Jerry_Atrick

OK, I am going to show my workings now, because I obviously, got one of my sums wrong in the penultimate question. Assumption: Despite appearances, this is not an equilateral triangle and despite the absence of the degree symbol, the 3x's and 4x denotes degrees of the inner angles of the triangle. As the inner angles of any triangle always add up to 180 degrees (I am sure there is some theorem that disproves this), then 3x + 4x + 3x = 180; therefore 10x equals 180. Therefore, x equals 18. The angle of y is the difference between 180 (straight line) and 3x, or 3 x 18 or 54. 180 degrees take away 54 degrees = 136 degrees.. Oh wait.. that is where i went wrong in the last one.. it is 124 degrees.. Darn it.. I have been working with computers for too long! Think about this.. if I got this wrong, and I am involved in implementing market risk systems, which are quite mathematical, what hope has the global economy got?

That would be correctly named "Swamp"

pfft! This is the money pit. I have stopped counting how much I am putting into it as it will just depress me (and it has eaten into reserves already). Latest is on my return from Aus, I went straight to work .. partner calls in a panic - power put... Sparky called.. Whole basement had to be rewired... All work stopped for a week as power required for a lot of what was going on.. Thought it was going to be £7K, but "Happy" mates rates brought it down to £4k. Current builder spent 7 hours in last two weeks as he had a roofing issue at his own house. A decorator started today. This is the longest finals to landing I have ever been on.

I think its 150, but could be 170. Geometry and trigonometry were never my strong points (pardon the pun).

Normally, I go for function over form 😉 Normally.. Can't say I have had that much function on the current bike. 😞 I would mandate everyone has to learn to ride a proper motorcycle before they can touch a car. Can I have your vote now?

I actually don't disagree with some of the sentiment above. But picking on immigrants is not going to solve the problem. In fact, foreign corporations welfare - so to be clear - lining the pockets of foreign shareholders - using things like tax breaks, grants, subsidies, and funds transfer (legal avoidance of tax). That is a lot to research, so I thought I would use some water and get AI to do it. Here is the summary - and its confidence in each number (a nice trick - I wished people would use this when quoting facts - maybe AI has some advantages): For transparency, I included my response and its initial response. And here is a link to its hole answer https://chatgpt.com/share/6a907746-4178-83eb-a04f-be64bfef4444 We have to take the second line of the summary above out of the equation because that includes pensioners and longer term immigrants, and to properly account for that, we would have to measure the input into the economy and deduct that from the $30 - $40bn per year. For the sake of argument though, let's assume that it is the same as recently arrived immigrants, at around $3bn a year. So, the total in welfare attributable to immigrants is say $6bn a year. The confidence in that figure is low. So lets more than triple it to $10bn a year. That should be more than what it is, but since some here have expressed a dissatisfaction with lefties cooking the books, lets err on the side of caution. Lets only take the bottom line (pardon the pun) as all of government assistance to foreign firms and assume the second from the bottom like is for some reason singling out the commonwealth portion. It is a reasonable range guess. On the low side, it is below the adjustment for error in the immigration cost, and on the high side, it exceeds it. I would guess there are far fewer foreign corporations, so the amount paid per "head" will be a lot higher. Of course, if we assume the numbers provided are near accurate, which in their own words are of low confidence, corporate welfare is costing between 4 and 7 times immigrant welfare - every year. That adds up. Of course, you could argue that corporate welfare provides jobs. Yes it does, but why give it to foreign corporations? Why not give it to Aussie owned corporations and use it to build up Aussie industry and Aussie assets? Also, welfare to immigrants is spent locally. There is none sent back as profits to foreign peoiple (yes, some immigrants do send money to their families from their homeland - but they will by far mostly be those working and not given "handouts"). Thinking about it.. I do agree with the meme. Get the immigrant corporations out and get Aussie ones in their place.

BTW, if you really want to stop the rent takers of the economy, start using cash for as many purchases as possible. Every card transaction - and I do mean every one - results with some going to one of two payments companies in the US. Even our dear eftpos has to pay a fee.

Although largely correct, my understanding of stablecoin is that it has to be backed by a liquid asset to derive its value. In other words, we would treat it as a derivative financial instrument when pricing it. I am not sure how the inversion of the dollar value would send the stablecoin up in value. It effectively becomes a proxy for directly buying US Treasuries in this case. There is no mandate for a stable coin to buy anything.. but on issuing more of the currency the stablecoin can do one of two things.. not buy any, which will dilute the value of the already issued coin as well as that of the newly issued coin, or top up their reserves of whatever is backing the stablecoin - in this case US Treasuries. These holding represent hedges against the loss of value of the coin against the currency they are stabilised against. Importantly, they don't have to buy up new US Treasuries (or whatever currency they are stabilised against), and they don't have to buy the debt - they can hold cash reserves - though that is far more expensive. I am nto sure about the retail market, but any intitutional interest in a properly hedged stablecoin as a result of a decrease in the demand of the asset backing it would not lead to an increase in demand.. In fact, it would go the other way. In the above case, if they saw the dollar dropping, they would probably take short positions in that coin (note, assuming this is not speculative) because even if it took a while for the hype of the retail investors in the coin to wear down, the coin would drop to its actual value... Also, for the coin to remain a stablecoin, as it dfoes not have cash as a hedge, it would likely have to buy more US Treasuries to maintain its stable status, and that could squeeze its finances and eventually cause it to break from the claim of stablecoin, which would then kill demand and value as it becomes another meme coin after that, or go into massive debt to hold its value. If the dollar stayed long term depressed, either way, the coin will eventually go with it from a retail investor perspective. That is my favourite. Errr.. Yes they did.. They knew tariffs were coming, and from his first stint in office, they knew he was going to be a lying, corrupt con artist. The fact this bit was not in his policy did not mean he wasn't going to try to use the presidency to disproportionately enrich himself corruptly. It could have been any myriad of ways to do it.. And yes, you just had to listen to his policy speeches (rallies) and realise he was all about tanking the US economy through increased debt and tariffs, and being a dictator. It seems that people are really no smarter than any other animal - you offer them a morsel of bait with a giant hook in it, they will not see the hook and just take the bait, hook, line, and sinker (in fact, some animals seem smarter as when they see the hook, they nibble at the bait but not take the hook). And then they will start thrashing about trying to get off the hook as they are drawn to the usually inevitable conclusion. In the aftermath of the initial policy implementations, it was educating to see how many people who voted for Chump say they didn't vote for the policies he implemented - the very same policies he was very clear about implementing before the election... Teachers voted for slashes to the education budget, government workers voted for DOGE, undocumented immigrant families voted for ICE.. those on SNAP having it withdrawn, and the list goes on. It was absolutely mind boggling when they would turn up on youtube and MSM and say they didn't vote for that... What they thought for some reason is it wouldn't happen to them.. when it was clear it would. And the funny thing was they often said they would still vote for him... They are getting exactly what they voted for.

Although to smaller extents, there are a few more countries I could think of that could fit that bill.

80 doesn't seem to be a good number for celebrities this month

I am sure Iran will happily purse Chump himself, but apparently, there is now a bounty of his son, Baron.. so he has succeeded in drawing his own kid into the line of fire: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/barron-trump-threat-iran-bounty-war-b3038679.html I bet whichever of his wives is Baron's mum is ecstatic at the idea.

Think of all that GST they can reclaim without a penny of revenue?

As with everything, ultimately the consumer and more broadly, the general population ends up carrying the costs

Dolly Parton has passed away aged 80.. in very long article on the ABC news website, it only mentioned health issues. SWMBO will be devastated

Just got a call from the shop. Apparently the connectors on the loom side of the regulator were knackered (though I thought I checked them... so when I pick up the bike I will see what I missed).. And also, the new regulator itself is a dud. So they are taking a video of it so I can use as evidence to get my £ back... The company that supplied me the regulator should be OK with it though, as the shop is replacing it with one from the same company I purchased from and they have good reputation. Regulator won't arrive until tomorrow and I will not be able t collect until Thursday afternoon... So to London by train this time.