onetrack

Aspartame is toxic, it's been found to cause cancer by researchers. I hate the taste of the stuff, and go out of my way to ensure it's not in any food or drink that I consume. "Diet" drinks always contain it.

I'd estimate about 95% of health problems are related to alcohol consumption. It shows up in your advanced years. One day, I'll wager the researchers will find a link between alcohol consumption and dementia. I'm fortunate in that neither of my parents drank to excess, nor did they smoke. I think my father smoked a little during his younger years, as 90% of the population smoked in the 1920's to 1950's. My fathers religious views rated pubs as "dens of iniquity" (which wasn't too far wrong) and we never went to pubs, nor did we have boozy gatherings. Mum and Dad drank a small amount of wine or aperitifs. I detest beer and always have, I like a scotch occasionally, but a bottle of scotch lasts me at least 12 or 18 months, and even longer today. Even SWMBO ceased all alcohol consumption probably 20 years ago, which is something, given her (distant) Irish ancestry! She says she feels better for it, and regrets drinking as much as she did when she was younger.

Yes, you have little option to avoid constant changes and updates in technology. I hated leaving Windows 7, it was the best system ever, as far as I was concerned - but it became untenable to keep using it, so many sites and programmes started telling me I needed to upgrade to keep using their sites and programmes. The biggest issue is increasing security needs. Windows 11 has massively increased security over previous versions. I personally don't think Windows 11 is as user-friendly as Windows 7, a lot of common menu items are now hidden under sub-menus, which is bloody annoying. MS continues to harrass you to buy all their "necessary" products, most of which are not necessary to me at all. I've been on Windows 11 since last year and I'm gradually getting used to it. Windows 7 is utterly obsolete now, and support for Windows 10 from MS will cease shortly. Windows 12 is not far off. The scale of ongoing development and modification of electronic devices and programmes is staggering, it never stops. It means all electronic stuff over about 5 yrs old is obsolete. One of the things that caught me out when I rebuilt my desktop computer last year, is that you can't simply go from Windows 7 to Windows 11, you have to upgrade to Windows 10 first. I couldn't get Windows 11 to load, it was frustrating in the extreme. I ended up going to a computer expert who sorted the problem by loading Windows 10. It cost me $120 to find that out.

Yes, the weather picture in NSW is staggering in its extremes. The Hunter Valley region is being washed away with 200mm rainfalls, while the Riverina and the Murray are in massive drought, which is still ongoing. Welcome to Australia, land of fires, floods and drought. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-20/weather-warnings-for-nsw-live-blog/105311220#live-blog-post-181767 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-20/farmers-sell-stock-as-drought-deepens-riverina-southern-nsw/105300140

Well, the primary problem is timing. Introducing a massively-increased emergency services levy at a time of severe drought is mind-bogglingly stupid and shows Jacinta Allans Govt is out of touch with the people affected. But the Victorian Govt has invested massively in new equipment and vehicles and no doubt has a major fund set aside for hiring large water bombers. None of this comes cheap. I see where some volunteer brigades are saying they don't need all new gear with the latest bells and whistles - but the problem is, emergency equipment must be fairly new to be reliable, once you get to 20 yrs old with equipment, parts sourcing becomes a problem. Plus, the latest equipment is faster, more efficient, easier to operate, has better protection for operators and has more features. Someone has to pay for all this, I can imagine the howls from the squatters if volunteers rolled up late to a disaster in buggered old equipment, that broke down as soon as they went to operate it. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-20/emergency-services-levy-protest-victoria-state-budget/105309740

We had the hottest Summer I can recall since the heatwave of 1962, then we had a little bit of rain in March, and absolutely nothing since. It's been an endless Summer, we had 34° on the 9th May, nearly a record high for May. It's been endless sunny days, and no real rain in sight. The weather pattern is like Mid-Summer, huge high pressure systems sitting in the Bight, blocking the cold fronts and making them slide away to the S.E. without any impact on the State. A lot of farmers are worried that it's going to be a drought year. There's talk of the 80 year drought cycle coming around again, there was a huge drought in 1944-45, and the Eastern States were worse affected than W.A. in those two years. The BOM reckons there's a decent cold front coming through on Friday and Saturday, but I'm convinced we won't see any rain until the first week of June. We have a lot of rainfall catch-up to do.

Well, he certainly sounds like a born loser, still backing Tony Abbott and John Anderson and telling us that Labor are driving the country to total ruin. It's the same-old, same-old, Liberal fear-mongering BS and a vast numbers of voters have just shown what they think of the Liberal Party and its policies (well, their non-existent policies - unless supporting continued use of fossil fuels, easing taxes on the extremely wealthy, and supporting mates in big business, rates as policies?) In W.A., the Liberal Party could hold their meetings in a hallway closet, so low are their numbers. Someone probably needs to declare the Party an endangered species.

Not enough gold on it, to be a true Trump product. It must be a fake watch.

Yes, when you end up in jail, you're effectively screwed.

And he's giving it a blow job, too! 🙂

Just looking at John Gaults FB page leads me to understand why he's whingeing about an increase in the emergency services levy - he's a dyed-in-the-wool, silver-spoon-in-the-mouth Liberal! Still backing imbeciles such as Tony Abbott!! And still trying to figure out why the Liberals were beaten to a pulp at the last election!! Time for him to wake up to himself, and to understand his privileged position of massive wealth, and that it doesn't automatically bring great entitlements!

Property owners are extremely well off by any measure, in this day and age. They are best situated monetarily to fund emergency services, and they have most to lose in fires, floods and earthquakes. I don't have much sympathy for John Gault, he's almost certainly a multi-millionaire, as are all farmers today. In my neck of the woods, farms are selling today for 10 times what they were 20 years ago, and it's all corporate money being ploughed into them. One of my previous clients just sold his farm for $22.5M (in less than 3 weeks, I might add), and around 20 years ago he would've been struggling to get $2M for it. Pay the levy John Gault, you can easily afford it, you're a member of the "landed gentry", and you probably got your land for a relatively small outlay, or inherited it. Drought is part and parcel of farming, I've endured it, and had to wear it. I changed business direction and put in 2,500 acres of crop in 1980 (which turned out to be the worst drought year in 80 years), and I harvested ONE 8 tonne truckload of wheat off that 2,500 acres at the end of that year - when I should've harvested at least 1500 tonnes. And a big parcel of that cropped land was leased land, too - it wasn't even my land. Then I had to put up with diesel going from 10c litre to 40c a litre in the space of 18 mths - along with interest rates going from 7% to 23% in the same period of time! No Govt cared about whether I could survive in my line of business, I just had to suck it up, and live with my losses. Farmers are pretty good at whinging about what they pay out, but they say nothing about what they get in, in good years, or in capital gains with their valuable land. I've seen a bloke sorting out a recently-deceased farmers affairs, and this bloke confided he'd discovered a bank account belonging to the deceased farmer with $100,000 in it, that had been untouched for years. And that was in 1984, when $100,000 was serious money!

The message goes well with Trumps MAGA America. Get reamed out the minute you arrive, and probably on the way out, as well.

The general talk a little while ago was that Chump was greatly in favour of devaluing the US$, saying what a great thing it would be. He expressed this view in his first term, but did little to weaken the currency back then. However this time around, he appears more emboldened to try every lever he can get his hands on. For his simple mind, a weaker US$ means U.S. exports and manufacturing boom, thus producing his highly-desired crown of Making America Great Again. But American consumers will suffer the most, as everything becomes dearer for them, as they losing purchasing power.

I'm still ROFLMAO over that image, and SMWBO is looking at me, very puzzled. It's simply because it's too close to the bone, as regards her cooking style!! 😄