kgwilson

If you can't afford medical insurance in the US you are generally f**ked.

I have private hospital cover but my GP bulk bills and prescriptions are capped to a certain amount annually & then they are free after that (unless the drug is not in the PBS) so the system works well for me. But the rumblings are getting louder and the system is struggling to attract GPs. Many clinics are now charging a co-payment as they say they cannot manage on the amount provided by the system so the number of bulk billing clinics is diminishing. Mine now charges for small procedures. I had a small punch biopsy on a suspected BCC recently & paid $50.00 (still cheap). The situation is probably worse in large cities with high costs associated with real estate/rent and wages/salaries. Getting an appointment urgently is almost impossible now. It used to be no problem. Some people are resorting to hospital ERs as they can't get an appointment with their GP. Family in NZ say the same is happening there so what is going on in the UK is occurring elsewhere. We just haven't caught up yet. Why this is happening everywhere I don't know & have not researched it, but it is a worrying trend. Seems to have accelerated since the pandemic.

The yanks have lost just about every war they have been in since WW2. They just keep fighting themselves at home with about 1.3 guns for every human alive & more than 1 mass shooting a day. Even 6 year olds are shooting teachers now. Their government changes every 2 years anyway so they don't need to get overthrown, though it was close a couple of years ago.🤐

It will be hard to shake the dyed in the wool older ex Soviet Russians who believe the nightly BS served up on State TV. Even when real information is available they don't believe it. The same can be said for the 50 million Trump nutters in the US who still believe the election was stolen despite not a single piece of evidence ever having been produced, the courts throwing all the appeals and lawsuits out & the lawyers being disbarred. Ultra right wing outfits are gaining ground everywhere. Look at Brazil. Long term though hopefully there will be enough dissent and disgruntlement to force through enough change to reverse the "Russian Empire rebuild" policies of Putin & his idiot followers.

I just read that in Virginia after a 6 year old shot his teacher, that guns must be secured from anyone under 14. So once your kid is 14 you can leave guns lying around the house for them to play with. Also apparently a 6 year does not have the ability or mental state to form the intent to commit a crime but a 7 year old does. Really? Only in America.

The counter attack a few months ago in the Luhansk was the major eye opener then the retreat from Kherson. The Russians have concentrated their attacks around Bahkmut but have made no progress in months. They keep probing to the North and South & gain a block or a paddock & then get beaten back again. The infamous Wagner group of mercenaries has been severely weakened as well & they will be running out of prisoners to send as new canon fodder. Ukraine has been hitting Russian airfields and their positions in Crimea and other select targets as they are smart enough to know that firing off artillery all the time will just use up reserves which is what the Russians have been doing. They have far superior intelligence and partisan contacts which the Russians lack. How long it will take for Putin to go I am not prepared to guess. The cap on the oil price, reduced gas supply and sanctions will be biting harder now that the Europeans have now got alternative supplies. I said it somewhere before but I like the statement Churchill made after the allied victory in North Africa. "This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, it is perhaps the end of the beginning". Churchill was right. Stalingrad & North Africa were the turning points in WW2. The Ukrainian gains in the North and liberation of Kherson I think will be the turning points in this war. Putin may have another go (something like the battle of Kursk or the battle of the Bulge) possibly from Belarus in another attempt to seize Kiev. If he does and it fails he is gone 100%.

At the end of WW2 thousands of returning Russian soldiers were pulled out of the lines and shipped East to the Gulags. Stalin imprisoned over 18 million people from 1920 till his death in 1953. The song by Al Stewart "Roads to Moscow" is an anthology of a Russian soldiers life from Hitlers invasion to incarceration at the end of WW2. Great song about 8 minutes long.

A farmer friend of mine went through the process about 10 years ago. The cost to get power to his new house & sheds was over 30k so he invested in solar & batteries plus a backup diesel generator which cost him less than connecting to the grid. He has no gas at all & runs his large property with several large freezers & everything else that a modern house requires from his solar installation. He has not yet had to run the generator because of lack of capacity of his system. He just fires it up a couple of times a year to make sure everything is still working.

It seems the Indians have changed their minds about the 2 Russians who died there, one supposedly from getting too p!ssed & the other from depression by falling out a window (as they do) because his mate carked it. They are now investigating both deaths. Given Indias relationship with Russia whatever they find will be sanitised to be acceptable to Putin. I certainly can't see the real truth being published.

If you are connected to the grid then the retailer is not compelled to take the excess generation from your rooftop solar if the system is at the limit of what it can absorb. If there is nowhere for the power to go you will not get anything for what you are generating. But you are never compelled to pay for grid power if you are producing sufficient of your own to run your household. What you generate goes through your inverter to run the fridge, washing machine & every other electrically driven device in your home before it gets to the smart meter for you to on sell to the retailer. So No, no-one other than you can switch off your solar generation system. The retailer may not take the excess you produce but that has nothing to do with compelling you to use the system except if you need more that you are producing. This is where the installation of batteries becomes an attractive option.

Not if you are completely off grid.

With electronics it is easy to control updates etc because it is all driven with software. I don't blame Tesla for controlling updates. This is normal practice from any manufacturer of integrated circuit controlled devices. Tesla is just trying to protect its products from pirates. Apple is the most protective of all technology giants. You cannot access IOS & they have built in redundancy forcing users to upgrade, you continue to pay for services via their iTunes locked in process and iOS does not integrate with any Android features. Even sending a text is different and you cannot send texts to a group unless they are all iOS devices.. They have had to build in software to access Google Maps as their own Mapping software didn't work. Android as we know is Open Source. Interestingly Apple has a cult following & still outsells Android devices in the US despite their outrageous cost. I suspect Tesla will follow this model for some time yet.

Another Russian magnate has died falling out a window. This time it was in India. Pavel Antov a multi millionaire was a member of Putins political party & briefly criticised the war in Ukraine (he originally called the attack on Kiev as terrorism). It was suicide apparently as he was depressed when they found his friend dead surrounded by lots of empty wine bottles. The FSB will be celebrating. They got rid of 2 in one go.

Abbot was, is and remains a dork. His main claim to fame was his ability to provide political caricature artists with a great subject to be exploited which they did with great aplomb especially his ears. When the shirtfront comment appeared in the media most people had no idea what it meant. I remember one cartoon that showed Abbot & Putin with Abbot saying "I stopped the boats" & Putin responding with "You won't stop mine". How things have changed. Putin has bugger all boats left to do anything other than his Nuclear subs.

The only reason modern ICE engines are efficient and run smoothly is that they are electronically controlled at every stage from turning the key to shutdown. The process is very complex requiring valves and high pressure air and liquid functions, vacuums, pumps, servo motors etc and multiple sensors to make sure everything is functioning the way it should. An EV is much simpler though new things have been introduced like regenerative braking. Electronics control everything else in modern ICE & EV vehicles that is not related to the cars motivation, even door handles these days. Normal air conditioning systems are now giving way to more efficient heat pump systems. You name it and it is controlled electrically or electronically. Motor Mechanics are now a rare breed. Motor Vehicle service outfits now call their people "Technicians". Most have little knowledge of how to fix anything or even how electronics work. They use diagnostic tools that they do not understand to determine where a fault lies and the only thing they can do is replace the module or component if the diagnostic screen says it has a fault. I get my 2012 Mitsubishi serviced at the NRMA service centre. I noticed (about a year ago) a whine in the engine bay. After looking and using a long screwdriver as a stethoscope I figured out it was an idler bearing on the main waterpump/aircon compressor grooved belt. I asked them to check it out. I got told that it was the bearing on the aircon compressor clutch & they would have to replace the compressor at approx $3,000.00. I rechecked & still thought it was an idler bearing. I took it to an old school aircon service bloke. I opened the bonnet & he listened, told me to turn the aircon on & off a couple of times & said "Nothin wrong with that". If it was the clutch bearing there'd be a tone difference when flicking the aircon switch he said & I went on my way. No charge. For interest sake I checked on replacing an aircon compressor clutch bearing. It is a bit tricky but not hard. The clutch is removed from the compressor & the bearing pressed out & a new one pressed in. The compressor does not even have to be removed so re-gassing is not required. Bearing cost about $15.00. Good electronics engineers are what is needed in future, in fact right now. There are still mechanical functions and mechanics will also be required but they seem to have dumbed them down to just pulling something off and putting a new one on.

An old hybrid is hardly worth spending that sort of money for a replacement battery with only about 80km of range on the battery alone. It may have been OK in 2012 but it is completely out of its depth now with current hybrids. There won't be many new hybrids hitting the market in future anyway. They are the worst of both worlds and appeal to those who do little or no research into what current EVs can do and have predisposed range anxiety. Within 5 years 1000km will be the range average, EV owners will mostly have their own 10-15kw chargers at home, the car will be the house battery backup for outages and/or used when power cost is at peak and range anxiety will be a joke from the past.

That's about the most mild offering i have ever heard from KBW. Not a single swear word in the whole song.

I remember in that Movie, Russian recruits were sent across the Volga in small boats without any weapons. They were given a clip of ammo & told to pick up the rifle of the man in front who had just been shot & keep going till they got shot. The Russians seem to have a similar philosophy in Ukraine. Zelenskyys speech at the US congress got him about 15 standing ovations in 30 minutes. Even though the Republicans have the majority there from the 3rd of January I think that the support will still be forthcoming. Some republicans have been questioning the aid but judging from that address to congress there will be more than enough support to keep the money flowing. As one commentator said 3 or 4 billion is a pittance out of the massive budget they have at their disposal. Zelenskyy has finally got the Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar Intercept On Target) Missile system after his visit to the US which has been brushed off by Putin as old and his systems will take it down. Given that even the basic anti missile systems that Ukraine already has, can take down more than 80% of the missiles and drones Russia sends over he is in a world of his own in that thought.

If I was an apartment dweller it would be OK, but I'm not, so no I wouldn't live in one. Brilliant concept though.

No worries. After all the hardships & abuse she still managed to get to 90. She spoke 7 languages but her English was relatively poor. She met her (Romanian) husband in the forced labour camp (their common language was German) & they only came to Australia because at the time they could not speak English & got in the wrong queue. They thought they were going to America. Better choice anyway though not by design.

Yes my wifes Mother was born in Donetsk. She spoke fluent Russian. She hated the Russians. She witnessed her father & grandfather being executed by the Russians in the early 20s. When the Germans came in 1941 & put her in a labour camp for 4 years she still hated the Russian more than the Germans. I got this from her before she died

What ever happened to that whacko Lawyer Sidney Powell. She kept rabbiting on for ever about the election machines that had been tampered with by the Venezuelan president who'd been dead for 10 years. She & Giuliano had to be the most pathetic legal advisors you could get. Both have been either disbarred or discredited and fined etc as far as I know. Only in America. Neither would get past go just about anywhere else in the world except possibly Russia.

Development of sodium battery technology is surging ahead. The latest break is a sodium battery with 4 times the energy density of lithium. So far this is only in laboratory conditions and very small batteries but this is generally where most successful new technologies begin. CATL & BYD have also announced that sodium batteries will be manufactured for EVs in 2023. Sodium is of course plentiful & cheap being half of the chemical composition of common salt & both CATL & BYD say that the use of sodium will reduce battery cost by 30% over its lithium based counterpart. It may be a good time to think about divesting shareholdings in lithium based companies.

Electric drive has been around on heavy load vehicles for many years. Direct drive from a diesel or petrol engine is terrible requiring many gears to get going. It is much more efficient to generate electricity & then use electric motors to provide the driving power as in diesel electric locomotives. It is only recently that we have had batteries of sufficient energy density and small enough to fit in a vehicle that fully electric trucks have become viable. Electric trains have been around for 100 years or more and there is no advantage having a battery one when they have to stay on the tracks anyway so the overhead power supply is the solution that we have always had. We have the Janus Electric truck in Australia with a removable & 15 minute replaceable battery & 600km range & the Tesla Semi just released has a 800 km range on a single charge & can be charged with another 450km range in 30 minute on the Tesla megacharger.