rgmwa

You can probably add rare earths to that list as well. The point is their motivation for defending us would be their military and commercial interests here, while our interests in defending them in places like Vietnam and Iraq were mainly about staying in their good books.

The US will only defend us if it's in their own interests. They probably would if Australia was attacked but mainly to protect their intelligence assets and forward bases, not us.

Worse than that. It was meant to be a text message.

Wondered where that went. The perils of technology and senility.

But it’s their three legged system of government that allows a corrupt president to accumulate so much power. It would be very difficult if not impossible for a prime minister of this country to do what Trump is doing.

Trump has demonstrated how weak the US Constitution and their system of government is if you want to exploit or ignore it.

Good thing you got there early.

Could be and it looks pretty wet as well which suggests water had something to do with it too, especially being so close to a canal. Those units further along are probably going for a good price now.

The basic structure is concrete but the bricks held on pretty well. I remember seeing pictures of a block of flats in Japan that toppled over in an earthquake like that with barely any structural damage. The embankment in the China photo seems to have slipped which might have triggered the collapse.

They got most of the design right. The building held together pretty well.

Bots would be able to spell better.

I was a bit surprised that the recent discussion on the AI thread didn't seem to tempt him.

Nice experience for everyone. If I tried what you did you’d find me on the Cemetery Walk too. 🙂💛

We had two rentals. I sold one after five years because we were losing money on it despite it being a nice house with good tenants paying a fair rent, mainly because there was no capital gain over those years. We probably lost $50k overall. I still have the other one, a small A-frame where the increase in block value has been the main driver of capital gain as the house is so small. It has been rented out over the last 20 years to a handful of tenants - all young singles or couples in their early twenties who were great. On the other hand a rental next to my son’s place was utterly trashed by the tenants before the owners managed to get rid of them. Our daughter now rents the A-frame because she like so many others has been priced out of the market and can’t afford to buy. She gets it for what it costs me to keep the property because I don’t want to make money from our kids and hopefully that will help her to save and buy her own place one day. We are very fortunate to have this property now, but I have mixed feelings about properties as investments in general unless you’re pretty hard nosed about pushing rents and cutting costs.

That sounds like a thoughtful discussion. I feel a bit sorry for Claude in that exchange, but it seems to know its limitations which is ethical in it's own way and a lot more honest than can be said for many humans. I think calling it AA makes more sense than calling it AI.