kgwilson

Getting back to the title, I have just read of yet another mass shooting in the US. This time 3 staff & 3 students at a school in Nashville were shot dead. The statistics for this hear are almost unbelievable, but after all, this is the land of the free. Free to buy almost any type of firearm and free to shoot anyone. As at 27 March 2023, 9,870 people have died in gun violence since 1 January 2023, that is 115 per day. There have been 132 mass shootings since 1 January 2023 though not all have resulted in deaths and all that in only 86 days. With the freedom and gun culture they find so endearing, Nothing will save America. https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759

That's OK given there isn't a god and america disintegrated in the 60s - 70s and was renamed Trumpland not so long ago which is still believed by about 50 million idiots that live there.

Not only that but Old K posted it on this thread a few days ago.

There are so many people who will tell you with conviction that Brown snakes will chase you and attack. Snake experts have debunked this theory many times but the myth continues. I grew up in NZ where there are no snakes except a few sea snakes that get brought down from the tropics and end up on the beach. They don't last long. When I first came to Australia I got a book out of the library on Australian reptiles & went to a demo by a snake catcher. I have never had any fear of snakes or other reptiles but I am suprised at how many Australians I meet who have an almost hysterical fear of snakes and have never taken the time to get any real information on them. We have quite a few pythons around here and I see the large green diamond pythons sunning them selves in the Pandanus trees in the early mornings. They are superbly camouflaged so most people don't know they are there. I get the odd Red bellied Black in my hangar and they are good at keeping the mouse population down. I have only ever had one in the yard & it could have been anything. Young Browns can be any colour & can have various patterns. It did whatever it came for and I never saw it again. Snakes have terrible eyesight but their hearing is good and they detect vibrations and movement very well. When you are out in the bush, make plenty of noise and they will stay away. Their preference is always flight over fight but will fight if there is no other option. Leave them alone & they will leave you alone.

Wishful thinking. Totally fake.

Excellent, now I know what to call them instead of wankers, dickheads, morons, f**** wits, dorks, nutters, the list goes on. I can reserve these names for special individuals now.

I met a beautiful French Woman in London in 1973 when I was looking for somewhere to stay when I got lost looking for the Youth Hostel fresh off the plane . She was so friendly and obliging & gave me a place to stay the first night. Her French English accent was mesmerising & I was instantly in love. She wasn't though but we did become friends for some months. When I finally got to Paris about 6 months later my rose tinted view of the French based on my initial encounter vanished in to thin air. My schoolboy French was terrible and they let me know by completely ignoring me.

It looks like Trumps call for protest has this time fallen on deaf ears. The big time organisers of the Capitol riots have shied away completely and there are only a few fringe nutters on social media who are calling for Police to be blockaded etc. My guess is he won't be indicted on Tuesday & his blatant attempt at publicity will be a total fizzer.

Ukraine didn't have any means to stop Putin in 2014 & the West whinged but did nothing. Putins support for the separatists in the Donbas got Ukraine pretty riled up but somehow Putins intelligence was a complete failure as we all know from the invasion last year. If Putin thinks he is safe in the annexed areas he is sadly mistaken. You can guarantee that anywhere he goes will be a closely guarded secret as the ability of the Ukrainians to strike almost anywhere in Eastern Russia is very real.

The leak is probably non existent & Trump has made up the story. Good for his publicity and for stirring up his adoring bunch of nutters.

I always thought it meant Ahm a geddin outa here.

He'll send that human amoeba Lavrov as he did to the last G20. Then, Lavrov got such a roasting from the other delegates he snuck out to the garden for a cigarette, left, never came back & flew out the next morning.

And he is calling on all his nutter followers to Protest. The information is not from any official channel but from illegal leaks. Trumps legal team say that he has based his post on media reports so that is probably fox news. Trumps says it is from illegal leaks from a corrupt and highly political Manhattan DAs office & his lawyer says that "the district attorney's office has engaged in a practice of leaking everything to the press, rather than communicating with President Trump's attorneys as would be done in a normal case". I reckon this new lawyer Susan Necheles is about as smart as Rudy Giuliani & Sydney Powell & various others who have been indicted themselves.

There are so many guns in the US that when they go to "protect democracy" in a place they weren't even asked to go, there are guns everywhere there too so it is the same as home but they make sure theirs are the biggest ones.

Nothing like this surprises me in a country where a large percentage of the population still think Trump won the election and know little about what happens in the rest of the world or even where the other countries are.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, told reporters at a press briefing that it was likely that the drone broke apart upon impact in the Black Sea, in 1,219-1,524 metres of water, and would be difficult to recover. "There's probably not a lot to recover, frankly, as far as the loss of anything of sensitive intelligence, etcetera. As normal, we would take, and we did take, mitigating measures," General Milley said. "So we are quite confident that whatever was of value is no longer of value." From that statement above The US isn't too worried. Part of the design is built in self destruct mechanisms. That, including how deep the water is plus the corrosive effects of salt water on electronics will likely mean the Russian will learn virtually nothing.

Right through trumps presidency, Pence was known as trumps poodle. While he made the right decision on Jan 6, he should have given trump a serve at the time as it was his and his family's lives that were threatened. He was gutless then & waiting 2 years to make a statement criticising trump is almost as gutless.

Russian Telegram channels have also been reporting that field commanders have been refusing to follow orders around Vuhledar where they lost an entire brigade of 140 vehicles including 36 tanks a few weeks ago. Basically it is a mutiny because after the loss, the high command decided to send soldiers to the front line in vehicles, drop them there and leave. They would be left in groups of 10-15 men as infantry and were cut down easily by the Ukrainian defenders. The 155th Naval Infantry brigade and regular Army Cossacks refused to follow orders when the moron Shoigu instructed the Eastern commander to take Vuhledar at any cost. After seeing what happened to their mates it was obey and certain death or mutiny and maybe survive. Shoigu went to the area and organised new troops to the front so Ukraine sent a few Himars in to Berdiansk, Yakymivka & Melitopol where they were assembling as a "welcome to the front" present.

I got refuelled by a truck at Parkes, one of the rare times I have used Avgas. The refueller asked how much and I said it'll probably take 50 litres as the tank was close to half full. The blokes helper pulled the hose out before the pump had completely stopped so I got Avgas all over the front deck. The quality of their filling process was pretty poor. Hopefully the quality of the fuel was better.

Simple statements but spot on.

I bought a new Hilux Ute fitted with an aluminium Toyota made tray in 09 when the government was allowing full write off for tax when purchased. I had an aluminium fabrication business in Noosaville & we made racks to carry long things on top as well like 4-5 metre slatted driveway gates. The sides and rear folded down for over sized items & the rear rack was bolted to the chassis through the tray floor so it was flat when the rack was removed. The business still has that Ute & the tray is still in good working order so it was really good for what we used it for. We carted glass balustrade and pool fence panels, stainless steel posts and panels as well as aluminium everything. The 2.7 litre petrol engine is on its 3rd time round the clock & there is no rust in the body even though it lives right on the coast.

They also fall down stairs all the time and rarely open a window without falling out. Some that have done these things weren't even drunk, they just didn't see or weren't able to resist who pushed them.

All the current twin cab utes have grown huge, Ugly and tall. This includes Ford Rangers, Mazda BTs, Toyota Hiluxes etc and are all trying to look like ugly American pickups like to F250 & RAM. The top of the tailgate is at shoulder height or higher in some models, but still with a pathetically short tray. They are nothing like the Japanese UTEs of the 90s or early 2000s or the best of them all Holden & Falcon utes that drove like a car with the tray space capacity of a truck.

Until this recent change in company philosophy Toyota was on the road to bankruptcy. Hybrids are expensive and not very efficient and appeal to people with range anxiety and who deep down don't really think that the EV revolution will kill off ICE transportation. The advances in battery technology in just the past couple of years has been astounding. The price of Lithium has gone through the roof and with Sodium now rivalling Lithium for energy density at less that 1/3 of the cost so most new EVs will be using this in the near future. CATL is now mass producing Sodium batteries. Not only that the first solid state EVs are rolling off the assembly line. Average range has more than doubled in the last couple of years as well as charge times with 350 KW super chargers appearing. Toyota got to the very top with its range of vehicles and the best reliability but like all things being there breeds complacency while rivals diversify and catch up and eventually overtake. It may be too late for Toyota to maintain its position especially with the huge development going on in China. Tesla still holds No 1 spot in technology, manufacturing and sales and doesn't look like relinquishing this for some time yet.

Trump is just a delusional con man. He appeals to all the moronic, religious, conspiracy theory, nut jobs that inhabit the US Southern States. He used his fathers wealth to con his way through life and he really believes his own lies. The only God in the US is money & when Fox News began to lose viewers they changed horses in mid stream with their anchors even admitting they knew the whole thing was bullshit while pushing the outrageous claims by Giuliani and that completely unhinged Sidney Powell. And yet the lawsuits continue and the idiots keep popping up when they should have all been incarcerated long ago.