onetrack

The Dems should be appalled at the level of voter support they lost and they need to go back to square one and figure out why they lost so badly. Kamala would never make a leader or stateswoman, and I stated that from Day One. Obviously inflation and the cost of living has hit a lot of Americans badly - but it won't get better under Trump, it can only get worse as he brings in a huge level of tariffs, and ring-fences the U.S. from the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies will boom under Trump, and the Wall-building construction companies will be clinking the champagne glasses.

They're all just crossing their fingers, and hoping it all goes to plan!

The safety levels of vehicles today is so far in front of the 1970's vehicles, it's not funny. In the old days, we had crap crossply tyres, drum brakes, no airbags, no crumple zones, and metal projections in the cabin everywhere. But the old vehicles still went fast - and the roads were narrow and twisty. In those days, you could repair anything and put it back on the road. A mate is restoring an FJ Holden sedan - it was written off 3 times in the 50's, 60's and 70's, and rebuilt each time! The amount of body filler in the car is amazing! And the body is twisted out of shape, no-one ever checked it for twist of alignment ( and yes, the manufacturers had data that you could refer to for twist, and diagonal measurements, and all sorts of reference points - but many smash repair shops ignored them). Today, cars are made of high tensile steel and it's thinner than ever, and if it's torn, and a "structural component", it cannot be repaired - both legally and physically. The metal is too thin to weld or braze, and heating via welding ruins the heat treatment of the metal. With todays high-technology in cars, even immersing in as little as 150mm of water over the floor means the vehicle is a statutory write-off - because many electrical components associated with safety devices are mounted in footwells or under seats, and once they're immersed in floodwater, they can stop working, or only work intermittently.

When I used to canvas around the farms for contract earthmoving work in the Wheatbelt of W.A., and a woman answered the door, in my youthful brashness, I always asked for the boss! More than one I got told, "You're speaking to her!" 😄

E. The letters are the first letter of the words for consecutive numbers, starting from one.

Trump won? This must be the biggest Trumped-up election ever held!! 😄 Isn't it interesting how Joe Biden conceded the loss? A gracious outgoing speech, and an orderly handover in the transition. No screaming and ranting about fraud, illegal voters, stacked ballot boxes or even any attempt to rally backers to stop the handover in a violent fashion. That'll come with the next Presidential election, no doubt. https://thenightly.com.au/politics/us-politics/us-election-president-joe-biden-calls-for-unity-after-ramrod-vice-president-kamala-harris-loses-election-c-16677592 I guess winners here are the wall builders, I bet they're lining up to get a piece of the action making America into one huge gated community - because they're all terrified of the invaders at the border. Fear and loathing were the winners in this election. Imagine what's going to happen to the DOJ, it will be gutted, and Trump appointees will take their place, to hunt down all those criminal Democrats. No doubt Ivan Raiklin, the scariest murderous criminal I've ever seen, will be appointed to run the DOJ. He has a list of 300 Democrats he's going to jail and execute. Calls himslef the Secretary of Retribution. He's another Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, in a sheep costume. How this threatening criminal thug Raiklin, ever got to be an Intelligence Lt Col in the military, and a lawyer, is a mystery to me. Meantimes, every Jan 6 criminal now in jail will be pardoned and released, and probably given special medals, because they're actually wrongfully-jailed heroes!

It won't work, and it won't get past any legal challenges. There are better ways to increase taxes, and a simple increase in the tax rate for extremely high earners is warranted. People with huge unrealised capital gains may have little by way of income, and you can't tax people for capital gains that they haven't got in their bank accounts.

In W.A., it's pretty well known and understood, that a Welcome to Country ceremony, a Native Heritage inspection before development, or any other required Indigenous involvement in events, requires that payment is paid in cash money, or "liquid currency" (booze) to the Elder or Mob involved. It's a "nice lil' earner", as Arfur would say.

"D", because pea, eye and bee, all sound like letters of the alphabet, but hammer doesn't.

Back to school for you, Marty! 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_bear#:~:text=The Gobi bear (Ursus arctos,Species and by IUCN standards.

Any componentry to do with forklifts has suffered serious abuse, and is normally worn right out. They're they most abused machine around, everyone jumps on them and drives them, but no-one ever does any maintenance on them. I've got 7 forklifts in various stages of disrepair, and all but one (my best operational forklift) needs major work on them. Four are getting motor rebuilds, one is getting a complete steering system overhaul (including a reconditioned steer axle and a complete new steering box!), and the other one just needs a number of repairs, such as brakes and cooling system overhaul. Battery-powered forklifts get their batteries discharged excessively on a regular basis, and the batteries cost a fortune to purchase. I've never seen a worn out forklift battery that was still useable.

I can remember speeding with great pleasure, late at night down a great stretch of the M4, towards Reading, from London, in 1988 - in a hired Vauxhall, enjoying the great stretch of motorway, sitting on about 95mph. However, I was greatly surprised to have a marked police car pull up alongside me, and the copper in the passenger seat clearly mouth, "SLOW DOWN!" 😄 Of course, I did just that - and they kept going without losing much speed. I think they were enjoying a fast run, too! I must say I was surprised I wasn't booked.

Dec 1970, I did Bathurst to Uworra, NW of Ceduna, in a single day of driving in a HD Holden 179 sedan. 1175 miles or 1890kms. Sitting on 80-85mph (128-135kmh) most of the time, I left Bathurst around 0700hrs and stopped at a layby near Uworra at approximately 2230hrs. A 17 hour day with the time zones in my favour, I only stopped twice to catch quick bites and drinks. I went Bathurst-Hay-Balranald-Mildura-Renmark-Berri-Barmera-Morgan-Spalding-Crystal Brook-Port Pirie-Port Augusta-Ceduna-Uworra. The sealed South Australian roads were the best back then. I was young (21) and keen and silly, and eager to get home to a big-titted redhead, after 6 mths of no physical contact. No speed limits in those days, very few cops, and only low levels of traffic. But the roads were pretty ordinary, too. I think it worked out to about 115kmh average speed for the hours behind the wheel. The HD was pretty new, and would do 95mph. It still took me another day and a bit to get into Perth, approximately the same distance again, because the Eyre Hwy still had 300 miles of unsealed road, and that slowed me down a bit, thanks to dodging big potholes.

That's because you've got to be a real dickhead to play with matches!

The batteries need to be secure in their packaging to prevent arcing. The eggs need soft material protection. Even then, you often find cracked eggs - generally, right after you've checked and bought the carton, of course!

Sorry, I've been working my ar$e off, and travelling around the countryside, I've really been under the pump. And tomorrow is SWMBO's birthday, so that means I'll be tied up for multiple hours, got to find a good eatery for lunch, then in the afternoon, it's back to the grind. I've been working on acquiring a shed frame so I can erect a shed on my block in the wheatbelt. I found a pile of really nice proper-structural-steel portal frames, then I had to go 200kms South to pick them up. Got caught up in a massive traffic jam last Friday, when a bloke rolled his truck on the Kwinana Freeway, and ended up on the train tracks - and he killed himself. So the Police closed the Freeway for hours while they investigated, and every street for a dozen kms around, turned into a giant car park. What a nightmare, I've never seen anything like it.

The land occupied by the nuke plant is the least of anyones worries. It's the mind-boggling cost of constructing a nuke power station, and the time taken to build one, is what matters. Many nuke power stations still aren't finished after construction started 20 or 25 years ago. The cost overruns are notorious on nuke plants. Every single thing in the construction has to be radiation-proof, so thousands of tonnes of concrete and hundreds of tonnes of lead shielding. Then there's the safety codes to be met, with a huge number of stringent requirements, that all triple the cost of everything. Every component has to be manufactured from costly exotic steels that are corrosion resistant, and many other components are exotic materials as well. Coolant systems are exceptionally complex, they have to have triple redundancy - and then the protection systems still fail, and reactors overheat. And at the end of the day, the nuke power plant still produces nuclear waste that is dangerous for thousands of years - and no secure place to store it on this planet has been found yet. No-one wants nuclear waste stored anywhere near them, and the number of sites that are suitable geologically, are few and far between. Overall, the nuclear power plant industry is one that has a poor safety record, and it's an industry that isn't expanding - unlike renewables.

The name comes from Buffalo, N.Y., where the spice-infused chicken wings originated.

Hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, and the cost and origin of the hydrogen source, are the two biggest problems facing hydrogen. The Japanese Govt is pouring mega-billions into hydrogen to ensure they have multiple sources of energy. But no-one has yet found a cheap and plentiful hydrogen supply. The dream is "green" hydrogen, made from the electrolysis of water via solar electrical power, but that setup is far from low cost and far from being plentiful. Current hydrogen is sourced from natural gas, and known as "blue" hydrogen. The process uses steam to "crack" the natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The CO2 is captured. It's far from cheap, and not ideal. Then there's "grey" hydrogen, the same process as above, but the CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Also a less-than-ideal arrangement, and also not cheap. "Brown" and "black" hydrogen are produced from brown and black coal. Once again, a costly and polluting process. "Turquoise" hydrogen is produced by methane pyrolysis - using natural gas. Nothing about this process has any advantage over the above processes. The bottom line is the sheer volume of hydrogen gas needed to sustain the massive demand that is already being met by fossil fuels supply and infrastructure. Battery development and improvements will more than likely keep H2 as a fuel on the back foot for a long time to come. The distribution infrastructure for H2 will need a massive allocation of funds, which no-one is prepared to stump up, at this stage.

Spacey, the problem is, many phones are locked to a carrier when purchased and the purchase price and payments are a combination of phone plan monthly fees, and a monthly payment, that is part of the purchase price of the phone. You can't sell a phone that hasn't been paid for.

Before you purchase any phone, go to the GSMArena site, and look up the brand and model number, to check if it's a model compatible with the bandwidths used in Australia. Many manufacturers have up to a dozen different models, all look the same, but the model number gives you the country it's built for - and a lot of countries use a lot of different frequencies to us. When you find the right phone model on GSMArena that you're looking to purchase, put your mouse on the end of the "Network" line, where it says "expand", and clicking on "expand" produces all the frequencies that that particular model is set for, or is capable of operating on. https://www.gsmarena.com/ Australia uses the following mobile frequencies and channels - https://www.whistleout.com.au/MobilePhones/Guides/Will-my-phone-work-in-Australia-carrier-network-frequencies Note that frequencies used can vary from carrier to carrier, and rural frequencies are nearly always different to city frequencies.

The "climate" disasters were Cyclones/Hurricanes, heat waves, a drought and a flood. Cyclone Sidr, Bangladesh, 2007 - 3,400+ deaths Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar, 2008 - 138,366 deaths Super Typhoon Naiya, Phillipines, 2013 - 6,300 deaths Severe storm, Libya, 2023 - 4300 deaths, 8,500 missing Severe flooding in Uttarakhand, India, 2013 - 6054 deaths Drought in Somalia 2011 - an estimated 260,000 deaths Heat wave, Russia, 2010 - 55,736 deaths Heat wave, France, 2015 - 3,200+ deaths Heat wave, Europe, 2022 - 53,542 deaths Heat wave Europe, 2023 - 37,129 deaths They all made the local news in most cases - but we take little notice of disasters that are far away, and which don't directly affect us. Maybe a few minutes of bewilderment at the scale of destruction and death, and then it's back to the immediate pressing (for us) jobs, money-earning, and local disputes.

Worm. The completed sentence reads the same forwards or backwards. A very clever brain teaser.

You'd think deerhide would be a lot cheaper than it is, given the number of deer regularly slaughtered. Or is that the Americans just shoot deer for the venison and discard the skins? Or don't they kill as many deer when hunting, as they make out? I can recall someone producing a fact that the Americans expended 50,000 rounds for every enemy death in Vietnam. Firing accuracy doesn't seem to loom large in American historical records, as noted by the regular shootouts by American police, where they expend 100's of rounds, and still don't hit any of their target, or targets.