kgwilson

Canada isn't a threat to anyone except Trumps America. If they stopped supplying cars and car parts, oil, electricity, minerals etc Trump would have to get everything from elsewhere at higher costs plus his tariffs as they don't have everything there anyway.

One of the most annoying things about buying stuff from stores in the US is that you never pay the advertised price. When I arrived in New Orleans for a conference after over 20 hours travelling, I decided to buy a 6 pack of beer as the mini bar prices in the Hotel were outlandish. I bought a 6 pack & there were 4 separate taxes added on. It's a long time ago but I remember one was for a local school. The beer was also awful.

Tell Trump our red mud is full or rare earth minerals & he can have it cheap for less than 1k/tonne plus 20% tariff.😀

His latest effort with the President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa was nothing short of Trump lies (fake news) and totally embarrassing, lambasting SA using dubious news reports in publications quoting SA government critics who have no credibility at all. He continues to alienate every country he encounters (except Russia).

Here on the North Coast of NSW we have had the wettest late Summer & Autumn I can remember. Since ex tropical cyclone Alfred in late February/early March there have been few fine sunny days. The problem is that the high pressure anti cyclones have remained to the South of the country when they normally migrate North as Summer comes to a close. This means that there is an Easterly flow on to the mid North to North East coasts which pick up moisture from the Tasman & drops it along the coastal fringe. Troughs develop and we get plenty of showers, many heavy & then as now a major trough has developed & everywhere from Taree to Coffs has been hit by a massive deluge. This morning i emptied 135mm from my rain gauge. The ground has been sodden since early March & there is water & mud everywhere. Already we have had 1200 mm year to date. This pattern has meant massive drought for the West of NSW & Victoria & it is sad to see the state of farms and livestock there. Hopefully as this current trough moves South a bit will get to those who desperately need it.

I have 2 Chinese made inverters. Probably around 90% of all home rooftop solar systems have Chinese made inverters. As with almost everything you buy now you register the warranty and provide your Email address and other contact details. My units are connected via WiFi to my network and when I log in to the web enabled system to check production statistics that information is accessible if required by the manufacturer. I am pretty sure that the warranty registration process has this specified. Everything I have purchased in the last few years has an on-line product registration process where your email and other contact details are stored. The manufacturer is more interested in selling more of their products and improving performance to stay ahead of their competitors than spying on you. In my case and it would be the same for the vast majority of other consumers of these products they would not find anything worth while & if they were able to do something even remotely strange and it was found out that would be the end of them.

The granny charger that came with the car is limited to 8 Amp input or 1.84 kW and the inverter will probably provide about 1.5kW DC to the battery so to charge the 64 kWh battery from empty would take 2 1/2 days You can get 10 & 15 amp granny chargers from Ali Express pretty cheap. The MG limit is probably due to the average idiot using a 1.5mm extension lead causing excessive heat plus leaving it coiled etc. Indeed the wallbox is rated at 32 Amps (7.4kW input single phase). 3 phase units are rated at 11 Amps or 22 Amps with 32 amps for all 3 phases. No point from my perspective as I only have single phase at home & the car inverter is also single phase. I installed it & and my sparky friend signed it off. Cost only about $100.00 for the 12 metres of 6mm TPS cable & a 40 amp RCCB. I hard wired the wallbox. It is called an EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) as it just supplies AC power to the car. The car inverter then charges the battery. It is configurable in 1 A increments from 6A to 32A. This can be automated via software to link in with the solar supply though I don't have that version. The EVSE is from ZJBeny & cost $550.00. The flasher version was over a grand. If I need to charge on a cloudy day I just go in to the App on my phone & limit the input amps. I get free power every day from 12:00 to 14:00. This is the daytime plan from my retailer. The night time plan provides power at about 5-6C/kWh from midnight to 4:00am but the daytime plan suits me better. My last 3 power bills have been credits & I am only getting 1.14 cents/kWh for export now. When i get home I just plug the car in & it will charge between 12 & 2 unless I amend it from the car app on my phone which I do from time to time. Last week I did a couple of longish trips & only had 7% of battery left when I got home. I charged for an hour or so while the solar was still producing & re-started the charge the next morning at about 9 am at 20 amps & increased it to 32 amps at about 11 am then left it till the car stopped the charge at 80% & ran it's cell balancing program for about 20 minutes & it was complete by about 2:45pm.

I have been away for a while. I am coming up to 2 years of EV ownership. As with 90% of EV owners I charge at home. The MG4 came with a granny charger. You don't get one with some brands. Tesla give you nothing now. I have used the granny charger once & that was to make sure it worked. I installed a 7kW wall charger & I get free power for 2 hours a day. I also have 8kW of solar panels so my running costs are negligible. The network is better than it was 2 years ago & there are now many "Destination Chargers" at hotels & motels & these are usually free. In the 25,000km I have driven so far I have spent about $150.00 at fast chargers. As with most people I don't do many long trips. The average car owner travels to/from work each day & except for long trips on holiday etc all charging is done at home. The charging process varies and the simple way is to register with each of the main suppliers. I have with Evie, Chargefox, BP, Ampol & Tesla. I have an RFID card which is registered with 3 of them. I pull up, plug in scan the card & that's it. If there is a queue it is bad etiquette to charge to 100% as the last 20% will be slow. I have not had a problem waiting long & by the time I have been to the loo & had a coffee or bite the car is ready. In the MG4 the WLTP range is 450km. At 110kmh I get around 380. After that many I am ready for a break. From Coffs to Noosa I stop once for lunch & charge top up (20-30 minutes). Admittedly this is on the main highway & chargers are everywhere. The thing is the car has a built in Satnav with a charging planner & it knows what range there is and will tell you which charger to go to & in many cases can tell you if the charger is in use or not. So where are we going from here? Well CATL, the worlds largest battery manufacturer has recently announced a new battery technology that uses a combination of 2 types (lithium & sodium) to provide a range of 1500km and can get 520km of range in a 5 minute charge. That is quicker than filling a petrol tank. The new tech breakthrough is with Sodium ion technology. Of course sodium is everywhere. The sea is full of it & it is cheap. https://carnewschina.com/2025/04/21/battery-giant-catl-showcases-three-innovations-1500km-range-battery-520km-in-5-minutes-ultra-fast-charging-and-2025-mass-production-sodium-ion-battery/ This is now where battery & charging technology is up to. The only thing that will happen from now on is that it will get better & better. Already battery warranties are 1.5 to 2 million km or lifetime, The battery will outlast the rest of the car. EV haters will continue to abound but they are being rapidly drowned out with reality & the uptake of EV ownership continues to climb (Tesla excepted due to the Musk factor). Worldwide 17 million new EVs were sold in 2024 representing a 20% increase on the previous year. The new government is not only supporting the switch to electric vehicles but also getting more home batteries installed. Since the election home battery installers have had a massive increase in orders and inquiries. The electric future is here.

Chanel 7 turned comments off on their Spotlight page about this after getting thousands of messages pointing out the facts & rubbishing their claims. I saw the advertising for the show & figured it would be a full on anti EV show but didn't watch it. It astounds me that productions like this that are based on complete lies, the producers know it and are allowed to air it but then free to air TV is in such rapid decline it shows their desperation for an audience. So any sensationalist rubbish will, they hope, slow the decline of their audience and keep a few sponsors and advertisers from leaving.

Before Trump & Musk began their destructive mismanagement a few short weeks ago I was reading an article about the worst cars of 2024 from a prominent Auto mag. The first statement on the worst cars was "everything from the USA that isn't a Tesla". Now it is everything from the USA including Teslas if current sales have any thing to do with it. They do seem to have an unhealthy relationship with enormous gas guzzling Pickup trucks producing more emissions than any other brands. Interestingly though RAMs are built in the US but the company is owned by Stellantis with its HQ in the Netherlands. Trumps plan to ban Chinese cars and tariff imports from everywhere & the RAM price is indicative of his ignorance of where all the components for the US auto industry come from.

Was he there with Paul and Mary as well?

That was only due to his hate of Hitler and the almost infinite supply of canon fodder to take a lot of heat from the western front. he was one of the big 3 but was never trusted by anyone. In the 1930s Stalins communist collective farming methods failed and so did the crops so he took most of the grain from Ukraine and starved the Ukranians. Over 5 million perished. Then he settled Russians in the eastern parts of Ukraine after decimating the population so he could claim it as part of Russia as it had always been (not). That is one of the main reasons there are a lot of Russian speaking people in the Donbas and the eastern Oblasts. My wifes mother was born in Donetsk & spoke Russian but hated the Russians. Her grandparents were White Russians & were murdered by the Trotskyists during the 2017 revolution. Putin doesn't care about his own people. Russia has lost anywhere between 100,000 & 800,000 killed or injured. No-one really knows because Putin will never allow the real numbers to become known for fear of a massive backlash which could see him fall out of a window.

I haven't been near the U toob lately but last night was surprised at the huge number of US based news, public information organisations, celebrities etc tearing in to trump like there is no tomorrow, correcting the lies and disinformation from his mob.. Some of them fear there may not be a tomorrow if the current debacle continues. After Vance got into Zelenskyy he went on vacation in Vermont only to be met with heaps of protesters waving Ukraine flags and protest banners. He'd have been mobbed in to submission if it wasn't for the secret service. It is good to see that there is a large number of good Americans who know the truth & I am pretty sure there are a lot who voted for him and now wish they hadn't. Apart from tariffs, his bullying and declarations of acquisition of countries & territories, changing place names and supposedly stopping illegal immigration nothing material has happened. Stopping the war in 1 day went to 100 days and then as soon as possible & then to a diversionary attack on Zelenskyy which has only hardened the resolve of the rest of the West to continue support. Europe has already started ramping up its defence industries & while the US has the biggest, the UKs BAE systems is the 6th or 7th largest worldwide. Add Airbus & Thales and others in Europe & the dependence on US suppliers will be heading South. The trouble is all the bluff and bluster, insults and the like as he said "makes great television" all it does is increase opposition to him and damages the reputation of the US from its already low point to an even lower point.

A month in to this despots 4 year term and the entire world now knows what they already knew but seemed a bit afraid to admit. Trump is a clown, a complete f#$kwit, a malignant narcissist, 100% untrustworthy, a pathalogical liar, an ignoramus & got voted in by 33% of the eligible voters in the US. It will take some time but the US will become isolated if its once allies move away to form their own security pacts and alliances. Nato will morph into a European alliance and US bases in Europe and probably many countries around the globe will begin to disappear. Trumps policies will increase inflation for the US populous and only the Billionaires will benefit. Bullying tactics and threats only work for a while and statements like acquiring Greenland, Canada & Panama & turning the Gaza strip into Trump land will be forgotten. It will take some time but some of the cracks already evident will widen and fester and eventually there will not be enough new theatrical insulting performances to stop the rot and even though Trumps rusted on support base will keep the faith, mostly due to them being fed a diet of only Trump positive information through the right wing US media, it will not be enough. Bear in mind that he got in with a very small margin much less than Bidens over him after the first term and the mid terms only 2 years away may see a shift in the senate and congress.

It took Britain till the 1980s to pay for all the lend lease stuff they got in WW2. Russia also got massive lend lease aid but paid none of it back. Of course this would be lost on Trump. He knows nothing of history and doesn't read books. It's all about him and he has to win even when he has lost he refuses to acknowledge that as in the previous election.

Killing me Softly, one of her best.

Facts don't matter to Trump, they never have. It is all about him and his ego. So long as he is in the headlines, that is all that matters. He has only been there for a month so far, though it feels a lot longer. He seems to think the world revolves around him, however in a couple of years I reckon the chickens will come home to roost. The problem is it will take a lot longer to repair the damage. If every country trading with the US pulled back and left them on their own their economy would wither & die. That won't happen of course but Trumps current strategy is encouraging the rest of the world to think about alternatives.

And he is now blaming Ukraine for Putins invasion. There are no limits to this megalomaniacs depravity.

The water temperature about 15 NM off the coast here at Corindi beach is currently 27 degrees. Normally it would be 24 to 25 degrees at this time of the year so 2 to 3 deg hotter than normal. Local fishers are complaining about no fish anywhere so I reckon they have all gone somewhere cooler. No cyclones yet but they will start forming within the next month or so & may track South & with the warm water could get pretty intense. We'll see.

CATL are now providing between 1 & 2 million km warranties on their EV batteries. The chemistry and longevity is improving all the time and solid state batteries will be available for some Chinese EVs before the end of this year. The MG4 I bought now has a 10 year 250,000 km warranty on both car & battery. In China the MG4 called the Mulan has a lifetime warranty on the battery transferable to new owners. Honda & Toyota have been promising solid state batteries for over 5 years but have not been able to crack the technology while CATL the worlds largest battery manufacturer said nothing & quietly achieved it. There is still a lot of misinformation and disinformation about EV batteries supported by fossil fuel companies & the right wing press though they are slowly losing any credibility they had. While Teslas are great cars I'm glad I didn't buy one purely because of madman Musk who now looks to be a malignant narcissist like his orange mate.

That is 4.826 metres so the record probably still stands. Cardwell only gets rain during the monsoon wet season & very little for the rest of the year.

Albo has had a yarn to Trump & Trump has called him a "very fine man" & is considering tariff exemptions due to the US trade surplus with Australia. Dutton of course won't give Albo any credit. Politics Aarrgghh!

I've said it before, Trump is a Malignant Narcissist, diagnosed by multiple Clinical Psychologists. He is incapable of feeling empathy and will do anything to be front and centre of everything. He couldn't care less about anything else.

Musk was a visionary, a bit like Steve Jobs of Apple. Apple now are the 3rd largest mobile phone maker after Samsung & Xaiomi now that Jobs is dead. He was reputedly an arsehole but developed a following of iphone fans that were almost like disciples. Apple will end up like Nokia, once by far the biggest mobile phone company. iphones have become boring with few new or innovative features and are far too expensive. An iphone 16 looks almost the same as an iphone 11 Now Musk is orchestrating the demise of the company he created with his antics and ultra right wing concepts. He is the richest person on the planet & was given a $US65 Billion salary in 2024 from Tesla. The US justice dept would not approve it even though it was approved by Teslas shareholders & would be one of the reasons he jumped in to bed with Trump The EV industry is far bigger than just Tesla and while in some markets the increases slowed in 2024, world wide the increase in sales was pretty much as expected, championed of course by the Chinese who now produce by far the most EVs and are way ahead in innovation and battery technology as well as almost every part of the support infrastructure from high speed charging, 5 minute battery swap stations etc. Many of the legacy auto makers will not survive even in the medium term. There were 17. 1 million new EVs sold globally in 2024 up from 13.6 million in 2023 & 10.4 million in 2022. About 114,000 EVs were sold in Australia in 2024, still a small percentage of cars sold but a record high.

Trump has now back pedalled & at the 11th hour has delayed the tariffs for a month. The damage though has been done & Canada & Mexico will never have any faith in Trumps government (if they ever had any before) & will be working on strategies to ensure they will never get conned this way again. He is now threatening the EU as well & wants Ukraines rare earths for his continued support. Bully boy tactics only work for a short term until the bully becomes completely ostracized.