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Cake day: September 3rd, 2023

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  • The US should have looked to Australia as an example of why not to do that. We had very low interest rates pre-covid in a bid to try and drive inflation up to about 2.5%. It didn’t work because it basically meant that people who had plenty of cash just put that into investment properties and drove house prices through the roof, instead of increasing spending throughout the economy like the reserve bank thought it would. That led to a vicious cycle of property investors using the low rates to continue investing in properties, continuing to drive house prices up and pricing new home owners out of the market.

    Then, when the post-covid inflation hit, the reserve bank decided to increase interest rates because if the interest rate drops didn’t have an effect on inflation, it should have an effect on inflation in the other direction right? (/s) This meant that the few first home buyers actually got their foot in the door pre-covid were the ones who got punished the most, and the rest of us dealt with the “supply chain issues” (rampant profiteering).






  • I’ve struggled with this for a while too, and I’ve found that the only ‘secret’ is to go to sleep earlier so that you either wake up earlier, or wake up feeling more refreshed. You should also do this in conjunction with getting up and out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off. I’ve got an alarm that doesn’t turn off until I go into the kitchen and scan a barcode because otherwise I’ll turn the alarm off and go straight back to sleep. Someone also suggested opening your blinds which works really well if you don’t need the privacy and you wake up after the sun rises.






  • The State Emergency Services of Australian states. Basically, they’re state government funded volunteer rescue agencies that focus on floods and storms. They also provide other rescue services outside of major population centres, like vertical rescue and road crash rescue. I think it’s a great idea because we get enough severe storms and floods that a specialist agency is worthwhile, but there can be years between large scale events, so having the surge capacity of a volunteer agency is great.

    It’s a similar story with the CFA/CFS/RFS/NTFRS¹/TFS¹/whatever’s happening in WA¹, but instead of rescue they do firefighting. Their main (“combat”) role is fighting bushfires, which happen seasonally so surge capacity is important. However, in country areas they also provide structural and vehicle firefighting services. I’m aware that the US have a similar situation with volunteer firefighters though, so I’m not so keen to teach grandma to suck eggs.

    ¹These agencies are metro and rural firefighting agencies, so their combat role is all fires, not just bushfires.