April 2024

Mobile phone maker Xiaomi has just released its first electric car, the SU7. And it’s a corker, rave reviews from motoring experts. Superbly engineered and built, Porsche Taycan-type performance. Up to 800km range. Cheaper than a Tesla Model 3. The industrial might of China is delivering astonishing car tech at even more astonishing prices.

When a brilliant organisation gets appalling management. (*wave to CSU*)

This got wide applause on social media. It was an act of rank stupidity. It’s vigilantism, the sort of thing social media encourages every day. If people had been injured or killed as a result of the DIY traffic control for example, on this high-speed stretch of highway, these ‘champion blokes’ could go to jail. It’s possible they’ve already committed a crime by taking control of the highway. And no it’s not just community spirit. Community spirit is doing Meals on Wheels or picking up litter, not being a vigilante taking over serious, dangerous work. Next we’ll have DIY firefighters and police.

You are only ever as happy as your unhappiest child.

Happy Birthday sis! Let's catch up soon for lunch in town.

A very obvious point not often made. The best way to make everything more affordable for young people is to return the provision of essential services like housing, education, childcare, health and super/pensions to public ownership and management. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/superannuation/2024/04/01/super-wont-buy-young-a-home?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240402&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

Boy jumps from bridge. Dies. Crowdfunding launched before the body is even cold. (How vulgar is crowdfunding now? Disgusting.) Council asked to take more measures to stop idiots jumping off bridge. How about a sign that says "if you're a parent standing there watching your child jump off a bridge, you're a fucking moron"?

Apparently it’s ’Cash is King’ day? With all of the urgent problems facing the world, social media always makes sure people are focused on anything trivial and irrelevant instead, based on some loon conspiracy theory.

We’re losing a generation of boys. To pathetic macho bullshit ideologies, driven deep into everyday life by social media. People are weak, imagine following somebody like this. 95% of people though are followers in life, it’s a number quantified in research. If you don’t provide them with good role models, they’ll find bad ones. What’s not said here is the number of women who actually look for this sort of thing in a man too, which is even more disturbing. Some of them end up marrying them, and then spend a lifetime tip-toeing around a man who hasn’t matured since he was 14.

I don’t waste a lot of time arguing basic science and engineeering with people, because I know that really most are actually arguing from a political position. Team sports. It’s their lens for everything. If their team likes A, they like A. If it hates B, they hate B. They’ll pretend they’re ’doing their own research’ etc. It’s all bullshit, they’re just shopping for whatever they can find that backs up the team line. If you disagree with them, their only thought is ‘he’s a supporter of the other team’. The fact you don’t have any team won’t compute with them. High school behaviour, defending your group. We never leave.

Meanwhile reality continues on its merry way, oblivious to peoples’ opinions.

A friend's daughter, in Year 11, had a catastrophic stroke 2 weeks ago. 3 brain bleeds. Is not expected to walk or talk again. How many Year 11 kids had strokes when you were at school? I'm guessing zero? She's had Covid twice. It's a vascular disease. Anywhere you have a blood vessel, it can get you.

Council does ok for people who just stand around leaning on their shovels all day.

Hmmm.

So many problems we face are just artefacts of social media. Like the current ‘youth crime waves’, seen across many countries. Imitative rivalry, driven by social media. Our refusal to act against Covid, or to vote Yes? Social media. Refusal to act on climate change by shifting to renewable energy and buying EVs? Social media. The obsession with using cash? Social media. Body image problems? Social media. The surge in nonsense ideas about gender? Social media. I could list these all day.

So far we've paid $10 billion to the UK and US, for them to use on their own nuclear production facilities. And we're also taking their nuclear waste. They saw a sucker coming when ScoMo inked this deal. Right up there with Gillard giving away our gas to foreign fossil fuel companies, for them to sell back to us at extortionate rates, and Abbott's destruction of the mining tax so that mining companies could use us as a big cheap quarry.

Ah sovereign citizens. So much BS, so much jail time.

This graph should make us all very scared. The idea of 'living with' Covid did this, and it's driven ALL vaccinations down, for all diseases. Public health is dead, the thing that doubled our life expectancy in the past century. Life expectancies are already heading down again.

The attraction of fame is in another word for it - recognition. It’s being recognised, in an otherwise anonymous world that doesn’t care about you. Paul McCartney spoke about this, how fame appeals because it makes a person feel validated, for who they are. A very intimate, personal thing. Something everybody wants. Fame doesn’t deliver this though, because people recognise and adore an image of the person, not them personally. It puts an even greater barrier between them and the rest of the community. Imagine being a Beatle and trying to live a normal life. Impossible. The famous often end up feeling more isolated and alone than ordinary people. McCartney in public is often noted to seem aloof, a bit cold. I’m sure it’s just a protective mechanism, to save his own sanity, to not just be the Beatle everybody wants a piece of. Attractive men and women are often the same, to discourage constant attention. Harrison hated fame, despised it. Most of our lives is pretty simple behaviour. We just want somebody to notice us, to appreciate us for who we are. To get ‘likes’. Fame (and likes) is a terrible way to achieve that, it does the opposite.

LOL. Worth a couple of minutes of your time.

Lots of criticism of EVs from those who say they can't tow because it destroys their range. To take a common towing vehicle, a Toyota Landcruiser. Towing a caravan for example about DOUBLES its fuel consumption. Petrols and diesels try to get around this by having much bigger fuel tanks in these towing vehicles, 110L or more. Even doing that, range is only about 600 km. If you doubled the size of the battery in an EV, it'll tow, just as doubling the amount of fuel and size of fuel-tanks in an ICE allows it to tow. And the EV will use only 10-20% as much energy to do the same towing, because it has much more torque than any petrol or diesel, and doesn't waste any of it out the exhaust. Also long-distance towing is an even tinier subset of Australians than the 3-5% who tow anything at all. For everyday towing, when you're not doing the Big Lap, an EV is a much better towing vehicle.

My experience is that many who support Daylight Saving don't even understand it. (It's darker in the mornings during DST.)

There were 8400 excess deaths in Australia 2023. Meaning 8400 more people died than was expected from the historical average. Over 6000 were caused by Covid. The other 2400 were likely caused by disruption caused by Covid. These are staggering numbers. What's more staggering is that nobody cares. For comparison, in an emergency very bad flu year, about 1000 extra people die.

Big jump in fuel prices again overnight. I see north of $2.40/litre for 95 or 98 in Bathurst. The true definition of range for any vehicle: how far can you afford to drive it? 🙂 Imagine being an Australian arguing to keep this shit technology, and then taking out a 2nd mortgage to pay Texans, Arabs and Putin over $50 billion per year for the fuel as well? All while creating toxic smog that kills you.

Even with reality staring people right in the face, they can still find new ways to be stupid. Rising petrol prices apparently a conspiracy by the government, to make us all buy EVs. (Fuel tax hasn’t changed, btw.)

Happy Birthday!!🎉🎉

Transgender is the first theory in human history where the test of its reality is entirely social media. It went very quickly from being a fringe (whacky) academic theory in marginal gender studies departments in universities, to an international requirement in all of our processes. It’s the ultimate triumph of misogyny. Terrible damage is being done. Good on Rowling for using her position to call it out.

When teaching physics, often kids (or adults) think rockets work by somehow pushing the rocket up into the air. In reality they throw megatonnes of stuff out the back, and the rocket’s movement is the reaction force to this stuff being thrown away, in the other direction.

Local dealers now have Toyota’s first full-EV, the bZ4X. I went and had a look at one today, it’s a pretty slick car. A BYD is cheaper and a better EV, but encouraging to see the bigger manufacturers now getting going.

Brilliant shot of The Beatles watching Jimi Hendrix perform, in shock. I love the contrast with the face of the woman on the far left, relaxed enjoyment. Popular music (and all human activity) is about social status. The woman on the left had no skin in the status game, thus total relaxation. The Beatles were top of the tree. Hendrix briefly burned the tree to the ground.

View out the front window today, 6.15 am. Next to view out the front window yesterday, 6.15 am.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

If/when the ice melts at Antarctica, sea levels will rise by 60 metres. We know this as well because that’s how high the seas were in the last period when there was no ice at the poles. You can find the fossils in today’s mountains. https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/powerful-heatwave-affecting-antarctic-continent-unprecedented-temperatures-40-degrees-above-average-rrc/

Keep an eye out for news about the bird flu outbreaks in the US. Now in cattle and cats, and also humans. It’s when viruses cross into humans from animals and then jump from human to human that they can become pandemics. As happened with Covid, and the Spanish Flu. Pandemic flus kill even more people than Covid, and often very young people too. 30-50% mortality rates.

The world has just had the wettest March since records began. Driven largely by oceans that are boiling.

Public transport in Finland.

Had Whooping Cough only a few years ago, when NSW had a surge. Was vaccinated, but it wanes. As the article says, we’ve now seen big increases in measles, syphilis, gout, leprosy, malaria, RSV and whooping cough. ‘Living with’ Covid did this. Sharing to encourage people to check if you’re vaccinated against whooping cough. It’s hell.

The reason housing prices don’t come down, no matter how much we build, is because housing is not a ‘market’. In a market, new suppliers can always add new products for sale, which is where competition then happens with existing products. But with property, nobody except government can issue new land. (And that’s a very good thing, for a range of reasons.) To even begin trading in the supposed property market, you have to buy ‘into the market’ (a giveaway of what’s really happening). Property owners are actually, quite literally, franchisees of a monopoly stock of property. Like owners of McDonalds franchises. Nobody expects a new McDonalds store to drive down the prices of Big Macs. McDonalds owns all of the franchises, it’s not going to compete with itself. Similarly existing property owners are not going to compete to drive the price of their own properties down. If on the other hand you’re selling apples or bikes, new suppliers can always enter the market for those and offer new apples and bikes, at more competitive prices. But only government can issue new land. Bathurst now has 3 McDonalds stores (supply is right up), and the price of Big Macs is still going up. One of the assessments in a franchise agreement is whether a new store will harm the business of other nearby stores. QED.

Your immune system is not a muscle. It doesn’t need a regular workout from infection. Infection damages it.

Happy Birthday! I hope the pink toes get some sun today.

See, it can be done. And fast. What's funny here is that Norway is an oil producer. It sells it to numpties like us, and banks the mega profits in sovereign wealth funds, for investment in Norwegian life.

There's almost as much gravity where he is as there is where you are, right now. It's not 'zero gravity'.

Schleswig-Holstein in the north of Germany is one of the most beautiful parts of Europe. Many travellers have never heard of it. Which is probably a good thing, they won’t wreck it. I lived there with dear family friends the Kersigs, in the early 1980s, together with brother Mike. Also the home region of my dad.

Humans like to form teams, and then to compete with other teams. The underlying principle of all of society, if you look, we learn it at school but our adult lives are this too, whether it's the cars we drive, the people we vote for, the bands we like etc. It's why team sports is so popular. In retail, companies know this and create fake brands, so that people can feel like they're choosing between options, in their teams. Thanks Ed for the image.

How do you spell sucker.

One of my favourites is 'government should be run like a business'. Ask the Brits what they think about that right now. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12245021/Thames-Water-brink-disaster-amid-possible-renationalisation.html

What does this graph say to you?

Ed is an economics journalist from the UK. If you’re interested in cars and the future of the car industry, this short piece is a must-read. Brilliantly entertaining too.

Australia is an international embarrassment with this rubbish. Nobody says boo with 70+ coal ships queued only a few hundred metres off Newcastle, but some windmills 20km offshore are apparently destroying the Western Australian coastal views.

The source of all real wealth is building things. Engineering. Not the economy or its market (both fictions). Not supply and demand. Building things, at scale, to drive costs down. That’s how Henry Ford made cars affordable for all. With huge efficient factories. That’s how governments made housing affordable for all, when they used to build massive amounts of public housing. The market never has. The market solves no problems, nor does its supply and demand. Those are all fictions. You have to build things. At scale, to create economies of scale. Not in small business. In huge factories, with controlled supply chains. Which is what Asia does. It’s been building our lives for decades. Ask yourself what Australia now builds.

Home battery installations jumped 21% in the past year. And still climbing. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2024/04/09/battery-solar-households?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240410&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

US houses are less than half the cost of Australian houses, relative to incomes. How do they do it? It's not the market at work. American housing is nationalised, government provides the capital to banks through entities it created called Freddie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. This means banks can lend at affordable rates, with government control also over prices because Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie determine the size of mortgages they'll buy. It's been in place since 1938. Only massive government intervention can fix Australian housing. Right now nobody has the political balls to do it, everyone just babbling rubbish about 'supply'.

The pain of staring at a heap of oily metal and tubular junk wondering why it won't go will soon be a thing of the past. Put your shopping or luggage there instead.

An example of the huge distance between our politics and reality. 'Out of an abundance of caution' he's isolating. The Deputy Prime Minister. Here in NSW, if you DON'T isolate, you're breaking the law, the NSW Public Health Act. Up to 6 months in jail and a large fine. The disease is that serious. Nobody is told, because we have no leaders. Instead we have parliaments full of jellyback morons, spooked by a handful of loud and insane anti-vax cookers on social media.

Crabapples growing wild, street trees in Bathurst. Ran into an elderly European couple last year picking these, to the bemusement of passers by, who had no idea what they were. They were going to make jam, said it was a delicacy. Thanks to mum for identifying them, and her memories of making the same jam.

The current data for how immune from Covid you are, by getting infected with Covid. For the current JN.1 variant. Effectiveness is against being reinfected. So for 3-6 months, about 80% effective at blocking another infection (margin of error 40-90). By a year, about zero. If you’ve not had Covid recently and no recent vaccines, you’ve had zero protection for a long time. The idea that by keeping catching Covid your immunity builds up gradually is bunkum.

Have posted a few times how our bodies are not pulled down by gravity. That we’re all ‘weightless’, here on the surface of the Earth. Part 2 of this story is just as interesting. The motive force for all of your body activity is not inside you. It’s OUTSIDE you. Your perceptual system doesn’t gather information, which you then ‘process’ and turn into movement. It’s sensori-motor. Perceiving activates your muscles, directly, you never need to do muscle movement. We’re exactly like puppets, except there is no puppeteer. Our surroundings are the puppeteer. Try this. While standing somewhere (or even sitting), be talking to somebody a few metres away, or be looking at something. Then simply want to move to where that person or thing is. DON’T stop talking to them or take your attention off whatever the thing is, to try to go inside yourself to make muscles move you. Keep doing that activity, as you move. You should find you just spring off into movement, elastically, without you needing to do a thing. Our bodies are elastically-sprung. They literally spring us into posture or movement, based on what we’re perceiving. Trying to do any of that by moving your own muscles will wreck the whole thing, making you tight and stiff.

Baby steps, the penny has dropped everywhere except social media. The 'range' thing is still a distraction, many still not aware that you don't need a service station for most EV driving. You charge at home.

Brendan is one of our top infectious disease experts.

Poor farmers, thinking warning people about climate change does anything. They should go to YouTube and social media, chock full of Dorito-eating masturbating armchair experts to tell them there's nothing to worry about here, it's all 'alarmism'. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/10/uk-food-production-down-record-rainfall-farmers

There’s no need to go off-grid, it’s a stupid choice. A home battery creates a micro-grid for your property, so if the main grid goes down yours still functions. Best of both worlds.

We don’t have a power bill, so it’s not true that people will necessarily pay more. But he’s making the obvious point about the scale of change needed, and fast, and how expensive it will be. And more importantly, he’s explaining that if we stuck with coal (or added nuclear), the costs would be even *higher*. The best way to buffer yourself against costs from this massive shift is to have your own solar and battery.

Happy Birthday sir. What a distinguished age.

Because they're from Texas and the Middle East. Why would they care? Buy an EV, fill up for between $0-$5.

I was called ‘transphobic’ and unfriended by somebody for posting on transgender issues. It’s too important for people not to speak out, children are being harmed, sometimes irreversibly, by these theories that few have even read. It’s just ‘trending’, which is all most need to fall in line behind something now. In the UK the edifice of trans-fundamentalism is crumbling, with puberty blocking drugs now (thankfully) themselves blocked in most cases in children. To be clear, absolutely some (very small) number of people have gender dysphoria and need to be treated. But the idea that somebody’s actual identity is transformed just because they find current gender roles limiting is dangerous nonsense. A gender role is a social thing, not an individual identity. People should play with gender roles all they like, I for example find much modern masculinity ridiculous. It doesn’t make me think I’m a woman or non-binary, or whatever. That comes from social media, where in increasingly broken societies people look to find an identity society no longer provides for them. So they invent new ones, which then become teams on social media that they become part of.

This should make people think long and hard about any resistance to EVs. Tally up the real-world experience: - over 666,000 km using the same battery - the owner only bothered getting his FIRST service at 200,000 km (!!) - the car has only had 5 services in over 750,000 km of driving, and - the first brake pad change was at 460,000 km, and the pads still had life in them. EVs save you a fortune in fuel and maintenance. People worry about resale. An ICE with 750,000 km on the clock would be lucky to sell for $50. This EV is still going strong, and looks like brand new.

Kyoto has had enough now. Says tourism has turned its city into a ‘theme park’. A perfect description of what travel does to a place I think, it’s inevitable. Visitors can only ever have an image of a place, a stereotype. They live that stereotype when they visit - a theme park.

In a sign of the major shift underway in buying habits, the Tesla Model Y outsold the Toyota Hilux in Australia, in March. The Hilux has been Australia’s top-selling car since 2016. This month Tesla increased the pain for traditional car makers by cutting the price of the Model Y by up to another $8500.

Roy Morgan’s latest poll shows more Australians are planning to buy an EV over the next 4 years than are planning to buy petrol. EVs are now the dominant segment in planned purchases. Diesels have fallen off a cliff.

EVs are already on-par with ICEs on price. And way, way ahead if you include fuel and maintenance costs. EV batteries, by far the most expensive part of an EV, are projected to drop in price by 50% this year. Meanwhile petrol and diesel prices are still going up, way over $2/litre regularly now. Petrol and diesel vehicles are dead in the water.

Every autumn and winter is a gardening challenge, because massive trees over the road in a schoolyard deposit literally cubic metres of leaves up our driveway. Every year I use a leaf blower to deposit them back in the street for the Council vacuum truck, but it’s slow and tedious, there’s literally truck loads of leaves. I thought, I need something that acts as a combined vacuum cleaner and shredder. Some leaf blowers are reversible like that. Then I realised, I already have something. The lawn mower. Lawn mowers act as both cutters and vacuum cleaners, they create lift to suck the cut grass into the catcher. Duh. Early experiments were even more successful than I imagined.

The basic engineering that explains clearly why EVs will always be a far superior performance vehicle, as well as dramatically cheaper to run and maintain. They have HUGE amounts of ‘grunt’, way more than any combustion engine. The noise of a combustion engine is mistaken for power. That noise is literally just the engine farting, sending 80% of its energy straight out the exhaust, unused.

Mars on the weekend.

Watching the final round of the US Masters. The star of this tournament is always the gardeners, never mentioned. Also what’s the obsession with baseball caps in golf? With players and fans. The dumbest possible hat for this sport.

Japan is in desperate trouble, and pretty much all developed nations are on the same path. Population collapsing, the entire country an aged care home, with no workers.

One of the most fascinating things to observe is what a nation chooses to mourn. The excess deaths Covid caused in 2023 alone was greater than the number of Australians lost at Gallipoli. Not even mentioned. Let alone mourned. Raise it and people say you have some sort of anxiety disorder. It disgusts me.

George is a plant scientist. Worth spending a bit of time digesting how true this is.

Every single party to this action has been disgraced by the findings. Spruikers for the various cultural battles that attached themselves to it will claim victory here, in a variety of ways. There is no victory, it’s a terrible example again of how civil society is collapsing. Read the judgment, the judge knew this would happen.

I’m re-reading Catch-22, the perfect novel for a time when societies have taken leave of their senses.

Like the warning labels on cigarettes.

Happy Birthday Mel :)

Who can help Adam here...

I walk every lunch time, and see this quite a lot. Really rude and selfish, I’m able-bodied so can easily divert onto the road to get around it, but I shouldn’t have to. If you’re old or in a wheelchair, this can literally be life-threateningly dangerous. It’s a footpath, not part of your driveway.

We've owned a Corolla hybrid hatch for more than a year now, and it must be one of the best fun driver's cars out there. Very low centre of gravity so it hugs the ground, I've never experienced a faster car around corners. One of the worse things about the ute fetish Australia now has is how awful they are as driver's cars, all that weight so high up off the ground, fighting you in the opposite direction on every corner. Inertia does that. Being a hybrid this thing also kicks arse from a standing start, with the electric motor. Hasn't been beaten yet at a red light. Power/torque is maximum from 0 rpm all the way through the rev range, like all EVs. Ask the Subaru WRXs I've left behind. And it uses sub-5L/100 km of fuel. Also sweet when you come up the driveway at home and the neighbour says 'your car doesn't make any noise'. He was quite taken aback.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has estimated that wind turbines kill an average of 234,000 birds per year in the US. Sounds horrific! They also point out that cats kill an average of 2.4 billion birds, and collisions with building glass kill an average of 599 million birds, per year.

Travel seems like a great idea, until everybody else thinks the same. Open this image to full size to take in just how crazy this scene is. Repeated all over the world now.

You’re not ‘stuck in traffic’. You are traffic.

7 countries now generate ALL of their electricity from renewables. When you look at the list, they’re mostly not rich countries. And they managed to do it even ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow’. Another slogan bites the dust. Albania Bhutan Ethiopia Iceland Nepal Paraguay Democratic Republic of Congo

Comment about a hybrid vehicle. A very common misunderstanding among the anti-EV crowd. An EV is a vehicle that uses electric motors. *Where* it gets the electricty from is irrelevant. Because electric motors are so much more efficient than petrol or diesel motors (400-500% more efficient), they will use *much* less of whatever fuel is used to generate the electricity. A petrol hybrid will use up to half the petrol to drive the same distance as a full petrol car, for example. Obviously the best thing is to use renewable electricity. But in the transition, hybrids will still use a LOT less fossil fuel than sticking with petrols or diesels. They’re also just far better cars to drive, much more powerful and refined.

Happy Birthday! Have a wonderful day :)

"Taxation is not a deposit account that we can draw on to 'buy' whatever service we choose." In this case, talking about the private school argument that says they save everybody money. But also applicable to private health cover, and recent views on super being 'our money'.

A while back Elon mocked Chinese EVs. He's not laughing now. He's about to lay off 10% of his workforce. And as he says here, Chinese car makers are going to 'demolish' every other car company in the world (ICE and electric), if nothing changes. The industry will deserve it, it's been lazy and complacent. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/25/elon-musk-says-chinese-ev-makers-will-demolish-other-companies.html#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%20said%20Chinese%20electric,the%20world%2C%E2%80%9D%20Musk%20said.

A 7-star energy efficient home built today, under only a moderate projection for climate change impacts, will have the comfort of only a tent by 2070. The amount of energy needed to cool these homes will double. The vast majorty of Australian homes are not even near the current 7-star rating, so will be even worse.

The cold writes songs in the air.

Some very important research was published this month to assess whether 'hybrid immunity', the combination of infection + vaccination we're using for Covid, works. It doesn't work. It not only doesn't work, it makes things even worse. The graphs here show the impact on infections. They go UP. And even worse nobody is getting vaccinated anyway, many stopped when the prize boofhead Scott Morrison told them they'd only need 2 shots. Australians (and everybody else in the world) should be being vaccinated for Covid every 6 months, until the virus can no longer spread in our communities. Getting infected over and over won't stop it, as the graphs show, it makes MORE Covid. No politician has the brains or balls to do what's needed. Paper here: https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-024-09282-4

In Nevada, JB Straubel, one of the founders of Tesla, has now set up a new business to recycle lithium-ion batteries. About 95% of a Li-ion battery can be recycled, meaning for every 100 EV batteries for example they process, another 95 EVs can be made. It's very profitable. Right now it can recycle more than 250,000 EV batteries alone, in a year. For comparison, how much of the energy store in a petrol or diesel can you re-use? Zero. 80% of it isn't even used to run the vehicle, it goes straight out the exhaust. There will come a time very soon when people will understand what absolute rubbish petrols and diesels are, and always have been. All they have left is the noise, for people who have a fetish for car farts.

Meanwhile in the UK, the conservatives are looking at near-extinction. Richly deserved, they've done incalculable damage to the UK. It may not survive. Our own LNP takes many cues from these in-bred halfwits.

In Louisiana, a lunch break for childcare workers is seen to be a restriction on employers.

Thanks to @[1257795447:2048:Christine] for the link. EVs are popular in the bush, even in the most remote areas.

I suspect many have not heard of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD). In October 2020 a group of ‘scientists’ signed a short statement suggesting a way out of the Covid pandemic. The Covid ‘strategy’ we’re following today is pure GBD. Here was their idea. They said we should just protect ‘the vulnerable’, and let everybody else get back to normal life, building up immunity with vaccinations and infections. Which would then lead to herd immunity i.e. the end of the pandemic, as everybody being immune would stop Covid from spreading. Sound familiar? They called it ‘focused protection’ i.e protecting the vulnerable, while letting everybody else go back to normal. And how long did they say this process would take? 3-6 months. It’s now almost 4 YEARS later, and Covid has grown, not gone away. The vulnerable have died in the millions. It was bullshit, scientifically. Sponsored by the Koch network, billionaire Americans who sponsor much of the opposition to climate change action as well, including a lot of the anti-EV and anti-renewables slogans people regurgitate here.

LGBTQIA+. LGB - sexual preferences (lesbian, gay, bisexual). T - Trans. Supposed disconnect between sex and gender. Q - Queer. Generic term for any diversity of sex and gender. I - Intersex. People born with ambiguous genitalia. A - Asexual. No desire for sex at all. + is there to allow anything else to be added people want. Putting these together suggests they’re connected. They’re not. LGB have no relationship to T or I. A is not related to LGB, T or I. T is now openly at war with LGB, as is I with Q. Meanwhile T says sex is separate to gender. But then says a trans person is somebody whose gender doesn’t match their sex. You can’t question any of this without immediately being thrown into one of the idiot teams in these debates. Or lumped in with moron shock jocks who just hate everything. I oppose this because I think it’s complete nonsense. That’s all. I’m not anything-phobic, except stupidity.

Most local councils are tens of millions of dollars short of having enough money to do even basic road maintenance. Climate change will now make many roads unusable. Meanwhile the public, hypnotised by social media, respond with endless memes about councils being hopeless because they don’t fill potholes. Like they don’t know roads need fixing.

Nissan is advertising the new X-Trail ePower heavily. It’s a ‘series’ hybrid. Meaning the petrol motor acts only as a generator for the electric motors, that drive the wheels. There are also parallel hybrids where the petrol/diesel and electric motors operate together. Then there are combined series/parallel hybrids, where both types of motors can operate at the same time, or independently. Toyota hybrids are the combined type. They’re the most sophisticated and efficient.

I suspect people might be shocked how many young men look up to Tate as a role model. Social media will end our societies, unless something is done, and fast.

Politicians currently wrestling with the dangers of social media. I think we should all be. An honest, open question, as one example. Are people genuinely happy with the idea that we can all decide our own sex, simply by identifying as that sex? Not just those with gender dysphoria, but everybody, including children with no previous history of dysphoria? Do people wonder how that idea came to be so universally accepted, in such a very short period of time?

The average NSW price for E10 this morning. The 'cheap' ULP option. There's so much public anger about supposed price gouging by supermarkets (mostly a myth), while oil companies have been rogering consumers for years. And not only is not much said, people actively queue up to support them by buying bigger and bigger cars.

Flooding in China on the weekend. People will cling to ‘one-off event’ explanations for as long as they can. Until it’s too late.

Queensland petrol prices.

This is only possible because people share their most intimate personal lives on an international platform. And then often say they’re interested in ‘privacy’. They’re not interested in privacy, social media is all about continuously curating a public image, in imitative rivalry with others. It’s why I share very little of my personal life here.

Winter exercise options that don’t involve gulping in Covid-infested air in a gym. Nice windows, these.

This is a trend gaining real speed. Child-free spaces, on holidays, in restaurants etc. In societies that already have plummeting birth rates. The focus is recreational lifestyles, free of the ‘interference’ of children. Children they herd into schools to all catch Covid to try to create population immunity, again to prevent adults (really kiddults) from having to sacrifice their recreational lifestyles. Their travel and gigs and dining out. People treat their dogs better than we treat children. Any society that doesn’t place children at its centre is literally dead. It doesn’t reproduce, so disappears.

Social media is already running societies, we're seeing it now brought to the surface. We really don't see I think how it's a cancer eating away at democracies from the inside. We think it's a happy friendly place to share photos of what we're doing every day. That's how the platforms suck people in. (And to make myself complete friendless, who actually cares what other people are doing? Nobody ever liked slide nights. We get global platforms to connect with the whole world in real time, and what do we do with them? Talk about ourselves.)

In just over a year of ownership, our solar panels have exported enough energy to the grid to: - drive an EV from Sydney to Perth 25 times, or - power 2 additional homes for an entire year. That's *with* a battery to store our own surplus needs, plus powering our entire house. And at 10c/kWh, the grid is getting a bargain, and selling it on for 2 or 3 times that amount, or even more.

Pictures sometimes tell the whole story.

No matter what anybody's opinion is, renewables are doing everything they promised to do, and more. As are EVs. Social media is a hopelessly distorted view of the real world.

For all of its wonderful contributions to humanity, this one toxic belief that dominates American life is a cancer on the world. Going right back in their history to the Puritans being booted out of Europe. Humans fought for centuries to achieve democratic governments. Continuously attacking them in this way is the most terrorist act anybody can perform.

I don't think there's a more important lesson to teach kids than this: that what's said on social media mostly has almost zero connection to actual reality. On renewables, EVs, gender, personal appearance, how happy peoples' lives actually are. ETC.

BYD's Sea Lion is rumoured to be released in Australia this year as well. It's a mid-sized SUV, one of the most popular car segments. And glorious EV, kick those petrol prices to the kerb. Designed by ex-Audi and Lamborghini designers, like most BYD vehicles it looks stunning. And it'll be high quality engineering at bargain prices. The Chinese have incredible economies of scale. They build most of the products you buy already.

Musk is a CEO. CEOs answer to boards. CEOs who go to war with nation States are on a fast-track to redundancy. He owns 20% of Tesla stock, which makes him the majority shareholder. But it means 80% of the company is owned by other shareholders, who I suspect think he's trashing the brand right now and losing them money. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the Board to act. https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/utter-contempt-elon-musk-goes-to-war-with-australian-government-over-violent-content/news-story/9226d2bc38a90504ba1c82e97b9711fd

Like I said. The Chinese have arrived. No amount of racist porkies about 'cheap Chinese crap' will be either true or effective, at saving traditional car companies. Or even EV car companies.

Mollie O'Callaghan. Remember that name at the Olympics this year.

The Milky Way seen from one of the limestone caves on the Nullarbor.

The fascinating battle in play. The best selling car in the world last year? The Tesla Model Y (top picture). Yep, an EV was the best-selling car in the world. Now, the rival, BYD. The Sea Lion, bottom. Release imminent. Higher specs than the Model Y, appointed at a luxury level. Here’s the battle. The BYD Sea Lion is $20,000 cheaper. Elon Musk says China is going to demolish the car industry. These numbers tell the story.

Every year we say ‘Lest We Forget’ on Anzac Day. And nobody can tell you what it is we’re not supposed to forget. Because we forgot. (It isn’t the noble sacrifice of young soldiers.)

Happy Birthday! 🎂🎈🎉

UK railways are one of the best real-life examples of the myths around public vs private. They began in the 19th century as private railways. That was a complete disaster, and so the government nationalised them in 1948. John Major’s conservatives then privatised them again in 1993. It’s been another complete disaster. The proposal is now to nationalise them again.

Yeh, don’t let social media raise your kids.

Another of the hysterical fear campaigns against EVs is that they ‘have no resale value’. As the article explains, when a new technology is being rolled out the resale will be lower at first, until prices of new vehicles are at parity with the old technology. We’re at that point now, things will normalise quickly. Also you can drive an EV a LOT longer than you would a petrol or diesel car, very little can go wrong with them, mechanically. So where you might look to trade in a petrol or diesel at sub-100,000km, or sub-300,000 km for some who like to keep their cars a long time, an EV will happily keep motoring well past those km numbers.

Abolish HECS. And wipe all the existing debts. if you think that sounds extreme, look around the world. Countries have NO YOUNG PEOPLE. No workers. The ones they have left will tell you they’re largely not having children because they can’t afford them, they can’t even afford somewhere to live. This is a genuine emergency, we need to do everything possible to make it easier to be young again.

Less than 5% of the world’s population does regular international travel. We rich countries treated other countries as places to ‘see’, and got away with it because most of the world couldn’t afford to do the same. The moment that percentage increases, the entire world is log-jammed with tourists. There is NO SOLUTION to this, except to travel a lot less. We keep resisting this obvious truth.

Those with actual gender dysphoria, sometimes called ‘transsexuals’, a genuine condition. They recognise that to say somebody is a woman simply by identifying as one not only erases women, it also erases transsexuals. Their entire struggle is to want to be a woman/man, not to allow everybody to simply identify as one. If it was that simple they’d have already done it, years ago. They know sex is real.

Milan now battling travel too.

Farmers in Australia can earn up to $40,000 per wind turbine, per YEAR, if they have them on their property. And $1500 per hectare for solar farms. At a time when farming is a dead business, it's a lifeline. Making it even more incredible that the political party originally set up by farmers is out there campaigning every day to get rid of renewables. That's because the Nats now represent the fossil fuel companies, not farmers. Big donors to the LNP.

People won’t touch this topic. They get abused, verbally and physically. And lumped in with the knuckle-draggers who oppose transgender ideas because they think it’s a Leftie/woke thing. I admire Rowling for sticking to what she knows is right, and knows is damaging people terribly. Including all women, and children.

Climate change is making its way into our lives, pieces at a time. We used to buy these large tins of olive oil, to use for deep-frying. For years they were about $18. They’re now $65. Because most olive oil comes from Europe. Its olive crops have been decimated for several years already by climate change. You can read about it here, if your friends who are YouTube climate experts don’t believe you: https://phys.org/news/2023-11-winter-isnt-climate-greek-olive.html#:~:text=Spain%2C%20the%20world's%20biggest%20producer,80%20percent%2C%20according%20to%20producers.

At work a few weeks back, a young woman appeared at the counter. She said the community needed to know a message from John Campbell about Vitamin D, and what could Council do to get the message out? Campbell is a Covid minimiser on YouTube, widely debunked by serious health and science bodies. If your information about the world is coming from social media, 9 times out of 10 you’re being fed horseshit.

Domestic violence data in Australia for the past 35 years. From the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, official government data body.

The entire family surviving a 75m fall onto rocks is some sort of testament to the strength of a Tesla. And its battery, there was no fire. A petrol or diesel car would likely have exploded.

EV battery development is so fast now. This latest one has over 1000 km of range, and can charge to 600 km in only 10 minutes. Remembering too that most range anxiety is nonsense anyway, the vast majority of people don’t drive more than 40 km a day.

The pushback against travel is accelerating. Because the stupidity of travel is also accelerating, at exponential rates. Even domestically people are flocking to every event and tourist location, at exponentially-growing rates. Travel only works when hardly anybody does it. It’s basic maths. We’re very bad at maths. Time to stay home, and make those homes the types of places we travel elsewhere to see and experience.

The destructive, lethal power of social media. Over 200,000 Americans died in 2021-22, because they weren’t vaccinated against Covid.

Happy Birthday!🎉🎉

An eagle’s talon.

Beneath a clickbait headline, the ABC sharing the same data I shared a couple of days ago. Homicides have been in steep decline for decades. And absolutely clearly in the data domestic violence not only shares in this decline, if you take out violence against Indigenous women, it’s fallen even faster. What protest movements call ‘gendered violence’, because gender is a cause celebre for social media, criminologists call intimate partner violence. Because it’s intimate partnerships that are the true cause here, not gender. Particularly those involving Indigenous women. It’s not ‘tone deaf’ to refer to actual data. It’s a rejection of ‘tone’ as a way to run a society.

My family are about the only people we know now who still mask regularly. But we’re also free of colds and flu too, never been healthier. And in terms of relative numbers of people masking, 60% of the world lives in Asia (as do we). So we’re in the majority, globally. It’s people who refuse to mask who are the (always sick) minority. It’s all domestic peer pressure, people would rather be sick and even die, than do something different to what everybody else is doing. High school now never ends.

Those who still refuse to accept the crisis that climate change is can hopefully point us to the last time in their lives when home insurance was completely unaffordable for large parts of countries. Insurance is my current work. No doubt somebody on YouTube will know better.

See the deeper motivations of trans movements here? To erase women and their history. This wally 'identified' as a woman, said 'hey, this isn't so bad'. So is now an expert on women.

Michael Salter in the Herald today.

Tick tick. Why would you want petrol or diesel, particularly at fuel prices well north of $2/litre? EVs will cost less to buy, and huge amounts less to run. And more grunt to boot, and no servicing.

This got the knuckle-draggers hot under the collar. CBA doing a similar thing.

One of the early pandemic arguments was that ‘lockdowns’ would cause an increase in domestic violence. Because women would be locked up with their abusing parters. It turns out the reverse was true. Domestic violence decreased. Having sponsored time at home together brought a lot of families closer together. Also further confirmation that it’s not gender that is the main cause of domestic violence. It’s economics. Lockdowns in reality were societies redirecting their common-wealth back to ordinary people, for the first time in more than 50 years. It’s why economic politicians were desperate to end them. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-unexpected-drop-in-intimate-partner-violence

Meanwhile in the Land of the Free (Market), attempts to track the rapidly accelerating outbreaks of potentially pandemic flu amongst cattle have come up against the usual social media hurdles.