kgwilson

He wouldn't last 5 minutes anywhere else either. The US is the only place where there are enough stupid people to elect a convicted felon, 6 time bankrupt, accused rapist, malignant narcissist, poorly educated conman because he appeals to fundamentalist christians and is a billionaire.

I watched this program on the ABC & could not believe the stupidity of the reporter. He borrowed an EV & knew nothing about the cars capability. If he did he'd know that the satnav will tell him all of the chargers within range & guide him to one. You cannot fill a petrol car in 2 minutes & pay for the fuel etc. He should have already downloaded the apps before leaving. He was at an Evie 350kW charger & if he already had the app & registered the vehicle as most people do, all you do is plug the charger cable in to the car, it charges, you then click stop remove the cable & drive away. You are automatically charged & details are stored in the app. Everything Sam Evans said is spot on. I felt like complaining but then thought why bother. Anyone with half a brain & an interest in going Electric will make their own mind up. I did & it was the best car purchase decision i have ever made. My fuel cost is zero as I charge from my solar panels. When going long distance I check the location of chargers on route & know the range. The car has a longer range than my bladder so when I need to charge I take a break & have a bite to eat. If it is down to 20% charge 20 minutes later it is at 80%. This is usually quicker than than I am. Often I will go & unplug & move the car so someone else can use the charger. It is coming up to 3 years & 45,000 km since I bought my MG4. First service in 2 years & nothing had to be done except update the software. The only downside is that the new facelift model is now 10k less than I paid but now EVs are no longer an expensive way to get in to a new car with the latest small models cheaper than their petrol equivalents.

The Nickel mining story was aired 6 months ago. Almost all of the nickel is for the stainless steel industry, not EVs. The presenters fossil fuel bias and links have been well established. Channel 7 had to close comments within a couple of days as almost all were highly critical of the claims made. NMC batteries for EVs are now in the minority but even so 98% of all minerals including lithium, cobalt and nickel are recovered in battery recycling so are not wasted and reduce the need for expanded mining. LFP is now the dominant technology for EV batteries but sodium batteries are becoming available and making major inroads in to the battery storage industry. They are also between 30% & 60% cheaper given the abundance of sodium & ease of extraction. Start with evaporating sea water to get NaCl, common salt, separate the 2 elements and you have sodium and chloride.

The Trump photo passports are a special edition to celebrate the 250th anniversary & cost more than a normal one. It is a great way to get extra special attention from immigration officials around the world especially countries Trump has bad mouthed which is all of Europe, UK, China, japan, all of Oceania, most of central & South America & both immediate neighbours. No sane American who travels would want one. BTW the photo of the Aussie flag is probably genuine as the flags were being installed on lamp posts by workers from the Washington municipal authority. Someone discovered it fairly quickly & they were taken down but it is an indictment on the American education system that teaches only American geography, history etc so council workers & obviously some of their superiors wouldn't know the difference. King Charles speech to Congress was eloquent and covered a number of touchy subjects that criticised the US & Trump without naming names & he received a lengthy standing Ovation. Trump had no idea that he was being told to pull his head in & thought it was wonderful.

It isn't just Trump. The US has always done as it pleases. It used to be "Not our fight" as in only getting in to WW1 in 2017, then in WW2 Roosevelt couldn't get the support of Congress & only got involved after Pearl Harbor. Since then we have honoured the treaties like ANZUS & got involved in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan sent peacekeepers to other places the US has screwed up. Trump has just insulted every ally the US has ever had as in his comments about Afghanistan. He starts a war then complains NATO won't come to his aid. NATO is a defence treaty, an attack on one is an attack on all, not if one member attacks someone then everyone else attacks as well. Complains Australia won't help with the blockaid on Hormuz when we were never asked. The list of his stuffups and insults is endless & reportedly is considering recognising Argentinas claim on the Falklands as punishment for the UK not supporting him in his crazy actions against Iran.

And it is a fusion reactor with no radioactive waste, something we have not been able to replicate for any length of time so the simple option is to use it and we are via solar, wind, hydro and every other form of energy capture and use other than those that have been stored as fossil fuels for millions of years.

He isn't even good at golf. There have been numerous videos posted of his caddies shifting balls to more favourable positions & prior to his foray in to politics was a poor investor as well having been bankrupted 6 times. This time of course he has posted sycophantic Yes men & women to all the important and influential roles, dismantled many of the departments that provide checks and balances and breached the constitution and rules more times than you can count and the Senate & Congress have become paralysed. He thought he had control over the supreme court having appointed sympathetic judges but obviously some of these actually have a conscience. His tariffs were deemed illegal & the Epstein files got released though missing all the important stuff that would implicate him, his ICE thugs have been called to account after murdering 2 protesters in Minnesota so he was getting into pretty hot water. A diversion was required. What better diversion than to start a war. It is all beginning to unravel now & he is becoming more erratic and lashing out via his social media platform. Then picking a fight with the Pope was the last straw. There are a lot of loyal catholics in the US so how he is going to survive this one is hard to say. Only his appointees & the MAGA nutters seem to be supporting him right now. Most of his media supporters from Fox News and right wing influencers have railed against him. He was called insane just this month by Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Georgian congress woman initially one of his staunchest allies. Not only that but the protests against him in the US have grown to massive proportions with over 3200 events in all 50 states in late March estimated at more than 8 million participants. As well he has virtually no friends left in Europe & the rest of the World except Israel, Russia & North Korea. I hope we are witnessing his downfall and that it won't be too long before the world can sigh a collective relief.

He keeps confirming with every post that he is a complete and utter F@#$wit.

They had Cyclone Vaianu last week and in its wake it left a massively unstable weather pattern and the huge downpours and local flash flooding has caused much more damage than the cyclone did. Here on the NE coast of NSW it is tinder dry. The grass is now completely browned off & crunchy to walk on. We are supposed to be getting showers today & the rest of the week but nothing at all as yet with a blue sky, full sun and a lot of wind.

In the first Trump administration he lied over 35,000 times according to the Washington Post. Now that publication has been taken over By Amazon Billionaire Jeff Bezos it has become far less critical. There are now multiple organisations reporting and debunking his lies. In one 69 minute interview in 2024 he lied over 150 times.

This is the second major attempt by Bartlett/7 Spotlight to get misinformation and some disinformation across to try and improve ratings. The first was a few months ago when they went through Nickel mining in Indonesia claiming it was used in EV batteries. In fact none of it was, it was all used in the Stainless Steel industry & the highlighted poor working conditions for Indonesian miners were already being addressed by the new Indonesian government. 7 had to close comments on the program within days because almost all were very negative. Pandering to the dwindling numbers of right wing fossil fuel advocates & anti EV populists is a great way to see ratings drop.

Totally agree regarding Induction cooking. We installed a Bosch Induction cooktop back in 2008. Then it cost about $3,500.00 but the performance was amazing. While it had 4 cooking zones there was a power option than combined 2 of the zones together with the output in 1 zone. It would boil a litre of water from cold in 45 seconds. Control is superb and instant & the cooking surface never gets baked on spillages as it stays cool only getting hot from the transfer of heat from the bottom of the pot. We are renovating the house we purchased last year & installing a new kitchen. Cooking appliances are all AEG & the induction cooktop has a matt finish which is very scratch resistant & is wirelessly connected to the rangehood so the lights & fan are switched on & the speed managed automatically while cooking & both together cost less that the original Bosch from 2008.

The maximum I have seen on the wholesale market is 25 cent/kWh at between 6:30 & 7:00pm. There is no solar being produced then so it is only export from batteries that can get that much. For most of the day the wholesale export price is 5 cents maximum to negative 3 cents. The best retail solar export plans I have seen are 10 cent/kWh & that is only for the first 10kWh per day then it reduces by half but this is countered by their high kWh charges when importing.

Baseload is a term that used to describe Coal Fired generation as it couldn't be turned off and had a very limited window of generation variation. The only people who use this now are those who are living in the past or conservative politicians who don't understand electrical generation, usage or demand. Terms like "we have to keep the lights on" and "what do we do when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine" just displays their ignorance. The generation industry, distributors and anyone with a smidgen of intelligence know the problem is "Peak Demand" so we need available energy to meet this. For many countries this occurs in the middle of Winter when heating demand stresses the electricity supply but in Australia it is in the Summer when heat waves stress the network due to massive use of Air conditioning systems. Rooftop solar has had a huge impact on reducing this during daylight hours and now with large multi megawatt batteries and home batteries set up as VPPs the problems are reduced. Add community batteries and pumped hydro and other storage to the mix and we go a long way to a fully sustainable renewable energy nation. Already rooftop solar produces more energy in Australia than all of the fossil fuel energy producers do combined during the middle of the day.

Trumps mental capacity is now openly being discussed at high levels after the profane midnight rant to open the Effin strait, to then declaring it closed, and having a go at the Pope. Albos meeting with the Malaysian PM to shore up fuel supply was notable for Anwars direct jab at Trumps sanity. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-18/fallout-iran-war-spreads-focus-donald-trump-mind/106576096 Meanwhile American Troops in the middle east are running out of food & morale has sunk to a major low point. Hegseth spent all of the food budget on lobsters and steak before the conflict began & now they are being served rubbish & not much of it either. This is simple logistics and supply that the incompetent US political system and military don't seem to be able to comprehend. https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360966583/trumps-troops-served-grey-meat-and-few-boiled-carrots-n