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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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Of Course what the rest of the World THINKS matters. No one can TRUST his word. THAT affects everything ALL He produces is Chaos and disorder . More as his position becomes More precarious. Nev

If ON get in, for some, yes.. For most, including - dare I say it - yourself, no, unless you want to be worse off than you are now. Regardless of the outcome, the differential between the primary vote should be a very star wake up call to both Albo and the LNP. And it is not a wake up call to lurch to the far right.. it is a wake up call no one can take votes for granted anymore. Over here, admittedly with a press dead against him, but a purely technocratic apprach, Starmer conceded a lot of ground to Reform and Restore (the breakaway part of Reform - both as bad as each other). Like Albo, his management of the economy and social cohesion was better than his peers and certainly very good given the constraints he faced compared to Albo. Yet his continual pursuit of economic prudence within constraints they had to promise less the press during the election campaign would have hung, drawn, and quartered them for at the cost of the middle and lower class population. Their attack on the vulnerable to appease the right wing press was duly castigated by the right wing press (well all of the press). And with each prudent move to save in relative terms, a pittance, was met with abhorrence from even his most ardent supporters. He is no longer, Burnham talks the talk and has taken small steps, and suddenly the protest vote Reform is, had tanked.. Burnham in the polls is by far the preferred leader.. If the Tories can sort themselves out, they will depose of Reform altogether. And you know he has got something right by at least talking about looking after the masses, as even the right wing MSM have stopped calling for a general election as he was not elected as leader for the prime ministership. Albo is better than Starmer, and has turned out better than I thought he would.. I will concede that. In fact, I would generally say he has been a good PM for Australia. He has proven that immigration is not the issue when it comes to property prices (purchasing at least). And despite everyone in the real estate industry saying rental properties will decrease and rents will go up (they have been anyway - at the same time house prices have been which is considered an economic inversion) there appears to be signs investors are returning to the market - with lower prices for the houses because their yield calculations have changed. However, the ratio of home buyers v. residential investment property buyers has definitely shifted in favour of the former, so the house prices will return to some semblance of normality. I will give Albo super credit - it took guts because a lot of recent home buyers are now in negative equity - investors and residential purchasers alike. My advice to wither is if you are not under some mortgage contract to top up a margin (and some will be), then, as long as you can make the payment, stay put. For both of you, the investment is long term. OK, if you just bought a one bedroom place and the wife is pregnant, this will prove a challenge.. and if you are into negative equity territory, this will be devastating. My first born in London was in the same position (although - at least until the money I have sunk into this place - I have never been in negative equity) where if I sold, I would not have had much to show for in in moving up the property ladder. You may have to have the cot in the corner of your bedroom or stick it in the living room.. You will get through it.. and if you hang out, you will make money.. but at the same time your brothers and sisters will also be able to put a roof over their and their newborn's heads. But the reality is, everyone today wants immediate results. So there are other things Albo can do immediately. The Gas Excise (those calling for 25% is too low in my estimation); reforming the tax take so things like funds transfer are mitigated, etc.. pouring money into people rather than foreign corporations, direecting the spend to stimulate Aussie owned innovation, etc etc.. These are not huge things to do.. but will go much further than the sponsorship the ALP (and LNP) gets now. Until he (and Angus) address that, Pauline - who I have to say - I admire her tenacity - will get a look in.. And I believe Clive sees an opportunity and is preapring for another tilt. @Grumpy Old Nasho - should PHON get in, I hope you have a significant amount of cash stashed.. because there is very little she really offers that will do anything but make life more difficult for you..

The sooner he joins the current 80 year old trend the better

I once had a 28 Studebaker. But back then raising a family was more important than playing cars. Last week a mate sent me this pic of one. On farcbook marketplace - complete & in running condition - too good to restore.

I always wanted a Chev ute like that but am now too old and lazy to take one on.

I think the Democrats are having their own existential crisis. All over the place, "socialist" candidates (translation: candidates who want to represent real people, not whoever pays the most) are winning elections - against the wishes of the DNC. So the traditional reps, who want the bribes, er, sorry, "donations" to keep rolling in, are shitting themselves.

Noooo.. Jerry has poor taste in motorcycles

Jerry for Pres! Jerry for Pres! Oh, wait, don't we already have some Jerryatric's in government?

BTW, if you really want to stop the rent takers of the economy, start using cash for as many purchases as possible. Every card transaction - and I do mean every one - results with some going to one of two payments companies in the US. Even our dear eftpos has to pay a fee.

Hope that fixes it Jerry. What a pain.

Sounds like drinkable yoghurt.

Well, we all know that you are rust free. Yoiu've told us many times already.

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.

Moose? Could still be a mouse, if you're Scottish.

No pictures please🤣

Time to liquidate my fiat currence. The BWS has a great exchange rate at the moment. When the big crash comes, at least I'll have good wine.