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pmccarthy

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Everything posted by pmccarthy

  1. I decided to check for you by asking ChatGTP "is there someone named Nomadpete?" This was the answer: Yes — there is at least one online user who goes by the handle nomadpete. Here are a few details I found: They have a profile on the forum “AircraftPilots.com” where they’ve posted numerous comments (on topics like ultralights, Rotax 912 engines, etc.). Aircraft Pilots+2Aircraft Pilots+2 Their profile indicates a location of “Van Diemen’s Land, A little pissant town halfway between civilization and the South Pole / Australia”. Aircraft Pilots+1 They also appear to use the same handle on GitHub. GitHub On a travel/social-tracking site they appear simply as “@nomadpete” with a listing of many trip-destinations. Nomads.com I cannot verify any more about their real identity (full name, background, etc.) from the sources I found.
  2. He ran a fish and chip shop - they make great politicians.
  3. I am in Vic temporarily, last 47 years, always meant to go back to NSW.
  4. A proper funeral would have been better than swept under the carpet.
  5. I should have explained in my story, that the question of selling my property now arises because half of the $400 rent goes in costs. That now includes the Vic government land tax, rates, services etc etc. costs were much lower a couple of years ago. I will let you know what I decide, has to be decided quickly if the lease is to be renewed.
  6. Years ago I renovated a house built in 1865. I still own it, it is my only 'real estate' investment. It is rented out for $400 a week, the market rate here. Based on the council valuation, my return on investment is 1.4%. The lease has expired. Should I renew the lease, the tenant wants to stay, or sell it?
  7. So who is a trash talking skip tracer?
  8. 1893, the year the banks went broke, that’s how it happened.
  9. Aluminum?
  10. If you have a continence problem, public transport is an added risk.
  11. I sort of saw Musk as Gyro Gearloose.
  12. pmccarthy

    Brain Teaser

    Wow, that requires a long memory. I was taken to that movie when it came out.
  13. This one on the Calder Highway just up the road. Took them about three years to build it.
  14. The big batteries smooth the peak, they can’t store enough to feed the grid.
  15. pmccarthy

    Brain Teaser

    I read the news today, oh boy
  16. I have guidelines too. Ignore anything with INSANE or YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE in the title. Ignore anything with an AI picture in the title.
  17. Sea level is rising, has been rising, will continue to rise since the last ice age.
  18. pmccarthy

    Brain Teaser

    I dream of Jeannie
  19. I eat meat. But when I am walking, if I can avoid stepping on an ant, I avoid it.
  20. Government greenlight Meadow Creek Solar Farm Meadow Creek Solar Farm
  21. Elderly man dies after being pulled unconscious.
  22. This morning's story on the King Valley (Vic) solar farm is most upsetting. Suffice to say the Victorian government has overridden the planning approvals process and ignored environmental assessments to destroy a beautiful part of Australia. The best analogy is the way the USSR destroyed the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan back in the day, in the name of what they saw as progress. We in Victoria are living in a frightening authoritarian state led by what is effectively a dictatorship.
  23. Hope you enjoy the Halloween story!
  24. European witch hunts of the 15th to 17th centuries targeted witches that were thought to be responsible for epidemics and crop failures related to declining temperatures of the Little Ice Age. A belief that evil humans were negatively affecting the climate and weather patterns was the “consensus” opinion of that time. How eerily similar is that notion to the current oft-repeated mantra that Man’s actions are controlling the climate and leading to catastrophic consequences? The first extensive European witch hunts coincided with plunging temperatures as the continent transitioned away from the beneficial warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1250 AD). Increasing cold that began in the 13th century ushered in nearly five centuries of advancing mountain glaciers and prolonged periods of rainy or cool weather. This time of naturally driven climate change was accompanied by crop failure, hunger, rising prices, epidemics and mass depopulation. Large systematic witch hunts began in the 1430s and were advanced later in the century by an Alsatian Dominican friar and papal Inquisitor named Heinrich Kramer. At Kramer’s urging, Pope Innocence VIII issued an encyclical enshrining the persecution and eradication of weather-changing witches through this papal edict. The worst of the Inquisition’s abuses and later systemic witch hunts were, in part, empowered by this decree. This initial period of cooler temperatures and failing crops continued through the first couple of decades of the 16th century, when a slight warming was accompanied by improvements in harvests. Clearly, the pogrom against the weather-changing witches had been successful! Unfortunately for the people of the Late Middle Ages, the 40 years or so of slight warming gave ground to a more severe bout of cooling. The summer of 1560 brought a return of coldness and wetness that led to severe decline in harvest, crop failure and increases in infant mortality and epidemics. Bear in mind that this was an agrarian subsistence culture, nearly totally dependent on the yearly harvest to survive. One bad harvest could be tolerated, but back-to-back failures would cause horrific consequences and, indeed, they did. Of course, the people’s misfortunes were attributed to weather-changing witches who had triggered the death-dealing weather, most often in the form of cold, rain, frost and devastating hailstorms. Horrific atrocities were alleged of the witches, including Franconian witches who “confessed” to flying through the air to spread an ointment made of children’s fat in order to cause a killing frost. Across the continent of Europe, from the 15th to the 17th centuries there were likely many tens of thousands of supposed witches burned at the stake, many of these old women living without husbands on the margins of society. The worst of the witch hunts occurred during the bitter cold from 1560 to about 1680. The frenzy of killing culminated in the killing of 63 witches in the German territory of Wiesensteig in the year 1563 alone. Across Europe, though, the numbers of witches continued to increase and peaked at more than 500 per year in the mid-1600s. Most were burned at the stake; others were hung. The end of the witch hunts and killings tie closely to the beginning of our current warming trend at the close of the 17th century. That warming trend started more than 300 years ago and continues in fits and starts to this day. Source: A Very Convenient Warming: How modest warming and more CO2 are benefiting humanity, by Gregory Wrightstone, executive director, CO2 Coalition. References: Pfister (2007) Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries Behringer (1999) Climatic change and witch-hunting: the impact of the Little Ice Age on mentalities.
  25. I think I’ve seen you in a movie, do you look like Bennie Hill?
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