onetrack

SWMBO wants to know, exactly what destination you plan to send your wife to, with this book??

The world needs more Mark Carneys. Luckily he's taken over from Trudeau, who wouldn't have the intestinal fortitude to tell Trump to shove his trade and allies policies where the sun doesn't shine.

It's been a while since anything positive was posted in this thread - so to counter the negativity, here's some party photos! SWMBO and I went to a friends party (Christie, and she was 50) on Sat 17th. It was held at a local bowling club and we all had a good time - despite the fact I rarely go to parties now. Christie is a senior ER nurse, she's got a lovely nature. She laid on some great finger food, she had a DJ with some great 80's music, and there was dancing and good general fun. One of the most amusing parts of the evening was, Christie hired a portable photo booth for the evening and it came with a pile of props, and everyone had a ball with it! Christie is the girl in the blue, off-the-shoulder dress, and her daughter Molly (20) is in the white dress with the black images on it. Her younger brother Sam is in all black, and hubby Gary is wearing the check shirt. The images start at the bottom, where setup and testing the day before, produced some interesting "test" imagery, mostly involving Gary and Molly. See if you can spot OT and SWMBO, we're halfway down the images, posing with Christie, and I've got my best Elton John shades on. https://gallery.glowbooth.com.au/view/e85ec5e4-2f3e-4634-a126-076cff8346cd?

When I mentioned to SWMBO that a woman invented the windscreen wiper, she retorted - "That'd be right! Always doing the cleaning!!" 😄

In 1906, this chatty little handbook was released. It was called "The Woman and the Car". In the book, advice was given to women who chose to drive a car (gasp!), to .... 1. Carry a revolver, carry a small mirror for seeing behind them, for summoning help, and to also carry some chocolate (yes!) 2. The book also advised bringing hairpins, a pair of clean gloves, an extra handkerchief, a clean veil, and a powder puff for neatening up at the destination! I notice that there was no advice to wear goggles, which were pretty necessary for driving in 1906 due to a lack of proper windscreens, and very dusty unsealed roads. In incidental motoring news, a woman actually invented the first windscreen wiper!

It won't. Trump and his MAGA employees and MAGA adherents are psychopathic and perpetual liars. They will continue to lie bare-faced, and present completely alternate "facts" about events, even when faced with sworn judicial evidence. Everyone is crooked, but them.

If lightning hits a dead tree, it will still travel down the tree to the ground (on the outside of the trunk), but it likely won't make the tree explode because of an inadequate level of sap in it. The reason trees explode when struck by lightning, is because the sap is superheated to steam instantaneously. The normal level of volatile eucalyptus oil naturally in the air, is at too low a level to be ignited by lightning. However, in a fire, heated trees close to the fire front can release large amounts of volatile oils that further exacerbates the fire strength. There is a known feature of bushfires, termed "a crown fire". A crown fire occurs in front of the main fire front, and is driven by strong winds, which send the fire front through the treetops, aided by the high level of volatile oils at the treetop level.

This is a piece of hilarious AI video work, on the part of a Danish woman, poking fun at Trumps grab for Greenland .... https://www.facebook.com/reel/2090905211646100

I can just hear the Tassie ukuleles from here on the Left coast!! 😄

"You ain't from around here, are you stranger?" 😄

That has to be an April 1st joke article, surely? Never seen a single millionaire who wants to pay more tax, they continually spent large amounts on finding ways to avoid any taxes at all. Just look at Paul Hogan - he avoided millions in tax by sleazy means, and whinged like a baby when the ATO came after him. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-30/tax-war-over-as-paul-hogan-settles-with-ato/3981546

Trumps murderous ICE thugs, on a par with Hitlers Gestapo. Operating in a country where the rule of law has been subjugated to the rule of monetary power.

H. The letter relates to the number, in words. The letter equates to its position in the word for the number. Very cunning.

The problem with rare-earth elements is the dreadfully toxic and extensive processes involved in extracting those elements. They consume huge amounts of energy in the extraction processes, utilise multiple toxic chemicals in the process, and produce multiple levels of toxins and pollution when doing so. Plus, a by-product of the rare earths extraction treatment is radioactive compounds. All this, to get the necessary elements to produce "green" end products?

That's the problem with very large houses, the sheer cost of trying to keep them warm inside. I hate to think what it must be like, to live in an English castle in Winter.

Oh Yes! - It must be great, being able to sit on a steady 80 knots! - in your 60 foot cruiser!! Just need a few oil wells on the home farm, and a following fuel tanker, to keep them fed!!

There's a lot of angry people out there, spouting foamy-mouthed visceral hatred. The disease starts with extreme right-wingers and Nazis, and goes right through to "Aboriginal activists", to radical Muslims spouting anti-semitism. I trust the new legislation captures them all, not just the anti-semitism promoters. "Aboriginal activists" are amongst some of the worst spouters of racist, foamy-mouthed, visceral hatred.

I didn't realise for years, how there was a corporate term, "captive customer". It means they sell you something that contains components or contents that are only available from their company, so you have no option but to keep going back to that company for parts, service or support.

The article about Chinese robots, in the link below is interesting, and the comments, which are mostly from Americans, are just as interesting. https://electrek.co/2026/01/21/humanoid-robots-build-a-new-excavator-every-6-minutes-right-now/

It would be good to have a public expose (a Royal Commission?) into the modus operandi, techniques and motivation behind the global tech giants design of their sites. Virtually all of their designs and operating principles rely greatly on subtle psychology and human behaviour patterns, to constantly feed their need to capture permanent "clients" for their advertisers. They rely on making people feel "wanted" and "attractive", and to want to belong to an important ruling group, with whom they can identify. And their power is highly addictive.

Large parts of America were founded by Puritans - and the definition of a Puritan is someone who believes, that someone else, somewhere, is having fun, and that must be stopped.

It's impossible to separate Americans from Money and God, in that order. They will make out they worship an omnipotent God, but the Almighty Dollar is what they really worship - along with The Gun, of course. And they believe God gave them both to the Americans, so Americans could be the dominant culture in the world, subjugating any nation they decide they want under their control. Then they regularly espouse the American "Freedom" mantra - which of course, means, to have American Freedom, you have to worship Money, Guns, and God, in that order. Of course, lawyers receive a great deal of worship and adulation in the American System, too. Especially when they transfer mind-boggling sums of American dollars to the plaintiffs.

Slovakia has been a major manufacturing centre for many years, from the early 2000's. The Slovak Govt introduced tax incentives for businesses to relocate there. The country has a simplified flat rate tax system. The Slovak people are good workers. The country has a major steel industry, that was inherited from the Communist era. The Danube forms the Western third of their border with Hungary, and is a substantial transportation route - and it also brings lots of tourists to the country, which is very scenic. The Slovak rail system is modernised, and links with the rest of Europe. The country is well placed in amongst many other European nations with whom it trades, and it is part of the EU. All in all, it is a very favourable place to manufacture. Meantimes, Australia is placed in the most isolated and Southerly part of the globe, well away from any potential trade neighbours. Our tax system is complex and fragmented. Our rail system is poor. Our highway system is fairly good, but trucking is expensive as compared to rail, even with the use of road trains. Our workforce declines to work in factories, so trying to find lowly factory workers is difficult. Every Australian aspires to be a major property investor, and to find highly-paid managerial-style jobs. We are last on a long list of requirements to be a major manufacturing economy. We dig up lots of valuable minerals, and sell them to the rest of the world, that is our forte. We also bring in a serious level of money via the education system, which, while not as strong as it was pre-pandemic, still carries out a major level of quality education to the nations in Asia and the Subcontinent.

The Chinese have invested hundreds of billions into solar panel manufacturing, just to ensure they control the solar panel market. The word is, few Chinese solar panel manufacturers are profitable, they are only existing on Chinese Govt support. I don't know where they go from here, the only real solution is an increase in solar panel prices - or refining manufacturing techniques to try and reduce costs. https://www.pv-tech.org/chinas-top-four-solar-manufacturers-suffer-1-54-billion-losses-h1-2025/

Clint Walker aged exceptionally well, and many people commented on how handsome he still looked in his 80's. This is a photo of him in his late 80's. He died at age 90.