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Getting rid of Trump would be a massive improvement

Trump will fix everything Ha Ha. It would have to be by accident. Nev

Maybe we need a separate thread for Iran.

This is a bit off topic, but I suppose it's slightly related to a previous discussion we had about noisy Harleys with straight through pipes. A mate received his new Verex slash cut drag pipes in the mail on Friday to fit to his two month old Bonneville Speedmaster. They make them in brushed, polished (bright chrome) and black ceramic finishes. He went for the polished finish as it will fit in with the existing chrome on the bike. I think they will get fitted on Monday. The photos show the drag pipes unpacked and the bike with the standard Triumph mufflers. It will be interesting to hear how loud it is; with the Triumph mufflers it sounds like a sewing machine. It's been a long journey. Me and the mate started out making mud pies and playing with plastic toy soldiers, graduated on to slot cars and now we all have bigger toys. Maybe we'll finish off with wheelchair races in the nursing home.

I live on the highway that runs to Warren. From my front gate it is about 70 kms away. Warren is on the Macquaie River. Although the Macquarie River doesn't have the deep gouge in the landscape that we associate with a "valley", the rain clouds seem to follow its course and that means it diverts away from my place. I drove into Dubbo yesterday for shopping. Dubbo is about 60 kms south from Gilgandra. As I got to about 20 kms from Dubbo I noticed that the paddocks were greening up. About 25 kms south of Gilgandra there seems to be a boundary between the catchments of the Macquarie and Castlereagh Rivers. This seems to split the path of storms. The radar often shows the storm cells tracking to the south of this divide, so the storms avoid the Castlereagh catchment. Since farming around here involves the growing of winter grain crops, most of the ground cover in summer is just dried standing straw. About the only greenery is the grass at the edge of the road that has been watered by the run off from small storms.

I Come To Bury Howard by David Archibald 10 February 2026 Certainly not to praise him. The evil he did as Prime Minister has gone on for too long. Howard’s last dark deed, after he lost the September 2007 election, was to pass the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. To put that in context, when he was a teenager Howard used to cross Sydney to sit at the knee of Sir Philip Baxter, former head of the Australian Energy Commission, and hear of the wonders of nuclear energy. As an elected politician, he became a one-man sleeper cell of nuclear advocacy. In private conversations, Howard used to call global warming nonsense. Nevertheless, he worked towards bringing in a carbon tax. He wanted Australia to adopt nuclear energy. To force Australia to that result, he needed to make coal-fired power generation more expensive. He was being two-faced and too cute. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act was the accounting basis for the tax. The idea was to bring it in, settle it down over a couple of years and then start taxing. Some 1,000 Australian companies continue to report their carbon consumption under that act. The total cost of employing all the accountants for this may be of the order of $500 million per annum. All of which is wasted. Close to $10 billion has been wasted over the years, for nothing. Fifteen years ago I used to be invited to give speeches at anti-carbon tax rallies on the east coast. After one such rally in front of Parliament House, I went in to meet Senator Nick Minchin, then considered to be the hard man of the Liberal right. I said to the Senator that the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act should be repealed. He replied “Why would we do that?,” which meant that he had no idea how the world worked. He also said that nobody in cabinet asked Howard why he was proceeding with the carbon tax. Not that they weren’t curious about doing something so stupid, they were afraid of upsetting him. They would rather national self-harm than lose their spot in cabinet. Abbott won the 2013 election on a platform of getting rid of the carbon tax. Three days later Greg Hunt, then Liberal member for Goldstein and a Klaus Schwab protégé, talked him out of repealing the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. Why get rid of the carbon tax but keep the accounting basis for it? So stupid, but he did it. The carbon tax came back in other forms. The price of electric power tripled. Businesses and whole industries are closing. Last year the Liberal Party formally abandoned a commitment to carbon taxes, but they still yearn to remain in the Paris mutual suicide pact of 2015. This confused position means they don’t believe the words coming out of their own mouths. The electorate have noticed and are now looking elsewhere for the promise of rational government. But there is an easy test of any party’s grip on reality. If their platform does not include repeal of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, they don’t understand anything and their professed concern for the future of our country is only performative. So far, no political party has undertaken to do so and the country remains on a glide slope to oblivion. In the meantime, as our standard of living keeps falling, curse John Howard. Curse him in living and curse him in dying. He could have killed the global warming monster in its crib but chose instead to live a lie. We continue to suffer because of his contempt for the Australian people.

Petrol prices have already gone up, and are likely to climb further with hostilities affecting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

My son calls them bomb-villes. I told him what an old bomb is in Aussie auto vernacular.. He wasn't too happy.. he is a Triumph-o-phile They do look nice, though..

You're right about the resale price Nev. You see a lot on marketplace with relatively low prices.

They aren't a Bike I lust after. Resale prices tell it all. Those engines run very hot. Nev

I read a report that said that both Mahommad bin Salman from Saudi Arabia and Netanyahu from Israel put pressure on Trump to take this opportunity to attack. The Saudi's would be very happy to see the Khamenei gone.

Depends on how Much "Rational thinking" takes place. Iran said they could knock out Trump on the Lawn at Mar a Lago. Looks like Trump got in first. Nev

Wars in the Middle East will never be finished. There is too much long-held tribal hatreds there, that have festered for centuries, and which hatreds they will never let go of. Plus, their "gun culture" puts the U.S. to shame.

Hopefully the job will be finished and not left to fester again. The turning point will be how to get the military to swing and I don't know how that will go with the revolutionary guard. They seem to be a fairly dedicated bunch.

It's ON! Iran's supreme leader, and possibly his son, have been killed. Beirut airport has been hit in retaliation, disrupting air traffic. Edit: It was an Israeli strike.

You got out alive! Well done.

The first post in this forum sort of sums up the above: https://themotorbikeforum.co.uk/topic/54673-ai-fail/#comment-665689

-I've been with AGL for a few years. We got a smart meter at least 6 years ago, way before my wife passed. The meter is read remotely. I can log onto my account, see the current accruing cost and an estimate of what the bill will be in X number of days. These figures are constantly updated. This helps my budgeting. I wish they could do the same with gas.

Dafuq?? Do you really think Trump gives a flying f**k about the welfare of anyone who isn't Donald J Trump? Especially foreigners. Once again the stupid bastard is being led by the nose by Netanyahu, who needs yet another war to keep in power and out of court. Peace prize my arse. The only prize the orange clown deserves is "Worst President Ever", possibly upgraded to "Person who has had the most negative impact on humanity 2016-2020, and 2024 to impeachment"

There is a lot of confusion about what AI is, and how it can be used. Here is an image that identifies the three types of AI:

I've been offline for most of the day, so you beat me with the report of Neil Sedaka. But there is a local one today. Lorraine Bailey, Grace Sullivan from the Aussie TV show The Sullivans, passed away today aged 89. A number of other TV and stage roles, and two Logies.

l feel like an absolute idiot l keep coming back to the same thing l know it butttt, how in hell can l make up my mind 1st of all, in whether or not to just keep my 1/2hec place and just live here. Financially it's perfect, l'd be set rest of my life, living free, saving a truckload anddd, it's a lovely little property. Yet other than renting elsewhere which l don't even know if l'd like tbh, l might even regret it especially if l sold this place but getting into something else now in even buying, is going to ruin finances, probably for yrs. Prices out there are just insane. Most of you guys sound long time very well established so you probably can't appreciate just how mad the market is. But then ofc above all, surely happiness is at the top too. That's the tricky part though and holding up the whole show. Sometimes it's a pleasure just being here, coming home to it, even waking up here, it can all be very very nice and without really knowing anyone so just from observation so far but people seem v chill too. At others though, it can l find get very very lonely here and my place is quite private to so if you don't go out thee gate you have zero contact with anyone. You can see through trees to streets just 50mtrs over and the pubs only 50mtrs out and around the corner but on the property itself, you could run around naked, wouldn't matter. One way or another though, can not for the life of me make a decision. Can't buy or try something else without selling this place well, apart from renting somewhere. Don't wanna waste even more time just doing that though unless it was a fully done decision or l'd just go to all that trouble and expense, effort, move, for nothing. l'm usually pretty snappy in deciding things but this one, has me stumped .

Dunno much about anything in the middle east admittedly, it's all that damn entwined and goes back 1000s of yrs. Long as l can remember they've always been fighting, all hate ea other. l dunno about Trump though, never have. He disgusts me in many ways but in this stuff, 1st thing comes to mind whatever else is goin on there is that it's just yet another tiny country where he knows they couldn't possibly lose yettttt, look at the way he treats Putin. But yet again bullies the little guy and Ukraine ! He should've taken Putin out just like these other two yrs ago. Putin's been harassing Europe, attacking countries killed millions of people, not to mention windows and aeroplanes and threatening the whole damn world decades , yet Trump too gutless to touch him it's sickening, while Putins still at it as we speak.

A bit of an update. The mechanic who I had look at the bike when I purchased it seems to have cut few corners, although the amount of rain we have had and the distances I cover may have something to do with it. The grips were wired direct to the battery, presumably as they detech the voltage that indicates the battery is not charging and then decide to cut out automagically - allegedly. As the bloke who jump started me said, the shoudl be wired into the fuse box. I decided, on a recommendation, to give another local mechanic a look. He said the same thing and that the heated grips were notorious for the controllers losing the ability to self-switch off. Then he pointed out wither the gripes weren't glued to the bars, not enough was used, or some inferior gluwe was used as he was able to move the grips around the bar. Then he pointed out a few things, including completely worn front sprockets, all of which I asked the last mechanic to look out for. And, to boot, the rear disc needs replacement.. which is better than the wheel bearing, which is what I thought could be the problem. He pointed out everythign I asked the last mechanic to look out for. FFS. As I have 10 thumbs when it comes to engineering, I basically have to pay up. Which I was expecting most anyway. So, it goes into the shop tomorrow for its fix. But, I had ridden it to London and back, and am riding with the lad, still. And, it is great fun, even in the wet, with freezing hands, and a little less fuel economy than I was aiming for.

No regime change has resulted in improvement.

The problem now is that Iran is not a united country, never has been, and there are plenty of different groups within Iran ready to take over from the Ayatollahs - and fight each other for that dominant position. Look for a replication of Libya. The worst part is, the Iranians will be planning a revenge attack from out of left field, and that will likely be either an economic attack or a military attack. They will mine or block the Straits of Hormuz and make the whole world pay in terms of a vastly increased oil price. We can look forward to rising oil prices this week, simply due to the attack by the U.S. Then there's the fact that the Iranians are the worlds best missile experts, and we know little of what they have hidden. They could quite easily launch a large warhead missile at an American city, and even if it's not a nuke, they could cause a lot of grief. They're like an injured snake, it might look like it's fatally injured, but it can still possess a vicious bite and lash out, too.

More ammo to justify the war, I guess. Containerised freight futures are down; may be a good time to go long on longer dted contracts.

Bin Salman is not much of a Person. I'm sorry for the Normal Iranians. Khamenei would have to Be with ALLAH now so why would he have been so scared of dying and becoming a Martyr? Nev

At what point can we csll a device "autonomous"? At present both sides in the Ukrain/Russia war, A.I. is being used for navigation by attack drones. They are using preprogrammed landscape recognition to recognise their location and guide them to a target. Although at present (as far as we know) they still need a human toget it out of its box an switch it on. From that point it is autonomous - navigating to a (at present) preprogrammed target. At our present rate of computing evolution, it won't be long before it will be feasible to have satellite data constantly monitoring enemy movements and doing target decisions very quickly. In the old days each technological advancement took time to reveal its hazards. This allowed humans to assess and mitigate risks before too many people got wiped out..But with the present rapidity of developments, it is a lot harder to deal with widespread downsides.

Indeed, and Iran have confirmed Khamenei is dead

It will be interesting to see how it pans out. The regime has never been weaker than at present. If the US/Israel alliance has good enough intelligence on the ground, they might be able to get a fair bit done in the short term with air power striking military infrastructure and the ongoing takeout of command. If the regime survives that, the next logical step would be some breathing space at the negotiating table. Both sides know that's never going to work but it gives them time.

When I come back from the Inland I find the green of the coast very Pleasant by comparison. Nev

Like any human invention, there is both good and bad with AI. I think that the problem in understanding that fact is that the majority of us have no idea about thois good and bad points, and as usual, the meeja plays up the bad.

There is a young lady who works in the pub at Butterleigh, not far from Exeter University, where my daughter goes. She is from Warren, about an hour west of you, OME. Butterliegh is a village that in UK terms, is not remote, but distant. I was suprised to see any Aussie working there as it isn't in a major centre, let alone someone from Warren. I aksed her what she thought of the UK? It was just before Christmas and her response was, "it is bloody wet..".. I guess they get as much rain as you do, as at that pointl it was a reasonably dry start to winter.

Sometimes I think I'd like to be off grid, but with the amount of mains power I use it's still the cheapest option by far. When I got the power on in 1994, it only cost me $5,000. The power company will run the power free of charge a maximum of 30 metres into the property (owner supplies the pole). From there I have 100 metres overhead which was $2,000, and from there about 250 metres of underground cable which was $3,000. With the three phases, that's four 35mm underground cables, so I'd hate to guess what the cost would be these days. If it was all overhead I probably could have got away with single phase, but over that distance it's good to share the load over two phases. It didn't cost much extra for the third phase cable so I got it put in for a couple of reasons. At the time I thought it was good to have in case I ever decided to run any three phase equipment, and even though I'll probably never use it for that purpose, the fourth underground cable is good insurance in case one of the two I use is ever knocked out by lightning or some other reason. Half the underground section runs up the centre of the driveway, so wiring in the unused fourth cable is a cheap fix if I lose a cable. Touch wood it hasn't happened but when the old underground copper phone line was in use, I had to get Telstra out a few times to replace phone cable from lightning strikes. It hits trees and travels down the roots to zap the cable.

You might like to download and save this for use at an appropriate time.

Trump's mantra is to prevent the Iranians from ever having nuclear weapons. He says they have been given opportunities to come to the table to negotiate but have failed to do so, therefore he is determined to raze their nuclear processing facilities to the ground.

We are promised 100-150mm over the next three days. Could be interesting.

The bore water at my place must be very low in minerals. It does not leave crusts on the end of taps and seems to lather satisfactoritly. It may not actually be bore water, but just creek water since the bore is not too far from a major creek.

Going flat out to AI is NOT INTELLIGENT. Blind Freddy can see that. Get out of the RAT Race The RATS won. WE need to get REAL. Nev

I remember my mum having an album of his with him in a hat and fur coat. Funny how an image can be remembered from over 45 years ago.

OME is in a good Place to Miss out on rain from all directions. Nev

Do it to a copper and you will be transported somewhere. Nev

The thumb is classed as a digit of the hand, according to my information source. But that source also tells me that an upraised centre digit, conveys unspoken messages more effectively. 😄

Nah, that's not digital, unless a thumb is a digit?

OME, your turn will come! When it does - don't come back to us, crying, "please make it stop raining!" 😄

Curried egg and red onion is a potent combination.

This is one of my favourite old lanterns, a Dipti brand made in India. I don't know how old it is but I'd guess 1950's or 1960's. It's a great old lantern, very solid metal and thick embossed glass with the name Dipti Oriental Metal embossed on it. That's the old company name; they're Dipti Metal Industries these days. It also burns perfectly and never gives any problems. It's in the top three in lantern status around here. Fairly rare in this country and not easy to find one.

I don't have a problem with people at the pointy end of the actual hard yakka, getting good money for what they do. But the current figures show, that executive renumeration levels - and in particular, CEO renumeration levels, have been rocketing ahead in leaps and bounds, well above the gradual gains the workers negotiate. https://www.governanceinstitute.com.au/news_media/large-pay-rises-for-c-suite-executives-reveal-impacts-of-inflation-and-labour-market-pressures/

Living alone makes you a lot more self-absorbed. I lived alone for too long, I much prefer having someone to share things with as I get older - from chores, right through to exciting "wins" and other joyful experiences. You must experience joyful events together. Despite the occasional arguments and head-butting, we don't indulge in abuse of each other, which many couples seem to degenerate into.