The Random thought thread

[onetrack]

There's going to be a lot more of that in the near future, the Chinese are desperate to corner the EV market, the Chinese Govt has poured US$350B into subsidies for their EV manufacturers and they're churning them out like biscuits on an Arnotts production line.

 

The problems with the Chinese EV's, are -

 

1. You're likely to be left holding a pup if you buy one, as dozens of Chinese EV brands are going to disappear in the near future as they find they can't compete.

2. Warranties won't be worth the paper their written on, many Chinese EV owners are already listing their fights for compensation over faults and an unwillingness to honour warranties.

We already have enough problems with Western and Japanese car manufacturers failing to honour warranties, the Chinese will make the Western recalcitrants look like angels.

3. The resale value of the Chinese EV's will be bugger all, if you like writing off your entire investment in one, well, that's O.K., but most people like to see some residual value in their vehicle.

4. Parts and service for the Chinese vehicles will be a nightmare. In the Chinese brand equipment market, this is already true, as brands vanish overnight, and parts supplies, even for current brands, are often unobtainable.

 

Edited September 22 by onetrack

[red750]

The world is full of sick or weird people. Two posts on Farcxebook -

 

After the recent massacres in the middle east, someone came up with a cartoon of Wiley Coyote with a plie of pagers and a sign "Free Pagers".

 

Then the person who posted a birthday tribute to Joan Jett, accompanied by a photo of Noel Fielding. 

 

[willedoo]

I wonder where you go to buy second hand stuff these days. Most of the demolition and scrap yards are closed down around here, Gumtree is nearly dead and Facebook Marketplace is inhabited by crooks.

[spacesailor]

Gumtree was 'bought-out by Facebook-meta .

So is being shut down slowly ,( possibly a writeoff tax dodge ).

spacesailor

[pmccarthy]

We had two good secondhand shops nearby. 5hey have both gone upmarket into collectibles and antiques.

[red750]

Here's something to think about.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13886991/sarco-pod-assisted-suicide-switzerland-capsule-death-message.html

[onetrack]

Spacey, eBay owned Gumtree, not Facebook/Meta - but eBay sold Gumtree to the Norwegian-based Adevinta, in 2021.

 

Regardless, Gumtree is utterly useless today, all the site does is constantly change your search terms to look for something you DIDN'T request - and you can't make it search for the term you DO want.

 

In addition, Gumtree redirects you to eBay constantly, they just want to keep dumping tonnes of new Chinese s*** on you.

[Marty_d]

Mechanic told me the other day that Subaru XV headlights were $3,000 each.  So if you've got an XV and hit something front on at 20km/h breaking both headlights, the front grill etc, the car will probably be a statutory writeoff.
How the hell does this fit with the push to be able to repair stuff instead of wastefully writing off the whole thing?

[spacesailor]

$ 6,000 for a pair of original car lights is good news for anyone thats good at " chop-shop " ,

facelift for that " individual " looking  car .

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

1 minute ago, spacesailor said:

$ 6,000 for a pair of original car lights is good news for anyone thats good at " chop-shop " ,

facelift for that " individual " looking  car .

spacesailor

That's what I said too, but apparently a statutory write-off means that car cannot be re-registered.

So you'd have to get the VIN from another chassis somehow which is what I guess they do at the dodgier chop shops.

[spacesailor]

No necessarily.  

If you know the outcome, why take a few $ thou insurance on your $ 100,000 car that for a little more than , a few years insurance premiums,  will give your upgraded ride back.

A bent boot would be a " write-off ",  not a happy return for that insurance , but $2,000 , would be an easy 

Backyard repair job . Forgo the insurance pittance. 

And have your ride , untill you finally kill the poor thing,

with your bad driving .

spacesailor

[onetrack]

A Statutory write off is only applied to a vehicle where the SWO Damage Assessment Criteria are met. There's a booklet put out by Austroads, that advises what those criteria are.

If the SWO criteria are not met, the vehicle is a Repairable Write Off and can be repaired. Many "insurance salvage" vehicles are sold as RWO's, and then repaired and put back on the road, legally.

You cannot ever repair a vehicle that is declared an SWO, the 17 digit VIN number stamped in the body is physically destroyed, so it can never be repaired or re-registered.

 

Smashed headlights do not meet the SWO critieria, so the vehicle must be classed as an RWO. The link to the Austroads booklet is below.

Good quality aftermarket headlights for the Subaru XV are available ex-Taiwan, off eBay, and from aftermarket parts suppliers, and they run to about $500 for a pair.

 

http://carsafe.com.au/assets/AR_NMV_LV_Tech_Guide_Dec_2019.pdf

[spacesailor]

That is my way of seeing it .

But if you think a couple of $,grand , is what your $ 100,000 ride is all it's worth . Take their pittance. 

They ( Insurance companies ) need those 'second hand 

Panels & parts , for the repairs to the RWO , they do repair cheaply,  at great expense.

( no new parts in ' your ' well loved ride ).

spacesailor

[willedoo]

Some of these ebay sellers must laugh themselves silly when they make a sale. One example - a Gorilla brand bow shackle on ebay for $34.95 plus $9.95 postage. You can walk into Bunnings and buy the exact same thing for $14.80. My guess is the ebay sellers get an order from a sucker, then wander down to Bunnings and buy the item to send away to the buyer. A bit like dropshippers in a way.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I was one of those suckers once. I made an offer on a rocking horse for my daughter that was 10% lower than the price asked which was already cheaper than I was expecting. It was auto-accepteed and I though, "hang on, that was quick.. am I getting gyped?"

 

Turns out I could have got it 25% cheaper by going to Amazon.

 

Lesson learned.. The internet lets one always check the prices before making that irreversible offer (Paypal took the money automagically, and it was before the days that chargebacks were easy).

[onetrack]

The buyer of the Gorilla brand bow shackle may be located in a remote location where acquiring hardware items is costly, due to local high prices and long drives to get anything.

When I sold a fair bit of NOS industrial items (parts and tools) on eBay, the largest proportion of my buyers were based in remote rural locations and it must have seemed magical to them to be able to buy items at half the cost of local purchases and have them delivered right to their mailbox in the price!

 

But yes, there's always the suckers who just buy items without checking - usually as part of a "package deal". I recently acquired a couple of pallets of NOS, 500ml Hills Garden Trigger Spray bottles at auction. They were surplus from Chevron, and unused in their original cartons.

These are top quality spray bottles and Woolies charge $5 each for them and Mitre 10 charge $4 each for them. So I'm selling them for $2 each (because I'm not greedy, I'm only making about 800% markup - :D  )

 

So a bloke contacts me from FB and wants to buy a pile of them. It turns out he has a hydroponics shop - and he sells everything you need to "grow your own"! 

But get this - he sells the Hills Sprayers as part of his hydroponic package - for $15 EACH!!

I don't understand how he can get away with this, when a simple search turns them up for $4 or $5 each - but I guess it's all about "buying the complete package, without having to run around"!

 

Edited September 27 by onetrack

[red750]

In a number of posts I have criticised the Daily Mail (I call it the Daily Fail) over their ridiculous headlines ans sensationalisation. Here is a typical example.

 

Headline:

One of the biggest music artists in the world who enjoyed a high-profile romance looks unrecognizable on film set - can YOU guess who it is?  

 

 

Name revealed in next post.

[red750]

The mystery star is Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny!  (Edit: Ever heard of him?)

 

He truly transformed for the day's shoot in New York City for Darren Aronofsky's crime thriller Caught Stealing.

 

 

 

 

 

[red750]

How the mighty have fallen.

 

John Wood, Senior Sgt Tom Croydon on Blue Heelers, now doing betting apps commercials. I guess you've got to put bread on the table somehow.

[red750]

I watched an episode of Ice Pilots NWT, about the folks at Buffalo Airlines in Canada. The son, Mikey McBryan took his old man, Joe (Head of Buffalo Airlines) to an airshow and organised a ride for him in the Military Aircraft Museum's Avro Lancaster, one of only two in the world still flying, as a Fathers Day surprise. Then Joe got to fly in the Snowbirds formation display.

 

The episode then went on to show what they claimed was Mikey's first flying lesson - - - in a Beech Baron?? I don't know how old the episode was, but I'm sure I'd seen Mikey flying a DC3 a few years ago.

 

Any way, I then switched to Ch 7 in time to see Katy Perry walk off stage at the MCG. Missed her whole show, which from what I've read, was just as well.

[red750]

Not sure where else to post this, but it popped up on my Facebook feed - a fight between a leopard and an alligator. Fascinating.

 

https://www.facebook.com/reel/3601738940048610

[red750]

I mentioned Katy Perry performing at  the Grand Final. Despite what I had read earlier, lots of social media comments saying it was a top class performance. There was criticism that she was paid $5 mill, but it looks like the AFL got off cheaply. A story on the Daily Fail today to say they tried to get the Rolling Stones, but balked at the $20 mill asking price.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I though her performance was reasonably good (I am not into all the effects and dacing stuff they do these days). I would have preferrred the 'Stones, but can they do it anywhere near as good as they did? And will the audience relate to them as well as Katy.. 

 

I know my now young adult kids would not have watched it if teh Rollign Stones were palying (and I was not badgering them).

 

Anyway, there are 4 Rolling Stones. and 1 Katy Perry.. At $5m each, the Rolling Stones on a per capita basis are the same cost 😉

 

(I wonder how much of that $20M is travel insurance for the over 70's)

Edited September 29 by Jerry_Atrick

[old man emu]

I wonder if what has been done to improve pastures in Australia has had a beneficial effect on native birds.

 

I was looking at the seed-eating birds in the paddock beside my place. The clover which grew there this winter has gone to seed. Clover is a legume, like peas and beans, so is pretty nutritious. Then there is the grain that either falls to the ground during harvest, or blows from the back of trucks transporting it around the place. There's plenty of self-sown canola along the roadside.

 

The nutritional value of these introduced seeds would be much higher than the native grasses that these birds evolved upon. Then I saw the insect eaters. Insects eat seeds, so would their populations in the paddock have increased? Of course there is also those accursed mice which eat seeds and which are meat and drink to the raptor birds. 

 

So I wonder if, with higher quality food and more of it, these native birds are stronger and healthier and more numerous than their ancestral populations were. 

 

 

[red750]

5 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

there are 4 Rolling Stones.

Since Charlie Watts died, they've had a stand-in drummer. Now they only refer to Mick, Keith and Ronnie. I have since read that the AFL offered $20 mill, but it was rejected.