onetrack

Jerry, I don't get any error message, the site just simply refuses to load, it stays stuck on a blank screen. I suspect there's a need to download the realestate.com.au app, to get their site to work. Not interested in doing that.

What is a more interesting development in the Trump/MAGA saga is Trumps effective takeover of the RNC (Republican National Committee). He's arranged to have Ronna McDaniels, the current head of the RNC to be pushed out and another total Trump sycophant (Chris LaCivita) installed in her place. In addition, he's installing his DIL, Lara Trump as co-chair of the RNC. The deviousness and rat-cunning of the man is unbelievable. What he's now aiming to do, is to utilise the RNC's election funds to pay all his legal bills and judgements, because "they're all a political witch hunt" - so it's O.K. to use all those political funds to pay for all the costs and judgements tied to his bad behaviour. Two Political Action Committees (PAC's) paid $50M of Trumps legal bills last year. However, Trumps manoeuvre now is to merge the MAGA operations and the RNC, so it's all about cost reduction and having access to one big pool of political contributors. And the staggering part is, the MAGA cultists will no doubt pay up the billions required, "because it's only right to pay to defend this poor victim of the Demonrats wicked corruption". https://www.axios.com/2024/02/14/inside-trump-campaign-takeover-rnc https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/01/trump-pac-money-spent-legal-fees#:~:text=Trump political action committees spent over %2450m last year on legal bills,-Filings to Federal&text=Donald Trump's political action committees spent more than %2450m,counts across four criminal cases.

I've never had any problem with bumps with the womens seat on my bike, it's just more comfortable under every condition. It's built like the big old wide vintage motorcycle seats, they were a practical and comfortable shape. I guess they had to be, when you consider that nearly all vintage motorbikes and pushbikes have no rear wheel suspension.

KGW - Well, the Chinese EV's you mention have only been on the market here for a couple of years, so I don't know how you can claim "they are all very good cars" - when it takes at least around a decade of regular use, and time on the market, to establish reliability. Many owner reports are that the Chinese cars still have a long way to go, to match Japanese car reliability and build quality. https://www.whatcar.com/mg-motor-uk/mg4/hatchback/used-review/n26329/reliability

The reason for his death is quite likely linked to his previous poisoning by Poo-Tin, that he survived.

I'm sure his death will be found to be the result of an unfortunate fall out of an open jail window.

I don't know what it is about that realestate.com.au site, but it refuses to open for me, and has done for over 6 mths. I thought initially, last year, it was because I was still using that "utterly obsolete" Windows 7 - but I bought Windows 11, and it still won't open for me.

But the electric motor is only one part of what is a very complex combination of many interoperational and important other components. And it's not just the battery, it's the body construction, the platform with the suspension and wheels, and all the interacting vehicle systems that are required and deemed desirable by owners, that make up the car in its entirety. Tesla is only just now, starting to mature as a vehicle manufacturer. But they have built up a "fan club" of Tesla-bois, who want and can afford the latest and greatest technology. The same thing happened in the early 1900's. I can recall my Dad telling me how a wealthy bloke in his birth city of Portsmouth, owned no less than SEVEN cars when he was a child, before WW1. Those cars would have been eye-opening wonders in their day - they'd be noisy, slow, unreliable contraptions by our measures today. But the bloke obviously had enough moola to splurge on the latest motor cars that took his fancy. Most Tesla owners today fall into the same category - very wealthy, keen to get into "cutting edge" motoring technology, caring little about longevity (or even the build quality) of the product (most would be company leased, or salary sacrifice deals, anyway), and happy to pass on a low-km Tesla to any other sucker prepared to buy a used Tesla, with all its attendant problems.

The worrying part is when the Northern W.A. iron ore deposits were assessed by American geologists in the late 1950's, they estimated there was enough iron ore there to supply the entire world for 300 years. But they never took into account the massive industrialisation of China in the last 30 years - nor the massive increase in the rate of mining the ore. In the 1960's, BHP and Rio Tinto were mining a few hundred thousand tonnes of iron ore annually. Fast forward to the 2020's and they mine hundreds of thousands of tonnes of iron ore a MONTH. Only a little while ago Rio Tinto remarked, that it could see the end of iron ore mining in the North of W.A. within 30 years, as all the available ore bodies became worked out by then.

Re the bike seats - I found, purely via purchase error, that womens bike seats are much more comfortable than mens bike seats. They're built wider, and this feature alone makes them more comfortable. I have never understood why the standard mens bike seat has to be so narrow and basically painful after extended riding. No wonder the Tour de France blokes spend so much time standing up on the pedals!

Well, here's a few extended reads for you, as regards Tesla build quality woes .... I always keep uppermost in mind that the bloke behind Tesla design and production is a pretty dislikeable, arrogant, divisive, and ruthless character. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/ https://www.topspeed.com/10-most-common-problems-with-new-tesla-evs/#autopilot-failures-and-power-steering-issues-can-be-life-threatening https://cleanenergyrevolution.co/2023/11/20/tesla-model-3-fault-rate-is-the-highest-of-any-car-report/ https://www.hotcars.com/problems-with-tesla-nobody-talks-about/#replacing-old-batteries-is-a-hassle

In the meantimes, just BHP and Rio Tinto alone have been recording company profits averaging over $20B annually between them for the last 10 years - despite every shady tax-dodging manoeuvre known to man, all designed to reduce profit to zero. And that's just two iron ore miners.

The BOM has been steadily defunded by successive Govts, until it has become a shadow of what it was even 30 years ago. We used to get weather forecast upgrades 3 times a day, now we get just 1 update a day. When we had the massive damaging storm that swept through the W.A. Hills region, Wheatbelt and Goldfields in mid January 2024, we got around 45 minutes warning of the severe storm approaching. We had no SMS alerts, even where people were subscribed to warning alerts. My stepdaughter, who lives in Stoneville in the Hills above Perth, only noticed the threatening storm when she went outside for a work break from her office in the house. She became alarmed, and only just had time to round up her chooks and lock them away, before the storm hit in an especially violent "mini-tornado" manner. She had no time to put anything loose away, nor tie anything down. When the mini-tornado hit, it shredded huge trees on her 5 acre bush block, picked up her 10-seat glass patio table and flipped it upside down, and hurled it into the bush. The chairs got hurled up to 40 or 50 metres and buckled out of shape, and her large patio incurred substantial damage.

There is still an underlying problem with EV's - and that is the fact that the manufacturers, especially Tesla, want their EV's to be just another disposable electronic device, like a mobile phone. They are doing nothing to ensure that their EV's have a long lifespan. The simple fact remains that a good IC-engine vehicle is good for a 25 year lifespan (barring mechanical disasters) - but the average EV is essentially scrap after 10 years. They are not made to last, simply because of the huge level of cheap electronics in them - not to mention the battery that is toast at 10 years. We've all seen how late model IC-engined cars are scrapped when they have a major electronics/ECU failure - when the repair/replacement cost of the failed item exceeds the depreciated value of the car. It's all very well to say, "Oh, but all of the EV is recyclable! - so that makes it all worthwhile!". However, there's just one big fly in the ointment there. Hardly a single recycling setup - no matter what they're recycling - ever pays its way. Virtually every recycling operation must receive huge Govt subsidies to continue their operations. This applies to nearly every currently recycled item - be it plastic, cardboard, tyres, batteries. The only recycling that actually pays is metals recycling - and even then, the metals must be in sizeable volume before any metals recycler is even interested in taking it. The W.A. Govt alone is currently handing out $70M annually to recycling operations - in the form of straight-out grants, free land and various other subsidies. It's a hidden cost to all Australians. There is hardly any lithium battery recycling being carried out at present - despite the massive volume of batteries being produced and in use. Only around 6% of lithium batteries are recycled. Ecobatt is the only battery recycler operating in Australia, and I currently have no idea of how they're funded, or what it costs to recycle batteries - but I'll wager that they get subsidised in some form. https://www.ecobatt.net/expired-electric-car-batteries-set-to-be-a-major-problem/

They don't have to fly in cash every week. Once a cash float is established, it's like running all transactional ventures, the money just keeps circulating. My nephew bought a defunct country tavern 110kms East of Perth, and on the day of opening the new manager forgot to organise a cash float. They did a run-around with family and friends, borrowing cash they had on hand, and they got $1300. It was plenty to operate with, on the first night they were open again.

Well, well .... look at this! It's good I've still got my reserve of cash, that I can rely on! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-15/banks-affected-by-outages/103473152

Because the RE systems cannot be relied on to produce full power 100% of the time. Cloudy days and windless days will seriously impact full output.

I'd love to just see some storm cells. I cannot believe the total lack of storms here on the left coast, despite the relentless heat. I'm going to forget what rain is, soon.

But every single one of those systems still needs diesel power generation backup.

I don't see what's "onerous" about handling cash transactions. It's a system that's been in place for hundreds of years, and it has always worked just fine. Good safes work for most people, the thieves always worked on weak safes, and poor security - and how successful has robbery ever been as a career?

The problem is in financing the renewable energy systems required to replace fossil fuel power generation - and the FF companies know this, and will play it to the max. It is a major, major outlay, and it's not like the outlay is simply for one style of RE generation - the outlay is required to build massive solar arrays, build massive wind turbines, and buy huge batteries. And at the end of the day, the RE systems have a shorter lifespan than FF power stations. Most of the FF power stations are good for 50 to 75 years, solar systems and wind turbines and batteries are currently only good for 20 years. It's all very well to say, "but they're all recyclable" - but recycling is another huge cost and energy user, and I've yet to see any recycling system that pays its way. They all need constant, ongoing funding. There's an interesting piece of mine construction going on at present in W.A. It's the West Musgrave nickel-copper project on the Eastern central edge of W.A. This location is so remote (over 700kms from Kalgoorlie, which is already as "Outback" as you can get, as regards civilisation), the company is having to install the largest private RE power generation plant to ever be built in Australia. But the project is costing AU$1.7B and a very large slice of that outlay is in the RE power generation. However, this is also mining company money, so pretty much a bottomless pit of shareholder funds available here. Even at that, the power generation at West Musgrave is still going to be hybrid, with large diesel generators as backup - and the bottom line is, the RE power generation setup will be worn out in 20 years, but the mine orebody is likely to be almost exhausted then, as well. https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/west-musgrave-project/?cf-view https://publications.aecom.com/sustainable-legacies/projects/developing-one-of-the-world-s-largest-off-grid-renewables-powered-mines/

My argument is the cost of electronic transaction systems is effectively hidden, because it's absorbed by million of businesses, and simply added to the cost of the goods that I have to buy. The day we get major transparency as regards the cost of the electronic system/s, will be a wondrous day indeed. Every business pays out substantial amounts for access to the electronic networks, for EFTPOS machines, and constant ongoing monthly fees. You see none of these costs listed on your till docket (or electronic record).

It was an act of bastardry on the part of every Australian politician who supported it, and ranks as treasonous - and the decision, and the removal of the sole barrier to private banks greed, has cost every Australian dearly. Read up on King O'Malleys reasons and arguments for setting up the Commonwealth Bank, it was because he'd seen the rancorous unparalleled greed of American banks at work in the late 1800's. The Govt-owned Commonwealth Bank returned a huge amount of profits over the 80+ years of its operations, and was a greatly stabilising financial force for Australia's economy throughout the Great Depression and WW2. Of course the economists would agree with its sale, all the economists have been bred up by the private banking organisations, and when has an economist ever been right? This is the same coterie of cossetted bank-backed, out-of-touch people, who agreed with Keynes that, "(gold and) the gold standard is a barbarous relic that has no place in a modern economy". As the old saying went in the 1960's, 300 economists agreed with this statement, but they only had to convince 3 billion other people on the planet, that they were right. The floating of currencies is the greatest scammy pea-and thimble trick, ever played on the worlds unsuspecting people. It's like having weights and measures that vary every time you get to the till.

Those drone boats would be a nightmare for radar operators to pick up, I'd have to opine. They'd have to be100% alert every second of every hour, and respond instantly. I'll wager plenty of Russian sailors are switched off, maybe even drunk. We all know what the Rooskies are like, when it comes to booze. But the fact the Ukrainians use several drone boats approaching from both sides and rear, is an even more clever modus operandi. They're the next best thing to torpedos, which are any sailors terror. https://www.businessinsider.com/russias-weak-defenses-letting-ukrainian-drone-boats-blow-holes-warships-2023-8

I love it when a huge aggressive war-mongering nations war assets are being demolished by low-cost weaponry from the nation they're trying to subdue.