amount of money available to support Australia's local small businesses.

I don't think our system of preferential voting is the fault. The fault with modern elections is the contributions made to Parties by organisations. Dose an organisation have a franchise to vote? Is an organisation a person? We are coming to the conclusion that donations to political parties by organisations are bribes - a rose by any other name.

I'm sure the electoral Commission has stats on the number of informal votes. But the thing is, if voting is optional, only those who feel strongly about issues will bother. That means more goes to the extremes, which is why you have an autocratic kleptocracy in the US right now. I think our system means more people vote towards the centre, which helps reign in the more extreme policies on both sides.

You don't comb the hair over it, it's worn as shown in the second photo, over the hair. You take it off for sleeping, showering, swimming. Any way, I have a buzz cut, nothing to comb.

A diagram of how the whole thing works.

For anyone not familiar with Cochlerar Implants, here are a couple of photos. The first shows the components of the system.The grey parts are what is seen on the outside. They clip over the ear similar to a hearing aid. They contain the microphone, sound processor, the battery, and the round part on the lead contains a magnet and a loop which transmits the processed sound signal. The shiny thing in the centre of the loop on the right is a magnet. This component is implanted under the skin of the scalp. The magnets in the two components hold them together when worn. The sound signals are transmitted to the coil in the implanted component. The lead on this component is threaded into the cochlear in the ear, the 22 electrodes on the end of it stimulating the nerves and sending the sound signals to the brain. The second photo shows how the external component appears when worn.

A great number, that one. The main riff is based on John Lee Hooker's Boogie Chillen. I must admit I prefer ZZ Top's use of it if I had to choose between the two.

Don't mess with the elephant. VIDEO-2026-08-08-16-07-09.mp4

It's on topic. All these things with Toyotas happened in one local government region or another.

Hope that fixes it Jerry. What a pain.

The owner probably said "sit, sit" and lisped. Nev

Foreign investors get Au$'s as dividends too and what about the fossil fuel we buy and the Chinese stuff we import?. Tourists and foreign students bring money IN. Not much need to send money back to China. Nev

The outcome is totally random - yes. As I mentioned, a historical simulation may show a more or less universal distribution of drawn numbers, in which case the odds and the probability would be the same for all practical purposes. However, a historical simulation may show certain combinations of number drawn more often than others material enough to be a pattern or series of patterns emerging that increases the probability of sets of numbers being drawn. The draw is stall random, but the probability - and that is all it is - a probable and no guaranteed - set of drawn numbers may become higher than any old random selection. This could be because of say manufacturing imperfections of the balls where minutely different weight distributions result on some balls being more likely to be scooped than others.. And it could be that the probability if subsequent balls being drawn changes depends on what ball/s were previously drawn for the same reasons. In order to prove it, you would need a lot of data, including that of the factors that we define as determinative to the probability - but without those factors, we can only rely on the historical number draws. Given the permutations and combinations, coming to a single set of numbers likely to be drawn using a historical simulation would improve the probability - but only marginally at best. These simulations predict probable outcomes over various scenarios and normally a confidence level is provided. And it will be a probability map. So for example, it may give a probability for each number of that number being drawn first. For each number, it will give the probability of every other number being drawn second. Then for each number drawn second of the number that was drawn first, it will come up with a probability of each number not drawn yet to be drawn third, and so on. Taking this approach, there are 130m nodes in the map for each number drawn first. So, if 1 is drawn first, there will be a map of 130m possible permutations and combinations. Now multiply by 6 and that is how big the probability map will be. You can use a binary coefficient approach to reduce it, but you attenuate the probability calculation as a result because we don't know the factors that are causing some numbers to be picked more than others. Anyway, for a 6/45 lottery draw, the probability map reaches something like 900m nodes, each with a confidence factor. Of course, if we could pick our numbers just before each number is drawn, we could really improve our probability of winning. But we can't, so the only way to really improve the probability is to try and predict what the first through 6th number is going to be dependent on what we think the first number is going to be. So, in defining our confidence level, we have to look for any other correlations. As we have virtually no other known factors, the only thing I can think of is to look at time based cycles and add that to the algorithm to predict the different potential numbers to draw. And that is the rub. Coming up with one most likely to draw is not really going to to reduce it much; intuitively, I would reckon you need to put around 200k minimum bets on it spread across the different scenarios. And, it is still not guaranteed. I have no idea what the cost of a singe entry is, or 200k entries are against the normal prize value. So, it may be futile.. buit the above is a glimpse of algo trading (well, that would get smashed in the markets.. so I would not recommend it). Now I am rambling as I have had my first wine in 6 months - a Jim Barry McLaren Vale.. and very nice. What impressed me is my local Majestic Wines knew exactly which aisle I was heading for when I entered the shop... I digress. Anyway, chasing the single winning entry will probably not yield too much more likelihood than the basic odds.. it is how you play the probability map.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1569344667967992

I agree as a parent it would be devastating to have your hopes raised but then dashed, but it's hard to be overly critical if the searchers were doing their best to keep the parents informed in real time. Also, we don't necessarily know exactly what they were told. It could have been anything from, `She's alive' or `We've found her, haven't been able to get to her yet but we think she may be alive'. Big difference, but the media would just focus on them being initially told she was alive and then criticise the mistake.

The Odds are very much stacked against you. The HOPE you might win keeps you buying tickets. Without a ticket you won't ever win.. How much of the take that is Paid out%, gives you an indication of how fast you will lose your money. Gambling is a Big drain on any society. People you would think would never succumb to it, lose everything quite commonly. It's EVIL. Nev

Related to addressing climate change, as well as reducing pollution, and reducing reliance on foreign fuel sources (i.e. still on topic).... Wouldn't the inland rail project reduce transport's contribution to global warming?

I did rip this off Farcebook (while looking for a cheap and cheerless runabout before getting the next car)

Just found this video filmed at the Janus facility in NSW. Very interesting. It does mention the fact that most trucks on our roads are involved in local work only. It also shows how a battery exchange depot could be set up. I'm less cynical of the idea now.

We also need to remember the grid infrastructure has to be up the task. 10 x 100kW chargers is a MW. The cables that supply the facility need to sized for this plus what ever the wider community needs.

Janus trialled a electric conversion of a diesel long haul tractor unit that could get from Melbourne to Sydney on a single charge or Sydney to Coffs similarly. The original had a clamshell front & the battery was swapped out by Forklift in 15 minutes. The driver though had a minimum 2 hour stand down timeframe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4FjettzOJg Medium size delivery trucks & even long haul tractor units in the city can get a battery swapped in under 5 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOxqhWbsk4&t=6s

The Trivago ads over here featured ab Aussie voice. I don't get ads much as I only watch YouTube channels that rarely play them.. or streaming..

Yeah. I agree. I blame local government.

Chinese startup Windrose was only founded in 2022 and planned to compete with the Tesla Semi but like most other Chines EV technologies has already surpassed Tesla. Their latest Generation 2 offering has a 700km range fully loaded & the next Gen 3 model will have a 1000 km range due out in 2028. They have their HQ in Antwerp & plan to sell worldwide. https://www.windrose.ai/ In China though heavy Electric trucks have just surpassed Diesel in sales. There are over 500,000 heavy electric trucks on Chinese roads already.