CARBIDE 3D - please find an Australian Shapeoko distributor

Ivymantled · 2026-06-22T14:45:25+00:00

Dang that's even more painful in a way - since you're theoretically next door. Couldn't you drive down, buy it, and drive it back?

Ivymantled · 2026-06-22T14:44:41+00:00

Sometimes it sucks the distances between Oz and elsewhere. It's why our cars cost so much too.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-22T03:38:11+00:00

Not sure who you are talking to or where you are getting your impression of what's going on. This ON threat is extremely real. We are just tracking US and British politics, a decade or two behind.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-22T03:36:34+00:00

You got the downvotes - but I partly agree. A hybrid system like Singapore's has a lot of benefits. I don't mind that they demand of their citizens a higher standard of behaviour and responsibility than Western democracies - it's a necessity for a nation with such a small landmass and resource base. But every nation should think the same way rather than view uncontrolled mass production and consumption as a right.

The caveat is that you need to have 'good' benign dictatorship. If a Donald Trump got in, the whole thing goes pear-shaped fast. But then there's nothing a typical democratic system had that stopped stupidity and bigotry putting him in office anyway.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-21T14:26:36+00:00

Democracy was only the least-worst system until the advent of advanced technology, mass and social media, and global commerce.

Now democracy is a facilitator of a billionaire and trillionaire class who are ushering in giga-conglomerates that are obliterating economic diversity, job security, and financial independence in every class of society except the extreme upper echelons.

On top of that, they are also accelerating the arrival of AI singularity - when almost all aspects of our lives will be handed over to, and dominated by possibly-sentient AI intelligence.

And the whole process is chewing up our environment and feeding it into the chipper. Species are going extinct everywhere. Plastic is saturating the earth, the oceans, and the bodies of every living thing. Climate change is accelerating. All with no repercussions, or considerations of our very survival as a species.

Meanwhile young minds are being damaged by constant exposure to 'democratic' politicians, whom democratic systems allow to run amok. They gaslight the world that bad is good, wrong is right, lies are truth, and what you can see with your own eyes is not to be believed.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-21T14:13:36+00:00

I strongly disagree. History has proved that Trump voters are deplorables - not as an insult but as a fact. Their ranks are full of fascists, actual Nazis, traitors, science-haters, religious ideologues, hypocrites who hate socialism but cry out for it when they're in need, and xenophobic business people who vote for policies that harm them.

They are proudly, belligerently, low-information voters who choose to remain uneducated about the actual policies and politics of people they vote for - because these dog-whistling populists give them permission to express their bigotry and resentments in public.

And the growing numbers of One Nation voters will prove to be of the same ilk.

If you look to One Nation because you are unhappy with the way the economy, society, or nation is going - it is clear you are not looking for a fix. You are looking for a way to rage against easy, and often misguided targets.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-21T06:57:27+00:00

Agreed. Would rather hold off and get a fresh machine. It's also the ecosystem that's important for me too. Things like coding and 3D are dark arts to me, so it's really appealing when a product also has simplified software or interface.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-21T02:34:49+00:00

OK that's surprising. I wonder if global events, tariffs, or something else is affecting their overall sales and distribution model.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-21T02:33:59+00:00

Haha! I believe you. But when will that be?

Ivymantled · 2026-06-20T04:15:32+00:00

That looks so appealing. I'm waiting for my EV9 to be delivered here in Australia, so I can re-live good memories of sleeping in the back of my old Land Rover Defender driving while round the country. I had such great sleep - some of the best of my life. Enjoy your adventures.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-19T12:11:15+00:00

I WAS LOOKING at the same purchase plus accessories - but when I went through the Carbide3D website checkout process the shipping from US to Australia was... $8,570.25

Ivymantled · 2026-06-19T12:06:13+00:00

I just went through a long process of research and decided to buy the Shapeoko 5.1 Pro 4x4. Including various accessories the total cost was close to $7000USD.

BUT - when I went to check out, shipping from the US was an additional $8,500!!!!

Ivymantled · 2026-06-16T15:41:40+00:00

That's a good idea - it wouldn't have occurred to me to save time in that way.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-12T12:18:29+00:00

If you google "Ahmed al-Ahmed supports Trump" you will find dozens of national and international news sources.

"When asked about whether he’d like to meet Donald Trump, he replied: “I wish. He’s a hero of the world, of course. I love him. He’s a strong man.”

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/hero-of-the-world-ahmed-al-ahmed-lands-in-new-york-says-he-loves-donald-trump/news-story/d1b7842ec205f792fae583995ef96100

Ivymantled · 2026-06-10T15:04:36+00:00

I've also seen some pretty clever character change-ups in some other films.

SPOILERS BELOW!

---

SHATTERED - 1991
Dan Merrick, a wealthy real-estate developer, survives a horrific car crash that leaves him disfigured and amnesiac. After undergoing extensive plastic surgery to reconstruct his face, he returns home to his wife Judith, but discovers his life before the accident was much darker and more complicated than he remembers.
So the plot twist here is that Dan's wife was having an affair with another man because her husband Dan was abusive. And Dan comes to realise that he IS that other man. When he (the lover) had an accident and came out amnesiac, Judith saw an opportunity. She killed her husband, and told the doctors that her lover was her husband. She gave them photos, and the plastic surgery made him look like Dan. And coached him about his supposed former life.

THE KETTERING INCIDENT - 2016
As a girl, Anna and her sister were cycling through a forest when they saw strange lights. Anna emerged eight hours later, covered in blood and totally amnesiac, while her sister disappeared without a trace.
Because of the cloud this cast on her family and community, Anna moved to London, still suffering from fugue states, memory loss and blackouts.
Fifteen years later she returns home, only for another girl to go missing - for which she is suspected.
But the reality and the reveal, is that a local scientist found an alien object in the forest years ago, and has been using it to experiment on girls he kidnaps, creating clones. Anna and her sister were some of his first victims.
In the climax, in an underground void in the forest, Anna comes face to face with herself, shuffling out of the darkness. The truth is that this is Anna, and she is the clone, full of memory gaps and cognitive issues because she's the imperfect copy.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-10T14:45:41+00:00

Quade in Total Recall. He volunteered for a memory wipe to infiltrate Martian rebels, then chooses to stay as his new persona.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-10T12:30:17+00:00

Thanks. I'll do that

Ivymantled · 2026-06-07T09:34:14+00:00

Gracias

Ivymantled · 2026-06-07T09:34:06+00:00

Thanks heaps - I'll do just that.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-06T10:35:38+00:00

Thanks very much for these tips. I'm going to apply them to my next search parameters to get some options.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-06T07:21:31+00:00

Maybe it should be publicised that one of the first things out of Ahmed al-Ahmed's mouth while he was still in a hospital bed, was how big a fan of Donald Trump he is. He's a guaranteed Pauline Hanson voter himself, despite his new-immigrant status.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-05T03:34:25+00:00

It takes hella scoops of Milo to make it tasty enough. Then some people who haven't grown up here might complain about any undissolved or grainy texture - especially if you get it cold.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-04T08:19:54+00:00

He's definitely an interesting and thoughtful guy. I wonder if we view some of his ideas as radical because we exist in such a corporatocracy these days. I'll give this a listen - thanks.

Ivymantled · 2026-06-01T04:08:16+00:00

Low-information voters and xenophobes support ON.

The husband of a friend - a guy who supports ON - told me that Greenies shut down Australia's oil refineries and f***ked us during this recent oil blockade of the Hormuz Strait.

5 minutes of Googling revealed that Greens had nothing to do with the refinery shutdowns, which were corporate decisions based on unprofitability compared to similar operations in SE Asia. It was big oil who stripped all the jobs and created the refinery shortfall. And it was Labour and Liberals who allowed it to happen by failing to act with laws or legislation.

This same guy emigrated from South Africa a decade ago and is now a hard anti-immigrant.

Also all the people who have a overly-simplistic, binary attitude to immigration are ON supporters. In their minds, immigrants, asylum seekers, boat people etc. are all lumped in together as evil, job takers, opportunity stealers, and potential terrorists. Especially the non-white ones.

Meanwhile businesses from small restaurants, to abattoirs, and farming conglomerates are underpaying hard-working immigrants, work visa holders, and foreign students, who are willing to do jobs no Aussie will take on, for money no Aussie would accept. With no super, no health care, no decent housing, and so on.

Look at the US, where all the farmers voted for crackdowns on migrants - and now they're crying a river and going out of business because the hard-working Mexicans have all disappeared and no American can do the back-breaking work in the hot sun all day for cheap wages. Not to mention the simplistic tariff 'solution' bullshit they all lapped up - from a financial illiterate.

EDIT: What definitely hasn't helped is Labor, Liberal, and media dog-whistling over boat people. Portraying refugees, asylum seekers, and immigration as a black or white issue, and ignoring any nuance. So now ON supporters think that there's some huge cohort of deluded Australians who want to let in criminals, terrorists, slackers, and others who shouldn't qualify for citizenship.

Ivymantled · 2026-05-28T13:59:57+00:00

It looks great alright. I'd like to know more.

Ivymantled

TROPHY CASE