willedoo

I think Elle Woods in Legally Blonde was like a human Barbie doll.

I've never had the impression Barbie was promoted in a sexual manner. Her and Ken don't even have genitals.

I guess in the past the press would contact the family or police for a photograph. These days they would find it a lot easier to google the victim's facebook or instagram account and grab a photo from there. It poses a lot of ethical questions as those photos might be publicy downloadable but for the media to repost them publicly makes you think that ethically it should only be done with the family's consent. Particularly as in the past family supplied photos would be vetted by the family and be reasonably formal photos. The bulk of younger people's FB and Instagram photos are of them partying with their mates.

I've never been to PNG. I got offered a job there once but it was through a mate I was working with. He was trying to broker the deal by quoting a daily rate that gave him the same amount as me. In effect, he was asking the company in PNG for twice the going daily rate so he could skim half for doing nothing. The bloke from the company wouldn't pay that double rate so got someone else. I missed out on a lot of work there, It was meant to be a five week job but being PNG ended up being around five months of work. It was up around the Fly River if my memory is correct. A mate of mine worked up in the Mt. Hagen area in the 90's. He showed me photos of the camp complex where they stayed. It was quite a big show. The way I understood, it was a large permanent combined camp where different companies all stayed in a reasonably secure compound.

At least with the cold, if you have enough of the right clothing and gear you can survive. But with heat, as Nev says, if you don't have some way of staying cool you die. In the cold you can add on enough gear to survive with your own body heat trapped in the clothing but with heat you can take everything off and still die. The other problem with heat is as the heat stress increases you start losing judgement as I've experienced a couple of times. They tell stranded people not to leave their vehicles but it takes a lot of discipline to adhere to that when they are in that mental state of confusion.

Kununurra can get really hot at times as they are close enough to the coast to get the humidity but also can get inland type high temperatures with it. I was there once when it was 50° which is nothing out of the ordinary for inland dry heat, but the humidity combined with it was a killer. I spent a month further south of there near Yagga Yagga (south of Balgo) on the edge of the Great Sandy and it was around 55° every day for that month, but I'd rather have that high dry heat than what was at Kununurra.

The bloke on the right looks a bit like Ted Danson.

I guess the lesson is, if you are answering a particular part of someone's post, only quote the section that relates to your reply and not the entire post. It avoids different topics getting mixed up.

The confusion happened when ome quoted Jerry (in relation to pmccarthy's post) and in the reply tacked on a second part about the methanol poisoning. Then Jerry quoted ome's total post (including the bit about Laos) when his answer was only in relation to the first part of the post (regarding pmccarthy's post). Then ome has quoted Jerry thinking Jerry's answer was in relation to the Laos poisoning and given a response to Jerry about the poisoning when Jerry was talking about pmccarthy's post. Situation normal for this forum. It would be boring otherwise.

There's two different things getting mixed up here. pmccarthy's post had no mention of the methanol poisoning in Laos. That was thrown in later and now there's two different conversations getting jumbled up.

It's an awful fashion these days, especially among social media influencers to have those big lips. Some are done by silicone injections but for most of them it's a make up technique that goes way beyond the natural line of the lips. I can remember the days when we felt sorry for old grannies who applied the lippy past their lip line. In their case maybe to try and cover shrinking lips.

There's a lot of natural resources in Russia as well but history has shown them to be an unreliable business partner for the US. Trump looks at everything as a business investment so it's possible he might flip Ukraine's way if the figures stack up and the stability for investment is there. It would be a better option than what they've had the last two and a half years of Biden slowly bleeding them to death. Biden's dithering has supplied enough to stop putin overwhelming Ukraine, but the lack of decisive support to defeat the Russians has come at huge cost to life and infrastructure in Ukraine. Not many people view Biden's handling of Ukraine as competent or decisive; mishandling and weak leadership would be a better description. Their worst case scenario would be if Trump favours Russia and his own budget and pulls the pin on Ukraine support as Trump has talked about in the past. I've heard it said on this forum that most wars end by negotiation. For this one to end in Ukraine's favour by force is a big gamble considering the nuclear capability of the aggressor. The glitch with negotiation is that the bit putin occupies is the resource rich area that would be important to the US in any resource sharing deal with Ukraine. The big question is what sort of bone will he throw putin and how big will that bone be. Either way, come next year things will change in Ukraine from what we've seen under Biden. For Ukraine's sake I hope it's change for the better.

I've got a space in the kitchen about 5 metres in length I can walk. While the jug boils for a cup of coffee I've measured 100 metres of walking I can do in that short time. I can now get up a reasonable pace on this new mechanical hip joint (6.5 months old).

Senator Lindsey Graham has been speaking about Trump's possible plans for peace in Ukraine. He's of the opinion Trump will broker a peace deal and partner with Ukraine in trade and mining investment. He said Ukraine is the richest country in Europe regarding rare earth minerals worth 2 to 7 trillion dollars. He mentioned the US making money so it's possible Trump thinks there's more money in backing Ukraine than backing Russia. The big question is what the peace deal would involve. putin will only stop if he's given enough. If he's not, the only other alternative I can see is the US backing Ukraine to push putin out which I can't see Trump doing. It seems like the deal to Ukraine might be "give up some of your country and make lots of money with us in return". I don't know where their rare earth deposits are but a lot of their coal and iron ore mining is in the territory putin has occupied.

The thing is the people can't vote him out now as it's his last term and he's not up for reelection. They've already voted him in, voted him out and voted him in again. Four years and his time's up; they don't get to judge him at the polls ever again.

Under the current constitution, yes.

I think in the US these days if your side doesn't win democracy is dead for some people.

That's right. Biden and Co. have acknowledged that it was a free and fair democratic election. Unless I've missed something and that democracy has done a runner in the last 18 days. What laws have changed since the election. The last time I looked the constitution was still in place.

The way they're trying to rush all these bills through in the last week with an election just around the corner is a bit like stuffing your wet clothes off the clothesline in a bag and trying to make it to the airport on time.

Different bill Nev. You're thinking of the social media age restriction bill.

They look like hothouses for growing plants.

I'd have some photos of the steel fettler's carriages we had but I think they're on an old portable hard drive that I can't access as I've lost the power adaptor. Lucky they were air conditioned and well insulated inside as the steel surface on the outside would get very hot.

The government's fake news bill has failed to get up. Probably a good thing as it's getting into dangerous territory when a government decides what news we should or should not read. That's better left for the people themselves to decide. With misinformation or disinformation it's hard to draw the line. As an example, how many times do you see people quote Wikipedia as a source. Wikipedia articles are written by members who create a Wiki account and write an article. Before publishing, it's peer reviewed to an extent but the main requirement is to quote sources. Any controversial statements made in a Wikipedia article are only as good as the sources they quote. Often those quoted sources are an article written by a journalist. And guess what, journalists protect their sources by not identifying them. How many so called news articles do you see the quote "according to two persons familiar with the matter". The journalist could be full of shite or not, but either way for a Wiki article to be credible there has to be some validation of the sources quoted as sources, and so on down the line. https://www.9news.com.au/national/labor-abandons-misinformation-bill/36c70cf4-16ee-4c9c-bbb2-972879968e84

onetrack, there's something in this photo that was posted previously that's from your neck of the woods. The accomodation dongas were Elross vans from WA. The reason being the company we used to work for had been bought out by a WA company and we were gradually converted over to their type of gear. The Elross sleeping dongas were a form of torture. Two to a room with 0.6 of a square metre of floor space for two people. In the morning one bloke had to stay in bed so the other had enough floor space to get dressed. The only practical way two people could be in the room was if at least one was lying on their bunk. The other problem was they fitted the rooms with very noisy truck air conditioners which woke you up all through the night. Before the WA mob bought us out we had South Australian steel railway fettlers train wagons to live in. They cut the train wheels off, weld a truck bogie on the rear and a skid plate and pin on the front to slip a prime mover directly on to them. We used to road train them as doubles and they were virtually indestructible and very roomy. There was no work required to the interiors as they were purpose built for fettlers to live in. The only issue was they were over width and way over length. By the time I left the WA company had only retained the W series Kenworths out of all our original gear.

Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know about that one.