mike carey

Yes, he persists in using the wrong pronouns for the poor masseuse!

Random content posted on an Australian twitter account, and captioned 'for my birthday I've been gifted treasures beyond my wildest dreams'. I'm sure he'll be delighted he's inadvertently posted a tribute to @RadioRob!

Now that has class!

Different countries, different brands, but there are choices here about which one you want. I went out and bought some pastry after hearing that segment on the radio. Store brand, $2.30 ($US1.65) for a one kilo packet, six sheets 25x25cm, great for simple recipes like sausage rolls and quiches. I'd pay more for a fancy dessert recipe. That price isn't much more than a kilo of flour.

Pastry is one of my things to buy rather than make from scratch list. Short crust pastry I'll happily make, although more often for savoury pies (using meat dripping) than sweet ones, where I'm happy to buy sheets of pastry from the freezer section. Fillo pastry I wouldn't dream of trying to make, although I rarely use it. Puff pastry is a different matter, I don't use it often and when I do, I usually use bought pastry. I seem to remember trying to make it with mixed results, but that was in the olden days. Now, not so sure, but this 15 minute segment (with the recipe in the notes) sparked my interest although not yet to action. I was interested in the 'you get what you pay for' bit about cheap pastry being made with margarine but if you want butter in it you need to pay more. It was also interesting to hear the ease with which folding and refolding it as you roll it out so quickly leads to 1,000 layers. It's obvious when you think about it, I just hadn't done so. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/annie-smithers/13955058

Yes, I'd posted about her on the weekend, in the music forum. My purpose above was to add Archie to the two of whom I thought the average US reader would have been aware. I should have made it clear that my sadness was in having a third prominent Australian musician die within such a short time.

Term deposits (as they are called here) are still well below the rate of inflation (and the interest payments are taxed) so it's not exactly a growth strategy to invest in them. At best, short term deposits are a place to earn some interest while you park the funds pending some other use for them. I'm far more interested (pun not intended) in my main bank (alone AFAIK) paying 1.75% on my transaction account. Most such accounts pay at most 0.1% p.a. It's inevitable that people have some funds that they need to have fast access to, whether that's immediately or in a few weeks or months. Any interest on that money is a bonus.

Mate, you sound like a delightful person to engage with. It's clear you get off on chatting about sexy stuff! I'll now start talking with you!! /s/

Buildings in the city of Melbourne have been illuminated in pink this evening in tribute to Dame Olivia.

Her work in that field has featured in the TV coverage here. The director of the centre in the Austin Hospital in Melbourne was interviewed during the day.

It's been a sad time for Australian music, Archie Roach, a great indigenous musician also died just over a week ago. I was in Hawai'i on an exchange posting in 1987 (ish) when she opened one of her stores there (in the Kahala Mall). With an Australian Army and an RAN colleague, I was invited to the opening to add some extra Australian 'colour' to the event. Vale.

I think 'sent' is what that curved arrow means. Then it changes successively to the single and double tick icons.

On Firefox on my Windows computer it's CTRL + or - Essentially it magnifies everything on your screen (or makes it smaller). In Firefox, in the bar at the top of the screen there is the URL and to the right of that the magnification level (I see 133% atm).

From my experience it's: Delivered to their account ✅ Opened (more precisely they have looked at the convo with you) ✅✅ But not said with any degree of certainty!

Firefox on a windows machine here, but that aside... I've found changing the zoom level (and it seems to be inconsistent as to whether zooming up or down does it) adds extra formatting options. As I'm typing, the chain is there and I get more icons after a few changes of zoom level in both directions. I've had trouble with the strike-through icon which sometimes doesn't appear no matter what I do.

Judith Durham will be accorded a State Funeral in Melbourne. The Victorian premier announced on Sunday afternoon that her family had accepted the government's offer. A date for the funeral has yet to be set.

It seems that a likely purpose of this thread is to prompt discussion and it seems it has, although few days' lists attract any commentary. As I understand it this is a list composed by one of those 'list of' apps and is posted here automatically so doesn't [standard disclaimer] management views here! And Princeton, Indiana, btw. (I confess that I have been surprised that there are so many non-US events recorded in these posts!)

And it is: Her voice has been part of the soundtrack of my life.

I wasn't challenging the medical consensus, nor was I clutching at pearls, and I'm not the one engaging in condescending dismissals of anyone. You're right, their language is not imprecise and I didn't say it was. I said that yours was. Right now, in rich western countries transmission is primarily as a result of sexual contact, so of course caution and probably abstinence are prudent. Strange as it may seem, 'rich western countries' and 'now' are not the only contexts in which this disease occurs.

Excerpts from the Seekers' 50th Anniversary Concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Judith Durham, the singer whose unique voice took the Australian group The Seekers to fame in the 1960s has died in Melbourne at the age of 79. https://7news.com.au/entertainment/judith-durham-lead-singer-of-australian-band-the-seekers-dies-aged-79-c-7781329

... At the moment! A pedantic clarification, it's true that currently the virus is primarily being transmitted sexually, but that relates to the distribution of the disease now, not its general transmissibility. (In April 2020 most cases of Covid in Sydney were in aged care homes, but that didn't mean Covid was primarily transmitted in them. All it meant was that was what was happening then.) That is in no way to play down the importance of publicising sexual transmission as the greatest current risk. Among gay and MSM, the distinction is less important at the moment because we want to know how best to protect ourselves. What we should avoid is playing down other transmission paths. If your partner has the disease you really need to know that handling bed linen and clothes is a risk. Precision in language is also important in trying to prevent a false narrative that it's a gay disease.

Call it 27 degrees and you won't notice it at all. Promise!

The Australian government announced yesterday that they have entered contracts for 450K doses of a third generation vaccine, with about 22K to arrive this week and a total of 100K this year. State and territory health departments will manage vaccinations including setting criteria for which cohorts will receive them. There were limited supplies of earlier generation vaccines before this.