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4 points
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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.4 points
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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.3 points
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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?3 points
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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."3 points
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3 points
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Seems the Globemaster was accompanied by a C130 - probably carring the catering truck. Just in case.3 points
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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.3 points
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I bet they call it 'Almond Milk', because nobody can say "Nut Juice" with a straight face.3 points
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3 points
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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.3 points
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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.3 points
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If you aid people where they are, there will be less needing to escape to Here.. Nev3 points
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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.3 points
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Being able to get that fancy gadget and HEAR is the most important thing. Nev3 points
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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.3 points
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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/13666208153110132 points
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2 points
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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.2 points
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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.2 points
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one thing for sure..they wont declare any taxable income for the work processed, magically they will all run at a loss.2 points
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2 points
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What I if told you, You the read first line wrong? Same the with second line, And also the third...2 points
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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.2 points
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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.2 points
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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."2 points
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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.2 points
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2 points
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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.2 points
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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.2 points
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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.2 points
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2 points
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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.2 points
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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.1 point
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1 point
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Dolly Parton has passed away aged 80.. in very long article on the ABC news website, it only mentioned health issues. SWMBO will be devastated1 point
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I've found AI is not too bad with simple questions that are not likely to have a hugely incorrect answer. One thing to watch with things like Google AI at the top of their search page is the reference links they give. Often they link to just something some bloke has said in Facebook or on Youtube. Far dodgier than some of the Wiki references.1 point
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Then you run this load over roads that are basically tamped-down dirt covered byt a layer of stones glued together with tar.1 point
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I currently live under a Ln optional voting and fist past the post system. I am not sure Farage would have been successful given the low voter turnout (44%) delivering him a 27% vote of the total electors in his seat1 point
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There's a De Haviland Dragon Rapide that went down in WWII still undiscovered out there. Just think of the Southern Cloud as another example of 'lost in the bush'.1 point
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