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In my prime.... Zero debt. Low body fat percentage. Fluid balance perfect. Nutrition excellent. Cholestorol low. Mental health balanced. Zero alcohol, excellent hydration. This was my peak. I was eight years old.

Random....

Righto... All those profiting by stopping action on climate policy and fossil fuels including bankers please make a orderly queue to the right.. Just close your eyes and go through the door to your reward.. Those on the left can enjoy the view of the cliff diving.

I think you'll find they get their information from their bank account and what is left in them after the bills are paid.. or their crumbling health services, etc. Murdich makes it easy ti fund someone to blame and someone to use to punish the incumbents. Look over here.. a PM who finally gets it and with really tiny tweaks, the protest party, Reform and his mates are imploding in the polls

I kind of agree but only where the holder of such views influences others with them. If it's just your average idiot on a forum, no. If it's an influencer with 10,000 followers, yes.

But back to topic - yes I think Jerry has it but it's damn depressing. The fact that people are angry at the status quo I get. The fact that they don't care that things can get a lot worse for them, that's the sad bit. Looks like the lessons we should be learning from the USA are not being learned. Dark times ahead.

My son just turned up this morning to show off a Royal Enfield Himalayan with just over 1,000k on the clock that he got for a great price from a guy who had to sell it for health reasons. Kitted out with panniers and other extras so he's very happy. I don't know much about bikes, but it looks great.

Jerry, if I read the first post correctly, you said you paid 1500 for this bike. Given the ongoing electrical problems, if you can get 1200 for it, that would seem to be an excellent option.

This image isn't mine but it is taken from a better angle. Also, when a motorcyle is cornering, the rider holds the front wheel a bit away from the direction of the turn. That is counter intuitive, but the artist seems to have captured that.

One winter's evening we found an straggly cat at our door. 
She was a sorry sight indeed. 
Starving and dirty, she smelled terribly and all her fur all matted in lumps. 
We felt so sorry for her so we put her in a carrier and took 
her to the vet. 
 We didn't know what to call her so we named her 'Pussycat.'

 The vet decided to keep her for a day or so. 
He said he would let us know 
when we could come and get her.

 My husband (the complainer) said, 
'OK, but don't forget to wash her, she stinks.' 
He reminded the vet that it was his WIFE (me) that wanted the dirty cat, not him.

 My husband and my Vet have never seen eye to eye. The vet calls my husband 
'El-Cheap-O', and my husband calls the vet 'El-Charge-O'.
 
They love to hate each other and constantly 'snipe' at one another, with my 
husband getting in the last word on this particular occasion.
 
 The next day my husband had an appointment with his doctor, 
who is located in the same building, next door to the vet.

 The MD's waiting room and office was full of people waiting to see the 
doctor. 
A side door opened and the vet leaned in - he had obviously
seen my husband arrive.

 He looked straight at my husband and in a loud voice said,

'Your wife's pussy doesn't stink any more. We washed and shaved it, and
now she smells like a rose. Oh, and, by the way, I think she's pregnant.
 God only knows who the father is!' Then he closed the door.


Weell. Not that anyone would ever do this.... but hypothetically if they did.... If I was powerful and wanted to tank the dollar and get rich off it, here is exactly what I would do.I would hire a Treasury Secretary who already made $3.5 billion crashing another country's currency. I would put my guy in charge of the agency that approves bank charters. I would install a crypto czar with $200M in crypto holdings and give him an ethics waiver so nobody could challenge it.Then I would sign an executive order banning the government from ever creating a digital dollar so there was no competition.Then I would have my family launch their own private digital dollar. My family takes 75% of net profits. I would grow it to $4.6 billion in circulation and route a $2 billion Abu Dhabi sovereign fund deal through it to prove it works.Then I would get Congress to pass a law requiring every stablecoin in the country to hold short-term Treasury bills. Now every dollar of my digital currency is a forced buyer of government debt. Brookings projects $2.3 trillion in captive demand by 2030.Then I would have my OCC guy grant my family's company a federal bank charter. Now I can issue my digital dollar with federal authority.Then I would have my Treasury Secretary weaken the actual dollar. Bond buybacks that suppress yields but tank the currency. Build a $950 billion war chest for more. Let the debt hit $40 trillion. Dollar index drops to 99. Gold goes to highest point ever.Then I would kill the Corporate Transparency Act and delete the FinCEN beneficial ownership database. That was the one law that required every shell company in America to report who actually owns it. Without it, nobody can trace who is buying my stablecoin, who is routing money through it, or where the profits land.Then I would let the loop run. Weaker dollar drives demand for "stable" digital alternatives. The law I passed forces those alternatives to buy T-bills. That funds the government's debt. My family takes profit on every transaction. Foreign central banks walking away from Treasuries get replaced by legally mandated stablecoin reserves my family controls.Then I would use sanctions to start cutting countries off from the dollar system entirely. And when those countries need a new way to transact in dollars, the only federally chartered private digital dollar in existence is mine. They can buy it through shell companies nobody can trace because I deleted the ownership database.I just built a toll booth on the global financial system. I take a cut every time someone uses the dollar. And I made it so nobody can see who is paying.And every single step I just described has already happened.So what does that mean for you and I?The reason the United States can borrow at low rates and keep your mortgage and your car payment and your import prices stable is because foreign central banks hold trillions in dollar reserves. That system has always been public. The benefit went to everyone. Lower borrowing costs, cheaper goods , and the single biggest economic advantage any country has ever had.What I just described is the privatization of that function. The entity buying the debt is no longer a central bank acting in the public interest. It is a private company taking 75% of net profits for one family. The reserve function used to generate a public benefit. Now it generates a private fee.Your purchasing power shrinks every time the dollar weakens. Your 401k buys less in real terms. Everything you import costs more. And every time the dollar drops, demand for the private digital alternative goes up. The one the president's family owns. The one that by law must buy government debt.You absorb the cost of a weakening dollar. His family collects the profit. That is the trade.The enforcement mechanism to stop a sitting president from doing this? There isn't one. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter says it would be a violation for literally any other federal employee, but not the president.Nobody voted for this. No one was asked. There was no debate. There is no enforcement mechanism. There is no one investigating it. The Senate tried and it was blocked.This is the largest conflict of interest in American history happening in broad daylight while everyone argues about something else.So what do you do? Share this. Make it impossible to ignore. Send it to your representative, your senator, every journalist you follow. We make them answer for it. Because the only thing protecting this scheme right now is the fact that not enough people understand it yet. But that would never happen, would it?

An amazing statue dedicated to Australian motorcyclist Kenny Blake. Located in Strathalbyn, South Australia. "Surely it is one of the most amazing and continuous tributes to a mate ever known. They come from afar to cheer this bloke, a motorcycling legend who won 11 Australian motorcycling titles. Some say he would have been at least the equal to Australia’s more recent champions Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan and Casey Stoner had he not been forced to race on a shoe-string budget."

Did they think you just had a happy end to your car trip? Lucky you!

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.

You are having a bad day. Don't feel bad, it could be worse. Imagine running into a wall with a boner, and breaking your nose first.

The major parties have had 125 years to get it right. In all that time you'd think they would have learned that democracy means more than just having an election every three years and then treating the electorate with contempt. They're simply not the kind of people we want governing us anymore, they've had their day, their psyches are no longer fit for purpose.

You can thank privatisation for that. User pays. A base station isn't cheap. If it doesn't make a profit over and above the install cost there, it doesn't get installed. A handful of customers will never be profitable. If you want capital city services, move to a capital city.

Count Binface, a satirical candidate in the Clacton by-election included in his policies requiring anyone who denies human-caused climate change to return to school. Quite frankly, I would have voted for him if he was in my electorate on that alone. The Australian death toll from the Nepal disaster alone - which is hard not to ague was the result of climate change - was 46. Stuff will get worse.. My favourite saying is facts don't give a ship about what people think.

On the subject of voters no longer listening, it has a two part effect. On the one hand, they no longer trust or believe the incumbents and stop listening to the sales pitch. The other factor is that the only way the majors can dismantle the One Nation juggernaut is to point out the faults and weaknesses of ON. That's where the second part comes in; people stop listenening to that as well and basiclly couldn't care less about the party's faults if it means getting rid of the status quo.

Jerry gets it. What is happening with the swing to One Nation is a movement to burn down the house and start again. The problem for the incumbents is that at some point, people are so fed up that they just stop listening. The federal Labor government has long ago realised that this could hurt them, and not just the Coalition as they initially thought. The government is and will be trying to turn it around, but once people develop a deaf ear to them, the government is done. Maybe it's reached that point now, but if not, it's not far away.

I can't get a code anymore for my online banking changes. The bank will only send a code via mobile phone now, not landline, the way I used to receive it. I don't have a mobile, and even if I did have one, there is no reception here. I'm up the creek without a paddle. In this respect, online banking doesn't exist for me any longer, I'll have to drive all the way to town, at their whim, and do my banking at the counter. The only other way is to buy a mobile phone, travel 10ks or more to higher ground, download the code, rush back home, enter it, hoping I haven't been automatically logged out due to inactivity. Everyone around here will be similarly affected.

40 Nev

If you look at the process of governing in a critical way, you'll soon see that a government elected by the people is only means of appeasement to the couner teh complaints of the people about the way they are controlled by faceless men. Just look at teh way multi-national corporations control your life. That's not something new. The American Revolution would not have happened if Britain's biggest corporation, the East India Company had not made the British Parliament mess about with the tax on tea and on the goods coming into the Colonies. No matter where on the political spectrum your politics lie, no Party can solve your problems.

This post is an exemplary representation of the way many voters feel today. It is no use arguing with the post or the reasoning because the post isn't arguing for anything better, worse of different than we have today. It's a recognition that the average person is squeezed and those in power are not putting the people first. There is nothing in the post to say ON will be any better.. it is about punishing those in power who are ignoring the people - plain and simple. For a stereotypical family, both parents are working and struggling to make ends meet when in yesteryear that wasn't the case as much as it is today. There are structural reasons for it.. modern life is more complicated. It is useless a polly saying don#t have your avocado toast, because it makes little difference in the end. You're lifestyle today is busier. People are working longer hours or when in the office travelling longer to get there and back. Many people when they get back do some form of work where that was rarer in previous generations. So, they are time poor and it is less of a luxury and more of a necessity - unless you want them to eat unhealthy processed food and eventually put more pressure on an ailing public health system. Ad don the need for smart phones for virtually all the family as you just can't do some things without them these days (or it costs you a lot more), tolls, longer hours, after school activities, child care for younger ones. And to help with a far more complex family life than in my day, it costs the government more. What people don't realise is the government has little levers to pull to manage the cost of living unless it starts taking measures that people will then complain of government overreach. So in some respects, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. To make things cheaper for example, we need denser housing because Australia suffers from diseconomies of scale. A land mass the size of the USA and 1/10th of the population. The more land with the fewer people, the more it costs to get services - especially those requiring infrastructure - to the people. So when the incumbents start to take things for granted - such as a vote - and let's face it even Labor is being a little less conspicuous in that taking for granted, people get pissed off because they can see the parties working for vested interests of the few - and themselves - and not at least trying to make decisions that are better for the people at the same time - like finding a balance. The gas excise issue is hotting up and people are now well educated on how Australia is being fleeced. This is a deal I think penned in the Howard years, but it can be fixed. The ALP consistently refuse to do it. That would add if I remember rightly $16bn to the coffers per year. You could solve quite some issues with that. The persistent morally corrupt lack of support for veterans; the Robodebt royal commission has not resulted in any meaningful change. The gambling ads report has not been implemented at all; Upping the public take of the pokies and other gambling is not being done. Approving fossil fuel leases/mining when there is clear majority opposition to it - and these never result in the promised jobs for locals; And then there was a recent bailing out of a mine or something... when was it Woodside or BHP (can't remember which one) are making massive profits?? WTF. In the last administration, they threw away a nascent market advantage by going for an early transition of energy (Yes, Siso, I know you don't approve). It wasn't until it was clear that SFM was going to lose the election and backing fossil fuel companies was costing him big time did he do a back flip. The above post says we have had enough of being fleeced. We want to send a signal to the incumbents that just because they may be the better, it is of a pretty bad bunch.. and we don't care if the next ones are worse, because until you get it through your thick brains that we are onto you, we are happy to vote in the next bunch of idiots, because in reality, for us, it will make little difference in the end... I don't think they believe ON will be any better.. they may use it to justify their actions, but when inaction is so poor with the incumbents, I agree wit the post - ignore the people and you're done for. This is exactly what is happening in the UK until Reform shot themselves in the foot; and it is exactly what happened in the USA (with the help of a media hell bent on getting an outcome for its advertisers regardless of the impact on the country). I think it is what is happening throughout Europe. People are sick of the same ol' same ol'. May as well make life hard for the "establishment".

Well, I watched about 10 minutes but the bum in the jeans was nowhere to be seen. False advertising! 😄

Yep, Lots of great bargains for the canny and slowish rider. Some add a high compression big bore kit, cam etc with nice pipes, ecu change. It's a common mod that makes a big change in power. One such kitted would be great second hand.

There's a lot of good low mileage second hand Royal Enfields on the market for very cheap prices. The fact that the new price is relatively low has some bearing on their used prices. They usually don't have much on the clock for a couple of reasons. First one is that a lot of people that own them are only occasional riders, and a lot of old blokes get too old for riding and sell them, still with low k's. With second hand 650 Interceptors, it's often the case that someone has bought one and not far down the track realised they're not a speed machine, so they sell to upgrade to something a bit racier. You can pick up Interceptors with 4,000 k's on the clock for half the price of a new one.

The cost of living is way too high. The ALP and Coalition have no idea how to reduce it, that's why One Nation is doing so well ... we've got to have a change. Yes, I have cash stashed already, for electricity, vehicle rego, compulsory third party insurance, Council rates (just increased 30%), and food bill increases are emptying my wallet. Petrol has gone up, so has diesel. A haircut costs me $35, nothing fancy, just a quick back & sides of my thinning grey hair. We need to put the major parties out to pasture, they've been at it too long. They've lost their way, they're still stuck in their old elitist ways. They're forgetting who the real boss is, us grunts trying to make ends meet. Ignore the people, and you're done for.

that i something I would believe.. though I am not sure they can produce it at the intensity of the players - though I am guessing there would be some relative to body size that would bring it closer than we (or I) think. I recall in year 8, Jack Leahy - my then English teacher - was telling us about an experiment where a bunch of toddlers/early walkers were put in a room behind one-way mirrored glass with a bunch of toys (those plastic type cars, balls, etc), and a bunch of relatively fit adults on the other side of the glass with the same sort of toys (obviously where necessary increased in size for the stature of the adults) and the adults had to mimic/copy everything their assigned toddler did throughout the day.. By the end of the day, apparently the toddlers were still more or less going strong, but the adults were completely stuffed. Of course, when the toddlers slept, the adults could only rest - but apparently some did fall asleep during those breaks, too. I have no idea if it is true or not, but he was one of the best teachers I had, so I have no reason to doubt him.

Unfortunately, Nev, what the rest of the world thinks, doesn't matter at all. Neither does what the people of his country think, either. Meantime, what he (and all those under him) DOES, is affecting a lot of people the world over. There is no win-win outcome. For every win, someone, somewhere, is losing. And that, my friend, IS 'The Art of The Deal'. P.S. yes, that is Capitalism as practiced in USofA.

Definitely 10.

Nice old Studebaker. I like the current culture where unrestored or minimally restored cars are as popular as full restorations. It makes it a lot more financially accessable for more people. For too long the main goal was to restore back to as new condition, and that was a very labour intensive and expensive process. It's horses for courses and the full resto people get great satisfaction doing their thing, but it's also nice not to see the history rubbed off or painted away on a lot of these old vehicles. I like the lived in look.

A man walks into a bar with a newt on his shoulder. "Cute pet," says the barman, "What's his name?" The man replies, "Tiny." "Why did you name him that?" asked the barman. "Because he's my newt." replied the man.

And yet, the accuracy of the art captured the whole racing motorcycle and rider.

This video is incredible. I didn't know where to put it. It is brilliant. So accurate. I hope you can view it. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1366620815311013

I look forward to suffering such delightful political boredom.

State and local governments are racing to entice data centres without any thought for the environment, or power costs for the rest of the population for that matter. Because a few dollars in rates and a couple of security guard jobs are far more important than all the downsides.

Now that's art I can appreciate.

I call my wife’s chai latte “Squirrel nut juice” bloody stuff is terrible. she does not like that name. Her cousins looked at me strange when I got to their place and explained the mess on my shirt as nut juice. Her over full cup had splattered all over me in the car whilst holding it.

one thing for sure..they wont declare any taxable income for the work processed, magically they will all run at a loss.

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...

Unless your phone is really old, you should be able to search up "wi-fi calling" in Settings and switch that on. Then you can get calls and texts with your phone using wi-fi from your home internet.

Should climate change denialism be a new form of crime against humanity? I think so.

Himalayan is a good machine. Great overall for back roads and gentle touring.just been updated with a better motor. Sounds a good buy with the luggage.

As a party in opposition, they are suspiciously quiet. It's not as if the current ruling mob aren't giving enough mud to sling. I'm starting to think the oligarcs are bribing the Democrats to STFU.

Thanks Wille. Not the sort of view that Tourism Australia would caption "Where the bloody ell are ya?" But it representative of a bloody lot of our wide brown land. When I first travelled the outback in my teens, all I saw was endless monotony. But the country grew on me. Now, I miss it too. We are heading to that country today.