We've run a street library for a while. I know a lot of people use it which is so good. It's a fairly quiet street but there's quite a lot of foot traffic. I quickly realised we needed an extension...
Superannuated biomed lab rat.
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We've run a street library for a while. I know a lot of people use it which is so good. It's a fairly quiet street but there's quite a lot of foot traffic. I quickly realised we needed an extension...
Thanks for the article link, I hadn't seen it. It is very metal, grandson will be impressed. The reconstruction shows a thagomiser rather than a plain club on the tail like later ankylosaurs. (Is it a thagomiser if it's on an ankylosaur rather than a stegosaur?) I can't see if they only inferred it
I wouldn't call my bees domesticated. I coax them into staying around and letting me handle them safely by understanding them as best I can. I know when they're not pleased... Very nice study, though, that will hopefully help with winter supplements where they're needed
Thanks Ronni. That's OK then, I was just worried their site might be down when they might need it
You've made my day, in a very weird way.
I just attempted to open their website, and I was met with a server misconfiguration error on Duckduckgo, and a flag and block on Opera for a possible malicious website. I don't know if this is relevant to them cancelling, but they may not be aware of it
Dear oh dear, they've woken The Mouse. How sad never mind.
It took me a while to find it, and I enjoyed it so much when I did, so I second your opinion
Thanks, other peoples' experiences are really helpful. My old i30 has lichen growing on it but the serious problems are creeping up too
I don't really have an answer to all this but I'm interested in the way it pans out with EVs. I've always bought second hand and then held on as long as is sensible, but I'm considering an EV now, as current car is a 2011 Hyundai i30 with 240k on it and it's age is showing.
Pelicans really love that style of light pole. I love pelicans, but! Never walk underneath one. They are quite big, they eat a lot of fish, and it takes quite a while to get the smell out of a woollen jumper (we still refer to the Tea Gardens Pelican Incident)
Too stupid, but maybe too lazy to learn a new grift and fearful of losing their current patron/s. The net zero grift arena is pretty crowded too.
They are both relentless and fuckwits, but the animated meat and Mr Cosplay are just gonna do what they do. I get crankier with the old school meeja who persist in pushing their bullshit in front of us when they could be covering something more relevant
That's nuts, but it's a good warning to be on yr guard. I got 3 quotes to add a battery abt a year ago, and 2 of the 3 both said at the time, with our usage patterns, it wasn't economically viable to go ahead bc the payback was too long. They did quote us on 10kWh batteries, which I thought too big
I particularly enjoyed A City on Mars because of the way you combined meticulous research and humour, and continued to acknowledge that deep attraction to the idea of space settlement even as you worked through all the ways that it's, maybe, something for the future.
In all my years I have never seen a total eclipse. As far as I can tell from the blurry map, the dotted line goes straight over my house! Excitement! Clearly there will have to be an eclipse party. I didn't know about this so thanks
I used gal iron sheet for a bit more weight. No tree was safe
Well done to the kid. Hope Fisheries do their bit.
There's a very good Australian series by a journalist Marc Fennell, called Stuff The British Stole, podcasts and video iirc. It was produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. I'm not sure of availability outside Australia
There's something really wrong with him - swamp wallabies are usually shy, and he doesn't seem to be alert to your presence, his coat is poorly groomed and there's some sort of huge mass on his back. Is he somewhere that someone from WIRES etc might be able to catch him?
Oh, I reckon we'll get: More and more foreign troops and bases. All the high level nuclear waste we can eat
True. The contrast with Eastwood over the last 40 years says it all.
Carlingford Village has been a rotting hulk since, I reckon, the mid 90s. It was home to an absolutely awful all you can eat Chinese restaurant. Unfortunately my kids liked it. I'm completely bewildered as to why it's still there.
Snap! We had a 35 year old solar heater go recently too. I replaced it like with like, though. I had one other thought. On your bill, does it refer to a "demand tariff"? Not time of day,that's different. Demand tariffs are bad for bills. You would only have either those if you have smart metering
Even if it's quarterly that's an awful lot for your situation. I'm sorry you're having to struggle with this. A Do you have electric hot water? It's a big load and expense. If it's not working properly it can cost a lot more. If it's a storage type heater it should be on an off peak tariff
Yep, probably no change in the HoR because below 3rd Pref behind Greens then Fusion where I put them, was entirely RWNJs, incl LNP. In the Senate though, I would give them no preferences at all if I was given another go. See also Marles grovelling to Trump yesterday
I enjoyed this book so much. The whole way the human / animal communication thing works in the story is so cleverly worked out. Highly recommended
SF promises strange new worlds. In @clarkeaward.bsky.social winner The Animals in that Country, the blurb is a classic 3-parter: protagonist, premise, perturb. 1) a foul-mouthed drunken granny; 2) who suddenly understand animals; 3) and hits the road with a bossy dingo to find her lost g-daughter.
She was, according to family legend, a terror to the bookies, all 4'10 of her
I've left the landline connected bc I'm lazy & it won't change the bills. I screen anyone who calls via the inbuilt answer machine. The scam calls have slowly gone away. It's been silent for weeks now.
I'm pretty old, so I (barely) remember my nanna getting done up to go to the races, and pinning her hat on. I'm pretty sure she'd have used it if she needed to
I got so much pleasure out of these books. I just enjoyed Alien Clay, too. Thanks and congratulations
I'd feel safer straight away.
Albanese, the Australian Labor PM and some other Government members post here. I'm not sure how often bc I only see when they're reposted by someone I follow. They do get a hard time, but it's mostly reasonable criticism, and deserved imo
Widely available too!
I second the 3M N95 for comfort as long as it fits you properly. Partner and I have quite different face structures and the 3Ms have worked well.
Search up Cows with Guns on YT and see how it ends. By Dana Lyons iirc
D'you reckon 730 will ever get around to talking to anyone from the actual government, or for that matter the Greens or other Senate crossbenchers? It's starting to look a bit pathological. It's also incredibly dull.
I first read The Call of Cthulhu in the late 1960s, and I'd never heard this one, so you have enriched my day. I'll have to annoy the offspring with it. They're just old enough to know what a Collect call was.
Yep. We managed to get to Epping by Metro and walked from there, about 2.5km
Indeed. Taking the scenic route, Metro to Epping and back to Eastwood
Musée de Cluny. No-one else has mentioned it and it was a favourite for me. It is a museum of medieval art and artefacts in a building to match. Most famous exhibit probably the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. Hope you enjoy wherever you visit.
Great to see the SMH going full on eugenicist. Should we start a sweep on who'll use the phrase "useless eaters" first?
This is, in fact, a rare image of the ceremonial entry of the Supreme Leader of the Heard and MacDonald Islands (left) on the occasion of their announcement of enormous tariffs on all US imports.
From my very limited experience (one LG election as an electoral officer) their card will be well and truly marked
There's not enough info in these reports. The prosecution appears to be saying the death caps were dried and powdered, so there'd be no identifiable bits, except maybe for spores. I think you'd have to prepare the sample. I've done that sort of thing but not with food samples.
When I visit Taronga Zoo in Sydney, I make a point of visiting the binturongs to see if they'd moved from the last time. It's a long standing joke with us
Give this a Like or even a RT if you want to see billionaires forced to pay tax like everyone else.
"Sentient" is a stretch... I also liked "slightly better than syphilis". I might have to start using "you pelican". I missed this post earlier so thank you for the laugh.
It is all of that, and sometimes I feel all I can do is make a joke of it. I've had no success with trying rational argument.
Thanks. We have a pretty targeted list, and manage it manually. There's always an unsubscribe option there. In the end it's just courtesy, which the likes of Palmer and Fong wouldn't understand.
It's all in a 1971 report by the noted cetacean scholar Philip Jose Farmer, "The Wind Whales of Ishmael". Or possibly the "dead whales" lot are on whatever PJF was inhaling when he wrote it. It's very odd even for him
I have to comply with the anti-spam laws, marketing our very small business. That's fine, I don't want to harass people if they aren't interested, and I don't like useless spam myself. But I really resent the carve out for political junk.
I've taken to calling them the Dog Trumpets, in honour of the old Mambo image. It's brain farts all the way down with this lot, so it fits
I sort of thought this was a feature, not a bug
I get paper wasp nests under the porch of my work shed and yes, they do sometimes just disappear. They don't bother me much, quite docile
It's very uneven, then. I've had no texts from Labor, one from the Libs and one from the Dog Trumpets. Plus a small number of emails from the Libs which go straight to the spam folder. Not much all up, which I'm quite happy about
Oh, that was poor of them. I was warned not to schedule anything too important for a day or two, and that was right. Fwiw both doses seemed about the same degree of unpleasant. I hope you're up to speed again soon
This is fabulous! Australia needs a local edition. We have just the birds for it, starting with sulphur crested cockatoos and bin chickens all the way to cassowaries.
I went to Montreal briefly in midwinter for work in ?2004. It never got above -5. My boots froze and my Quebecois and northern European colleagues laughed at them. Despite not transiting mainland US, I was searched by US border types at Vancouver Airport.
Me too, def too old to have had measles vaccine. I don't remember it (probably too young) but my titre is still high. I got it checked recently as I'm going to the UK soon. I do remember having chicken pox, not fun, still have a scar. Both my kids got everything available.
This weird little orchid is flowering again. Bulbophyllum rothschildianum
I just consulted my handy version of the periodic table colour coded by whether you can/should lick it or not, and yes, La comes up green.
I'd read about how harsh it gets there. Here water allocation in the big Murray Darling Basin gets very political - too much agriculture chasing too little water. It's very dry country. Water rights trading by entities without a presence in the basin is permitted, which IMHO is just stupid
I voted a couple of hours ago at Eastwood Baptist CC, it was nuts with the number of Lib corflutes and bodies, some pushing HTVs even when I'd said no. I had to tell two of them to stop obstructing access. This overkill been going on for weeks. How can anyone think this is good campaigning?
Yes, gotta collect that roof run-off before it touches the ground. On ground, it might still be yours. I'm in suburban Sydney. ~30 yrs ago, tanks were illegal here, mains water only. I've now got abt 1500 gal storage, and new houses *must* have tanks hooked to their rain gutters. Things change.
Australian here, we get very exercised about water too, but if rain falls on your property and you collect it directly, it's yours. Groundwater's different. I had a little house abt 150 miles NNW of Sydney, and it had a 4,000 gal tank. Guy who bought it was going to put in 50 kL, abt 12,500 gal
I have gone to the outer reef occasionally since the 1970s. I last went in 2022, taking a family member who'd never been. Fish and invertebrate diversity and abundance was very poor. Coral bleached & overgrown. This was at two of the tour co's "select sites". I don't ever want to go again.
Not everyone loves the Marsh Frogs. Ex-Neighbour: you have a weird dripping tap. Me: Oh, that's a frog. EN: No it's not. M:Yes, here it is. There's lots. EN:You have to get rid of them. There was a long exchange then about wild animals and protected species and how they'd just come back... Sigh.
I'm in Eastwood in Sydney. The Perons TFs are relatively new, and not numerous, also it's cooling down so they just make sad trombone noises. We've got several ponds so we're up to our ears in Marsh Frogs.
Which frogs do you have? We get lots of striped marsh frogs and some Perons tree frogs. That's a very nice filter. Isn't it great when something you've made works.
Yung runs an "education business" acc to his LNP bio, and he didn't understand how many child protection red flags that little stunt raised? I run activities in schools sometimes. I can't believe he did that. Spot on with the wider point of the cartoon too, as always
I've heard him speak once on radio and he came across to me as clumsily evasive. I don't think they'll ditch him though. There's a lot of resources going into this seat. Going to buy milk has become a bit of a trial
Maybe mango musso has vaguely heard the mutineers from the Bounty finished up on Norfolk, and they must be punished (their descendants did - the place has an amazing history)
They have a substantial number of pine trees and very scenically arranged. Can recommend a visit. Do you think that they just randomly applied extra tariffs to some small territories to make it look like they knew what they were doing?
Norfolk Id is a) Australian territory, and b) Doesn't export anything relevant that I can think of. It is however beautiful and historically fascinating and the locals are welcoming. The idiots have just pulled up the Wikipedia entry on phone codes, haven't they.
I still have a faint scar in my lower lip from the hardwood swing I took in the face when I was four years old. We were too poor for concrete, just dirt and rocks and tetanus around our roundabouts.
I didn't look closely first time I saw it ( why would you?) but I think you're right. It can't be what they were trying for, I wonder who looked at this and thought "That'll do".
I'm Australian so it would have to be koala. Sloth vibe but with fresh eucalyptus scent.
You're right, I can't see why you wouldn't go straight on them. Maybe ask the GP why. Fwiw, I've been taking statins for yonks, no problems, and my lipid profile has stayed well under control.
The moral is, I guess, if you think you're not right, keep pushing for answers. Also, try to have someone with you, and take notes. Get copies of reports. I worked in biomed for years, and I was dismayed by how bad it was.
I hope you make a good recovery, Fiona. All the best. I second what you said about being a woman with atypical symptoms, & add being older makes it worse. My partner was months getting properly treated. Even when she got classic left arm & chest pain she was dismissed.
So this probably is who was grunting and bellowing outside my window last night. He's a very big boy.
There's more chance of digging HMAS Otway out of the park in Holbrook and recommissioning it, than there is of Australia ever receiving any the nukular boats.
No GHOs here (Sydney AU). We do have Powerful Owls and they're messy eaters too. One was using a tree in my yard as a snack station for a bit and it was random fragments of ringtail possum all over the grass for a few weeks.
Don Ritchie was a national treasure (he died about 12 years ago). I don't know if I could approach someone so distressed like that. He pretty much shamed local authorities into making safety improvements along the top of the Gap, too. Thanks for the reminder of him
This is true, and I was using a bit of hyperbole, but "averages out" does a lot of work here. The end result impoverishes the voters' ability to make an informed choice. Long term, it will reduce the choice on offer.
He's being entirely truthful, isn't he? "You" are limited to a spend of $800,000. "We" will do whatever we like.
My bat plant is definitely enjoying the hot, humid Sydney summer. Me, not as much
Yes, there's been nothing to stop this happening earlier. Once I accepted that a govt could say they had to work their way through things, only so many sitting days etc. Now I've seen so often what does get priority & rushed through. Now, for me if it hasn't happened it's just cheap bullshit.
It is indeed very good news. All the best, Jon
I remember the episode of Clarke and Dawes' The Games where some random turns up with a "drug testing machine" that gave an instant result just by putting your hand on it. I worked on the Sydney Games as a doping control analyst, and the bizarre ideas we had to listen to about how to "fix it"...
It's telling that no-one in govt can pick this for bullshit, and it's got this far. Scientific illiterates the lot of them.
It hasn't improved...
These are brilliant. If you're ever thinking of a working holiday, there's some places in Straya that could do with your very special treatment. Bondi, Manly in Sydney, Byron Bay, Gold Coast in Queensland. And Canberra.
Surveys unnecessary, your brain implant will pass on any info needed. And you better be sure it's the right info
Just like colonising Mars, except for the bit on Mars where you're utterly dependent for every breath of air, sip of water and bite of food on the approval of an erratic, billionaire fascist. The novel Bear Head, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, visualises it convincingly.
I have been trying to work out how your correspondent got from the Southern Reach to wherever the hell they are and it's taken my mind off some medical stuff this morning. Thanks for sharing!
It was (and is). I watched it again recently and it is still a very big favourite
Hey, I liked Ray Harryhausen! I was very young and impressionable though.