Jerry_Atrick

You're absolutely right, GON. Sadly, we don't properly tax those that extract our wealth, especially the multinationals. Add to that the fixed price gas contracts that the Howard government wrote, so we have to end up importing gas at market prices when we sell ours for a song, and we are just dumb lucky to be able to afford anything. But, we shouldn't put us down. Australia punches above its weight with innovation. Sadly, some, like Thales Australia, is foreign owned and developed; Some is sadly sold off to foreign buyers. What we have not been great at is manufacturing - we used to be good at it. It is something our federal and state governments could really invest in to kick start it (not at the bottom end - we'll never compete with low-cost economies), but they are still tepid at doing it.. all talk, little action.

Was that an XT Falcon? Although I come fro a "Holden" family, I had one of those and they were quite alright for their day.

There is no doubt going to be a knock on impact particualr to higher profile companies. But if you invested in a lot of these companies a year ago, you would be still up on your investment. Tesla is an example: A year ago it was around 180 and now it is 248 - about a 35% fain in that period. It ballooned on the election and retracted by the same amount, so it is trading where it was pre-election ans pre protest dumping of the stock. So, at the moment* the market thinks it is at its core value. However, the price/earnings ratio is huge at 122. Compare this to Meta which is traditionally high at around 24, unless Tesla's fortunes change in terms of revenue (remember, cars is only one part of its business) that translates into profit, it probably has a way to go down yet as markets wake up and realise it is a manufacturing company and not a technology company in the traditional sense. This has everything to do with its positioning in the market and its outlook as opposed to purely protest. But, the protest plays well into Trumps hands as he can blame the loony and now violent left. The fact the cybertruck has had 8 recalls, two major and for every one of them, and are costly to fix, and it hasn't had the market penetration Musk and his investors were betting on, has nothing to do with it in Trumps (and probably Musk's) mind. Here is the share price of the other companies Outside the election bump, they are all doing well. X (x-twitter) was recently valued at $44bn... this is after a bunch of users left the platform in protest.. that seem to have gravitated back: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elon-musk-x-rebounds-purchase-price

"... because some day, maybe they're not our allies..." Apart from the grammatical error, he should reflect - America's allies were very loyal - yes it was a two way street, but maybe he should have said "maybe some day we may cut them off as our allies..."

Next year will be your grandson's year... Great to hear you caught up with your cousin...

There are similar voters all over the world

You just proved my point.. no idea what you're talking about. But use your ignorance to vote against your own interests.. but don't complain when you get what you voted for

Yes.. the original illegal immigrants...

You either misread what the voice was about or was duped.. but nothing anyone can say will change your mind.,, so it may well be prejudice.. But go ahead and vote against your own interest based on a hollow culture war

Maybe Australia should think about aligning its defence procurement for fighters somewhere else:

That was the point of the vid... Funny how most people don't look beyond a headline, and in a time with MSM as echo chambered as social meeja, and with the ability to find the trueth with a few more clicks, but they don't.. well.. they get what they deserve.. Sadly they take us with them.

What a "godsend" are these large language model (LLM) AIs. I now use Le Chat (https://chat.mistral.ai/chat) which is a French version of Chat GPT. It is a little more abrupt and less personal than Chat GPT, but just as effective, and I guess better because you definitely know you're interacting with a machine and not a person. Well, I was writing some code and trying something funky, which resulted in a run-time error (i.e. it compiled OK, but the error occurred under certain scenarios when the program was running. It was a stack overflow error, which is running out of memory on a part of the execution map called the stack. To be quite honest, they are a pain the posterior to debug and usually involves injecting code to keep track of memory usage, setting break points in the code (which stops execution in flight so you can see what is happening), and as this is multi-processing and multi-threading, means it could fail at completely different points of the code, in different processes and different threads within those processes... Even if you have no idea what I am talking about, you can get the idea that it is a bloody complicated thing to find and fix - a bit like a needle in a haystack. So, I literally asked Le Chat to diagnose the issue and gave it the very basis symptoms, and it was a lot faster processing than Chat GPT and pinpointed it.. must have taken it about 1/2 a second. I made the change and that bit of code works a treat. At the same time, it recommended some minor tweaks to improve performance. For may things, a lot less people are going to be required to produce the same output.

When I had my motorbike and commuted on it, I could not believe how quickly the tyres were eaten up.. Rarely did they get more than 10,000 miles; usually 6 - 7 thousand miles.

When financial needs must, I have had retreads and for my driving they weren't too bad.. But, as a year 8 teacher drummed into us, when driving, there are only 4 bits of rubber between one and eternity, so have always gone for the best I could afford.. And even then. sometimes they weren't right for the car. Years ago, I had a MQ Patrol LWB and went to Bob Jane T-Mart to change the tyres. They recommended some Bridgestones that weren't cheap but on the Patrol, they were useless - especially on tram tracks - they's slip and slide on them even in the dry. So back to the shop the ague about it and the agreed to change them and giving e a heavy discount on the new ones (I think Dunlops of some sort).

I wear a respirator and goggles.. though with glasses it is a but tough..

Well. best laid plans o' mice and men... Have finished the sanding, which was quite a challenge in the end. This is my random orbital: And it went through 80 grit sheets like no tomorrow. Some of the plaster, albeit standing up tot he steamer, was damaged and fell off. The smoke detectors started up and it was mayhem for a day. All done, and today, patched the holes with bog plaster and skimmed some flaked holes with multi-purpose plaster after PVA-ing the holes - will take photos tomorrow as the lights are not working in that room. So much of having the base coat on yesterday.. There is dust and poop everywhere.. In the morning, will dust down the walls, and fill the minor blemishes and then PVA and then basecoat. We don't want it perfect as we like the imperfections (will try and get a close up of what I mean)... And, hopefully, top coats on Sunday.

A lot of the old houses in the South East and South West of England as well as the home counties are in very good condition... There are some 'burbs and areas of course that are dour, but that is the same everywhere.. North West Victoria isn't know for its housing in pristine condition, from memory. When I was in the Czech Republic 20 years ago, most of their older abodes were also on good nic, which is saying something given the average incomes they were on at the time (no idea what it is today, but a friend I keep in touch with has a darned nice car.. some top of the line Audi). Romania was pretty shoddy and some a lot of areas on the outskirts of Paris, that were reasonably well heeled looked dilapidated.. I imagine the pollution those buildings are exposed is a lot more in those dense areas than most places in Aus. But I remember when I was looking to buy a house in Melbourne - south east - there were lots of Californian bungalows with rotted stumps, leaning floors, saggy ceilings and the like.

Yeah - I think I must have, though the name doesn't ring a bell. It was a name of Greek extraction, though.

Maybe we need a Dutton's Dailies...

Yeah.. sometimes we are masochists...

The next one is in Vic.. but bugger that gyprick ship.. it will be lime plaster all the way.. and proper render outside.

https://www.socialaustralia.com.au/settings/

OK.. Have half of the walls sanded - all that I could reach. I was generating so much dust, and I forgot to kick back a blanket over the bottom of the door, that dust seeped into the hall way and set off the smoke detectors. I didn't hear it if course, with the sander blasting away. Anyway, as promised, some pics. The before with these really cheap shleves, where the photos make them look 10 times better than they are: And, so far (yes, there's a lot of crap on the floor including stripped wallpaper) Those patches of bare well in the middle photo are of where I hand stripped vinyl paint that came loose from the steamer.. looks like they didn't PVA or prime the walls - just threw paint on them. Plan is to finish sanding, wash down, clean up, fill obvious stuff (and there is a bit) and PVA today. If I can get that done, then base coat tomorrow and see what else neeeds filling. I don't want the walls to be perfect, but there are a lot of holes and areas where the skim has come off. And, we had a nice distraction today.. a hot air balloon flew over the village and landed in a fields adjacent to our place, where we walk the dog. It is being rested, so no crops on it.

Can already feel it...

@Litespeed - Glad to hear things are on the up. Best wishes for smooth sailing from here on in