willedoo

There's two different things getting mixed up here. pmccarthy's post had no mention of the methanol poisoning in Laos. That was thrown in later and now there's two different conversations getting jumbled up.

It's an awful fashion these days, especially among social media influencers to have those big lips. Some are done by silicone injections but for most of them it's a make up technique that goes way beyond the natural line of the lips. I can remember the days when we felt sorry for old grannies who applied the lippy past their lip line. In their case maybe to try and cover shrinking lips.

There's a lot of natural resources in Russia as well but history has shown them to be an unreliable business partner for the US. Trump looks at everything as a business investment so it's possible he might flip Ukraine's way if the figures stack up and the stability for investment is there. It would be a better option than what they've had the last two and a half years of Biden slowly bleeding them to death. Biden's dithering has supplied enough to stop putin overwhelming Ukraine, but the lack of decisive support to defeat the Russians has come at huge cost to life and infrastructure in Ukraine. Not many people view Biden's handling of Ukraine as competent or decisive; mishandling and weak leadership would be a better description. Their worst case scenario would be if Trump favours Russia and his own budget and pulls the pin on Ukraine support as Trump has talked about in the past. I've heard it said on this forum that most wars end by negotiation. For this one to end in Ukraine's favour by force is a big gamble considering the nuclear capability of the aggressor. The glitch with negotiation is that the bit putin occupies is the resource rich area that would be important to the US in any resource sharing deal with Ukraine. The big question is what sort of bone will he throw putin and how big will that bone be. Either way, come next year things will change in Ukraine from what we've seen under Biden. For Ukraine's sake I hope it's change for the better.

I've got a space in the kitchen about 5 metres in length I can walk. While the jug boils for a cup of coffee I've measured 100 metres of walking I can do in that short time. I can now get up a reasonable pace on this new mechanical hip joint (6.5 months old).

Senator Lindsey Graham has been speaking about Trump's possible plans for peace in Ukraine. He's of the opinion Trump will broker a peace deal and partner with Ukraine in trade and mining investment. He said Ukraine is the richest country in Europe regarding rare earth minerals worth 2 to 7 trillion dollars. He mentioned the US making money so it's possible Trump thinks there's more money in backing Ukraine than backing Russia. The big question is what the peace deal would involve. putin will only stop if he's given enough. If he's not, the only other alternative I can see is the US backing Ukraine to push putin out which I can't see Trump doing. It seems like the deal to Ukraine might be "give up some of your country and make lots of money with us in return". I don't know where their rare earth deposits are but a lot of their coal and iron ore mining is in the territory putin has occupied.

The thing is the people can't vote him out now as it's his last term and he's not up for reelection. They've already voted him in, voted him out and voted him in again. Four years and his time's up; they don't get to judge him at the polls ever again.

Under the current constitution, yes.

I think in the US these days if your side doesn't win democracy is dead for some people.

That's right. Biden and Co. have acknowledged that it was a free and fair democratic election. Unless I've missed something and that democracy has done a runner in the last 18 days. What laws have changed since the election. The last time I looked the constitution was still in place.

The way they're trying to rush all these bills through in the last week with an election just around the corner is a bit like stuffing your wet clothes off the clothesline in a bag and trying to make it to the airport on time.

Different bill Nev. You're thinking of the social media age restriction bill.

They look like hothouses for growing plants.

I'd have some photos of the steel fettler's carriages we had but I think they're on an old portable hard drive that I can't access as I've lost the power adaptor. Lucky they were air conditioned and well insulated inside as the steel surface on the outside would get very hot.

The government's fake news bill has failed to get up. Probably a good thing as it's getting into dangerous territory when a government decides what news we should or should not read. That's better left for the people themselves to decide. With misinformation or disinformation it's hard to draw the line. As an example, how many times do you see people quote Wikipedia as a source. Wikipedia articles are written by members who create a Wiki account and write an article. Before publishing, it's peer reviewed to an extent but the main requirement is to quote sources. Any controversial statements made in a Wikipedia article are only as good as the sources they quote. Often those quoted sources are an article written by a journalist. And guess what, journalists protect their sources by not identifying them. How many so called news articles do you see the quote "according to two persons familiar with the matter". The journalist could be full of shite or not, but either way for a Wiki article to be credible there has to be some validation of the sources quoted as sources, and so on down the line. https://www.9news.com.au/national/labor-abandons-misinformation-bill/36c70cf4-16ee-4c9c-bbb2-972879968e84

onetrack, there's something in this photo that was posted previously that's from your neck of the woods. The accomodation dongas were Elross vans from WA. The reason being the company we used to work for had been bought out by a WA company and we were gradually converted over to their type of gear. The Elross sleeping dongas were a form of torture. Two to a room with 0.6 of a square metre of floor space for two people. In the morning one bloke had to stay in bed so the other had enough floor space to get dressed. The only practical way two people could be in the room was if at least one was lying on their bunk. The other problem was they fitted the rooms with very noisy truck air conditioners which woke you up all through the night. Before the WA mob bought us out we had South Australian steel railway fettlers train wagons to live in. They cut the train wheels off, weld a truck bogie on the rear and a skid plate and pin on the front to slip a prime mover directly on to them. We used to road train them as doubles and they were virtually indestructible and very roomy. There was no work required to the interiors as they were purpose built for fettlers to live in. The only issue was they were over width and way over length. By the time I left the WA company had only retained the W series Kenworths out of all our original gear.

Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know about that one.

I wonder if the Greens have reached their peak support. I don't know about other states but in Queensland they sit around the same support percentages as One Nation. More of a fringe dweller that a serious contender for government. I think their biggest achievement would be balance of power in the Senate.

Musk probably thinks it looks cool which is a priority with him. It's probably got as big a future as that useless pickup truck he put out.

I see where they've got a week to go before parliament finishes for the year. If they call an early election next year, this might be the last sitting week for the term. Albo & Co. are trying to get a lot of legislation through in the week; a lot of it has been sitting around for a long time and some of it is rushed through and not well finished off. The weasel words about the cost of living crisis wear a bit thin on voters when the government is spending some of their last energy of the parliamentary term on pushing through electoral reform that will increase public election funding for the major parties. Talk about out of touch with the needs of the voters. That's a bad call when along comes Dutton running on cost of living, housing, energy and climate change and immigration. It will be a populist campaign from the opposition with not a great deal of policy detail but I think it will beat the government. Labor has traditionally lost votes to the Greens but considering the Greens of late have been as popular as a turd in a punch bowl at a party, votes swinging from Labor might well go the way of the opposition instead of the Greens this time. A lot of voters might look at the government's performance over the last three years and think their promises for the next three are likely a bit hollow, so think they have nothing to lose by giving the other team a go. If Dutton gets in he won't have won the election, it will be Albo who has lost it. It seems to be the way with most of our elections. People don't particularly want the new government, it's more a case they just don't want the old one.

A lot of kids under 16 have older siblings or friends over 16. What's to stop the over 16s creating a second account in their name and letting the under 16s use it as their own.

spacey, most of those charities use third party companies to raise their charity loot. There will be several different charities all contracting the same mob to do their fundraising. When someone rings up saying they are from xxx charity, they're not, but are from the contracted fundraising company. If they can suck people in to permanent monthly payments, the usual rule of thumb is the first 12 months of payments goes to the third party fundraising company. You'll be paying them for a year before one cent goes to the charity cause. My guess is the chuggers outside supermarkets are also working for a third party.

With a site like that the restoration is basically using a dozer or grader to push the removed spinifex back over the site. The main object is to scatter the seed stock back over the cleared site. There would be a certain amount of root stock still in the ground as well.

This is that same camp site after a lot of human foot traffic. It looks like a mob of cattle has been through it. The person in the white chef's tunic was a bloke who was pretending to be the cook. Chefs are ok at chefing but they rarely make good camp cooks. He kept us alive though and that's the main thing. That job was the one and only time I've worked in the Simpson. I'd flown over it a couple of times previously. First time in 1982 in a Cherokee Six in a drought year when it was all sand and hardly any vegetation. That was flying from Windorah to Alice Springs. The second time was in 1985 when it was much greener on a trip from Halls Creek to somewhere west of Gidgealpa. That was a nice uneventful flight compared to the issues we had with the Cherokee on the first flight. On that one it took us a couple of goes to get across. Eventually we got across with no radio or instruments and had to land at Ringwood Station and use their phone to alert Alice Springs airport to clear some airspace for us to come in without comms. At Alice we got a new alternator and finished the trip to Halls Creek with no further problems.

That wasn't the best camp site being soft and sandy but there were no better options. From memory we had to tow the trucks on site and tow them back out to the track when we left. The track was fairly hard as it had served as a rig road a couple of years before and still had the clay surface mostly intact. There was the old rig site with a capped well not far south of our camp site but it was out of bounds for camping. Same with claypans due to environmental restrictions and there aren't many claypans in that area anyway. It was on the first day at work on that trip that I came across Reg Sprigg's original base camp #1 from the 1960's when he did that west/east crossing with his family. It was when he had his Geosurveys company pre Beach Petroleum. I think the claim was they were the first white people to cross the Simpson from west to east. I'd have to re-read the book on him (Rock Star-the story of Reg Sprigg) to be sure but I think they were doing a magnetic survey grid. One of his partners was doing the north south lines. I came over a sand dune and spotted a star picket which survey companies use as permanent markers on lines. When I checked the stamped aluminium tag attached it had the Geosurveys detail on it. There was a bit of debris scattered around and a few old baked beans cans. The beans had long dried up and you could hear them rattle if you shook the can. It had probably been buried and dug up and scattered by dingos over the years.

In the Simpson. It had been a good season, the dune corridors were all covered in grasses and herbage. I can remember coming across a bloke doing a trip on an off road bike. He was on a north/south track that ran up from the French Line and eventually exits the desert on the western side.