@BillyBones

Yeah. I was actually diagnosed as an arachnophobe when I was ten and newly arrived in Oz. The psychologist said it was a reasonable fear, given that we routinely caught Funnelwebs in our house.

I'm cautious but not remotely scared now.

Also not scared of sharks, even though I've seen them up close and even had one try to knock my 12' sailboat over once. And I even like snakes, including the second most poisonous one in the world that lives in the bush I walk through every day.

@stueytheround

Actually, those White-tailed House Spiders are the ones that bother me more than any of them TBH.

They're everywhere, and there are stories about their bite causing all manner of people's bits to fall off 😬

@BillyBones

@BillyBones

This is the tone that I always hear in my head when I plug a humbucker guitar into my Marshall, but never quite manage to get 🤷‍♂️

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q13EUUsIsFE

The sustain!!!!

@BillyBones

😂

FWIW - the big buggers can't kill ya, and only the little Sydney Funnelweb is a worry.

I can report first-hand that those piddly redback ones (I think Yanks call them black widows?) can't even sting through a slightly leathered 50+ yo man's hand. You only have to check under the outside toilet seat for them, and she'll be right 👍

@BillyBones

I'm still jelly about MIck's tone.

Just even once getting the tone he and Paul Kossoff got is my life goal, TBH 🤣

@IrelandTorin

Where I live, people voted for a guy that they openly hated for years because he was in the party they habitually voted for.

Then, he became Prime Minister and his own party knifed him out of the job in his first term because he was crap, but even that didn't stop him getting re-elected to his seat.

It was only when he literally ran out of the Parliament to avoid voting on legalising same-sex marriage, even though 75%+ of us voted for it in a plebiscite that he lost his seat.

Dinosaur Jr - Feel the Pain
Letterman 1994

I'll take 90s angst for $1,000, Ken.

*buzzes*

What is....

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

#CosoMusic

@stueytheround

Pretty useful fast-medium bowler too. She's only 19 and fairly diminutive, so she'll probably be able to stay healthy and not have the injuries that the tall bowlers seem to get.

@stueytheround

Yup! 👍

@MookyTroubadour

True. It worked just fine for me with no buffering at all on my Mac here in Australia, but I hear it was pretty 💩 in North America 😂

'Elderly abuse'?!?!!??!??!

1. Mike's 58 and only a few years older than me, so I'm a tad insulted. 😂
2. He knew precisely what he was doing.
3. I obviously voted for the winner, and I, equally obviously, think 27% of the newspaper readers who voted missed the point.

Of course there's video 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-B_ily2xNs

We're watching the Women's #Cricket, and they just showed a clip of a player in the dugout realising that she was on camera in bare feet. She hides her feet and then makes a *gimme some money* gesture to the camera, and now Milly Illingworth is my favourite player who has ever been. 😂 🤣

@th3j35t3r @Tacitus_Kilgore @Minholkin

Sometimes a thing is genuinely perfect.

@IrelandTorin

I honestly believe it's more tribal than any kind of rational thing. People have shown time and time again that they will stay aligned with a flaming paper bag full of cow chips as long as it has their party logo on it.

Their dislike/fear of the other outweighs everything else, and they tell themselves it's all okay until either they capitulate or the abuse becomes too much to bear.

The latter is, sadly, the minority case in my experience 🤷‍♂️

I'm actually not a big fan of former Australian PM - now Ambassador to the USA - Kevin Rudd, but all this scrutiny over his T**** criticism is making him look pretty good.

The enemy of mine enemy etc.

Yeah... This is more a desperate plea from the author - a relatively moderate former cabinet colleague of the thuggish Opposition leader - than an honest take.

They are making the same mistake that 'reasonable' Republicans keep on making by misunderstanding what's happening here:

Their party has been taken over lock-stock-and-barrel, and they simply cannot see it.

It's built into traditional conservatism to think things will stay okay until they don't. See one N. Chamberlain for reference.

@JolieSaboteuse

That thought had crossed my mind.

But then I remember that literal traitor against the United States, Robert E. Lee, was once Superintendent of West Point and it scares the bejeezers out of me 🤷‍♂️