old man emu

Not quite a conversion on the road to Damascus, but it looks like I'll be taking my first ride in an EV next week. My son has bought a BYD Shark 6 for himself and a BYD Sealion for the family car. My son has a business pimping up 4WDs. He worked out plans to do what he wants to his Shark and has had initial talks with the sellers of BYDs, interesting them in his idea. If his talks produce anything, his business will contract to do up these cars as special vehicles, which will add something special to retailer's offerings. From what he says, he thinks he will be starting limited production around Spring. As well as doing this stuff with BYDs, he will still be doing similar work on the usual suspects. It's good to see a young man (geez! He's 36!!) having a go. I can only wish him success. However, no matter how successful he becomes in business, he'll still be my dickhead of a son.

GON, that's an excellent question and I congratulate you for posing it. I like to see such posts from members.

Whenever it arrives, then post-Trump era will be hard on everyone - Americans and the rest of the World. The USA will celebrate its 250th year this year. Probably the only way it could move ahead is to critcally examine its present Constitution in light of the development of Democracy in other coutries, and re-write the Constitution to bring it into alignment with current concepts of what a modern democracy is. I'm not saying that the current Constitution should be torn up and thrown away. What is required is that the bits that don't work should be fixed if possible, or ditched. A prime example of a bit that needs fixing is the 2nd Amendment. In the 21st Century, it is anachronistic. While it may have had a good reason behind it when it was introduced, that reason holds no water today. It could be replaced with something that maintains the Right of a person to own a firearm, but requires such a person to meet the Responsibilities of gun ownership. (wishy washy enough for you blokes)

That is the irony of Charity. All Vinnies, LifeLine, Red Cross and Op Shops suffer from the generosity of people. I'm battling the same problem in the OP Shop I work at. Too much stuff donated; not enough staff to sort it, and not enough demand for what is put out for sale. I'm bagging up good clothing to be sent to Africa. Doing that is better than sending it to landfill. Also, our tip operator (local council) does not charge to tip. The Metropolitan charities lose bucket of money paying tip fees. It's bad when you live in a town with an aged population. Boomers are dropping off the perch and their kids are cleaning out theie houses and dropping off what they don't want to charity shops. Just think of the wedding gifts you received at you first wedding. Nowadays, no one has dinner parties so there is no need for fancy dinner sets or glassware. Then over the years people collect stuff like Tupperware and cookware. You can't sell that sort of stuff, but people keep donating it. We can't sell electrical items because we don't have anyone to Test 'n' Tag each item, but we continue to get it donated. You'd be surprised at how many items of clothing still have the original retailer's tags on them. I spent today packing up Mum's stuff to remove it from her room where she lived for the past ten years. I packed away CDs, DVDs and casette tapes, as well as their players. Who would want her out-of-date clothing. I have just poured opened jars full of jam down the sink. And there are all her creams, ointments and soaps that can't be given away. And her shoes and underwear. The only thing we can do is to wait until the end of the bushfire season and have a big burn up.

Apparently these buzzwords are used to express power in interpersonal relationships. If a person is on a lower rung in the ladder than the person using the buzzwords, then the one on the higher rung is exerting power over the other. These words are also used to exclude outsiders from inner circles. These words are the trade jargon of the administrative classes. The one I hate is "on my watch". I could see it being used by John F Kennedy and the elder George Bush who both served in the Navy in WWII, but its use by people with no navy service grates on my nerves.

Thaty's the principle behing the Stirling engine. A Stirling engine is a heat engine that is operated by the cyclic expansion and contraction of air or other gas (the working fluid) by exposing it to different temperatures, resulting in a net conversion of heat energy to mechanical work.

Good luck to you blokes who have had rain. It looks like my area is set for a drought this year.

Nowadays, "freedom of the Press" seems to have become "enslavement of the masses".

I would rather vote for a Party that actually has experience in running a government. These smaller parties are often single issue Parties and don't have the experience of operating the many varied portfolios that are needed for government. The LIB/Nationals have a lot of work to do in regaining the trust of the electorate after the recent split and reunification. It seems that there is a widening gap between them in core policies. That will have to close before they become a realistic threat to Labor. Not that Labor has all the correct policies, either.

His new avatar:

Talking of betting on sports, online bookies are making it difficult for country jockey clubs to keep operating. With the ability to place bets using an app while at the racetrack, less money is going through the TAB, whose profits are fed back into country racing. That means less mon allocated to country clubs so prize money is less while the costs of operating meetings continues to rise.

OK, you two. We know that you each sit on the otehr side of the fence. We accept that. What is not acceptable is personal attacks. Please play the ball and not the man.

Has Trump ever paid what he owes? You have to wonder why anyone would take on a job for him. How does he keep lawyers working for him?

Finally! Afer a bit of rain on Satruday, which resulted in the cancellatoion of teh local jockey club meeting, the rain started to fall just before dawn this morning. It is the type of rain you raelly want after months of dry. It is gentle, soaking rain that does not result in rushing torrents across bare ground. After only a few hours I see that my drinking water tanks are replenished. Now I will wait to see if any seed that has been in the soil will germinate to give some late summer feed, or at least hold the topsoil together.

But is the $US backed by Washington or by the Fed? That's the worry with the economy of the USA as it is at present.

I wonder what price they have put on Fort Denison? Really great harbour location.

His administration carried out human rights abuses, including mass killings, and collapsed the economy. Copied from the Wikipedia entry for Idi Amin. I could not help but think that it applies to Trump.

Ian doesn't drive on country highways very much. Long stretches of no overtaking on straight roads are common.

Derr! Too easy. The centrelines are not white.

Let's be fair about the ABC. It is the only broadcasting organisation that actually produces Australian worthwhile (actual theatrically worthwhile) content for television. In fact, it only seems to be the news and current affairs department that shows bias.

There has been a great number of these videos on YouTube. You can tell that they are created using AI. As I read Red's original post, I could hear that same AI-generated voice saying the commentary. Those videos are mass-produced simply as clickbait. Each click earns the creator a cent or two, and as they say, pennies make pounds. I suppose the saving grace of these videos is that they hold Australian troops in high esteem. As factual documentaries, I doubt that they are more good yarns than facts.

Listen you petrol heads! In relation to Economics, the term fiat derives from Latin for "let [it] be done", used in the sense of an order, decree or resolution. Looking at the history of this type of currency, the "order, decree or resolution" came from the rulers of the society.

As mentioned elswhere, Trump's World Liberty Financial issued a stablecoin designated as $USD1. Stablecoins are digital assets pegged to a fiat currency, in this case, the U.S. Dollar. So what are a 'fiat currency' and its operating device, 'fiat money'. Fiat money is a type of government-issued currency, authorized by government regulation to be legal tender. Typically, fiat currency is not backed by a precious metal, such as gold or silver, nor by any other tangible asset or commodity. In days of yore, kings, emperors and other governing bodies facilitated trade across distance by producing tokens (coins) to which they assigned a nominal value, usually based on a set amount of the valuable physical item. Evenutally the valuable physical item came to be a metal. The metal could be gold, silver, copper or an alloy such as bronze. The common feature of the item was that it could be used to produce other things such as jewellery in the case of gold and silver, or simpler objects in the case of copper and bronze. The value of the item was related to a predetermined value of the metal, and that value was set by the producer of the item. As the populations of the regions using coins increased, and the amount of trade carried on over large distances increased, the amount of valuable physical material available to produce coins lessened. Also as the value of transaction increased, it became difficult to carry large weights of coins over long distances. So 'paper money' was invented. Paper money was first used in China in the 7th century A.D. Like modern banking, individuals would deposit coins with a trustworthy party and receive a note indicating the amount. The note could then be redeemed for currency at a later date. In other words, the note was backed by actual physical items. Eventually global trade grew to such levels that governments could not continue to meet the promise of exchanging note for valuable physical items made of "precious" metals. This lead to the adoption of fiat currencies and fiat money. In monetary economics, fiat money is an intrinsically valueless object or record that is accepted widely as a means of payment. Accordingly, the value of fiat money is greater than the value of its metal or paper content. Fiat money generally does not have intrinsic value nor a use value. It has value only because the individuals who use it (as a unit of account or, in the case of currency, a medium of exchange) agree on its value. They trust that it will be accepted by merchants and other people as a means of payment for liabilities. From 1944 to 1971, the Bretton Woods agreement fixed the value of 35 United States dollars to one troy ounce of gold. The Bretton Woods system required countries to guarantee convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars with the dollar convertible to gold bullion for foreign governments and central banks. Other currencies were calibrated with the U.S. dollar at fixed rates: for example the pound sterling traded for many years within a narrow band centred on US$2.80. The Bretton Woods system was ended by what became known as the Nixon shock, a series of economic changes by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971. These changes included unilaterally canceling the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold. Since then, a system of national fiat monies has been used globally, with variable exchange rates between the major currencies. In modern economies, relatively little of the supply of money is physical currency. For example, in December 2010 in the U.S., of the $8,853.4 billion of money supply in all forms , only $915.7 billion (about 10%) consisted of physical coins and paper money So now, all those trillions of dollars spoken of in relation to international and domestic debt are simply numbers in ledgers. Their actual worth relies solely on the promises of the buyer to pay the seller what is owed. Global debt reached a record high of nearly $346 trillion by the third quarter of 2025, driven by surging government borrowing in both developed and emerging markets. This figure represents over 300% of global GDP. That means that roughly only $115 trillion in debt could be met through productivity. The remaining $230 trillion is Scotch mist.

Mentioned in this article when speaking of Trump's Stablecoin, is this little gem: World Liberty Financial issued a stablecoin designated as $USD1. Stablecoins are digital assets pegged to a fiat currency, in this case, the U.S. Dollar. It is that thing 'fiat currency' that can be the downfall of the Global economy if the puppetmasters working Trump's strings continue on theri current path. I'm going to talk about fiat currencies in a separate thread in the Politics forum, if you would like to learn more.

Yesterday it got to 46C inside my place. All I could do was sit on the lounge and read a book with the evaporative cooler blowing cold air in my direction. I went to the kitchen to rinse a glass and nearly burned my hand on the tap. In the afternoon cloud started to build up. Later that evening I watched the lightning in the clouds downwind. When I woke up this morning, my bedsheets and pillow were drenched with sweat. I looked outside and the sky was clouded over, but the clouds were too high to suggest rain coming soon. So I threw my bedding into the washing machine, figuring that in the heat and low humidity it would dry before any rain came. Now it's midday and the cloud has moved downwind. At least my bedding is dry so I can remake my bed for another sweaty night. All week the temperature has been in the high 30s, rising to 40+ by late afternoon. I woke up this morning with no energy. I don't know if that's because it has been too hot to make me feel like eating, or if I've lost electrolytes. It's getting close to midday and the temperature is 36C. After what I have endured this week, 36C feel cool. Luckily I'll be going into see Mum this afternoon. She's got air conditioning.