My Australian town is almost as bad as American ones because it was built after cars became necessary

It has decent bike paths and painted bike lanes on many roads. Riding to local centres is easy, or to any of the five or so nearby schools (which gets a lot of kids onto bikes), but if you work a desk job it is probably in one of the three big centres and you’re likely to live up to an hour by bike away. So few adults get around by bike

That’s only because America makes terrible public transit

1. Are you saying the problem is cars are too expensive and too expensive to maintain because they are too complex?

Cheap cars are more dangerous. Simpler cars have higher emissions. I think the more complex ones are better. I would like to see legislation against the anti repair methods manufacturers use

2. Cars let you take longer trips. One of the Australian capitals had a train to the beach towns. That right of way was taken by a highway and the railway now only runs a tourist route between the three or four beach towns but not to the city

With cars less needed other transit methods get built for popular trips

Failing all that, hire a car the few times of year you want an out of town holiday would be cheaper even than a very cheap car

3. This one is completely correct. Last time I had a car problem I had a choice of tow companies and mechanics. Government services are monopolies but they’re pretty proof against failure. The worst that might happen is you might buy a car that turns out to be less valuable than you expected because it’s bad quality or the company owner turns out to be a nazi. But even that only costs you if you need to sell the vehicle.

I envy you for your walkable city. I don’t think I did better by getting a thousand square metre block and a detached house. I’d like to see our cities made walkable and the outer suburbs connected by rail so no one needs a car. I’d like to see cars banned from the city centre except working vehicles, taxis, disabled people, tourists with a hotel in town. For long trips off the transit network one would take a train to a car hire depot out of the city and drive from there. Hopefully cars will be sufficiently smart that the fact the drivers will have little practices will be mitigated

Public owned Telecom Australia charged like a wounded bull and provided poor service in connection or repair.

Telecom disabused me of the idea that government monopolies wouldn’t exploit their monopoly position

The secure solution is electronic access control on the door. A key box is very hard to secure

Kelvins are abbreviated to capital K

Cool to 25, heat to 20 (Canberra, Australia)

IRL 1984 was fine. America was still good; the Soviet Union didn’t nuke us all

Australia prefills all the information from employers, banks, share market registers so most people can log onto the government website, go to their tax account and accept the prefilled form

I didn’t sift mine. Hope it tastes good to you!

Musk is a shit, but lying doesn’t help

The last attempted helicopter prison escape in the Wikipedia list is from 2020

Hijinks are harder now than they were in the '80s but not extinct; though even in the '80s success rarely lasted more than a few months for helicopter escapees

How the fuck you do get a bullet to the head and then try the same shit again?

Perhaps he was not unharmed by the bullet in the head

It looks like Vevor make a knock off of the Excalibur 10 tray one at about a fifth of the price

In some of the advertising copy on Amazon they call it a beef jerky dehydrator

Australian Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/VEVOR-Food-Dehydrator-Machine-Temperature/dp/B0C5XK6ZT4

It looks like it’s on American Amazon too, though Amazon.com was only showing me the 220V ones

It seems a fraction smaller than the Excalibur — 0.77m² for Vevor compared to 0.86m² for the Excalibur top model

I also found “biltong box” on Amazon which seems to be comparable, but also supports hanging the product being dried

Biltong boss USA: https://kalaharikhabu.com/product/the-biltong-boss-biltong-drying-chamber/

Australia: https://kalahari.net.au/product/biltong-boss/

Victoria’s comments about being drawn to carnivore by videos - all the carnivore YouTube doctors look so healthy, while the vegan YouTube doctors look sick and gaunt

You really can see people’s diets on their faces

I really loved my Trinitron, but it needed so much space

I’m thinking of doing a DIY dehydrator made of a cardboard box, heat lamp, fan

I have a cheap dehydrator which dries meat in about 16 hrs, but it only can handle about 3kg

I’m also thinking of just doing small batches until summer and let the sun do the work

Flat CRTs were excellent though.

That’s been the military’s job for most of history - keep the king in power

My mother fed me brains as a kid. They smelled terrible cooking but tasted great