Has everyone gone to bed?….

Up babysitting grandson.

Winston Smithsays:
April 1, 2022 at 11:44 pm
John H:

It will be so boring. Beyond the solar system space is so empty, a vast nothingness. Submariners and explorers had plenty to do but on long space flights we’d be better off in hibernation.

You can hibernate – I will be selecting the crew for the colonisation program on Alpha Centauri. Here is a sample.
It will not be boring.
OK Serious hat on…
The Kuiper Belt will only be useful for a laser highway project
First we need to mine the crap out of the asteroid belt.

Winston you’re in big trouble. No gays, trans, disabled in the crew! Off you go then, to the airlock.

Weird site:
https://www.kuiperbeltminingcorp.com/
—
Darn it I just flew my F4-E into an enemy fortification so I won’t be a pilot on the mission to Mars.

Hey Rabz.
I said you probably don’t think much of me.
I never said I gave a fuck.
Stick your behavioral advice up your arse.

Rex Angersays:
April 2, 2022 at 12:55 am
Darn it I just flew my F4-E into an enemy fortification so I won’t be a pilot on the mission to Mars.

There is such a thing as too low, John. H.

What’s yer poison?

Project Wingman. Arcady style fighter game. Not that good, not enough tactical flying just constantly blowing stuff up. Good for what it is but if I wanted fantasy I’d go back to Freespace or try Elite Dangerous. Tempted to load DCS. I think a Russian group created it. Graphics are superb, flight models based on publicly available info, install for free but have to buy various bits and pieces to enjoy it. .

I’ve seen and heard good things about Project Wingman, John. H. A great excuse to scratch an itch. 🙂

Tempted to load DCS. I think a Russian group created it. Graphics are superb, flight models based on publicly available info, install for free but have to buy various bits and pieces to enjoy it. .

The game engine is spectacular, but the cost in aircraft modules is impossible.

A good and relatively very old-school alternative is BMS 4.0, a bottom-to-top revamp and software and visual update of Microprose’s Falcon 4.0.

It isn’t as pretty and is fairly geo-locked to the Korean Peninsula, but the AI and game engine is pretty good and actually has an interactive simulated war carrying on around you. That your actions directly influence. And for the cost of $30 or $40 from Good Old Games.com and signing up to the BMS forums. There is a lot of learning curve and documentation to swallow, but there is nothing else out there like it.

If the DCS folks could provide a campaign engine like that to their system (Any of the eras modelled-40s, 70s, 80s, 90s, present day), they will be the last word in combat flight sims. Just nobody’s done it yet.

Oh that’s right.

Matrix the sycophant likes Struth because too many coherent words is unmanly.

Do you fix your A/C units by headbutting them until the ducting fits?

Growling Sidewinder channel is much more technical, with some fighter pilots taking him on.

I think I’ve seen Growling Sidewinder demonstrating energy dogfighting with the DCS Spitfire, following a rabbit trail from a great little video RickW had linked about the P-40 Kittyhawk’s energy retention and combat performance. Summary was that the P-40 was underrated by postwar historians, and was really a quite competitive little aircraft below 10,000ft, even up to the end of the war. And in 1941-2, was right up there with the current marks of 109 and Spitfire.

Graders

bespoke says:
April 2, 2022 at 6:07 am

Graders

You have a one track mind, always dragging up dirt.

Agree with CK’s article 99% . (1. These injections are not ‘vaccines’ as he calls them. 2. I’ve not seen any evidence that these injections actually reduce the risk of severe illness/death.)

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/our-cowardly-response-to-covid-is-a-lasting-disgrace/news-story/bda2fb9989166075d9fa72ddcf78a777

Our cowardly response to Covid is a lasting disgrace

CHRIS KENNY

PHOTO. Masks on … Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and MPs pose for a formal photograph. Picture: NCA NewsWire

11:00PM APRIL 1, 2022

The most frightening revelation of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we appear to be managing the decline of our nation.

Without a dramatic reboot – which is not on offer in this election – we could lose, permanently, many of the characteristics that have made us one of the most successful democracies in history.

If you want a Pythonesque example of how far we have fallen from the stoic, practical and sensible nation we once were, you only had to watch the start of question time on Wednesday when the Speaker organised an official photograph. “I would direct all members to turn around and face the official photographer – we’re leaving masks on,” he instructed.

Then, just to emphasise the ­directive and make sure there was no superspreader event, he said it again: “We are leaving masks on.”

Here, in the seat of government, 150 fully vaccinated people in a cavernous chamber duly donned their masks. Perhaps in years to come, some new technology will see through the masks in this photo so we can tell which politicians were smiling (the idiots) and which were grimacing (the smart, but foolishly compliant).

More than two years into this pandemic, with 95 per cent of the eligible population fully vaccinated, and almost 70 per cent having received booster shots, we need to procure a government permit, prove our vaccination status and submit to a Covid test in order to cross the state border into Western Australia. Masks are mandatory in airports and on planes, as well as in taxis and on public transport in most states.

In Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, people must provide proof of vaccination to enter bars, restaurants and other venues.

In most states, teachers, police, transport workers and hospital workers cannot work unless they are fully vaccinated.

This despite all the medical and scientific evidence, along with our lived experience, demonstrating that vaccination, while protecting against serious illness, does not prevent contraction or transmission of the virus.

Vaccine mandates are less about pandemic control than they are about Covid theatre. This is as illiberal and odious as it is laughable. Police, nurses, teachers, bus drivers and others are kept from their livelihoods for no good reason. And we reject their service for the same.

In South Australia, under the threat of a legal challenge, vaccine mandates have been scrapped for police, teachers and transport workers. It is past time the other states followed suit.

We are entitled to ask what sort of a country we have become when we routinely see frightened people wearing masks outdoors in the sunshine, or others donning them theatrically, even on their social media profiles, as a virtue-signal about their faith in overbearing government.

The media wear as much ­responsibility as the politicians. Unless you have been reading News Corp publications, watching Sky News, or following a handful of sensible columnists in the Nine Media newspapers, you will have been swamped by hysteria and alarmism.

It has been clear since at least March 2020 – two years ago – that children and healthy young adults have no more to fear from Covid-19 than influenza or a range or other common infections. For children, of course, influenza was and remains a greater threat.

We have flu jabs, sure, but for the past year we have had Covid-19 vaccines too. And it did not take long to get them into the vulnerable (mainly the elderly).

When I queried a range of medical experts in the first half of last year why we would not remove restrictions once the elderly were vaccinated, the standard (and, I thought, reasonable) answer was that widespread vaccinations would prevent broader transmission. It was not long before that was self-evidently untrue, but the Covid-zero fixation had taken hold, and lives were put on hold and freedoms were trampled while we waited for ridiculously high vaccination rates across populations where the majority faced no serious threat.

Yet if you questioned these policies over the past two years, you were placed in the virtual stocks and branded an “anti-vaxxer” or a “granny-killer”. The digital giants censored any dissent about the policy approach, vaccination strategy, treatments trialled by medicos, or the potential origin of the virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

We involuntarily surrendered our personal liberties, freedom of movement and, in some cases, our livelihoods, yet we were not able to question what was being imposed.

Parliaments were suspended, cabinets were not consulted, and unelected bureaucrats with narrow expertise were placed in charge without any accountability.

States closed their borders, the Australian passport became almost worthless because its chief purpose, a guaranteed right to return home, was unilaterally abandoned. And Australians at home were not allowed to leave.

Our national anthem, and the very purpose of our federation, were rendered ironic. We were neither one nor free. Some of this was forgivable, perhaps, as our early knowledge and defences were pulled together. But our current state of play is ­inexcusable.

Children who have missed months of face-to-face learning are still routinely kept home again because their sibling, parent or friend is infected. Some workplaces are still largely empty as staff who are fully vaccinated (and are bound to be infected sometime) are kept home to prevent ­infections at work. For what purpose? So the HR team can win a company prize?

The persistent demands for proof of vaccination are mindless and discriminatory because the unvaccinated are no more or less of a threat to others than the vaccinated. The unvaccinated pose a risk only to themselves – and ­unless they are vulnerable, that risk is not high.

It must be their choice. Otherwise, if we believe our laws can make health choices for others, we need to ban smoking, drinking, doughnuts, motorcycle riding, and rock fishing – just for a start.

Our self-reliance was already being smothered by a blanket of government largesse. The pandemic has thrown us a doona. This week’s federal budget has shown that fiscal reality is something for our dreams.

We have sent future generations the bill so we were able to sit out the pandemic in relative comfort. It is the very antithesis of how our forebears sacrificed their adulthoods, and more, in war time to preserve what they had for the young and the yet to be born.

This time we have panicked children about something that was never a serious threat to them, ­ruining many educations along the way. The impacts of our response, from shutdowns to school closures, disproportionately hurt the disadvantaged.

Professionals were able to work from home, and supervise their children’s remote schooling on iPads and laptops, while their asset values increased.

But children in disadvantaged homes might have lost school as a refuge, had few home-learning ­options, or seen parents lose work and struggle to pay the rent.

For the media/political class, largely on the public payroll and never under threat of unemployment, working from home was a novelty – just check out the social media posts from ABC journalists, who were sadly ignorant about the plight of small business owners, tradies or casual hospitality workers. This helps to explain why the revolt against draconian pandemic measures was not reflected in much of the political debate, and was demonised when it did emerge.

Another factor was the lack of political differentiation. The ­national cabinet – which I initially welcomed as a unifying innovation – quickly became a forum of the lowest common denominator.

Morrison had the choice of starting a monumental constitutional battle with the states (he should have) or going along with their varying responses. Only Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet in NSW had the courage and sense to push the nation towards the inevitability of living with the virus – lord knows where we would be without them.

Political oppositions, Liberal and Labor, were too timid to call out the Covid-zero approach, preferring to tarnish incumbents with every infection and death. And the media played the same game, with daily tallies as a macabre KPI.

Our traditional characteristics of self-reliance, stoicism, selflessness, distrust of authority, commitment to freedom and common sense fell by the wayside. Instead, we became a mollycoddled nation, handing over unlimited power to the very governments we mistrust, in the hope that we could be spared any confrontation with life’s only certainty – mortality.

Too many of us wanted everything controlled for us, like The Truman Show, only we volunteered for this abomination. And there is so little self-examination and debate – even now in a post-budget and pre-election environment – that it seems we have learned nothing, and would do it all again at the first sign of fever.

The absurdity was laid bare on Thursday when the courageous Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was beamed in live from some bunker in besieged Kyiv, ­addressing our political chamber of masked, socially distanced, nanny-staters eager to pay deference to his fight for freedom.

Zelensky is fighting our fight against tyranny; the one we gave up on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, the one Obama and Biden hoped might stop in Crimea.

If Zelensky and his people win, we will gain more in long-term ­security than they will ever gain from our aid. Yet we know if we swapped our leadership for theirs, our stoicism for theirs, Vladimir Putin would be leading a victory parade in Kyiv within days.

Add leftism in the judiciary to the above list. There are certainly a lot of marched through categories.

Thanks for the ‘toons, Tom.

The Ramirez one is a ripper, especially if you are familiar with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s statements about churnalists:

“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.”

“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”

Seems like a reasonable chap.

Motor vehicles have been previously exempt from capital gains tax but Tony Gouger from the Fringe Offset Opportunity Liasion department of the Federal Treasury noted “the responsibility of the Government is to identify every opportunity where Australians are able to turn a profit and clip the ticket on the way through.”

Geebus!

No one that makes a few extra bucks are safe.

rosiesays:
April 2, 2022 at 7:27 am
Australian property prices to fall

having gone up more than 25% in the last year or so, -5% is a correction. Hardly a fall.

The caper with “offering” the “Bushmaster” vehicles to Ukraine seems a little odd, to me.

The Oz designed vehicle is a “protected” vehicle, NOT an “armoured fighting vehicle”. There IS a difference.

Only having four wheels mean that if one wheel is wrecked, the vehicle is disabled; and thus a “static target” Note how “serious” wheeled armoured vehicles, like the ancient LAV design or the excellent South African Ratel, have eight and six wheels, respectively. They are also REAR engined.

Also, given that our core defence “contractor”, Thales, who make the Bushwhacker, is a totally foreign-owned entity, any benefit that actually accrues to Australia will be in a minor blip on the employment stats.

Australia has long since ceased to be a serious country.

Just re-homed my little baby to a nice young lass in Newcastle. The money you can get for a second hand car is unreal. She was chuffed – she knew she was basically getting a “new” car for an enormous discount.

My new wheels are on order. A six month wait.

@ Rosie:

“Motor vehicles have been previously exempt from capital gains tax but Tony Gouger from the Fringe Offset Opportunity Liasion department of the Federal Treasury noted “the responsibility of the Government is to identify every opportunity where Australians are able to turn a profit and clip the ticket on the way through.”

Did anyone else notice the date on the original article?

The truly tragic part is that this exercise will generate another “life imitating art”, event with the usual suspects being “inspired” to “do something about it”.

This will, as ALWAYS, be to the great detriment of the peasantry, as is intended.

Outstanding weekend thread artwork Doverlord, if I may say.

Yes, Knuckles.

A well executed metaphor for certain aspects of the OT.

Alex Antic, Senator for South Australia, explains the horrors of the WEF. In Parliament yesterday.

This is our future and we are powerless to stop them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH6YRu6qr5I

My CX3 was 6 years old but only 33k on the clock, mostly racked up when it was new and I was travelling to Sydney weekly. It hardly ticked over in the last two years.

I didn’t want to be thrashing around waiting for a buyer to pay top $, just someone who would enjoy and appreciate it. The Beloved did all the negotiations, but I met her yesterday when she picked up the keys and the baby.

The newie on order is a bit higher in the saddle, mainly because I’ll be transporting my parents here and there and it will be easier for them to get into. I suspect this year will be the one that Dad has to hand in his license.

To make it clear, the Drive article about CGT on used car sales was an April Fools Day joke.

Hard to tell these days with the Left now wanting to apply CGT to unrealized paper gains. And I’m serious about the ICE ban, that’s in the green-left canon. The EU is doing it possibly in 2025 just three years away, so are Boris’s wet Tories in 2030 only eight years away. Sure to be ALP policy, although Albo won’t say so until after the election.

weet bix and baked beans together at last

Haha, maybe this story has something to do with that.

“Fertilizer Is Out Of Control” – US Farmers Ditch Corn For Soy To Save On Costs (1 Apr)

A Bloomberg survey found that farmers will plant 2 million more acres of soybeans and about 2 million fewer of corn. That’s because soybeans require very little fertilizer versus corn.

Farmer Tim Gregerson of Omaha, Nebraska, said he’ll plant more soybeans this year because “fertilizer is out of control.” He said fertilizer prices spiked even before the Russian invasion, and it was then he decided to reduce the corn-to-soy ratio to about 50-50 this upcoming growing season.

On top of soaring fertilizer prices, he told Bloomberg, diesel, tractors, machine parts, feed for livestock, herbicide, and seed costs, and just about everything to do with farming are astronomically higher this year.

Corn flakes not on the breakfast menu next year, unless you are rich.

Regarding very good Chris Kenny article in The Australian below is my rejected post:

One of your best columns. That people are still losing their jobs over not taking an ineffective vaccine multiple times is simply outrageous.

Not one union has stood up and said enough is enough.

This is beyond politics as it affects people on left and right side of politics.

The health “experts” should not be running our lives and the politicians should not be hiding behind them. Only NSW leaders have made an effort to not restrict freedoms.

As most of us know the danger from the virus is overwhelmingly for the elderly with co-morbidities ”

You have to wonder which para did not fit the narrative. Ineffective vaccines?

Dover please ban those with man crushes on John Wick.

John Wick would love that artwork, if for no other reason that it would remind him of the bloke in JWIII who made him cut his own finger off.

Don’t know about wider doors. If the seat is a little lower than “bottom height” the elderly person can reverse, grip the door frame (or the helper’s arms) and sit. Then swivel to get their legs in. Ditto to get out.

My recently sold car was about 100mm too low, which doesn’t sound much until you’re 90.

I’m not yet at the ambulance stage of transport!

To make it clear, the Drive article about CGT on used car sales was an April Fools Day joke.

P.T. Barnum. was right. Suckers abound.

John Wick would love that artwork, if for no other reason that it would remind him of the bloke in JWIII who made him cut his own finger off.

I thought that was the mystery crim in the Reacher flick ?

Suckers abound.

Indeed Megan

Something plausible and my confirmation bias kicked in.

Remember when Bezos surrogates said that Trump hacked his phone?
Turns out the spy ware came from a video that MBS personally sent to Bezos’s phone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPdVMdFCMj8

The next question is were the Saudi’s acting on behalf of others.

We are never going to know the truth of it. The waters are too muddied with a host of other factors.

Which is a feature of the process.
Not a bug.

Never has more data been collected.
Never has the data been more kept away from the plebs.
What gets released is deliberately useless.

We’re at Stage 2 now anyway.
Only people with 3 vaxxes can work at Local Councils.
Woolworths employees must be vaxxed, so must Coles.
I’d say, by the end of the year, no unvaxxed will have a job.

…and why do I need a booster shot with Novavax given I am not immunocompromised.

Superstition trumps science.

“Just in case”

These people are as rational as gambling addicts.

My Prado has perhaps doubled in “value” from the purchase price and non ongoing maintenance costs.

Must be the crystals.

Boambee John says:
April 2, 2022 at 9:06 am

Thanks BJ, not at that stage yet myself so I didn’t know.

calli says:
April 2, 2022 at 9:18 am

All the vaxxed and the unvaxxed will die.

Shyte, you are telling us now!

This GeoThermal Energy looks interesting, would put ICE cars outta production.
https://www.quaise.energy

This GeoThermal Energy looks interesting

ROFL. Flannery’s hot rocks. Good luck with that. Only wave generators have been more useless.

But why though Stuth? He hates Jews and you hate people of Italian heritage so why erase his Jew hating comments? Are you being a boganistic dickhead?

Wadda maka you tink, I’ma no lika da wogs, JC?
I lovea da food and alla dat shit.
I even once had a woga girlfriend who was a fuckin’ a maniac in a bedroom.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have got two dicks all upset talking about such things.

I’m a no hate a you JC.
I think you fuckin a lost a da plot little fella and it isa because a da jab.
It’s a really playing on you.

Don’t worry Nino, there’s plenty more here on this blog in the same boat.
You’re not the only one to spilla da meatballs outa da spaghetti bowl.

A former neighbour of mine still gets around in his 2006 Prius.
That was just before Christmas.
He says apart from tyres and wiper blades, everything is as he bought it.
He drives like an old woman so I’m not sure if that’s a surprise.

Where did you get the 20k change over cost from. Surely not the incel?

Here, it appears to be half of what you quoted.

That’s quoting $10,000 for a dinky 24kW replacement battery. Which is great if you’re driving a Nissan Leaf and planning a weekly shopping trip.

Less good if you’re driving a modern mass market EV, like the Ioniq, with a entry level 47kW battery.

The hope for the mass market EV future seems to be the Japanese model: remanufacturing batteries, replacing the dead cells, and bringing the price down with secondhand 2-year-warranty changeover units.

Kind of like buying retreads was once an option for tyres.

Lol, bern.

I resemble that!

Stop carrying on JC.
It doesn’t work on this blog.
It’s filled with silly old pricks like you.
People who were around when the piss could be taken out of each other.
Pretending to be all butt hurt doesn’t cut it here.
People dey know, ‘owa it a used to a be……..we pulls a da piss outa you, you pulla da piss outa us.
Leave your 2022 bullshit at the gate, victimhood and claiming hate speech as the denialists turn ever more left wing in defense of their actions, …..it will be pointed out.
And I’ll always esculate.