• 49 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Although I can’t imagine an Internal Combusion Engine sub being at all stealthy

    Diesel electrics can be very stealthy, with the potential to be even more so than nuclear subs when trying to hide (given equivalent level of technology elsewhere in the design). What they can’t do is continue being stealthy for anywhere near the time a nuclear sub can as eventually you need to come near the surface and run the diesel to recharge the batteries. Diesel electrics are also comparatively range limited - while they can travel a considerable distance nuclear subs are effectively only limited by their ability to supply the crew.


  • There’s certainly a lot around, it’s a real sign of a big population when you start seeing groups of them hopping around in daylight (like they often are around ADFA/Russell). Sometimes I wonder how much of the burrows have ended up under the roads around there - might make for interesting subsidence issues in the future.

    The shooting crews are effective, it made a very noticeable difference on City Hill when they went through there a while back (went from eaten down to roots and bark being chewed to the grass growing back). If the local population is developing resistance to the current calicivirus though the government is going to end up hard pressed trying to shoot enough rabbits to keep up with their population growth (unless we end up in drought anyway).




  • It does seem odd. The only way I’m seeing to make money off something like part of old mate’s driveway would be to get it cheap and sell it to the surrounding owner for a bit of a profit, but when you’re bidding against said person and win then you have literally spent more for it then they’re willing to pay…

    The land being a separate title probably comes down to historical oddities - possibly it was part of an old road reserve that got sold off or something like that.


  • Can’t say I’ve ever really thought about it, though looking at pictures it does look familiar. Not sure how one differentiates it from native tussock grasses though.

    I have stronger feelings about things like blackberries, fireweed, lantana, and crofton weed as these are ones I’ve had to put work into removing before (and blackberry is a pain for encroaching on single track networks or blocking off path walking). Running bamboo too to an extent, but while painful to get rid of that’s one that I think can be a nice sort of plant when in an appropriate location.



  • No. That is one question they ask. It is not how they define intimate partner violence.

    It’s not how they define it in the report but it sure sounds like if you answered yes to that one question they went ahead and classed you as using/experiencing intimate partner violence anyway. It’s right there in the report:

    To understand the use of intimate partner violence, respondents were presented with a series of questions following the prompt, ‘As an adult, how have you behaved towards a past or present partner?’, and asked to respond either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Respondents were also able to skip answering these questions. The questions included:

    • Have you ever behaved in a manner that has made a partner feel frightened or anxious? (emotional- type abuse)

    Similarly, men were coded as ever having used or experienced forms of intimate partner violence by 2022 if they had responded ‘yes’ to any of the types of violence at either the 2013–14 survey or the 2022 survey.




  • For me there’s a few reasons:

    • I needed a small device so I could easily bring it with me on the motorbikes (particularly necessary on the road bike as race leathers don’t have big pockets) and when hiking.
    • The SOS function like offered by the Inreach was a big reason why I wanted a satellite communicator - there’d been a few times riding in tougher stuff out in the bush where I’d thought about the lack of mobile reception and how unlikely it was for anyone else to come along where I was riding if things went pear shaped. I was considering an EPIRB but being able to send messages to reassure or solve a problem in my own circle instead of just calling in the cavalry swung the choice for me.
    • A reasonably shockproof/waterproof device is a real benefit for my use case.
    • I wanted to keep costs low and $20 a month is noticeably cheaper than Starlink’s offerings.



  • Regardless of the journalism it seems to be a pretty disproportionate outcome.

    If it were just him stealing then getting immediately tackled I’d be more sympathetic, but considering he was assaulting people before even entering the shop I’d put decent odds on the guard not being the one to start the fight. He still shouldn’t have died over it but if you’re going to get into fights the chance of something going wrong is non-zero.

    If it was a white kid in the ghetto the outcome would and is different. Look at the deaths in custody.

    Indeed, the white kid would be more likely to die in custody if taken into it. Whether he’d be arrested in the first place is another matter but I think it’s a pretty good bet that if this same situation occurred with someone of any ethnicity they’d be ending up on the ground.



  • People are not “placed” on the floor – that is what you do with bags, boxes and rubbish. But that was the word used by the Northern Territory police to describe the sequence of events to the media.

    Because they’re trying to put a neutral spin on them tackling the guy, it’s no surprise.

    It’s like the spin they themselves have in this article with this quote:

    I try to imagine a similar scene at my local Coles, where many people who have not been winners in life’s lottery also shop for little items to keep hunger at bay, but no image comes to mind.

    Implying the guy was in there just shopping for little items is an interesting way to cover walking into a shop after assaulting a woman, stealing things, and getting into a fight with security when confronted. The Eulogy Song is definitely still relevant…


  • Nothing like a good moral panic to make people throw reason out the window. Carrying a machete without a reasonable cause is already illegal and clearly didn’t stop these people, banning them altogether will just make things hard for those who would use them legally.

    It’s the same level of thinking as some pelican near me who was calling for a 40km/h zone due to a recent accident. The existing laws against taking illegal drugs, stealing cars, staying on the road, and not speeding over the current limit didn’t stop the guy who caused it, but he sure would have listened to a 40km/h sign…