bust

Hope you cook better than you take photos. Though that wouldn't be too difficult.

Unfortunately these days you have more rights as a minority than the majority.

World record bid for fastest typing of alphabet using the nose Omkar Palav makes his attempt to be the fastest person to type the alphabet with his nose. In short: An Adelaide man has attempted to set a new Guinness World Record at typing the alphabet with his nose. Hitting the space bar in between each letter, he did it in 20 seconds and 51 milliseconds. What's next? Omkar Palav has sent off evidence of his attempt to be verified by Guinness World Record officials. Forget about the Olympics, at least for a few more days, because an Adelaide man may have just broken the Guinness World Record for typing the alphabet with his nose. Yes, you heard that correctly. Omkar Palav has typed out each letter of the alphabet with only his nose in 20 seconds and 51 milliseconds. While his attempt is yet to be verified by Guinness World Records, if considered legitimate — and the evidence suggests it is — he will have beaten Indian man Vinod Kumar Chaudhary who reportedly did it in 25.66 seconds in May. "As per Guinness World Record guidelines I have to put my hands behind me, and I have to type out the alphabet with a space between each letter from A to Z," Mr Palav told ABC Radio Adelaide. "When I am actually attempting, I wouldn't know if I've done it correctly or not [without any nose typos]. "There are times when I could figure out that I might have gone wrong, but ultimately I was able to do that successfully." Omkar Palav tries to be the fastest at typing the alphabet with his nose.(Supplied: Mike Hill) Mr Palav employed a photographer and videographer to record evidence of the attempt at the Findon Community Centre over the weekend, as well as the necessary officials. "I have to involve two independent witnesses, usually people with certified professional documents in Australia. So I contacted two lawyers to witness that event, and two professional timekeepers from Athletics SA and The SA Athletic leagues," he said. "It's something that is very new and is quite surprising that somebody is typing with their nose. "It's a bit hilarious sometimes but they kindly agreed to participate and I was very thankful to them because without them it was not possible." Officials take careful stock of Omkar Palav's world record attempt.(Supplied: Mike Hill) Mr Palav has uploaded the evidence for Guinness World Records to analyse and confirm, which could take up to three months for a standard application — unless he pays a fee to fast-track the process. His first attempt at record An IT worker for 15 years, Mr Palav said he had been training for a month to achieve the feat, and this was his first attempt at the record. "Based on my typing skills, I just figured out this could be done," he said. "I was determined and committed to make this happen but, mostly, I have to bend continuously and move my nose and my face across for different letters in different angles along with the space bar. "It was quite challenging, but I was able to figure out that sequence and make it happen." Mr Palav is now looking at records involving typing the alphabet with only his "pinkies", and typing "100 decimal digits of mathematical constant pi". "But I'm yet to practise that. That is something I'll do in the future," he said. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-23/guinness-world-record-to-type-alphabet-with-nose-at-speed/104131164

I carry a couple of these in my car and use them regularly

Authorities charge American man over fatal stabbing of Perth man in Krabi, Thailand A Perth man has died after being stabbed while holidaying in Thailand. It's understood the 35-year-old was stabbed in his abdomen around 2am on Monday outside a bar in the coastal resort town Krabi. He was rushed to hospital but died from his injuries. Thai police have arrested a 43-year-old American man and charged him over the death and possessing a weapon without permission. It's understood he will be detained at Krabi prison and the Australian man's body was awaiting an autopsy at a local hospital. Local police have told the ABC the men did not know each other. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed the man's death in a statement and said it was providing consular assistance to his family. "We send our deepest condolences to the family at this difficult time," the department said. "Owing to our privacy obligations, we are unable to provide further comment."

Many a problem has been resolved or at least forgotten with a BJ 😉

Not sure if you have read about Project 2025 but it's a frightening idea. And yesterday The Donald was quoted as saying he "took a bullet for democracy" Do his supporters have any idea how the rest of the world regard them?

She is an American country music singer-songwriter. She first gained prominence when her US breakthrough single, "More Hearts Than Mine" peaked at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. Ironically her biggest hit was a Platinum-certified, GRAMMY-nominated No. 1, “Wishful Drinking (with Sam Hunt)," which was ranked by Billboard as one of the Top 10 most-played songs on country radio in 2022.

The company said the update, designed to target malicious system communication tools in cyber attacks, triggered a "logic error" that resulted in an operating system crash on Windows systems (Mac and Linux users were not affected). This is why I would never use anything but a Mac

Should have kept Ingrid away from the bar before she was handed the mic

Seems to be more than just the either side of the ditch. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz says a global tech outage affecting various businesses was caused by a "defect" in a "single content update" for Windows hosts.

Seeing it's only days away could be some interesting stories Paris Olympics 2024: Japanese gymnastics captain Shoko Miyata withdraws from Games after violating code of conduct by smoking Teenage star Shoko Miyata is out of the Paris Olympics after violating the Japanese team's code of conduct by smoking in the lead-up to the Games. Japan's women's artistic gymnastics captain Shoko Miyata has withdrawn from the Paris Olympics after violating the team's code of conduct by smoking. Miyata's coach, Mutsumi Harada, said the 19-year-old had been "spending her days really burdened with so much pressure". Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japan women's artistic gymnastics team, has withdrawn from the squad for the Paris Games after violating the team's code of conduct by smoking, the Japanese Gymnastics Association said on Friday. JGA officials said Miyata arrived in Japan on Thursday after leaving the team's training camp in Monaco for investigation, which confirmed the violation including drinking alcohol. The women's squad would compete with four athletes instead of five, the JGA told a media conference. "We apologise from the bottom of our hearts for this," JGA president Tadashi Fujita said, bowing deeply along with other officials including Miyata's personal coach, Mutsumi Harada. Hopes had been high for the Japan women's gymnastics team, which was seeking to win a team medal at the Paris Games for the first time since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Miyata had been expected to lead a team comprised entirely of first-time Olympians and teenagers after she secured her Paris berth in May with a third consecutive NHK trophy. Coach Harada said that while Miyata's conduct had been reckless, she had been under extreme pressure to perform at the highest level. "She was spending her days really burdened with so much pressure," he said, wiping away tears. "I would implore people to understand that." Mental health facing young athletes took centre stage at the last Olympic Games in Tokyo when gymnastics superstar Simone Biles pulled out of one competition after another.

Reports here are it's Crowd Strike

Watched a bit of The Donald's address to the Republican Convention. What a gullible bunch of supporters he has. His dramatic re-enactment of the assassination attempt was hilarious He recalled the moment he turned his head to look at a chart on a screen to his right, and heard a loud whizzing sound before feeling something hit him "really, really hard" on his right ear. Then, he said, there was blood, "just absolutely blood all over the place".

How Laos' plans to fast-track development left it facing a debt and inflation crisis Laos has built scores of hydropower dams along the Mekong River in a bid to speed economic development. In short: Laos borrowed big — mainly from China through the Belt and Road Initiative — to fund an ambitious infrastructure program. Some have accused China of carrying out "debt-trap diplomacy" by intentionally luring Laos into taking on huge loans it cannot pay. What's next? Defaulting, or declaring itself unable to pay its debtors, is one option for Laos, providing an opportunity to restructure its debt and apply for concessional loans. Laos is in serious economic trouble. The developing South-East Asian country borrowed big — mainly from China through the Belt and Road Initiative — to fund an ambitious infrastructure program. With the goal of becoming the region's "battery", it built about 80 hydropower dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries. But the revenue from the infrastructure is yet to flow through and the debt repayments are mounting up. Laos' total government-guaranteed domestic and international debt reached $US13.8 billion, or 108 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, last year. About half the $US10.5 billion owed to other countries is owed to China — though the details of the loans have remained opaque. It begs the question, could Laos soon go broke? What led to the debt crisis? The former French protectorate has been a one-party socialist republic since the Lao People's Revolutionary Party came to power at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. It's got a population of about 8 million people, with most employed in agriculture, largely subsistence rice farming. The economy was continuing to experience solid growth through the 2010s, with borrowed money flowing in to fund the infrastructure program. But things went south during the pandemic, with Laos' currency, known as the kip, depreciating heavily, which in turn fuelled rampant inflation. Laos' headline inflation averaged 31 per cent over 2023, according to the World Bank. "The main factor in the kip's falling value has been the lack of foreign currency available in country, a result of the need to repay large external debts, despite some deferrals, and limited capital inflows," the World Bank said in a report last year. Laos borrowed billions to pay for its hydropower dams. Kearrin Sims, an adjunct senior lecturer in development studies at James Cook University, said Laos had been borrowing "fairly heavily and arguably unsustainably". While the new infrastructure included transport projects such as highways and a joint-venture railway line with China, he said the hydropower projects were the biggest contributor to the sovereign debt issue. He added that the problem was amplified by the slowing of economic growth during the pandemic, but that was true for many countries. "If you look at the kind of longer-term trends with respect to Laos' debt, it's clear that this is a problem that started well before the pandemic," he said. He said trying to achieve rapid economic growth, and in turn development, through large-scale infrastructure projects was a flawed approach. "Large-scale infrastructures can make important contributions to development, and often require borrowing to finance," he said. "It is not that all infrastructure financing in Laos should stop, but that a more balanced approach to development is needed — one that prioritises poverty alleviation, human development, and sustainable resource management over economic growth and resource extractivism." Laos' debt obligations means less money in the budget for things like education and social services. How are people in Laos being affected? Dr Sims said the money going to repay the debt was money not going into things like education, healthcare, social services and other kinds of public goods. "In the context of Laos, a lower-middle income economy, that has real effects for poverty alleviation efforts, for the ability of Laos to achieve sustainable development goals," he said. The director of the Lowy Institute's Indo-Pacific Development Centre, Roland Rajah, said the depreciation of the kip and inflation had devastated Lao households. "Measured consumer prices have roughly doubled, including for essentials like food and medicine," he said. "People in urban areas have been the worst affected as they rely more on cash incomes and imported food." Urban people in Laos are being affected more by the economic problems. (Reuters) Keith Barney, an associate professor at ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy, said the rural population could rely to some extent on locally grown or foraged food supplies. "However, especially for the urban poor and lower middle classes, their spending power has been significantly reduced," he said. "This affects their ability to purchase adequate quantities of healthy and nutritious food as well as things like spending on education and health. "The economic crisis has been a disaster for Lao youth who are dropping out of schooling at record rates, with thousands heading across the border into Thailand or further afield, to find any work in a foreign currency." Why have the debts become such a problem? Dr Barney said after all the spending on dams and transmission lines the state electricity company Électricité du Laos (EdL) owed about 40 per cent of Laos' public and publicly-guaranteed debt. He said the reasons for the big debt were "multi-causal and cascading" including: "over-lending" and poor due diligence by Chinese banks; "over-borrowing" by Laos with the sheer number of project loans appearing to overwhelm the utilities' capacity effectively manage so many large and complex energy projects; over-estimated domestic energy demand projections which justified these investments; a seasonal mismatch between hydropower energy supply and demand forcing Laos to re-import expensive electricity from Thailand in the dry season; and poor planning between the large number of hydropower dams targeting the domestic energy market and the extent of high voltage transmission infrastructure needed to deliver that output to load centres; and EdL sale prices of electricity falling below cost recovery. The result was a large surplus in domestic energy production capacity, and stranded and idled hydropower projects. Meanwhile, the deep depreciation of the kip meant that the value of the revenue EdL was receiving in local currency was shrinking relative to the debt repayments and operational expenses priced in US dollars. Mr Rajah said problems were "almost inevitable". "Laos simply borrowed too much for projects that could only pay off over the long term but it had to start making big repayments to China now," he said. Laos' foreign debt problem has exacerbated runaway inflation. Has China snared Laos in a 'debt trap'? Some have accused China of carrying out "debt-trap diplomacy" by intentionally luring Laos into taking on huge loans so that Beijing can seize its assets or increase its geopolitical influence. It's a charge Beijing denies. China had been carrying out "mutually beneficial cooperation" with developing countries including Laos that involved strong support for economic and social development, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently told Bloomberg. The ministry said the "debt-trap" allegations were part of US attempts to disrupt Beijing's cooperation with developing countries. "It cannot deceive the majority of developing countries," the ministry said. China and Laos worked on a joint-venture project to link the Lao capital Vientiane with the Chinese border by rail. (Reuters) Dr Sims said there was an open debate about the use of the term "debt-trap diplomacy" and whether China was using it more than other countries. He pointed out that other development partners like the Asian Development Bank had been calling for Laos to invest in infrastructure such as hydropower. "China's just been the one to pop in the money," he said. However, he said that it was clear loaning money to another country brought political leverage as well. "I think we can say with confidence if we have a very high debt, like in the case of Laos, to another country then that country bears influence politically and economically," he said. How is Laos digging itself out of the hole? Mr Rajah said the Lao government was now "essentially scrounging around trying to raise money, especially in foreign currency, any way it can". "That includes borrowing domestically and selling state assets," he said. "The main thing keeping Laos afloat at the moment, though, is that Laos has been allowed to defer its debt repayments to China, which are very large. "But each year Laos has had to negotiate with China to secure this, which is not a sustainable solution. "And in any case Laos still needs to find more money because it still has to make other debt payments and meet its import needs." Dr Barney said the measures Laos was taking did not seem to be able to lower inflation, or get the Lao currency moving in the right direction. "Inflation is sticking at around 25 per cent, and the kip continues to slowly lose value after having depreciated by 60 per cent since 2019," he said. "At the end of 2024, Laos is likely to meet one definition of 'hyperinflation', defined as 100 per cent of compounding inflation over three years. "Again this just piles on the pressure for meeting external debt repayments. "We think Laos needs to chart another pathway out of its economic crisis." How close is Laos to defaulting? Defaulting, or declaring itself unable to pay its debtors, is one option for Laos. It would be an opportunity to restructure its debt and apply for concessional loans at low interest rates from institutions like the International Monetary Fund. But defaulting could also make future borrowing more difficult and expensive. Dr Sims said due to Laos' lack of transparency — particularly in relation to the loans with China — it was hard to say how close the country was to that outcome. "Whether or not a country defaults is largely dependent, not so much on the country itself, but on its borrowers," he said. "They're the ones that have the means to prevent a default by offering debt relief. "So with more than half of Laos' foreign debt being held by China, whether or not it defaults is largely, but not exclusively, dependent on whether or not China would choose to bail Laos out, offer delays on debt repayments, things like that." He said it was worth noting that defaulting may not be the worst possible outcome. "A number of countries have in the past defaulted on their debt and sometimes it hasn't resulted in the kinds of consequences that are sometimes threatened," he said. Mr Rajah said ultimately Laos needed substantial debt write-offs rather than just continued short-term deferrals from China. "At the moment it seems Laos and China both hope that Laos can just grow its way out of its debts," he said. "It's the classic 'extend and pretend' but that's just unrealistic given the size of the debts and would come at huge social costs for Laos. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-18/laos-debt-crisis-hydropower-infrastructure-loans/104080736