willedoo

After the 2022 full scale invasion, eBay banned Russian sellers. Before that, there was heaps of Russian military gear on eBay for sale. Up until that point. I'd assumed it was surplus seconds, but from what we all know now, a lot of it probably originated from military theft.

It's been an interesting couple of days for Russia. Yesterday saw about 60 drone attacks on multiple locations. Several refineries were hit causing an estimated 10% of Russia's refining capacity knocked out until repaired. An Ilyushin Il-76 went down in flames north east of Moscow. Totally unconfirmed speculation is that it was carrying an A-50 crew to pick up another AWACS plane. putler sacked and replaced the naval commander. Russian freedom fighters crossed the Russian border in three locations and drove the Russian army out of one small town with some heavy fighting. putler has appointed a new general as acting armed forces chief of staff. It adds to the "where's Gerasimov" speculation. He hasn't been see in public since he was rumoured to have been in the command post strike near Sevastopol on 4th. January. He appeared in a video awarding medals to some soldiers, but I don't know if it was verified as post January 4th. footage. All in all, nothing unusual for Mordor these days. A couple of more fleas on the dog's back.

Maybe they could apply CGT to expensive properties that have been turned over in a short time. In my case being on the pension with a block more than one hectare, the only way I'm allowed a full pension is because I've lived here more than 20 years. If they applied a certain term of residency exemption for CGT on properties over a certain value, it would be fair. Someone living in their home for 20 years then selling can hardly be considered profiteering speculator. The problem with it is where do they draw that line for CGT. None on your home plus one hectare or less. If the block exceeds one hectare, CGT applies to the balance of land exceeding one hectare.

Here's one for putler - snow sculpture in Finland:

We all know who this bloke is. The question is, does he know?

I think some people are trying to cash in on the rental crisis. The rental asking price for this donga is $485 per week. That's a lot of money for a space you can hardly swing a cat around in.

A spokesman from the Freedom of Russia Legion said they are coming for the election, whatever that means. putler's election is on at the end of this week, so it sounds like they want to make it a bit awkward for him.

The Russians fighting with Ukraine are on excursion in Russia again. It's been reported that the Siberian Battalion and the Freedom of Russia Legion have crossed the Russian border in three places and are engaged in some heavy fighting with Russian forces.

This chart was a bit of a surprise to me. It lists French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Dutch as category 1 languages, meaning the easiest languages for an English speaker to learn. German, Austrian and Swiss are category 2. I would have thought German would be in category 1.

He thinks it's a big deal because it's from a 100 year old building. It's not as if old rusty roofing iron is hard to come by. People dump it all the time.

I can't turn my monitor around to step back from it to see Marilyn Monroe, so I downloaded it. I can see Marilyn in the thumbnail in a folder, but when I open the photo it's Einstein. In an image viewer, I have to zoom right out to see Marilyn.

Facebook market place. There's some absolute bargains, some fair prices, and then there's sellers who belong in crazy town. The dude selling this old corrugated iron is asking $50 per sheet. Someone should tell him he's dreaming.

If true, every bit helps, but putler will just keep finding another idiot to fill the role.

It would be interesting if even half the rumours associated with this war were true. No news or confirmation on this latest one. A commercial ship that was grounded when the dam burst was allegedly being used as a Russian command post and was hit by an aerial bomb. The talk is that the general commanding the Russian airborne forces was killed in the strike. Most of these stories originate on Russian Telegram channels. Other speculation is that the well known Russian blogger, "13th", was also on board. He apparently has 200,000+ followers on Telegram.

The funny thing is that I can see the numbers on the version I've posted here. I've got my browser and the original source site of the image set to dark theme, so maybe that changes the ability to see the numbers. This forum appears as a normal light theme as I view it, so the red circle is totally surrounded by white background.

Can anyone see the two numbers in the red circle? I couldn't see anything so I downloaded it and still couldn't see it in the image viewer I use. When I moved it into Paint, I could see a feint outline of the numbers if I looked at it for a while. If you convert it to black and white they are much more visible.

This is a handy link to have. You can look up any federal politician and access their voting record in parliament. https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/

Same here Jerry. With a lot of those confusing perspective photos, once you see the correct version, you are usually ok from there on. But this one's tricky. My brain finds it hard to stay on the dog; it keeps flipping back to the pig.

The way their system works, speaker Mike Johnson is second in line to the presidency. If something happened to both Biden and Harris, Johnson would be president. In that case, it would change from a Democrat president to a Republican president.

Correct. Jolie is her middle name she used as a surname for her career. At one stage she got her surname Voight legally removed from her name.

No, not Drew, but I can see the similarity. Another clue: she was estranged from her actor father for quite a lot of her life, but I think they've reconciled to some degree in recent years.

No, she's a generation younger than Hayley Mills. In her late 40's now. She's done a lot of action roles.

I wonder what Ukraine will do with their two corvettes in Turkey. The contract for Turkey to build them was finalised in September 2021. The first corvette "Hetman Ivan Mazepa" was launched in Turkey in October 2022, and the keel of "Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky" was laid in August 2023. President Zelensky visited the shipyard during his trip to Turkey. Maybe the war will be over by the time they are both fitted out and active. It would be a shame to build them and then see putler destroy them.

I came across this meme regarding Macron's speculation about French troops in Ukraine.

This is not a silly picture, just one of those confusing perspective photos. I can normally flip the left brain/right brain view within 30 seconds or so to see the alternate perception. This one had me stuck on seeing a weird pig like animal for almost a couple of minutes before I saw the photo as it really is.