Youtube comments of Andy Dee (@AndyViant).
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@jakemurray2635 Only 34,000 odd T-34 tanks made by the Russians, and the 29,000 more T-34-85. Plus the 8,000 odd heavy tanks, and the over 20,000 Self Propelled Guns/Tank Destroyers of the SU series.
By comparison, Americans sent about 7,000 tanks to Russia, with about 4000 of those being Shermans, the rest being mostly M3 Stuart and the M3 Lee (mostly not used for combat). Exact records of how many were landed versus lost in shipping are unclear.
Also of note, the British and Canadians sent about 4,000 Valentines, 1,000 Matildas, and 300 Churchill heavy tanks. Not THAT far behind what the Americans sent there.
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Bond-eye. Like the James Bond movie Golden Eye.
It's a nice if stupidly expensive spot.
Bit on the nose with the rest of Australia right now with Bondi residents flouting covid restrictions leading to NSW's 1500 odd covid cases today.
Ermm... lets not start that little fight. Lets just say Noosa better than Bondi and move on.
Wineglass Bay is one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere. Period. Not developed and destroyed. Interestingly it isn't just the shape that recalls the bowl shape of the bottom of a wineglass, but the sea there also used to run red with blood as this is where whalers used to bring their catch in the old days - whale migration coming straight past this point up the east coast of Australia, and the gentle slope and sandy bottom made it really easy for sailors to bring their catch in and not damage their boats landing them.
That whole area, Coles Bay, Bicheno, Swansea... all just beautiful. If you're ever in Tassie that area is a must see.
Gold Coast. Yeah, if we're doing a Miami Vice Australian style it's set there. It already has all the drugs and crime it needs. Pity really, because the Gold Coast hinterland is beautiful. Check out O'Reilly's and Springbrook Falls. Beautiful places without some bikie trying to deal you some meth or some crackhead in a TapOut t shirt trying to coward punch ya.
If you love offroading along the beach, you need to check out Fraser Island. It's like god designed it for that reason. Stockton Beach is pretty awesome too. South West Tasmania is awesome for that stuff too.
As to how these are the best 20, I really don't know. I'm looking at Altona and Elwood and thinking people just rushed it, much as I used to love a winter fire and a bottle of Stones Green ginger Wine on the beach at Black Rock.
How the hell is Fraser Island or Stockton Beach not on this list? Port Willunga? Low Head? Mount Martha? Rottnest Island?
So many beaches to see.
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I think MORE Aussies are into their 4wd's as the biggest selling section of the car market is the dual cab ute (medium truck) market.
But due to regulations and safety concerns we don't tend to see 6 inch lifts and 38 inch tyres. Once I drove stuff like that (GQ Shorty on 36" Super Swampers) but those days are long past, because the police have heavily cracked down on those kinds of vehicles.
What we build for now is mostly distance touring.
When I travel to go camping, 4wding and hunting with my mates it is normally a 2000 kilometer (1200 mile) trip, so it has to have good reliability, reasonable fuel consumption and good comfort. 33"s are the go rather than 36"-38" tyres, and these days I'd be buying a radial aggressive all terrain over a pure mud tyre or a rag* tyre.
So while the 4wd has to be quite capable when I get there, as I'm usually talking about something like Victorian High Country driving through mud and snow, or Cape York and crossing crocodile infested rivers bonnet deep in water. Although to be honest with what I drive, twin difflocks and all, I'd probably bypass Gunshot Creek.
As such, we tend to build something that might be capable of getting through MOAB or Rubicon trail (but only so long as you get your lines right or pull out the winch) it's more an all terrain tourer that can get the family into places that most people will never experience.
*rag tyre relates to construction (bias ply, meaning "fibre" plies as opposed to metal plies) and is not in any way derogatory. Just because I know someone, somewhere will get triggered by another meaning for that word.
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@seanthiar No, there is an American dialect.
And within that there are sub dialects.
Same way there is no Canadian language, no Australian language, no New Zealand language.
Or else I speak fluent Queenslander, Victorian, and have at least passable Taswegian, Sandgroper, Welcher, Mancunian, Brummie, Geordie, New Yorker, Bostonian.
Hmm is Valley Girl a language as I might be able to get a multilingual allowance at work?
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The other things we need are honestly:
DECENTRALIZATION - we need more medium sized cities that are big enough to base competitive, world class industry in, but not be capital cities. If some of these were off the coast that would be highly advantageous. Other than the National Capital with the enforced industry of politics (and secondary industries of Journalism and Lobbying) we really don't have any big inland towns. Our largest inland non capital is Toowoomba at 140,000 people. These places would be cheaper to build houses as the land values in our capital cities are truly crazy. Compare how many major cities in say the 200k range the US has with a car manufacturing plant or similar.
Only really Queensland has much decentralization going on and that's nearly all on the coast.
We need more towns in the 200k-500k range, with a focus on just a couple of industries and then secondary support for the population, and then we need... HIGH SPEED RAIL to connect them to their major capital cities or other major rural centres. Australia is way too big for these hypothetical regional towns to just commute by car, and trips of say under 350 km should be faster by true high speed rail than travelling through airports with security check-ins and the like.
We also need HIGH SPEED INTERNET to reduce those wasted transport times and to share the knowledge and research with other like minded people across the world.
We also need a STRONGER DEFENCE FORCE because we do have an enormous area to cover. This will require a BETTER TAXATION SYSTEM to ensure that we actually shift the tax burden back to business, especially offshore owned extractive industries who pay basically no tax, leaving the tax burden to the workforce.
We also need to get ourselves off fossil fuels. We can become an economic superpower with the available sunlight and wind resources we have, and were once at the forefront of Solar PV development, but our government wouldn't invest in it so now that's mostly run by China. What a waste of a fantastic industry due to lack of foresight. As the current situation shows, weaning the western world off oil and gas is not just an environmental issue but an economic one and addressing a strategic weakness. Thus we need a strong RENEWABLE ENERGY industry including EXPORT via HV undersea cable, and, since this creates a new strategic weakness, by exporting RENEWABLE HYDROGEN.
To also support that defensive capability we need a MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY, say like a CAR INDUSTRY but failing that even making more buses and trains would do. We learnt in WWII that the ability to manufacture goods was an essential component of self defence which is why the Australian Car Industry. Sadly we have too many in government who keep trying to undermine our manufacturing industry due to ideology.
Since we have to build up that new industry from scratch it would make sense to focus on the ELECTRIC CAR since we all know that export opportunities for gas powered cars will be limited in the future. In addition, the layout of electric vehicles would make manufacture of both left and right hand drive vehicles easier.
We definitely need NEW SUBMARINES for the navy, but looks like we're not going to build them here.
To open up those regional areas where we are going to build these things, and support the population of those large towns we need WATER SECURITY which is why we are all currently stuck around the coastline. For that we need a nation building scheme such as THE BRADFIELD SCHEME which would divert water inland for farming, industry, domestic consumption and recreation. We also need to reuse far more of our TREATED WATER even if recycling water leaves a bad taste in people's mouths it's essential in the driest inhabited continent.
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Australia (and America) will never get remotely close to the Amsterdam model for a bunch of reasons.
1) Population density. Old cities like Amsterdam were designed around short distances and high density and foot (or even horse) traffic. Substituting bicycle (or e-bike) for horse was basically a like for like swap, just without the manure.
You could probably do this with say a Manhattan Island, but you couldn't do so with even New Jersey. Add geographically huge cities like Sydney, Melbourne or Los Angeles and the travel times are going to be too high for the great majority.
2) Comfort. Riding a bicycle can be hot sweaty work. Once again, a moderate temperatured seaside, high latitude, relatively cool, dense and geographically flat city like New York might be viable for this kind of transit (although maybe not in summer).
But how about Orlando? Fort Worth? San Francisco? Brisbane? Perth?
You take away one or two of the comfort factors and substitute in a high humidity, hilly environment and cycling quickly becomes a hot, sweaty chore. Put you deep inland and these issues get far worse.
3) Medical costs. A big discouragement for cycling comes from our health system. Australia sees a cyclist without a helmet as some huge economic threat to our health system costs and demands they wear a helmet from childhood, but at least if there is an accident the healthcare won't bankrupt you, unlike America.
Of course we completely ignore the benefits of active mobility in weight loss, reduced obesity and diabetes, better respiratory health, less car crashes, out of pure blind ideology.
4) Restrictive, risk averse laws. Not just the mandatory helmet use. E-scooters are effectively illegal in NSW and VIC, basically barring the residents of Australia's two largest (and densest) cities from transitioning to modern (or should I say future) mobility options that suit the higher population density economists keep telling us we need. E bikes faster than 25 kph (15 mph) are also banned. We also have no Neighbourhood Electric Vehicle schemes and little support for any form of Zero Emission Vehicles at all.
5) Ideological opposition to public transport. Both from lawmakers not wanting to subsidise public transport, but also users of public transport being seen as a poor underclass. This of course ignores the huge subsidies on fossil fuels and the costs of building and maintaining roads.
All in all, such pollution free transport options that don't chew up enormous space in roads and garages are exactly what we need. Especially if we want to encourage high density development and reduce the barriers to not just mobility but also housing for young, old and the poor. Let alone the whole climate change thing.
Don't get me wrong, I love my cars and motorbikes, but if it wasn't just dead money not to use them and have them sitting there it would be great to have more options. We need some sensible laws and a regulation point as to where an e-bike needs to be registered and insured. We need changes to our registration, fuel taxation and road use cost base.
Our current rules are madness.
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Had they been within range to mount a ground invasion and refloat the sunken US fleet at Pearl Harbour History would be a lot different.
Probably the Allies would still have won - American industrial might and resources was a thing, and Australia was far from tapped our from a resources, manpower or production capacity standpoint. India even more so.
But not having the Pearl Harbour base to work out of, and a total handover of all those ships to the enemy rather than refloating them for quick allied benefit would have changed things enormously.
Overall, I still see an allied victory, based on nuclear weapons capability, but a much longer and more bloody war, extending into probably 1947. New Guinea may well have fallen, and Hawaii too. Buying back places like New Guinea, Hawaii and even places like Guam that occurred in our timeline would have cost a lot of lives - moreso if Japan could employ later tanks like the Chi Nu in defensive positions in much greater numbers.
Protecting Japan from having it's industrial might from being bombed and greater effectiveness at resource harvesting by keeping the US carrier fleet from the Pacific would have had major consequences for the war.
And this opens possibilities that don't exist in our timeline, like Japan-Russia alliances, land invasions of Northern Australia, Russian land invasions of Alaska and so on.
Would it all have happened? Probably not.
But if Japan had waited until they had the capacity for a land invasion of Hawaii, then the war would have gone a lot differently. The US would have been forced to commit to a land invasion of Hawaii over Northern Africa, Lend Lease probably would not have existed. Would Moscow have fallen without aid? How far could German troops expanded in Africa? Would Rommel have rebelled?
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The other thing that makes the AMX-10 such a good weapon for the Ukrainians right now is how many of the older tanks the Russians are dishing up to the front. T54, T55, T62 etc. These are all pretty easy targets for the AMX-10.
Using the older barrelled versions and their proprietary ammo is not really that much of an inconvenience either.
While it may make logistics a little more complex, it does mean that there are large amounts of stored ammunition available RIGHT NOW which is critically important, given the ammunition shortages the whole of western Europe now faces. Even more important is that even with the proprietary rounds they still offer HE, HEAT and APFSDS that is NATO triple heavy rated to 2200m, so can perform all tasks a big gun may be used for - artillery support, direct fire, infantry support, anti material and anti tank.
The only downside of these vehicles is that people might be tempted to use them in an incorrect way, just like Canadian LAV's or US Strykers, or even the Bradley.
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Just worth pointing out the massive scale of "Hollywoodisation" of history.
Omaha Beach is believed to have cost around 6,000 lives in a day.
Let's just compare that to some other non American, and thus, non Hollywood, history.
The British lost 20,000 lives in the Battle of the Somme within a few hours on 1 July 1916.
Overall casualties for the Battle of the Somme were over 1 million across 141 days.
Imagine the carnage of Omaha for 141 days straight.
The French lost over 27,000 at Frontiers on 22nd August 1914.
But I guess they don't count, because to Americans WW1 hadn't started yet.
In fact such slaughter isn't even new.
At Waterloo, the French lost over 25,000 lives in a single day. At Borodino the Russians took 45,000 casualties in a single day.
But you don't even need firearms to create this much destruction. The greatest death toll for a single day in the English War of the Roses was 27,000.
But what's widely considered the most deaths in a single day's battle was the Battle of Cannae in the Second Punic War, when close to 90,000 Roman soldiers were slaughtered by the Carthaginians. With swords and spears.
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Worth noting the huge difference in terminology - regional versus suburban. Our suburban networks cover a fair amount of interurban network. NSW runs "suburban" trains from Newcastle to Kiama which is about 100 miles north of Sydney to 75 miles south, through Wollongong. QLD runs trains even further north from Brisbane to Gympie North as far south as Varsity Lakes on the Gold Coast, about 110 miles north to 55 miles south.
For us, "regions" suggest areas far removed from the capital city, not the nearby area to it. It's a huge difference in interpretation.
So are these suburban rail or interurban rail? It depends on where you call an end to your cities, I guess. At 5.3 Million Sydney is a big city, but that means Newcastle and the Wollongong regions are classified as interurban rail, not suburban. So is Sydney well over 6 million people? Are these suburban or interurban commutes?
Likewise, it's pretty hard to call Brisbane small. At a metro population of 2.5 million (sorry Ipswich and Logan lol) WITHOUT including the urban conurbations to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba it's nominally bigger than Dallas, Texas, San Jose, California or Jacksonville, Florida. Of course it all depends on how you break up your "statistical areas". If you include the areas with at least nominal "suburban" train access then Brisbane is probably a city of over 4 million.
Of course, San Jose is part of a big conurbation too, and the Bay Area puts the SEQ (South East Queensland) area to shame with more than double the total population.
We may not have the population density that the US does, as you can tell with California having way more population than all of Australia, but we have enough to support reasonable transport infrastructure.
The US could and should do better, however.
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@ejtattersall156 No, that's not necessarily correct. Wealth comes from availability of natural resources, human capital, productivity, innovation, education and many other things.
Corruption doesn't remove most of these advantages, but it just reduces overall productivity.
Likewise a country can have very low levels of corruption, but if it doesn't have the resources or production of goods to sell, it's still going to be broke.
I live in a modern first world country that has recently set historical records since it's founding for corruption levels.
Were we still wealthy? Absolutely, due to natural advantages of natural resources, educated workforce and so on.
Was anything done about that increased level of corruption?
No, because the entrenched government was THE major source of corruption (just like most 3rd world countries), as well as it's major industries and of course political donors.
Corruption only gets resolved when the people go without to a sufficient degree to cause civil unrest, or at least vote out the corrupt government for the alternative.
If you keep the corruption level below the level that the public reacts to, or distract them sufficiently, the corruption continues on unabated.
Eventually the distractions stop working when people economically hurt enough, or recognize the double standards.
This is the main cause of changes of elected government in democratic countries, or regime change in less democratic ones.
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More that France realises that 70 ton MBT's are not a great option given modern logistics needs, requirement to drive over 14th century bridges, and huge running costs. Great as placeholders in a defensive war perhaps, and maybe a deterrent like battleships were in WW2, but the tech has moved on.
An MBT that can be destroyed by a crew of 2 infantry with a Javelin, or worse yet a drone is not a winning strategy.
France worked that out with the first ATGM's, and changed their strategy ages ago. MBT's are still needed to hold and delay MBT's, sure. But mostly you need enough heavy armour to engage and from there it's about manoeuver and flanking. 2 MBT's to engage and draw fire and 8 flanking vehicles with top fire ATGM's will beat 5 MBT's every day of the week.
Cost wise it's probably more like 30 flankers not 8, making that strategy vastly more capable. In fact, France takes that to extremes - since they have a lot smaller flanking vehicles than just the Jaguars and AMX 10 RC's equipped with ATGM's.
They worked that out long before the US did. So too did Taiwan and Korea. You would have to ask if Germany STILL hasn't worked it out.
America's answer to that problem was the stryker. France's answer was the AMX-10 RC, over 20 years earlier, and even the ERC 90 sagaie. Of the two nations it's fair to say that France came up with the right decision decades earlier. The asymmetric warfare of the last 30 years favoured them, and now drone technology and stealth do even more so.
Both countries still have their frontline MBT's too. France still has the capability and tooling to make more leclerc tanks if required
France is shifting from the AMX-10 RC to the EBRC jaguars, at 5 million Euros a pop (about 5.3 million each). Meanwhile Poland is paying $6 Billion for 116 abrams, at a cost of 51 Million USD each. Almost a 10:1 ratio of equipment.
I'm not saying Poland is making a huge mistake, mind. Poland doesn't have great terrain to use the same tactics as France chooses to use. Poland is far too flat for that kind of warfare, and is purely focusing on a defensive war against Russia.
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@infochase6656 Yes, it would be. But most of the nations around that area are basically stuck with similar problems - borders decided by the peace treaty lines of long ago wars, meaning that significant communities are split up.
Do you think that a Pashtun state would be welcomed by Pakistan, who would have to surrender a large chunk of it's land and population to it, either on formation of a Pashtun state, or after decades of civil war?
Nor are the Kurds going to get a homeland in on the lands of northern Iraq and south eastern Turkey. Iraq won't be taking eastern Syria in compensation, nor the lands of south western Iran that should in theory belong to it based on language and religious background.
Then we have the Armenians. The Turkmens. The Georgians. The Uzbeks, the Baluch, the Tajiks, the Azeris and so on and so forth.
With every valley basically a different nationality it's not an easy fix.
Even if you could get agreement to move people back to a centralized homeland, the efforts to do so thus far - between Greece and Turkey, between India and Pakistan, between Israel Palestine and Jordan have all created genocide.
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@ibnu9969 not really, the Pashtun peoples are as stated a contiguous population of 60 million people. Certainly big enough to be an effective nation in their own right.
The Kurds are likewise similarly populous and wealthy enough to have their own nation, although that's a far more complex topic as it deals with major military powers having their lands chopped up, and outside the scope of Afghanistan, but it shows why these things are so hard to deal with.
Honestly the world would be a better place now for everybody if on the completion of the invasion of Afghanistan there were treaties done with each neighboring nation to hand large chunks of land over by ethnicity and merge say the Pashtuns into Pakistan, the Tajiks portion into Tajikistan, and the Uzbeks into Uzbekistan, at least where borders allowed.
Some correction of borders within those nations could have occurred too, potentially. You can usually extract some concessions when giving people a big chunk of land and resources.
So long as everyone gained land and population and homoginity out of it, and a bit of cash bribing, it could have defused a global hotspot and drastically improved quality of life.
There would have HAD TO be smaller nations created needing ongoing protection, like for the Hazara, and the Aimaq. How you handle that just means you end up with a smaller mess to deal with as far as land area and population.
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Actually, conventional powered subs, and even better air independent subs are far quieter than nuclear subs when they are trying to be quiet. As America has found out wargaming against Australia on multiple occasions. The much "derided" Collins class are actually exceptional hunter killer subs, but they're still ending the end of their viable operational lives. Whilst we can extend them to the mid-late 2030's they have a limited lifespan and the lead time on building replacements is probably a decade or more.
The decision needs to be made now. If it were not the Aukus agreement we'd be building French Nuclear Powered Shortfin Barracudas right now. Realistically it's lineball between them and the Astute class as to which is better for us, but geopolitics and all...
If this was just about defending Australia, Nuclear subs would be a huge mistake as they are far less stealthy, and thus far less effective in a hunter killer role. You cannot turn off that water pumping to cool the reactor as the reactor will melt down. And since you can't do that you cannot hide the heat signature of the submarine either. Both are easy to eihtter hear or track to high end sensors. That's how the Collins class can find American (or Russian or Chinese) subs so easily.
So If Australia was closer to China, like the way European nations are closer to their threats, Nuclear would make no sense at all. This was why an extended range conventional submarine was on our shopping list until the current tensions with China meant more time on target became a critical priority.
It is precisely due to that distance to China, that 2500 miles, that Nuclear power becomes viable. It's too far to allow for good time on target without stopping for refuelling in a potentially hostile region. Australia would need to refuel their subs in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan or Japan if they wanted to be able to patrol the South China Sea for an extended time. Japan is probably too far away for that to be feasible, and the others pose too great a security risk to be viable, with Singapore being the best of those options.
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11:20 Yeah, there's no way every Australian can assess every individual US coffee cart, or even the independent roasters of which there would be thousands in the US.
But that works both ways, as there's many of them here too.
As an expatriate Melbournian in Brisvegas, I get that also there's the regional preference, the subjective, that "I'm used to this flavour and therefore consider this to be good" issue too.
I'll be honest, I HATE one of the most popular coffee brands here (yeah, Merlo, I'm looking at you). When I first moved here it was everywhere as a supposedly premium coffee and I'd rather have drunk instant. Or muddy water from a puddle to be honest.
I couldn't get a good Turkish Coffee, or a good Latte, or a decent Flat White, or a passable Macchiato to save my life, so I got used to drinking instant to save some coin.
Coffee, like most things consumer, is in part an art, a science and a brainwashing experiment on the masses. In the end you can get great product, you can get cheap product, you can get accessible product, but you can never have all three together so you make your own choice as to what you can live with.
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Even if we harvested 20% that would still be a massive change to the outback without noticeable impact to the Burdekin region.
A significant amount of water would be able to get used, or sink into the ground and help replenish the great artesian basin, the lifeblood of the outback, which is currently losing masses of water and making survival out there less and less viable.
Even if there is huge evaporative losses? Well, that's gonna fall as rainfall somewhere, and it's also going to take heat energy out of the outback system, reducing temperatures and other evaporation.
Green energy, fighting the impacts of global warming, increased food production, rural job opportunities, better quality of rural life... what's the negatives?
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:)
There's been an uparmoured package on the AMX10-RCR which will be military classified info not on Wikipedia.
Most likely that up armour package was specifically designed to counter the 25mm and 30mm autocannons (you know, like Russia and of course the US use, because France is one nation that always hedges their bets).
So I'd think that it's probably unable to be frontally penetrated by 30mm API and API-T rounds from at least outside of 500 metres, but exactly where the 30mm autocannon on the BMP-2 and BMP-3 can penetrate it would be uncertain. It's probably still not gonna stop APDS rounds until at least 1500 metres or more.
As such, the BMP WILL still be able to penetrate an AMX10-RCR at some distance. It's not gonna be invulnerable. Close range that BMP will shred the AMX just on fire rate alone.
However, the AMX's 105mm with APFSDS will penetrate "Heavy Targets" read main battle tank to 1200 metres. It'll rip through a BMP from as far away as they can target it. Not that they'd bother since the same would happen even with HEAT or HE shells.
So, front on, within 500 metres, the BMP will almost certainly win. Any further, the AMX will probably win, and has the fire control systems, thermal sights, battlefield intel to do so.
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@shozlochshadr1536 It's an American Channel, run by an American who has a historical clothing company.
It mostly is covering mostly American frontier history and lifestyle. The fact that that is in many ways similar to many other places in the world doesn't change what it is, why it exists, who the majority of it's audience is, or how they're going to interpret things.
Americans certainly can and do come off with that attitude sometimes. This channel I feel puts in an active effort not to do that, but they're certainly still going to be judging recipes, clothing and lifestyle by what they've been brought up on as "normal". We can't help those unconscious biases.
As an Australian, I love meat pies. They're available here everywhere, including of course in my freezer right now, every local shops has a bakery/patisserie, and the local servo (gas station) has a hot box full of them, as does every 7-eleven in the whole country. If your background is Australian, New Zealander, Irish or from the United Kingdom your experience there is probably the same.
But to an American audience, or even a mostly global audience outside the anglosphere, meat pies are strange food indeed.
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@goodshipkaraboudjan That was in part because Australia wanted to build the subs, partly because the subs were being modified, but mostly because the the particular flavour of government in Australia at the time was more interested in turning every government purchase into a domestic political porkbarrelling/propoganda campaign than an effective purchase.
The recent reviews of Australia's recent and proposed military purchases has been scathing about the amount of wasted money, corruption and ineptness in defence spending. That's in the ones that actually happened rather than were merely "announcables" with no actual work done. Money has been spent on the wrong things, in the wrong defence budgets, with massive inefficiency and a fair bit of corruption. Much of it was pure marketing with no actual acquisitions.
Australia should have canned their modified conventional Barracuda class and renegotiated a deal for French nuclear subs, and gone with that. The French would have happily built them, they'd have been way cheaper, we wouldn't have had to pay a billion pollar penalty clause, and we'd have got them well before the mid 2030's, and had most of the technology and jobs here (except for the nuclear powerplant refits) . But that wouldn't suit the Americans.
What we really need is the UK Astute class, they're 100% the best match for our needs, but build times for them are far off too.
French Suffren/Barracuda class subs would be the next best match - pump jet technology, nuclear power for extended mission time at depth and small crew complements for a relatively small navy.
Astute requires over 50% more manpower, meaning we can operate at best 2/3 the number of submarines. Virginia needs over 130 people on board compared to Suffren's 60, and costs over twice as much. So we can have less than half the submarines active at any time, or be covering half the area. Australia has a lot of ocean to patrol, so the Virginia class seem to be the worst option of the three by a very large margin.
But such is the price of military alliances.
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@tzenzhongguo data about how much the soviets got from lend lease is widely available.
4100 Sherman tanks were sent, but only 3,000 odd were received. Some were lost with transport ships sunk and the like.
As far as tanks (and also planes, btw) go, the numbers are basically insignificant.
The Soviets built 84,000 t-34's alone. Over 10,000 T26 tanks. Over 5,000 KV Heavy tanks. 7,000 IS heavy tanks. T-50's. T-60, T-70 and T-80 light tanks. The BT series of light tanks. Lots of T-28's too.
Then there's the huge numbers of armoured self propelled guns, which were the mainstays of the German Army too. The soviets built over 13,000 SU-76's. 4600 ISU-152's, 2400 ISU-122's, 4900 SU -100's, 2600 SU-85's, and tens of thousands of others.
People think that the Soviets basically went into battle with one person carrying the ammunition and one the gun. It may have been a good way to put pressure on you in Stalingrad video games but it's hardly a factual representation of the war.
Here's a little factoid that will blow your mind.
The soviets started WW2 with more tanks THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
They finished WW2 with more tanks THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
Don't get me wrong, Lend Lease was important, but NOT for what you think. It mattered for trucks to transport goods, and also for food shipments, as with so many tens of millions of Russian men serving and dying in their armed forces they didn't have the labour for the farms they had pre-war.
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6:50 let's talk about the women's role in Chivalry.
The woman, to deserve Chivalry for the Knight, was supposed to be virtuous, supportive, courteous, and chaste until marriage.
She was supposed to serve both God and her lord in all things.
They were expected to know how to handle themselves in social situations in a respectful manner, and serve and obey her husband.
They were expected to learn how to cook, clean and play musical instruments to entertain their lord. They were supposed to knit and darn clothing for him.
Tend gardens to create beauty and peace for him.
They were expected to bring no dishonour upon their family.
Her lord and master, the knight would willingly defend her honour, but ONLY so long as she had honour to defend.
They were expected to respect and honour their knight's bravery and sacrifice. They were to be subservient to him, tend his wounds, be the balm to soothe his body and mind.
Now, think about how many breaches of these requirements modern women can achieve?
Now, who broke the bonds of Chivalry?
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As a person who is a landlord, the entry point for each additional property is low if you stagger your purchases. But not for the reasons people think.
Negative gearing doesn't actually reward you that much. The (established) property I bought as an investment in 2021 is negatively geared, but only by about 11k per year, which means I lose about 8k per year to "dodge" about 3k a year in tax. One significant weather event, an accident, or more likely bad tenants can cost me that many times over. Plus, obviously there are massive sunk costs in agent's fees, bank fees, building and pest inspections, and stamp duty
What makes me money isn't Negative Gearing. Negative gearing means YOU ARE LOSING MONEY. It means you are quite literally SUBSIDISING YOUR TENANTS lifestyle. I wish people would listen to the obvious "negative" in that phrase because it's frustrating to have to repeatedly explain it means a loss.
Instead, it's the combination of three principles, forced savings, leveraging of risk and the basic concept of investing money. Investment properties can take 10 or 15 years to actually reach a breakeven point between rental income vs interest and associated costs.
Mostly what an investment property does is it forces you to live well within your means as a way to get ahead. Anyone can do that without investing in property - just stop going out to expensive clubs, stop the overseas holidays, stop buying expensive cars to show off your wealth.
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"we rescued them in ww2"?
27 million dead Russians, 15 Million dead Chinese, 6 Million dead Poles, 4 Million Malays, 3 Million dead Indians, 2 Million dead Vietnamese, 700,000 dead Greeks, 600,000 dead French, 450,000 dead British....
Somewhere around 60 Million Allied dead, all up.
Yet your 419,000 American dead apparently won the war?
If that isn't the most self centred view of the world I have ever heard of I don't know what is.
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James Packer, not Parker.
His dad, Kerry Packer, was a really interesting (and pretty scary) guy, and the family was one of the first media Tycoon families here in Australia. You might know one other big one - the Murdoch family (Rupert Murdoch) that owns 20th Century Fox, Fox News etc etc.
The other big media family was the Fairfax family that was also mentioned with Fairwater Mansion.
Packer was not averse to threats, employing muscle, and even allegedly other more criminal behaviour than just threats and intimidation.
He made and broke Prime Ministers of the country in his day, a true power behind the throne. He's also responsible for World Series Cricket, which really created one day international cricket as a sport and led to Twenty20 cricket and the Cricket World Cups.
His son James, however, is a bit of a tool. Actually, he's a complete and utter tool.
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And after 1945 and Hiroshima, Soviet Russia would have invested far more heavily in nuclear production. With 1/6th of the worlds surface area they would have found viable sources for fissile materials relatively easily.
Given the range of available bombers, neither side could launch a significant blow. America could probably nuke Vladivostok, but not Karkov, Moscow, St Petersberg or anywhere of greater significance without years of advancing the front line to increase the likelihood of a bomber actually getting through.
And there wasn't exactly the enthusiasm to use nukes anyway, both from a cost and a human life cost. Macarthur was removed after proposing their use in Korea.
On the ground forces front, America was massively behind on rocketry and artillery, and tank design as well. The poor quality rushed out of factory with bad welds and untrained crews tanks seen at Stalingrad were not what the end of the war tanks were like. And the soviet purge of their best generals in 1937 had left them unprepared for war but nearly a decade of war had changed all that.
Korea showed exactly how many problems America had with their tank designs. They were forced back to using Sherman E8's and similar to basically hold HALF of Korea, despite their obvious air technology advantages.
The reason the world backed away from that precipice was simple. No one had a clue how it would go, and you don't start wars you think you would lose. Even with jets and nukes, America didn't think it had a good enough chance of victory from 1945 right up to the fall of the Berlin wall, and neither did the Soviets.
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Death Valley might beat anywhere, but the reality is so much of the Aussie outback is so uninhabited there's little out there recording information.
Anecdotally temperatures have been recorded as high as 57 (135) degrees in the shade at some outback mining camps but not to modern measuring standards. It's not like Furnace Creek where there is constant recording in some of these hottest places, although most people don't believe the Furnace Creek 1913 record meets modern measurment standards. Bragging rights are a thing, of course.
We have a couple of endorheic basins below sea level too that potentially could see similar combinations of conditions to see record temperatures, but reality is that the Middle East or Northern Sahara are in the same boat too - there will be peak temperatures we've missed, and any record is probably going to fall in those desert areas closest to the equator, whether that ends up being in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Tunisia or Saudi Arabia.
No point trying to steal their thunder.
But as far as big cities? Western Sydney is now regularly seeing summer temperatures as hot as 46-47 Celcius, with the record in Penrith being 48.9 or just over 120 farenheit. So melting tarmac and bars of soap are far from impossible.
Melbourne, which is nearly the same size as Sydney (a fact which may not be that well recognized outside of Australia) has a record temperature of 47.9 Celsius, so not much cooler despite being over 500 miles further south.
Days like this are usually part of a heatwave where you might get a week of daily temperatures around 43 C or so (110 farenheit) and low temperatures at night only dropping to 33 C or so (90 farenheit).
Remember Sydney is coastal, so expect much much worse inland. Northern South Australia, Western Queensland and Northern Western Australia can all get around or even over 50 degrees Celsius, with the highest recorded temp at an official weather station being 50.7 (123).
This weekend, in the middle of winter, I'm looking at daytime temperatures on the coast of up around 85 farenheit, and around 50 at night. This is unusual but not rare enough to be shocking.
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The reality is simply that the corruption in advanced economies is not defined as "corruption" by the people doing it as they're the law makers. Instead we talk about things like "rent seeking" whereby major industries lobby government for favourable laws or tax exemptions, or a developer who provides political donations gets favourable rezoning that sees the land they hold rezoned from agricultural land to medium density residential, creating tens of millions of dollars. Or of course, for an airport zone in Western Sydney in the "Leppington Triangle", hmmm?
Or pastoral leases or mining leases. Or who is allowed to purchase a coal fired power station for $1 MIllion that's worth closer to $700 Million in the real world and everyone knows it.
The problem with such corruption is it flows up - creating greater wealth for the already wealthy, allowing them to buy more power and influence, thus creating more corruption. And it only ever gets offered to political mates.
At least the dodgy cop looking to make your fine disappear for $50 under the table is never going to own your politicians. If it's abuse of power, trumping up a charge for an offence you didn't commit to make you pay the bribe in the first place, then it's a huge problem with undermining law and order. Think of the movie Cool Hand Luke and having your tail light smashed by a corrupt cop. If it's a fine you earned fair and square, but they're offering a reduced fine it's not really a big deal - it's more a paperwork efficiency thing. Plus of course, then as the saying goes if you can pay a fine, it's really only an actual crime for poor people.
That's the thing really.
3rd world type petty corruption at the coal face is churned back into the economy. It's small scale and it just gets rolled back in
High end first world rent seeking or lobbying shifts the whole economic system to create permanent winners and losers who gain generations of wealth, power and influence. It basically hands substantial level of power to those people and their children and their children's children forever, and then it gets reinvested to buy more power. Creating little empires and royal families within your democracy forever. The Murdochs? The Rockefellers?
It's by far the greater evil.
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Tipping, if customary or nearly mandatory ends up being a direct subsidy from the consumer to the company so that the company doesn't have to pay a proper liveable wage. The solution to this is simple - pay a decent wage and then tipping can be given just to people who you feel went out of their way to really assist you. Tipping everyone, even when their service sucks is just plain wrong.
Also, tipping is inherently unfair. When you tip, is it just the waiter/waitress that provides the service? Who cooked your meal, who cleaned the toilets, who scrubs the dishes after and so on. Tips seem to be based on the charm and the erm attributes of the serving staff, not based on who did the work. Does that money get back to all those other staff? Depends on the culture in the workplace.
Tipping in the rest of the world usually amounts to a "round up" where say a $143 bill might become $150, and even that is purely optional. In some places it's even quite offensive to tip.
I will admit American customer service is better, and probably because of this culture. But it seems a really high price to pay for people to be nicer to each other.
How much does it cost? Well, the food ends up cheaper, but then you pay 20% extra... so it ends up the same. Some companies do well, and some people get rich off tips, while others work 3 jobs. Plus, there's a lot of money never traced or taxed by government, and that means less money to pay for schools, hospitals, infrastructure.
All in all, I can only look on and shake my head. The world watches on and thinks it's crazy.
Holidays/Sick Leave/Workplace Welfare. Honestly, it's nuts from the outside. It seems like the whole reason to exist of the American people is to be slaves for business. The tipping culture is bad enough, but the lack of holidays just makes it so much worse. That's without taking into account "gig economy" or "side hustle" stuff.
Australia is pretty much a default 4 weeks leave per year, although some industries get more. Plus, usually 2-3 weeks sick leave, and another week or more long service leave accrued each year, so that after 10 years in one workplace you can actually take a decent 3 month holiday. Europe has crazy good holidays for some nations, way better than Australia.
It's mostly to do with strength of unions and the political parties tied in with that. But there is a clear trade off and some nations get the balance wrong on either side, and are economically uncompetitive. America is super competitive in the corporate world but there is an enormous social cost.
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Every nation has a balance between what is affordable and what is desired. This is why figures of around 2% of GDP are pretty standard during peacetime, bar for major structural shifts or purchases. Every nation can better spend capacity on productive improvements like transport and port infrastructure etc.
But military capacity, particularly capital ships has a lead in time of often decades.
It's clear we, like most European nations, have underinvested for a while, although certainly not like Germany. We need to increase that level, and wear the one off costs of upgrades or structural changes outside that 2% of GDP.
My question is about best efficiency. The previous government badly mismanaged the Submarine Contract and the Land 400 purchases, both due to lack of decision capability and blatant political manipulation. The issues on the Eurocopters are also an example of a defence purchasing process in shambles.
A reduction in IFV's is potentially disturbing, but if some of that funding goes to upgrades to either the old M113's or the ASLAV's then it may be money well spent. Both can have an important role, either in lower threat environments or even in higher threat environments with the correct upgrades. They also have capabilities that the Redback IFV and Bushmasters PMV do not have, most notably amphibious capability. The upgrade path of the ASLAV to LAV III spec and the Bushmaster M242 to 30mm or greater needs to be seriously considered.
The ASLAVs are far too good for just retirement. Either refitting or sale to allied powers to allow further purchases of newer generation gear would make sense.
Getting rid of gear with an intended increase in permanent professional Arm,y and also an increase in Army reserve makes no sense.
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How?
The main reason was the carnage of the Eastern front, and the German fear (rightly) of being captured by the soviets. A substantially larger volume of equipment and manpower was sent to the Ostfront to try and keep the soviets at bay long enough to get more favourable occupation conditions under US/British/French control than soviet control.
The T-34-85 changed matters on the Ostfront too. The T-34 (F-34) was not a massive upgrade on the original L-11 gun, but the D-5T and then the ZIS-S-53 changed things. Not bringing parity with the Tiger, far from it, but they had better ergonomics for the crew with the larger turret ring, and a far more powerful round which could penetrate the Tiger 1 from a kilometre away, a luxury the Americans would not have until very very late in the war.
Compared to the T-34-85, the Sherman, was inferior in direct combat in basically every way - mobility, armour, firepower. But the heavy losses the Russians were taking and inflicting in the east meant that America had far more ease in maintaining numerical superiority.
The other main advantages of the Sherman were far more to do with doctrine and logistics. The were much easier to operate, more reliable, and had better logistics supplies, air support, and better communications to coordinate.
The US eventually recognized that the Sherman could not easily go toe to toe with the Tiger, but delaying the Normandy invasion to develop a new variant with a better gun or even retrofitting (like the British did with a small number of "Firefly" Shermans) was not really an option. American doctrine had the M10, and as the war went on the M18 and M36 to deal with those threats.
Given that Tigers were few and far between and Panzer III, IV and StuG's were in far greater numbers it made sense not to complicate the logistics and give each type of armour specific goals.
Post war, the lessons of the limitations of the M4, and indeed the T-34 could be heeded. But until then, like the soviets realised, quantity had a quality all of its own.
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You can also buy 277 Fury (same dimensions as the 6.8 Common Cartridge Military Round) as a recreational cartridge for about $1.30 a round. Using a 55,000 psi bras case, let alone a 62,000 psi military brass case instead of that fancy 80,000 psi 3 piece case your armor piercing capability is going to drop. A LOT.
Would a standard brass case 277 Fury still be much MUCH better than 5.56 for armor penetration? Hell yeah! 5.56 NATO M855 was 1800 Joules energy, Retail 277 Fury in standard 55,000 psi brass cartridges is more like 2850 Joules, and M80 7.62 NATO is about 3450 Joules. So even in a retail cartridge the 277 Fury is over 50% more smack than an M855.
Upgrading that pressure from a standard retail round by 10% to the same 60,000 ish PSI range that is used in the 7.62 NATO and 5.56 NATO would see the 277 Fury punching out in excess of 3100 Joules. But with better Ballistic Coefficients and better Sectional Density than the 7.62.
Even a cheaper standard brass case 277 looks like a good option.
That is still gonna be more than enough for current Chinese or Russian body armour, but I 'd have doubts on it penetrating BTR's and the like without that 80,000 PSI case and some fancy teflon and pentatrator designs.
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Lamb will definitely improve it - but I say that with caution as most Americans are really not used to the lamb flavor and some are repulsed by the "grassiness", and also because psychologically lambs are cute (although calves are cute too, and piglets, and ducklings, and chicks).
More fat and moisture from the meat, and fennel is an even better match with lamb than beef.
Pork and Beef (or Pork and Veal, which will no doubt offend some) or even Beef Pork Veal (Ground BPV) is quite common as a mix for pasta and also works really really well.
The Cilantro/Coriander is not necessary, and I know some people register it as a weird soapy flavor. It's purely optional. If you want to add a substitute finely diced celery is a good option here. Some people add a little bit of carrot. Carrot/Celery/Onion is a great mix, one of the food holy trinities, but you need to be really careful about the amount of veg you sneak in, as it adds too much moisture and then you don't get the crispiness. Soggy sausage rolls are bad sausage rolls. If you substitute any veg in only do like for like amounts in substitution. Don't add extra.
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Men want the fantasy? Yet women have the shopping list of dozens of things men have to be - tall, high income job, good looking, rich, big house, flash car, 6 pack abs. The women are the ones after the 1% of all guys fantasy.
Guys just want someone who isn't obese, actually treats him with respect, wasn't previously a dude, hasn't banged everyone in town, and will be faithful to him.
I guess expecting them to actually be faithful to him is like expecting a fairytale.
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It's not recon in the American meaning or the British meaning. It's more like an armoured cavalry that actually does manoeuvre the way horse cavalry used to, then strike, whilst still having the ability to perform reconnaissance tasks.
The French have vehicles more dedicated to true reconnaissance roles like the various Panhard Armoured cars and Reconnaissance cars. Say for instance the ERC-90 Sagaie and EBRC Jaguar, and the AML 90, EBR and similar before them. A small scout car is always going to be easier to hide into do recon, or even a drone, than 20 odd tonnes of armoured truck.
So what really are these then? They have the speed and stealth (tyres are much quieter than tracks) to get into ambush positions and then attack, and from those kinds of side on location that gun is MORE than big enough to take out main battle tanks.
It also gives them the range to safely destroy most autocannon equipped IFV/AFV style vehicles as it's got an effective combat range of at least 4000 metres - a range at which no BMP (or Bradley) is going to be able to destroy it (except with an ATGM).
Plus, it can work in a support role for infantry advances, as a large gun that can fire HE is very useful for infantry, and very bad news for opposing infantry. It can also perform indirect fire artillery missions.
They're very flexible, to take advantage of opportunities, rather than being exceptionally good at any one thing.
Being present at the right time and having the ability to take advantage of an opponent's weakness is one of the best weapons of all.
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2:46 You just explained women's approach to dating, not men's. That's pure projection. At 3:14 though, you do nicely explain why the woman who has dated a lot of guys will never be satisfied with ANY man they date and will be perpetually single and miserable - they're searching for a frankenstein's monster of Josh's height, Luca's charm, Daniel's Porsche, Justin's house, Brendan's face, Steven's wallet and David's romance. So, they'd be great insights, but you've got the genders switched up completely lady.
4:25 Women are not socialized to "let men down kindly". Right now women believe they can attain clout within their friend groups or on social media by humiliating men by calling them creeps. They may let men down kindly when they perceive they have no backup, or where there are no cameras rolling, but if there's anyone in earshot that "kindness" goes straight out the window.
11:47 In any environment, where women discuss dating, even with a supposedly moral and Christian viewpoint, it always comes down to money and status. Not kindness, or devotion, or acts of service to each other, or community... but greed and extracting resources from the man. It wasn't the two men at that event that turned the conversation in that direction, it was women.
You keep doing it to yourself ladies, then keep being frustrated about your own selfish and superficial natures. Yet even talking about it, and complaining about it, you cannot see how it was women who took the conversation in that direction and accept the accountability for that, then take the actions to change.
Admit it, you ladies are the problem and until you recognize that rather than blameshift everything to men you won't fix the dating market.
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400f specs are actually pretty good gaming balance as far as bang for buck. Have been since the 8400.
Really the Intel xx400's run against the AMD 600's, the Intel xx600 runs against the AMD 600X, the Intel xx700 runs against the AMD 700X and both AMD and Intel 900's run against each other.
Historically it was more that Intel 700's ran against the AMD 800's and the Intel K sku 600's ran against the AMD 700X, but AMD pulled the pin on those matchups a bit with no 7800's, and also holding out so long on the non x variants (as well as the G, 300 and 100 variants) whilst they had such a huge advantage and basically milked customers to buy a 7600X. Not cool, AMD. That's where the xx100 Intel has honestly had a good run as a budget CPU since the 10105F.
The 600k (or 600kf) is kind of where "sensible" mostly gaming performance ends and the priority becomes more cores and clock speeds at the cost of enormous energy usage and running costs. Of course, the AMD 7600X regularly trounced the 600 class intels.
Most games just don't run enough threads to be able to use more than the Intel 13600k or the AMD 7600X or 7700X can use. That's why we actually saw in many cases lower gaming performance with the 7950X3D than the plain old 7700X.
The 7800X3D is basically a 7700X with VCache not really a higher end CPU. There is no 7800x in the AMD lineup, unlike the 5800X which was slammed for being an overpriced 5700X, at least until the 5800X3D came along..
The X950 is just AMD showing off. Those things are more a high end workstation than a desktop CPU, and unless you're a sponsered twich gamer or a heavy multasking renderer probably irrelevant to buyers. Doesn't stop them being bought for reasons of pure swag.
If you're thinking I'm an AMD fanboy I am running an 11400f, btw. At the time it was just far better bang for buck.
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At my current house I have twice stomped on eastern brown snakes in my thongs (yes, look up what thongs mean in Australia before you go further) rather than letting them bite and kill my dogs.
I get antivenom free treatment in the hospital, and would probably (97-98%) survive long enough to get to the hospital in an ambulance and survive if I got bitten Probably would have cost $5k vet treatment for the dogs and they would likely die anyway. Risk versus reward, I guess.
Mowing the lawn is an extreme sport in Australia, yeah, twice a week in summer and it could get you killed. No jokes.
Population is around 28 million now.
Worth noting is people really have no comprehension of how big Australia TRULY is. Mercator is a joke as far as projections of size when you are near the equator , and the two places that cop it the worst are Australia and Africa.
Australia is bigger than the contiguous 48 states, and way over THREE TIMES the size of Greenland, with just the state of Western Australia being bigger than Greenland (as well as being almost 4 times the size of Texas). Not that you'd know it from the way they look on a map, or with the two looking at each other with love hearts in this video. Because without Alaska, Australia is noticeably bigger.
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Ridiculously, the US$650 Tuf ASUS F15 laptop has an Aussie Amazon price of A$1499 for the 10300/1650 version.
On current exchange rates as a A$940 laptop this would be a great deal. At $1499, well... you can see how much you're getting taken for a ride.
AMD 4600H version a far more reasonable A$1160.
I picked up a similar spec MSI 10500/1650 about a year ago for $999 Australian Dollarydoos. They're now available as an 11400/1650 for similar pricing. A slightly higher spec 144 Hz one was available but it was about $500 extra at the time, but came with twice the memory and twice the SSD space. I upgraded both and called it good enough.
I think mine is only a 75hz screen though, so kind of regret it. But how frequently you can actually get up into the 144Hz range on a budget gaming laptop is up to you... you'd have to be running awfully low settings to achieve that and for mobile gaming performance my 4g wifi is usually by far my biggest limitation.
Funny thing is in Australia, Amazon prices for most of this kind of stuff are 50-100% higher than you can get them from a brick and mortar store, or if they're price competitive they are almost always a far inferior product being dumped on the lazy or gullible.
Right now a Gigabyte G5 or G7 is under $1200 Dollarydoos with a 11400H and RTX 3050 and 144Hz panel. You can get the A series versions with the AMD mobile CPU normally a few hundred cheaper. The ASUS TUF F15 can be got with a 12700 and 3050 for $1449 from the same brick and mortar dealer who will do shipping.
The very laptop you've listed here is basically the same price on Aussie Amazon as the Gigabyte G5 with 3060 and 12500H (G5 KE-52DE213SD) which should absolutely romp all over it. 12500 vs 10300, and 3060 vs 1650, for the same price? Game over.
That would be my personal recommendations to anyone looking to buy a cheap gaming laptop downunder right now. If you want the TUF, as reviewed here by Jay, go to another retailer, and you can get a much higher spec one cheaper. If you HAVE to buy off Amazon for whatever reason, get the Gigabyte with the 12500/3060.
A reminder to make sure you do your research, people, as what's cheap over there may not be cheap in your market.
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Zinc Bromine batteries are especially useful in high temperature environments, not facing all the heat (and fire) issues that plague LiFePO4. Redflow really target that household to small grid size (up to container sized, but linkable and scalable) and are very good at what they do. For a household, small medium business even up to a neighborhood scale solution they are probably the best product out there right now, and the fire safety aspect is a real concern in our Aussie heat.
Gelion seems to place themselves in a good intermediate ground with the transportability and safety, but without the energy density I'm not sure that transportability is that big a win. However, being able to be built in a similar way to normal AGM batteries may be a huge advantage on cost and also may suit mobile power applications like caravans down the track.
For stationary power stuff another old tech - Edison batteries may well be a great option too. Time proven. Lifespan measured in generations, not years, and the higher charge discharge rates are great for drawing current from them, and common elements.
Self discharge is a problem as they leak about 2% charge a day, but in an application where they're getting recharged on a daily basis that's really a non issue.
Weight is a big thing though. Stationary applications only, just like the RedOx flow batteries.
Really, I think Lithium based batteries have a place, especially right now in mobile phone or automotive applications where the highest density is the critical goal. But over time as charging infrastructure becomes more readily available, speed of recharge, number of charging cycles before failure, cost, and availability of chemicals are all going to be far more important than that charge density.
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I've been super stable from day dot. 2600 on MSI B350 Gaming Pro, first with a 1060 6GB and now 2070 Super (bought just at the start of the crisis).
The only thing though is overclocking. I got a really good stable overclock with my first memory, but had to manually overclock it. ryzen Master did all sorts of strangeness. then when I changed Memory to 3200 Ripjaws V I struggled to get it to clock up to 3200, even though it was on the support list. Yet the previous team 2133 ran happily at 2667, even 2866, anyway, but I struggled to get the supposedly much better 3200 to run more than 2933.
Later bios updates fixed that. XMP profiles are erm... messed up.
Then when I changed coolers to a far better one I lost my overclock profile, even though it was saved it was just gone. Manually tried to reinstate it, just gone. Set the same settings, it wouldn't take them. Eventually found a stable slightly higher overclock, but it was serious work to get it.
Why is it harder to overclock with better quality components, AMD? WHYYYYYYY?
Anyway, I've tossed up upgrading, was gonna go 3600, then 3800X, or maybe XT or whatever. but I'm maxed out 1440p 144 fps for the games I play, so what would be the point.
Although if someone wants to buy me 1060, b350, 2600 and that team memory I can probably justify a 5600X or 3700X build.
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1) Varies a lot by state here too. Winter in Queensland the sun can still be brutal, but it won't be in say Victoria. But summer, it's brutal everywhere and capable of melting your thongs.
2) We did experiment with Pay At The Pump but the margins on fuel are pretty low (even with the huge Aussie fuel prices), so I guess the opportunity to upsell is too critical for the business. A few places still use it, but very very rare - usually in 24 hour places.
Fuel is much more expensive in all of the world bar maybe the OPEC nations. Americans have no idea how much of an outlier they are on this.
3) There are turn left on red rules, but only where marked. Australia however has lots of left turn arrows and slip lanes, which mitigates this a bit. And roundabouts instead of traffic lights in many places. Guess we're concerned about pedestrian injuries which were certainly a big thing in trials where I live, because people might look for cars but not pedestrians and cyclists.
4) No free refills? There really is no thing as a free lunch, so your meal with it's free refill basically has an averaged cost of everyone's refills whether you take one or not. Some Hungry Jack's (Burger King) and Taco Bell do still do it I believe, but not anywhere else I have seen.
5) Speed Cameras vary from well signposted in advance to plain old entrapment. Yes, you shouldn't speed, but there are levels of enforcement that you can't even imagine in the states, like point to point speed cameras. Radar detectors are heavily fined and totally illegal too although they mainly used LIDAR now. Victoria is insane on this.
6) Internet speeds ARE that bad. Seriously. We have fraudband not broadband. His uploads shouldnt be that bad, though. Maybe he's on a cheap plan, or maybe it's where Youtube hosts his videos. My phone uploads photos quicker than his computer it seems, and that often drops back to 3g, so he's gotta find a new internet provider.
7) Yes. This sucks. No question. There used to be sauce bottles at the pie shop but not anymore (although it's usually only 20 cents not 2 dollars). Sauce is still free on the Bunnings snags though so we soldier on.
8) Given the government pays your medical bills for accidents (unlike the US) there is some sensible reason why this is the case, even as a motorcycle rider. In the case of bicycles, however, the discouragement it causes for cyclists and other forms of active mobility might make the healthcare costs increase due to obesity, diabetes etc as people choose helmet free options like cars and public transport.
9) Health again. Cigarettes are definitely highly taxed to discourage them, because of the massive health costs. Alcohol less so, because it's more culturally acceptable.
10) He's gotta go to the outback. Horseflies are really painful, btw.
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Looks like substantial improvements made on last time. Starting to be cool
What they need obviously is stronger coils and higher voltage output. The extra 2 coils help a bit. You'd think that they could use a smaller lighter 60v battery since the limitation of power isn't the battery itself but the limitations of the coils and capacitor. But for now, for off the shelf swap and go availability, that's really up to the owner to choose the battery that suits them.
Sooo... given the bigger capacitor is getting pretty decent recharge for the coils given it can mag dump full auto, the coils are still the biggest limitation.
If that's the case, then what you really need is more coils for more acceleration, to get those rounds up to a higher speed and greater stability. To me, this means that I'd be thinking of a total redesign for the new version.
What this screams at for me is a bullpup design. Since there is no chamber, or really a firing group, what you're really looking for is maximum barrel length in the design. A bullpup design should allow a few more coils to fit in for the same length. The jump from 8 to 10 seems to have improved it. With a bullpup design I'd be thinking more like 14 for the same length.
I'd LOVE to see this thing as a full p90 style design, extended magazine running along the top. But I expect that having the magazine anywhere near those coils is going to be a bad thing, so maybe a magazine that runs along the capacitor, either as a top or bottom feed is fine.
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Peanut butter. Satay. Toasted Peanut Butter and Cheese. Peanut butter whiskey. Not for pizza bases :(
Healthy food. America's food availability is based on what is convenient to large supermarket chains. It's funny, because in many ways America (well maybe California) is on front of a lot of health food trends, but the problem is frankly affordability, because of those same supply chains. Portion sizes and massive amounts of Corn Syrup have a lot to do with obesity. Australia ain't far behind, but our portion sizes at Macca's are nowhere near as bad.
Pro teams. Australia's biggest winter sport (AFL) has 18 teams and our summer sport (Cricket) just one third of that, so we have minor leagues too, but you guys get the same sized crowds as the NFL. Well done you. We used to get big crowds at our state league games, but not any more. Loved watching earthquake videos for Virginia Tech. That's true passion.
Medications. We let trained professionals choose the right medicine to treat your condition. Not some marketing dude. This is one of the reasons why your health system is messed up, dude.
Soccer. We call it soccer too. Soccer is called Soccer because we already had multiple codes of Football already in place well before Soccer became a thing. It may be "the world game" but it isn't as old as most people think. We do have people make fun (or should I say take the p*ss) of australian sport too. To soccer fans in Australia their sport is "foot ball" and rugby is "hand egg", because you handle it more than kick it and it's white and egg shaped.
But hey, attendances don't lie, and no one likes a nil all draw.
Taxes. There's VAT in Europe. Australia has a GST but that is inclusive on all quoted prices.
Metric System, well, we've never heard THAT one before. It's always funny to me that the nation that rebelled against the British Empire still uses the Imperical (that is to say, the British Empire's) System. You really need to measure things in freedoms per bald eagle or something. We know imperial too, but we don't use it daily except for heights, and the common sizes where metric and imperial meet up close enough (eg 4by2 wood, 17mm spanners, 25x25mm square tube)
Dates. YYYYMMDD is the only one that makes sense from a programming perspective. Not that I do that kind of work anymore, but no later date should ever have a lower number value. So until we go all "stardate" that's the best system we have and all others are wrong.
Final mention. Toilets. You should feel safe in a toilet, and not need to draft in your mates to protect you from being seen around the door. That's crazy.
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Bars, Clubs and Pubs vary in closing time based on location and also their opening time. So you may find an early opener - a lot of seaside pubs are like this and also industrial zones where nightshift workers come off their shift.
Even in the 1980's and 1990's you could find 4am closing bars and places with 5am or 6am opening times, so you could swing from one zone to another.
Also many cafe's could be 24 hours and serve alcohol with a food purchase. once you've ordered some nibbles you could keep ordering alcohol while you were at least socially acceptably drunk.
Responsible service of alcohol has changed a lot of that, mostly for the better. Although sometimes they're used to try and select clientele based on other issues than their sobriety...
Foster's was definitely an Aussie thing but mainly for export. It was never big in Australia except in the late 1970's to perhaps the early 80's. Mostly it sells to overseas markets, particularly the UK and China.
Size. We still get tourists hiring a car on the Gold Coast (and Sydney) to drive to Uluru and be back for dinner by the beach. Sadly even people who are a bit more educated than this are still completely blown away by it's size. Mercator projection makes huge changes - Canada has it's size effectively doubled (although it's still huge) and Alaska looks around 2/3 the size of the lower 48 when it's really about 1/5th. Alaska is only about 2/3 the size of Western Australia and is still smaller than Queensland as well. Only 2 states and the capital territory are smaller than Texas.
At least Americans have an idea of what a big country means though. Compared to Europeans who can drive across their country in a few hours, we can't drive across many of our counties or shires in a few hours.
Tipping. Don't unless someone really goes out of their way for you. It is not really expected, and we don't want to create the customers subsidising business profits model that the USA has. Australian holidays are expensive enough without adding to it. Rounding up to the nearest dollar or five dollars is kind of ok, but with so much of our payment system being electronic even that just makes everything weird and complicated.
Public transport is good, like really really good in the capitals compared to most of the US, although obviously the US has some exceptions. The regional trains are a bit more patchy, often only a couple of times per week, and many areas have nothing. Plus, 10 hour bus trips really suck. Do your research. Don't expect European levels of service (or even Bosneywash levels of service) as the population density just cannot support it. There really isn't high speed rail either.
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Just to warn you. I had a mate whose partner was big into her kink of choking.
Until with his influence at work he helped get her a job where she suddenly got a huge pay rise from her menial shop assistant job close to what he earned.
She, with her new income and a bit of attention from a new (male) workmate started dissing him in her new job, put some false claims in against him to both HR and then the police. Despite evidence his lawyers presented, including text messages from her begging he do that to her, he ended up going to prison for submitting to her kink. Despite fathering 3 kids with her over the last decade and paying to support her kids from other men. He's now a registered sex offender, and lost a $150k a year job.
Luckily when he got out of prison, people at another organization in the same industry who had heard the story gave him a job. Super lucky, as his life could have been utterly destroyed.
So, if you want to play into their kinks, get evidence. Preferably video not just text.
Or better yet, dodge not just that bullet but that whole magazine dump.
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What we're seeing is that we've got a brainwashed monoculture, a cult, that is allowed to promote bigotry and hatred of men.
When called out on that, the response is not to acknowledge that hate, but name calling, projection, exaggeration and lies.
In short, the debate here isn't a debate at all. It's honestly as brutal as "if you don't choose the bear, or you're a r*pist". It's a totally false dichotomy between minimalizing the (very likely) worst thing a bear can do (eating you alive, or mauling you and leaving you to die in torment) and projecting the very worst fears of what a man could do (which is incredibly unlikely).
Sadly, the false dichotomy of this debate means that even if you point out what is in fact the true debate occuring here, you're basically called a s3xual predator for pointing out the absurdity of it.
This is why men are so angry about it. It's a no win debate, where the man has to agree with the most ridiculous feminist demand, agreeing that all men are predators, or be labelled a predator.
We really have reached peak stupid.
Women, enjoy your bears. Grizzle Grizzle.
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Let's see.
#1 No.
#2 No.
#3 Maybe, but they've gone overboard with it on every example, so... No
#4 Absolutely, much as my doctor doesn't want me to. Still, it's just potato fries so nothing special really, just novelty.
I'd rather the Crunchy Potato Squares Dominique Rizzo used to do.
#5 No.
#6. Maybe but see #4 and #3. This overload turns what looks like appealing food into a disgusting soggy mess. So once again, No.
#7 Yes, much as my doctor doesn't want me to.
#8 Yeah, I'd give that a try.
#9 No.
#10 is a maybe.
If you're coming to Australia for food, I'd honestly rate one of them as being a worthwhile food experience.
Australia has some amazing food, but none of these are really it.
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Australia has such low population density that a lot of places just don't get temperature recordings. There's certainly higher recordings but whether they meet all the standards for "validated meteorological recording" is another story.
Plenty of places have claimed higher temperatures, and some of those were probably accurate, but many were the thermometer on a post type recording. Old newspapers talk about 125 degree Fahrenheit recordings, but the difference between a shielded proper recording and a "bragging rights" recording is huge. This is from a guy who used to see in direct sunlight temperatures at work in excess of 58 degrees celsius, and temperatures inside machinery exceeding 70 celsius regularly at work...
Death Valley is a bit of a special case, being so far below sea level and in a huge heat bowl. There are places in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Australia that might well be able to go close though. There's little likelihood that the 1913 Death Valley temperature is accurate and it will eventually get decertified, although it is possible that it was tied in with a heat burst effect, but there just isn't enough evidence to support that. It's such an outlier that it's extremely unlikely to be accurate.
Even so, Death Valley will still probably keep the record, because it still has accurate and verifiable records up to around 54 celsius
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@rowanbrecknell4021 When I took on a new career mid life it required a lot of planning, investment into skills and mental preparation.
People given the same opportunities as me at the same time failed, not because they were not given the same opportunities, but because they didn't prepare themselves psychologically and make an accurate assessment of their willingness to do the sacrifices required.
Exact same skillset, same opportunities - different pathways chosen and different outcomes. Because how they prepared themselves (or not) and whether they had an attitude of whether it would all fall into their lap or it would take five years of pain starting at the bottom and working their way up again.
People are brilliant at cognitive dissonance, change is hard. Really really hard.
I've seen people offered changes in lifestyle from unemployment to being straight to the top 10% of wage earners. They say they want to do it, but when it comes to the crunch they just won't change their lives.
The sad thing is for most the excuses are to blame everyone else.
Even accepting that they're not ready yet to make that change would be a big step forward.
Sadly, this seems part of human nature, and large businesses and even whole governments seem to fall into the same traps. Short term thinking. Hoping that even the smallest effort suddenly sees money falling from the sky, and giving up in frustration and resentment when it doesn't.
In the end, it's all about unwillingness to make difficult changes permanent for long term good.
I've got a Kodak Digital Camera that I've kept that sums the whole thing up perfectly.
Yet, we do see successes. There are people who are willing to uproot their lives to the other side of the world just for an opportunity.
I'm sure a great deal of good could come from the Ord River Scheme if it was effectively managed.
I just doubt there is the political will to let that happen from either side of politics.
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Straight up it' sounds like a puff piece from ESPN in the worst kind of flag waving yankee way. Full toss cricket bowling in the strike zone so that it's easier for the baseball player, and harder for the cricket player who does not normally play strokes like that at that height? Puh-leeze. Luckily it improves a bit.
The bat size is smaller, yes that's one for baseball. But Batsmen in Cricket are supposed to go out and score 100 runs in a game, not 1 in a game like baseball.
So the expectations are different. Batters in baseball can leave half the balls. In cricket they need to defend against almost every single ball, as in 100 overs or 600 balls there are usually only about 20 "wides" and "no balls".
In cricket there is no "zone". The ball can be bounced. It can be a full toss. It can be bounced at the opponents head, or bowled right up at their feet to crush their toes. You are literally defending your body from injury with that bat. There's no walk if you get hit by a ball. Check out "Bodyline" when english bowlers aimed to hurt Australian batsmen in the 1930's when no one had any protective gear...
Bowling speeds are about the same - peaking out at just over 100 mph. Baseball does slightly have the edge here because they can throw the ball and cricket you cannot. That's factual and measurable.
The pitching distance is shorter in baseball, yes, true too. But not as much as you think. The bowler must land his front foot behind the popping crease at 22 Yards, but that isn't where his arm has to be when he *releases the ball*. He is running in full speed, with his arm fully extended and will bend his back forward in the movement of bowling the ball. So that'll be at least another yard shorter distance from release to batsman.
Bowlers usually finish bowling their delivery about 6 or 8 yards down the pitch.
Reaction times? Baseball is a full toss. It may swing, or deviate in the air a little bit, but you can watch and judge the ball swing from when it leaves the baseball pitcher's hand. Without any external impact it'll continue it's curve. Laws of physics, baby.
But as you saw from the Shane Warne videos, the movement you can get from swing in the air is NOTHING compared to how much the ball can move if it's able to hit a rough, grippy surface like the pitch, you have a lot of angular momentum (spin) on the ball, or if you hit the seam on the pitch. The swing can be in one direction, but the movement off the seam hitting can be another, and the impact of the spin when it hits the ground can be a third direction. Plus as the ball deforms from impact to the pitch it can create extra bounce or slide and stay low. And they bowlers aim for the wear points on the pitch so it isn't bouncing off a flat surface either.
And those impacts and changes in direction happen one or two yards away from the batsman, not from the moment the ball leaves the pitchers hand. So the "reaction time" being based on the ball leaving the bowler's hand in cricket is massively inflating the response time a cricket batsman gets. If the bat wasn't bigger a cricket batsman wouldn't have a chance. In the old days (like 17th Century) teams being all out for 20 runs or so was the norm, when we had cricket bats the size and shape of hockey sticks. We changed the rules and equipment of the sport because honestly that doesn't make for exciting watching.
You watched the Shane Warne videos. Were the batsmen getting much reaction time from the moment the ball hit the pitch and started to turn? Nope. They didn't have even a chance to react.
If he bowled a full toss they'd hit him out of the park every single time. Bouncing the ball makes it much harder, and I'd personally say that facing a bouncer from even a fast - medium bowler at 90 mph+ is the most mentally challenging thing, even if actually facing a bowler like Shane Warne in the right conditions might be harder to hit.
Cricket is definitely played at a serious level by a lot more countries. You have about 14 nations with serious Baseball competitions (including Australia, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan who's country status is a bit questionable).
Cricket has far more countries with top flight competitions. We nearly have that many International Test Cricket Nations (12), and we don't give out test nation status very easily. Major cricketing nations like West Indies (1928), India (1932) and Pakistan (1952) didn't gain Test status without decades of international cricket tours to prove they were worthy of the honour and the cricket would be at least competitive.
IBAF (International Baseball Federation) has 124 members. Cricket has over 100 ICC (International Cricket Council) members, but includes a lot of more populous countries like India, Pakistan, China, Brazil, Bangladesh, Mexico and of course the United States.
But the scale of that competition? There's currently 91 Countries that are ranked for T20 International Matches. How many does IBAF organize regular international games for? The IBAF is NOTHING compared to the size of the ICC. If the ICC is Major League Baseball, the IBAF wouldn't even rank as a Minor League AA.
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It's amazing how many comments here are from overseas people (kind of obvious with all the "God bless", "Thoughts and Prayers" and "Thank you for your service" comments, which are things that Aussies NEVER SAY). If you click on a few repeat poster names here it becomes clear pretty quick just how many people commenting are not Australian but overseas provocateurs. Pretty clear that much of the support is from overseas antivaxxers who have been encouraged on social media to support their own domestic political beliefs in a completely different country.
As far as cutting off "critical supplies"? Queensland is a net food exporter, by a bloody mile, and much of what we can't produce ourselves is sourced offshore. We can also bring stuff in by coastal shipping or by train.
We might miss out on some winter veg from NSW. Big deal. We can buy it from Tassie and ship it by boat, or frozen stuff from NZ. We'll miss out on Victorian lamb. Big deal - we'll buy beef, cheap, because our suppliers in places like Rocky (you know, beef capital of Australia) won't be able to ship any south.
Meanwhile imagine the screaming when Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart cannot get steak or mince, until they can get supplies shipped over all the way from Brazil. It ain't Queensland who is gonna suffer. :P
We can also bring stuff in by train, completely unaffected by a truckies strike. Maybe we'll even start sending trains of beef mince south.
We might be short on pork, but since most people buy overseas pork because of the price, once again, no big deal. Chickens we've got enough of.
On seasonal fruit and veg, we'll have plenty of bananas, strawberries etc. We'll be short on apples and oranges.
Also, the antivax truckie strike is not going to be the cause, they're just trying to claim credit for a FWA approved strike to do with Toll's enterprise bargaining agreement. A perfectly legal strike action to do with the constant undermining of wages by a major corporation. The strike has very little to do with vaccination. It's just a couple of antivaxxers trying to claim credit for doing nothing else but creating a bit of noise on facebook and youtube.
Don't be fooled, people.
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It's more complex than this.
The solution was a proper fibre to the premises broadband - high speed, reliable, scalable and new. But that was proposed by the Labor party, who are usually opposed by our media (even moreso than our government), predominantly one Rupert Murdoch. You may have heard of him... has a lot of money and clout, as well as almost all of our media.
The alternative proposal was that we somehow cobble together a hybrid of HFC cable, Satellite, Wifi, 4G, 5G, ADSL and ISDN, maintain all of these, maintain a fair and equitable playing field by slowing it all way down, and do it on the cheap. Who knows, maybe there was even some HSDPA still in there. Maybe some homing pigeons too.
Of course most of that relied on using a copper telephone cable network that was in some cases over 100 years old. That the government once owned, but had long been sold off.
Of course with the growth of mobile phones Telstra knew they were sitting on an expensive dead duck that only was good for the basis of the ADSL network but needed massive injections of capital.
Could the government get cheap access from Telstra for it's old copper network? Not on your Nelly.
So, the "cheap" solution ended up being basically extorted into buying the old, clapped out copper network for basically what a brand new fibre to the premises system with 100 times the speed would have cost.
Hurrah for Superior Economic Management.
And that's how "fraudband" was born... erm birthed... erm oozed from the primordial swamp.
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@xristinarose2409 committing actual fraud that involves transfers of real money is a crime. She's actually committed cheque fraud worth a million dollars. You're talking Grand Larceny. So you aren't talking small bikkies. A man in Lousiana was convicted to 10 years jail in Feb 2024 for a $1.1 Million fraud, a similar amount to her check fraud.
If the justice system was fair she'd be in jail for 10 years alone just for that fraud, and it isn't her only fraud, as alluded to by her husband.
Secondly, at over US$20,000 behind in child support, men are taken to jail for 2 years for that amount.
Here's the US Criminal code relevant to that.
"18 U.S.C. § 228- Failure to pay legal child support obligations
Section 228 of Title 18, United States Code, makes it illegal for an individual to willfully fail to pay child support in certain circumstances.
For one, an individual is subject to federal prosecution if he or she willfully fails to pay child support that has been ordered by a court for a child who lives in another state, or if the payment is past due for longer than 1 year or exceeds the amount of $5,000. A violation of this law is a criminal misdemeanor, and convicted offender face fines and up to 6 months in prison (See 18 U.S.C. § 228(a)(1)).
If, under the same circumstances, the child support payment is overdue for longer than 2 years, or the amount exceeds $10,000, the violation is a criminal felony, and convicted offenders face fines and up to 2 years in prison (See 18 U.S.C.§ 228(a)(3))."
So why are you treating this as not a big deal. If that was a dude he'd have been put in jail for a long time for either of those offenses, let alone both.
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The local rugby you're talking about is pretty much guaranteed to be Rugby Union, which is a slightly different sport to Rugby League. Rugby League broke away from Rugby Union in 1895 in the UK and 1907 in Australia.
Rugby Union, or simply Rugby, is the global sport, although it's really only played at the top level by about a dozen nations, with New Zealand clearly the top nation, and South Africa next best. Australia lags behind and then we have Argentina, which is probably slightly behind Australia but rapidly improving.
Outside the former SANZAR nations, now that all broke up in a huff, you have the other Pacific nations. Japan is also a rapidly improving, and Fiji, Tonga and Samoa all love to carry former tribal disputes onto the field :) Great viewing.
Then you have the European 6 nations where France, Italy, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are consistently good. Then Georgia and Romania also field pretty reasonable teams.
Both Canada and the US regularly compete in the World Cup (and of course get slaughtered by the more serious nations). But hey, how do we go in baseball world series?
Because of the different seasons Northern Hemisphere to Southern Hemisphere, and the big spatial gaps you tend to see 3 areas of Rugby Union and 3 different styles of play within the same rules (European, South African/Australian, and Oceania). You could almost separate the French style of play from the other European nations.
Rugby League is much smaller, mainly Australia, one professional team in New Zealand, and Northern England with one Professional team in France.
It's also played a lot in the Pacific region. It's very popular in Papua New Guinea too.
The NRL should be looking to include teams from within this region, but the almighty tv sponsorship decides where sport is viable, sadly.
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Australia has kinships with NZ obviously, and Britain, Ireland (lots of Irish convicts), Scotland and Wales too, the Canadians, and USA, and Turkey (because of Gallipoli), and France (mostly from WW1, but also very much due to early exploration), India (Cricket and the empire), South Africa (Cricket, Rugby and the Empire), Indonesia (we championed the creation of Indonesia, and also because Bali), Thailand, Greece (huge Greek Community), Italy (post war migration, Snowy Mountains Hydro), Vietnam (boat refugees from Vietnam war), Sri Lanka (again, boat refugees).
We also have a very large Chinese community going back to the 1850's.
Parts of Australia also have huge German, Jewish, Russian, Hungarian, Serbian and Malay communities. The Barossa Valley and also the Adelaide Hills have a huge German community. St Kilda and Balaclava have a huge Jewish Community. Broome is an absolute cultural melting pot.
We also have lots of smaller minority groups we've taken in, with various levels of success. but I'm sure they'll come around to our way of life eventually.
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Probably not, to be honest. In WW1 Germany still held strong colonial regions, and the German navy of WW1 was a far closer match in strength to the British one.
Due to the restrictions placed on Germany post WW1, the German Navy in WW2 was barely a fraction of the British one, which is why they ended up going the Submarine warfare route.
The Bismark was ALWAYS going to get caught, the question was how long she would be wreaking havoc, which ended up being about a week... unlike the Emden.
Also, as far as the geostrategic importance, the role Emden played in raiding in the Indian Ocean could effectively cut Britain off from two of her three most powerful colonial possessions - India and Australia, which was certainly a big threat to the war effort. The Bismark, in the Atlantic, could probably at best bring the US into the war earlier.
So that's a huge difference.
The British were definitely more freaked out about the Emden, and the threat lasted far longer.
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Australia only has 6 states (and a heap of territories, small and large). 2 of the 6 states have a capital of over 5 million people (Sydney, Melbourne), 2 more over 2 million people (Brisbane, Perth), one over 1 million (Adelaide). We have plenty of other cities of over 150,000 people. Just not many people in the middle of the desert.
South East Queensland has about 4 million, with big cities surrounding (and in some cases attached to) Brisbane, like the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, and Toowoomba.
Moreton Bay, Redlands, Ipswich and Logan are not "officially" Brisbane but are usually included in the "capital city" population as it's definitely within the same urban area without any break.
If you also include the two "coast" regions which are almost completely joined, Brisbane is about 200 miles North to South. To an American it's not really too dissimilar to combining Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, although the three of them do have a little bigger population than the SEQ region. Maybe Miami-Dade and Broward, because that's a similar population in total.
Aussies wondering what Broward is, it's the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood-Pembroke-Miramar region. You've probably heard of Fort Lauderdale. Also, no, not THAT Hollywood.
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@Dominikize Because the german records are hopeless, such little of them are available? That's alluded to in the video.
The tank and vehicle numbers would include lend lease. Although much of the lend lease vehicles were unsuitable, and therefore show inflated equipment levels that the russians wouldn't put into front line service.
For instance the M3 (M3 Lee/Grant) which the Russians called "A grave for Seven Brothers". That's almost 1000 or almost 10% of the US lend lease effort and the Russians would only use them in secondary fronts.
As also is seen, many of them were also light tanks - 1200 odd obsolete M3A1 Stuarts, over 5000 M2-M9 Half Tracks, including MGMC versions which might count as "armoured vehicles" but aren't going to do much against a Panzer III or StuG.
Obviously anything is better than nothing, but many of these vehicles were either woefully obsolete, or were completely unsuited to the conditions.
But in 1942, when the Russian Army was at it's weakest, they made up over 10% of the armoured vehicles of the Russian army.
Out of the 12,000 US Lend Lease vehicles, however there was about 4000 Shermans, over the course of the war.
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America is quite frankly an amazing country - enormous natural wealth and beauty, huge economic output, friendly people and enormous potential.
Yet it squanders that enormous GDP by funnelling that money into a far too small group of people, leaving far too many struggling on multiple jobs below the poverty line, while those at the very top pay virtually no tax at all.
Sadly, for all the brilliance shown by American teachers, scientists and researchers, the industrial capabilities the nation has go to making the already unimaginably rich even richer rather than improving the quality of life of it's people.
I don't know whether it is because the political system requires so much money to get into that those in power have spent years isolating from the lived reality of the country's people, or it's because everyone's second jobs and side hustles mean that wealth becomes the only focus.
I honestly couldn't imagine living there. It'd do my head in.
Yet most people you speak to online from the US think that it's the best place in the world, because "freedom"...
IMHO Working 3 jobs to support your family ain't freedom. It's just a different, legal kind of slavery.
The sooner more Americans (like yourself) open their eyes to how different much of the world is and how much better it can be for the citizens the sooner Americans can get a better deal for themselves.
Is getting paid holiday leave and affordable health care too "socialist" for Americans? Or just for the few in power who need to protect their political donors?
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The inability to detect ambush by individuals using shoulder mounted surface to air missiles is a universal weakness of helicopters.
Perhaps the west could be performing more low speed CAS runs with A-10s or similar, but that would likely lead to increased plane losses for fewer helicopter losses.
Overall, given the toughness of the Warthog versus the susceptibility of any attack helicopter, it would mean slightly less losses, but at a greater cost of unit lost.
However, A-10 are not replaceable either, and it looks like the US won't be buying Textron Scorpions, and is unlikely to buy more than token numbers of a Brazilian design like the Super Tucano, even with the American built versions available.
A step back to the AT-6 Wolverine as replacements would be a HUGE capability drop, but hey, Beechcraft have lobbied hard.
Heck, even a drop back to the Super Tucano is a huge capability drop.
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The two closest million plus cities are Adelaide to Melbourne, which is about an 8.5 hour drive.
We do have some half million plus cities, but most of them are basically in a conurbation with the bigger cities (eg Gold Coast and Brisbane, Newcastle and Sydney). Likewise quarter million plus cities like Ipswich, Logan, Sunshine Coast, Wollongong, Geelong all kind of get swallowed up too).
Melbourne to Brisbane in 18 hours? Good luck with that. Fuel stops, inevitable roadworks, food, toilet breaks. Usually takes me 21+ hours.
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11:55 So you're all girlboss energy until you decide to try and do stuff "on the cheap" but then expect men to have the resources (eg the truck for you to put things in) and do all this free labor for you. You expect men to be willing to invest in the equipment, invest their time in you, invest their energy into your wants and needs for nothing in return.
Sounds pretty much the stock feminist lie of being "strong and independent" until you're confronted with reality, and then playing helpless female victim card to get your own needs fulfilled by men, with no reward to them. Be that independent adult and pay a moving man to move it for you.
A dresser isn't that heavy. Unless it's like solid oak it should be a 2 man lift, usually just one man with the drawers removed, which means you could get you and 3 other girlies and pick it up. Go hire a truck, a van, or a trailer, and get your girlies together. Or a simple trolley from home depot. Actually doing this adult task by yourself, as an adult, for once. Paying the full costs of it will make you realize how much it really costs for each of those "simple favours" you keep asking men for, and why you shouldn't be expecting people to drop everything to help you.
Or, if all that's too hard, work some longer hours at work, pick up some overtime, and pay for a new dresser from a store that does delivery. Or buy a flatpack one and the tools to assemble it, and watch some how to videos. Then think about when you're going to move out of that apartment in 12 months time, and start saving thousands of dollars for movers.
This is why men don't spend all their money going out to restaurants and clubs and holidays, and don't live paycheck to paycheck. It's men doing adult thinking.
Yet, you're what, near 30 and still living like you're in the moving out from home the first time mentality like you're 18. Grow up girl.
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@tzenzhongguo They did receive those as well.
But if you ask the German pilots who served upon both the western front and the Ost front which was the most dangerous plane of the war and you might get a big surprise when they rank the Yak 3 right up there.
"During 431 sorties, 20 Luftwaffe fighters and three Junkers Ju 87s were shot down while Soviet losses amounted to two Yak-3s shot down."
When you're talking in excess of 10:1 that's pretty good kill ratios there against stuff like BF-109's. BF-109's were a pretty even match to the Spitfire right through the war, by the way, so the soviets were once again doing something right.
In a war, any extra hardware is good. Even if you don't rate it highly you can at least use it for training or reserve units to at least create "paper" divisions for defence, shows of force to other nations that might try and take advantage of your current situation, and quelling insurrection.
Even better, it's probably better than some of the weaker equipment still getting churned out at some of your less important/less upgraded factories.
P40's were far more of a thing for China. They really weren't ever up to the standard of European warfare.
P-51's were kind of useless for Russia for most of the war, too. They were more suited as a bomber escort designed for long range activity. Too heavy for the kind of combat seen over the ostfront, and Russia was short of large, long range bombers for most of the war so it couldn't really assist with escort or long range interception.
The Airacobra was "kind of" a good thing, for the Russians and the Free French, but had critical weaknesses, particularly an underpowered engine with a bad ceiling. This is why it was the French and Russians who used it, since it was effectively obsolete for the Americans and British - it couldn't fly high enough fast enough for supporting their bombing nor interception needs.
Which means, mostly, what you're explaining is America expecting kudos for sending their inferior/outdated equipment for other people to get killed in.
But for lower altitude dogfights this was not an issue, which is why both the free French and Russians got good use out of them..
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Corn based ethanol is simply an example of how corrupt American politics is, particularly political lobbying for special interests.
Sugarcane based ethanol is, depending on location it is grown, between 7 and 16 times more efficient, but doesn't get assistance. Because Congress wants to favour midwestern corn farmers (and of course oil extractors).
Ok, most of the USA can't grow the most efficient option, sugar cane, because of climactic conditions. But why not sugar beet?
Sugar beet is at least twice as efficient as corn although still only about a quarter as efficient as sugar cane. Like corn, the leftovers make good animal fodder or can be used for other forms of bioenergy, but it needs less fertilizer and is better for soil health than corn.
The return of ethanol per kilo of corn grain in theory looks better than sugar beet (11kg of grain per gallon versus 18kg of beet per gallon), but that figure ignores that most of the corn plant is not actually the harvestable corn. Far more of the beet plant by mass is actually the harvestable material.
So why isn't America using Sugar Beet? It grows well in cold Europe and even in Russia. You can grow it in the colder, less efficient farming states too.
Well, despite America being a net sugar importer, there still isn't the incentive to grow it. Due to such corruption of the lobbying process it doesn't want to grow sugar, nor does it want to import more sugar. Likewise, even in areas where both could be grown, farmers don't want to convert from growing corn to beet, because they get paid more in subsidies for growing corn so much so that it's worth more to grow corn and then let it rot than have a viable saleable crop of sugar beet or cane sugar.
This is why everything is sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup and other abominations, but I digress.
Because of this ridiculous surplus of corn, uses had to be found. Despite the appalling inefficiency of corn as a biofuel source, America has enormous stockpiles of the stuff, and the federal government is paying farmers ludicrous amounts to grow more, while blocking more efficient sugar sources due to domestic politics and international protectionism (free trade hahahaha what).
Biofuel can make sense. Just not the way the American lobbying industry has corrupted the science.
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Affordability is based on wages, and American wages suck. They've stagnated for the last 30 years.
Australian wages have stagnated for the last ten years, but house pricing has skyrocketed. In 2021, house prices went up over 20% in most of Australia, and wages didn't noticably increase (about 0.2%).
So to buy a house to live here, crazy un affordable. Average prices in Sydney for a House are about $1.2 Million, and that's including all the "cheap houses" 70 km away from the CBD. Apartments within 15 km of the city average about $1.5 Million, and houses in that close will set you back $2 million and up, getting higher the closer you go in. Expect to pay upwards of $10 million to be close to the waterfront, too. Actual waterfront will start at maybe $25 million.
Melbourne the median is about $1 million for a house, but given that Melbourne is basically a square 100 km wide with a bay cut out of the middle that means that that's the average including fringes 70 km from the city, and houses within the 15 km zone are also close to $2 million.
Even cities like Brisbane average around $750k, and Hobart over $600k.
Compared to housing prices, everything else seems cheap.
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Except of course the rest of the world has had these smaller sized "Utility Vehicles" rather than "pick up trucks" for DECADES.
The first of them were built in Australia in the 1930's, almost 100 years ago.
Almost all of the major manufacturers build them. Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Mazda, Isuzu, General Motors, Renault, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, as well as Mahindra, LDV, SsangYong, Great Wall etc etc.
Imagine thinking that this was a new thing because you couldn't look beyond the borders of the US of A.
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4:22 Also, compared to a Bagel which Americans consider "healthy", a donut is basically health food. Don't get me wrong, Bagels are delicious but not healthy.
Cheezels are very very unhealthy but delicious. If you want to see how unhealthy a Cheezel or Twistie is for you, just get out a cigarette lighter and set one on fire. They will burn like a firelighter. They have SO much energy. Take them camping because they do the same job and you can eat them and give up on the idea of a fire anyway.
11:16 Bundaberg Ginger Beer is like halfway between a beer or kombucha and a soda. It's carbonated without being too sweet, it's spicy, and refreshing. You can drink it straight or mix with it. If you home make ginger beer you know what it's like.
13:00 Actually living costs are weird here. Grocery food prices go up as you move away from the major cities, due to logistics, unless you use local farmer's markets or grow your own. May regional areas you can find market stalls by roadsides or even just honesty boxes for produce. But housing prices rapidly decrease outside the capital cities.
Overall Sydney is the most expensive, then Canberra and Brisbane are roughly equal, Melbourne and Perth roughly equal (Perth cheaper for housing and Melbourne way cheaper for food). Everything else is in a gradient based on how close to the relative capitals and how you consume. If you're in say the Riverina, a lot of fruit and veg is cheap, but beef costs more. if you're in say Rockhampton, beef is cheaper and a lot of fruits are more expensive.
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@ejtattersall156 nice cherrypicking on how you ignored the rest of it. I will repeat
"Wealth comes from availability of natural resources, human capital, productivity, innovation, education and many other things."
Firstly, Germany was long the largest nation in Western Europe by population. So it excels in human capital.
It's population is well educated, which creates innovation which drives higher production.
So straight away choosing Germany as a counterpoint sinks your argument.
In addition Germany was long a wealthy country from natural resources too - the critical ones of the late 19th to mid 20th century especially being coal, timber, and metal ores such as iron ore and copper.
Germany was at one stage both the largest steel manufacturer in the world and the largest coal miner, as well as having significant reserves of gas and hydro power.
Germany would not have fought 2 world wars against most of the european powers without a lot of resources.
One they were critically short of was oil, and we know the consequences of that.
Obviously, as with most modern economies they have transitioned from a resource extraction economy to a knowledge based economy, although they certainly maintain far stronger production capability than most modern economies.
Part of that descent from extractive industries is environmental controls, with their much tighter environmental controls than say China or India, but I will agree part of it too is exhausting previously rich resources.
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8:01 Keep waiting for that right fit. Keep waiting forever...
The reality is there is never a "right fit". Relationships are ALWAYS work to create and then to keep them afloat. But you didn't want to put that work in because you live in a magical fairytale land taught to you by feminism, where you are entitled to be a princess and have a perfect 10 Prince drop into your lap and fall hopelessly in love with you and give you everything you desire.
Well, this ain't Disney, honey. That stuff doesn't happen. The princess isn't found at the Walmart cashier or the drive through of Taco Bell. There's no rescue. The cashier marries someone else lower middle class, and that's honestly a step up for their socio-economic status. Maybe a truck driver, maybe a uber driver or amazon delivery worker, maybe a street sweeper or a garbage collector. The administrative officer or the lab assistant marries someone from the same middle class too, maybe a call centre worker or maybe a construction worker. Your delusion of making it big as a content creator won't happen either, so you'll never be important enough or rich enough to snag the top tier guy. You're not pretty enough, smart enough, young enough or on point enough. On your current path, your future holds mid jobs, loneliness, and cats.
What's wrong with you is simple. Unrealistic standards. Entitlement. A false idea of your own market value. You do still have time to change, but not much by the look of it, what with all your friends getting married. The wall is coming for you.
You know all this, but you'd rather face the future alone than admit you were wrong with all those guys you rejected, all those years you wasted. You'd rather be self satisfied as the victim than put in the effort to change your ways and give up your fairytale dreams for the hard work that reality demands.
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Canada is one of the few countries I could see myself living in outside of Oz. (Sorry USA). I just don't know how I would go with the cold. Spiders, snakes? No problem. Temperatures below 17 Celsius? Terrified.
America definitely has some states that I could see myself living in, Maine, Oregon as examples, but then you look at other states say Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, California or Georgia and you're like ermmm... this part maybe, but that bit no way.
The scope and natural beauty of America is top notch though, with Hawaii and Alaska on top of the Contiguous 48 it's got a range of climates and experiences even Australia struggles to beat.
You've got some problems there, environment and political, healthcare and economic right now that I just can't ignore. Not that Canada and Australia don't face challenges too, but it looks more likely that there is a way forward on those challenges.
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Snowstorms can happen in the Australian Alps even during mid summer, although very rare. Snow can also fall as far north as Brisbane, although it never seems to reach the ground here. Toowoomba gets snow too, enough to fall on the ground. Given that this is only 27 degrees south of the equator and not that high, it's rare and disappears quickly, but it certainly does happen. Uluru (Ayres Rock to some) also occasionally gets snow. In the middle of the desert.
Of course, prevailing temperatures except in the Alps mean that snow doesn't stay around very long. A good snow season in the Alps sees the best snow resorts keeping their snow cover for 4 - 5 months, but a really strong year can exceed 6 months. As high as 15 feet of snow can fall in some of the colder places during that time, although obviously some of it will melt during the days. Temperatures can fall as low as -10 farenheit.
If you're a skiier or snowboarder it is really expensive but a certainly unique experience, especially if you're out skiing and you can see kangaroos. A lot of the staff at Whistler are Aussie expats who work here during our ski season.
80% by the coast? Well Inland Australia is basically a high plateau and once you get up through the Great Dividing range temperatures tend to be a lot more extreme - colder in winter and hotter in summer. Droughts galore. Much of the inland is like Death Valley, so it's barely habitable, and full of the most venomous animals on the planet, too. There's very few big cities inland in Australia, in fact outside of the capital cities there's few cities over 100,000 people even on the coast too. Stick to the coasts to live, go see the bush on holiday is the rule of thumb.
As far as the beach scene goes, the size of some of these beaches has to be seen to be comprehended. There's the Coorong in South Australia, which is 140 miles long. 90 mile beach in Victoria, and it's named that way because it's 90 miles long. There's 80 mile beach in Western Australia and 75 mile beach in Queensland, because hey we have too many beaches to name and we used to use miles to measure distance.
Of course, many beaches are probably chokkers with sharks, sea snakes, jellyfish, blue ringed octopi, saltwater crocs and so on. Don't swim on jellyfish beaches during stinger season, or crocodile territory EVER. Salt water crocodiles are MUCH bigger than gators. Buy a wetsuit that isn't dark blue or black and the sharks and orcas PROBABLY won't confuse you with a delicious seal. Do your research first, and read the warning signs on any beach. Swim between the flags, too.
Melbourne was the richest city because of the huge amount of Gold found in Victoria in the 1850's. Look up Welcome Stranger nugget. Of course, back then the city was far from liveable. That changed late in the 19th century with a lot of slum clearance, and the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition.
No Taco John, no Jack in The Box, Hardys etc. We do have some very rare Carls Jr and Taco Bell now. Taco Bell has attempted to launch here previously and failed. Australian tastes and American tastes are different and you will see plenty of American tourists critiquing KFC, Maccas, and Hungry Jacks/Burger King and saying that much of the Aussie Menu is better.
As you can see, we do have something like McDonalds. It's kinda the same, but we call it Maccas. The stores even use that name on a lot of their signs and promos, but it does have the golden arches. Wendy's is a LOT different too. We've got Starbucks, Subway, Domino's, Pizza Hut and so on, all with their little differences.
Failing that we have our own fast food chains too - Oporto, Red Rooster, Nando's, Guzman Y Gomez, Zambreros, La Porchetta, Miss India, Grill'd, Roll'd, Burger Urge, Noodle Box and so forth. What you'll notice is how many different cultural backgrounds we see there - Portugese to Vietnamese, Mexican to Indian.
Then of course there is the HSP or Halal Snack Pack, avaliable from most kebab shops. Combine hot chips (not fries, much thicker and crispier outside, soft and fluffy inside) with the meat of choice from a kebab, and covered in your choice of sauces. Some similarities to Carne Asada Fries or Poutine, yet very different and very multicultural Australian. Bliss.
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Anything over 6'6" means you need to watch your head on doorways and light fittings (Standard door frame height in Australia is 6'8").
If you stay below that kind of height, being taller is probably better, but you WILL need to get a king size bed to keep your toes warm.
Plenty of studies showing how taller people are more successful socially, get better job prospects, pay and promotions, get treated with more respect in basically all walks of life.
I'd happily be a foot taller than my current height and deal with the handful of negatives, even if it meant I'd have to sell my cars because there's no way I'd fit :(
My mum's 4'11" so that kind of short has plenty of disadvantages. Reaching for cupboards is one thing, but every desk, kitchen benchtop, sink, seat or table is NOT designed to suit you, and using them causes your body physical harm over time. Stairs are not spaced to suit your footsteps. You have to buy kids clothes.
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Bradleys have a bit more armour and survivability, but are much much slower (like 40 kph slower) and have a much much weaker gun, despite the fast fire rate.
I don't know the effectiveness of the active protection systems of either (and they both have them) to compare, so just ignoring those for purpose of this debate.
Depending on the range, the uparmoured AMX-10 RC that was used in the Gulf War and then the even more upgraded AMX-10 RCR will probably be able to survive some Bradley shots, at least AP-I and AP-T frontally against the additional armour plating. Depleted Uranium APFSDS, not so much, and you can bet that's what America would use. ;).
At any distance though the AMX-10 (any version) would probably one shot mission kill the Bradley with any offensive ammunition, and probably not just mission kill it but completely destroy it.
That's the difference between 25mm and 105mm. It may only "seem" 4 times as big but it's actually 17 times as much area, and then of course the 25x137mm Bushmaster has a case 1/4th the length of the 105x527 OFL, so the volume is probably like 70 or 80 times as much. Of course, much of that difference in volume is going to be empty, or using a lower burning powder, because in this form it is designated a low pressure 105mm gun.
The data I have has up to about 500gr total weight per shot for the 25mm bushmaster with 185gr of projectile. The 105 OFL is up to about 13.85kg or 13850gr and up to a 7.2kg projectile or 7200gr. 27 times the weight and 39 times the projectile size is a bit of a difference.
They're similar, but not identical vehicles, in intent both with different doctrines on their use. Both clearly showed they were effective in Iraq against Soviet armour.
Against insurgents, or in a town where the potential for an RPG from an unexpected angle is high I think I'd rather be in the Bradley - probably better armour and spall lining increases survivability. Anywhere else, probably the AMX-10 RCR, based on mobility and flexibility - you could be safely behind lines as a kind of mobile artillery.
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I'll post this in chunks because this is such a massive video. Plus I'm a way too verbose after a few beers....
Wow that is extraordinarily generous. Shout out to Darren (Darrin) for an awesome donate. I had a 4am servo Sausage roll for brekky this morning (the kids will love them), but the steak and pepper pie is the absolute dogs boll*cks. You will love that one, Ian, it is the pinnacle of Aussie Bogan cuisine. :)
I'd never send something like that unless there was a local supplier, too worried about giving food poisoning with the travel time... wow they packed it well to still be cold.
05:33 Thanks Melinda, love the Aussie Olympic Scarf. Aussie Olympic history is amazing... we consistently punch above our weight, and government sanctioned or not have attended every single (summer) olympics which is a very rare feat.
Brissy (or Briz-ben to pronounce it best) is awesome and I've loved my almost 20 years here. Brizzy and indeed the entire SE of Queensland is like a laid back version of Florida (except for the Miami Vice wanna be Gold Coast which is erm a bit less laid back). The bridge in the fridge magnets is the Story Bridge, and there are so many stories about it that there is a book written about it. There is a kink in the middle of the bridge so it goes around a famous pub that the construction workers refused to knock down, because, 'Straya.
The clip on koalas will be great for the kids bags at school. Mango because Queenslander! (check out Billy Moore Queenslander State of Origin on you tube - it's a big thing North of the Tweed)
11:10 Christopher. The Queenslander hospitality really knows no bounds. Well done mate. Ian, bit long on the "gee" bit on the Geelong. Geelong is the second biggest town in Victoria, and a really nice place. Nearby places include the famous Bell's Beach and Torquay if you are into the surfing. Geelong were if I recall the second oldest Aussie Rules football teams and thus at least in the top 10 oldest football clubs on the planet, if not top 5.
If you're ever here Ian I'm sure you can shout out and there will be beers a plenty. We'll teach you how Aussies drink. That's your REAL citizenship test :P
BTW, Ian, that AFL footy is NOT inflated properly. Better pump it up it should be far more rounded and more like an oval shape. Not a 4 sided wedge like a rugby ball. You are gonna have to do us some kicking videos... and a bit of running and bouncing too.
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The consequences of decades of saying that men are murderers and rapists and creepy and shouldn't approach women is... men don't approach women.
The only "socially appropriate" way men can now approach women is in those dating apps you hate so much.
You know, the ones where men swipe right 50% of the time.
How often are women swiping right? 15% 10%?
Women are competing over the same men, working off the same list they all reinforce with each other. 6 feet tall, 6 pack, 6 figures.
Those guys are swimming in🐈⬛ . They're never gonna commit to you, when they can choose someone prettier who is almost half your age.
You keep choosing the same people you're gonna get the same results, and get older and less valuable each time he strings you along.
Meanwhile, the guys who might have been good enough that you ignored? Maybe someone else didn't ignore them. Or maybe they got sick of rejection and gave up. Or they've thrown themself into their career. Or their project car. Or the gym. Or online gaming.
Or they're out fishing, you know those photos girls hate so much on tinder.
Which ever way, people like you had a really good shot at those men for years, and they remember how they were viewed and rejected.
They look at how happy they are with their lives, and their financial situation from not being divorced, not paying child support, not paying for your baby daddies kids... they weigh up how often they want 🐈⬛ now compared to when they were 20, and how much they'll lose financially if a relationship breaks down.
And they ⚠️⤵️
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It seems strange that they dedicated a slide on 1060 and 1660 but I think the point they're trying to make is that the B580 is basically targeting the market space that the 1060 and 1660 once occupied, and for that kind of user the time to upgrade is definitely now, and that the B580 is that kind of generational jump they need at around the same price point those other cards originally cost.
Although it would have made more sense to include the 2060 6gb card in there too, or instead of the 1660 Super, which was technically a first gen ray tracing card. The B580 should monster that even with raytracing enabled, based on vram alone.
Realistically, no one is going from a 3060 Ti or 6600XT to an Arc 580. The performance gains are too minimal to justify the expense.
The target for these cards is upgrades from 10 series, 16 series or 20 series Nvidia, or new builds who were looking at 6600, 7600 or 4060 cards.
It looks promising for US$249 - not of any use to me, since I'm well above that performance tier already. I hope they follow up with a B770 card in the new year. If it gets near 4070Ti Super raster and raytracing I'll be interested.
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303 Enfield? Went from black powder .303, all the way though .22 lr to .22H to .22-303, .25-303, .270-303, .276 Enfield, .30 carbine, 7.62x39, 7.62x51, .303 smokeless, .303 High Velocity, .410 musket, .410 shotgun, .45 ACP and even made it to semi automatic and fully automatic versions.
Oh, and a grenade launcher version using the same receiver.
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SU-57, SU-122, SU-152. All the SU and ISU range were all pretty much the same concept as the StuG - using a tank chassis and a casemate gun (Yes, The Soviets were Allies). I could list a dozen variants here.
If you can't cope with the Soviets being allies, despite them, you know, winning the war against Germany for us, then here's some others.
Churchill Mk1's main gun was casemate, as was the A22D Churchill, also known as the 3 inch Gun Carrier. So the British used the same concept.
M3 Lee and M3 Grant, like the Churchill Mk1 had two guns, with the main 75mm being somewhere between a casemate and a sponson, being on the front corner of the tank. So the US had them too. Of course the had the T28 and T95 super heavy (also known as the DOOM TURTLE), but of course those are post war designs.
France used the SAu 40 and the B1 series which like the Churchill and M3 Lee had 2 guns with the main being a casemate. Postwar they had the Foch, as another example.
It was also quite common with mortar carriers.
The only things that were unique about the StuG was Germany calling them the Stug as opposed to some other model name, but hey, it's a shortened German word so you get that. Their success with them was the other main difference. Yet the M3 Medium was a success in the Africa, and the B1 were highly effective in France when used properly.
The allies, in time, had more resources and chose to build things with turrets which gave certain advantages.
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Ahh, but the .303 Lee Enfield was not just used as a black powder rifle, but also got used as a trainer rifle in .22lr, a .410 musket, a .410 shotgun , in 7.62x39, 7.62x51, sporterised into .22H as well as .22-303 .25-303 and .270-303 as a hunting rifle, as a sniper rifle in .303 and 7.62x51, the jungle carbine, the cavalry carbine, and of course the trial .276 Enfield, .30 Caliber, and even automatic versions of it.
You've even covered the De Lisle .45 ACP.
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The simple fact is what is being promoted as "gender equality" is not equality at all.
In most of the Western World, legal gender equality happened decades ago.
Examples:
Canada and the USA introduced their Equal Pay Acts in 1963. Australia in 1969. The United Kingdom in 1970 and so on.
Whole there was some lag in societal expectations, the legal groundwork for equality was introduced entire working lifespans ago.
But equal opportnity is not equal outcomes, because people have free will.
So when people continued to choose jobs based on what they value or enjoy instead of the economic value of that work, wage gaps continued, because women choosing a safer, more social and comfortable job and men choosing longer working hours, more dangerous, more physically demanding jobs continues to be a thing.
When feminists saw that the outcomes hadn't greatly changed they demanded more intervention, more resources dedicated to women and more rights, rather than addressing why women didn't want to work 60 hour weeks, or socially isolating jobs.
Men have seen this happen again and again ovef thd past decades and now know that the current social model is stacked against us. We watch as news and social media have turned public manshaming and misandry into public policy.
Thus our political opinions begin to change, from being initially progressive, to voting in our own selfinterest, which means to vote against political parties and ousting governments which are actively harming our future.
People blame Andrew T*te, but he's just a symptom of a system that has become unbalanced and unfair.
Unless true equality begins to be sought in education, in healthcare, in judicial outcomes, in government spending, in industrial relations, then the backlash will continue to grow and more and more extremist leaders will be voted by disenfranchised men.
Historically this doesn't lead to great outcomes for anyone, and we're already seeing an increase in armed conflict and international posturing.
I don't see the feminist movement taking a reality check any time soon, so the likelihood is that Roe v Wade being overturned and the Russia v Ukraine conflict is just the beginning.
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@radfatdaddy4169 Realistically? 1812 Napoleonic invasion of Russia, which based on peace treaties after the disastrous 1809 campaign left Russia standing alone against a Continental European army controlled by France to a far greater degree than WW2 Germany ever achieved.
At this point France controlled France, Spain, Germany, Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland/Warsaw, Norway and the provinces of Wallacia, Moldovia and Bessarabia (meaning effectively much of Ukraine, Romania and Belorussia).
Britain merely provided a blockade and didn't jump in until Russia utterly trounced pretty much the rest of Europe combined.
I'm guessing your knowledge of history is erm American?
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@Cricket Explained there is some possibility of the sport having some Dutch basis as they have a similar word. However, there's been plenty of spelling and linguistic shifts of all these languages, mistranslations, and just plain using of other languages to explain concepts.
There's insufficient proof for any of the theories, but the Dutch one is as sound as any other.
The first recorded references to cricket are spelt very differently - usually creckett, criccett or kricket. The question of course is whether all these similar words (mostly meaning a stick or staff, thus representing the bat a ball was hit with) from similar languages were interchangeable and the sport was played across multiple areas, or within minority ethnic communities and spread out from there. Words like Creag, Cryce, Krick, Cricc, Crique all have very similar meanings. There's obviously some similarities to Hockey (well at least as it is spelt in Dutch) and even Croquet in the names, because all refer to a stick, and cricket is just another version of hitting a ball with a stick, after all.
But as you can see there are many languages that can make a similar claim.
The first references in English it as an adult organised sport date back to around 1550 but it is believed it would have been a disorganised children's sport well before it became the organised team sport of the mid 1500's and then the semi professional sport it became in the 1600's. The first references to something close to Cricket date back to mid 1400's France, but that is probably not linguistically it's origin, more likely Saxon or Dutch, so it is likely it was at least an early 1400's or even 1300's children's game in either England or the Netherlands, and either spread to the French along with migration or trade, or the French name is merely a coincidence due to a similar word.
But it is quite interesting that the first historical reference to a word that looks or sounds very much like Cricket actually comes from France in 1478, especially given the greater similarities between the other Germanic languages than French. Makes you wonder if the source is less Dutch and more Flemish?
However what is clear is the sport as it would have been was very very different to that of the mid 1700's where many of these ball and stick sports were separating with clearly different rules and equipment.
Certainly some of them are likely to have been influenced by or changed by teams deciding rules, as with many sports without central leadership teams decided the rules by agreement between the two captains until the laws of the game were codified. This can be clearly seen in the early history of the various rugby, football and Australian rules football codes.
Clearly cricket has milestones on rules and equipment where other sports could have branched off, and these are at least visible in historical record since the end of the 16th century. Hence it seems more likely Cricket is the source sport, and the others were likely to have branched off from them, not vice versa.
It is pretty easy to see how a dispute on the style of bat could lead to a split between cricket and hockey, and a split between how the bowler should bowl could lead to a split between cricket and rounders and thus baseball.
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i5 or equivalent AMD, 6 or 8 cores, ddr4, 3070 non ti LHR or 3080 / 6900xt, decent gen 4 ssd
For budget i3 or 5600 AMD, 6 core, ddr4, 3070 or 6700xt, base end gen 4 ssd.
For anything above that, please, blow the money you can afford and feed the second hand market.
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@deeacosta2734 Lend Lease? Yeah right. The great American story of America believing it's own lies about being the great saviours.
What won the war was the huge sacrifice of 20 odd million Russian dead, despite Russia pleading it's Allies to start a second front to take the pressure off. By the time the Normandy Landings occurred, the Russians had pushed the Nazis back out of the Caucasus, Crimea, Russia proper, most of Ukraine and Belarus. The Germans had lost millions in dead, most of their planes and tanks. The war was effectively already over and it was basically mopping up only.
80% of German troops died in the Russian front.
So, lets look at Lend Lease in more detail, eh?
USSR got 1/3 of the goods through Lend Lease that Britain did, despite having almost four times the population at the start of the war.
So per head of population, that works out of 1/12th the assistance, despite Britain basically being secure in it's sea borders and "Russia" having over a 1000 mile long front engaged in constant warfare.
Of that amount of lend lease goods, over half of it was shipped through Russian Shipping through Japanese controlled seas (there was a neutrality agreement between USSR and Japan at the time) under strict inspection routines that there were no arms, munitions or the like onboard.
Of the goods that the Americans managed to land in Russian territory, the level of respect for them varied greatly. American trucks and trains were sought after as there was insufficient logistical equipment for the level of industrial production that the Russians were gearing up for. Food was obviously important with so much of Russian lands under German occupation, the "Scorched Earth" defence policy, and the majority of Russian men in the army. Or exterminated on the spot by the Germans, put into death camps or forced labour camps.
As for the American tanks, the M3 Medium (Lee) was referred to as "a coffin for seven brothers" and was quickly relegated to training duties. About 2000 early M4 (Shermans) made it to the Russians, and were considered inferior to their domestic tanks, being prone to catching fire easily, due to gasolene fuel, and also sinking into the mud and getting bogged due to high weight with narrow tracks. Both Russia and Germany made wide track vehicles for the Eastern Front to reduce ground pressure to prevent this, because a bogged tank is a sitting target.
It was also slower, yet less well armoured than the T-34, and armament was only on par with the early T-34's. The 2000 later delivered M4 Sherman 76mm addressed some of these issues, but by then the Russians were using far superior versions of their own T-34's, specifically the T-34-85, and the 76mm gun was still massively undergunned compared to the standard German tanks of the time
About half the total "armoured vehicles" that made it to Russia were M3 "White" half tracks and M3 scout cars, including anti aircraft versions. So many versions of "M3" (let alone the M3 "Stuart" the Russians also recieved) caused great confusion, both for the Russians and also the British using them in Africa, which is how they all got their separate names.
Lend Lease had far less impact than Americans think. Any aid was still useful and welcomed, but it certainly didn't have the impact you seem to believe.
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Erm, Australia has enough domestic oil and gas to be self sufficient in a ration situation, and also has one of the largest known onshore oil and gas reserves in the world in the Beetaloo basin.
So basically the answer to that is, key resources running out? Several millenia for any domestic use, even on wartime footing of oil, gas, iron ore, coal, uranium, aluminum, copper, zinc etc.
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7:39 It's conservatism. Only doing things you're used to. America IS a very conservative country, not just politically but socially.
This may shock a lot of Americans, who think they are the ones leading the direction of the free world but it's totally true.
If you look at the current US positions on many things, without getting into any specific politics or topics (let's dodge those fights) America lags behind most European nations, or even the greater Anglosphere on metrics to do with food quality standards, voting rights, women's rights, environmental practices, corporate responsibility and absolutely on religious activity.
Conservatism can be both a positive and a negative. It depends on WHAT you are trying to preserve and more importantly the reasons you are trying to preserve it, and WHO benefits. Americans are great at preserving beauty through National Parks, and breeding programs for certain endangered species, for instance, as well as certain cultural behaviours. But it can also be a trap that encourages backwards thinking that disadvantages certain groups within your society and provides economic or social benefits to others.
Of course, America is far from monolithic, too. So there's plenty of free thinkers out there who break new ground for business and we certainly have America to thank for the insane variation in the craft brew scene.
What this video shows is conservatism can just be a method to push bad consumer product for profit on the masses, a weapon of control and manipulation.
Don't be manipulated. Choose the good.
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You got the XK and XL there, after that I believe our XM and XP are unique, based on a continuation of the XK body shape. The XR onwards are a completely different local design to US I believe, keeping the smaller body size but based on styling cues from over there.
Probably a lot more similarity with our bigger "Fairlane" to US models.
The XA-XC were Australian unique designs (although also available in New Zealand and South Africa), as by then the Falcon was dead in the states.
The boxy XD-XF onward were based on European models, not America - the styling was based off the European Ford Granada and Capris. A stretched British car, rather than a shrunken American one. Ford Australia didn't really have the money to develop a brand new car from scratch on their own. Holden faced the same drama with the replacement for the Torana with the VB Commodore (note VB is also the initials of Australia's biggest selling beer Victoria Bitter). It had to be a local modification of someone else's gear, and like Ford, they went with a Euro design.
Anything from the last Falcon XE ESP (the last v8 for ages) until the EB GT are basically all crap. Honestly so too was the EB GT, EL GT etc. But at least the V8 was back. The AU's were a better car, but ugly as hell except for the XR6/XR8 packs.
Honestly it was huge mistakes throughout the 80's from Ford, and they continued into the 90's. The XD wasn't that bad, but each successive car got worse and worse right through this era.
Once all the muscle car boys were mostly Ford fans. Now it's Holden fans probably 3:1 or more - partly because Ford killed the V8 for so many years, partly because for so many years their cars were total garbage - great taxis, but no performance cars, no passion, no feel.
So once you get past XE, it's kind of a wasteland. The cheap XR6 and XR8's were ok bang for buck, but basically nothing inspired anyone until the mighty Barra (BA) Falcon came out. Yeah, they're a taxi, but they're still a damn good looking, quick, and tough car. Ford was back, baby.
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That's why Group C was the best. All the different cars. Group A was good too, but when they killed off those two classes and turned it to just Holden vs Ford it was just a snooze fest.
Imagine a race class where you once had Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Ford, Buick, Cadillac, Mercury, Plymouth, Rover, Jaguar, BMW, Nissan, Toyota, Mazda, Suzuki all racing and the next year all you had was Ford Mustangs and Chevy Corvettes and all the other stuff was banned.
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Tiger snake is Australian too.
This is mostly based on land snakes. Technically the inland taipan is only the second most venomous snake, as Dubois's sea snake is sometimes rated above it.
Of course, we get them too.
The top 6 most venomous snakes in the world are all available in Australia, as well as 9 and 10. We just lack some of the kraits to have a clean sweep of the top 10, although some species of sea kraits do make it to Australia.
Cobras do not make a mention in the top 10, despite killing more people than most of the top 10 species due to the high population density of the subcontinent. We don't have Cobras as a native species, although some of them get as close as East Timor and Indonesia.
We do of course have death adders as well, to go with the taipans, tigers, brown snakes, black snakes, copperheads and so forth. Each of these is not just one species, but a whole family of different species of highly venomous snakes. As an example there are 9 species of brown snakes in Australia.
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The Barassi line concept I've discussed before.
All of Australia (AND New Zealand, btw) once all played Aussie Rules football to some degree. We had Aussie Rules and Rugby as competing winter sporting codes, and summer had Cricket. Gradually Rugby became more prominent in the working class industrial areas of NSW (meaning Sydney, Newcastle, Penrith, etc) and New Zealand, and Aussie Rules in the areas more influenced by Melbourne (which included Tasmania, Adelaide and Perth, and also included the south west of NSW). Most of south western NSW is closer to Melbourne or even Adelaide than Sydney. Northern Territory of course went the way Adelaide did as it was administered as part of South Australia for so long.
I can't really comment much on why NZ dropped Aussie Rules and even Rugby League until it's recent revival. Maybe a Kiwi follower can flesh that out as I'd be interested.
Perth's the mystery here, since unlike Adelaide it is too far away to be really under Melbourne's economic and cultural gravitational pull. I guess they just prefer the game, and 19th century maritime shipping along the southern coast kind of makes it more Melbourne influenced than Sydney influenced, although you would also think that there should have been a competing Cape Town influence.
Also worth remembering how much bigger than Perth (and Brisbane) Adelaide used to be. Maybe I'm understimating its own influence because Adelaide has been the laggard of Australia's big capitals for decades.
Brisbane, due to the same geography and economics reasons as Perth in the end fell to the influence of Sydney and became a more "Rugby" region (although it held on to a stronger Aussie Rules culture for far longer than Sydney did), and honestly most of the rest of Queensland went to Rugby as quickly as most of NSW, before Brisbane did.
When Rugby schismed into Rugby League and Rugby Union the "Union" side of the game became very much a sport of the elite schools and League became the working class man's sport. Of course this split had almost no influence at all on the Aussie Rules states.
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@James_36 ANY wild animal?
Lemmings are wild.
Chickens were once wild, and still are in parts of the world. As are things like the fennec fox, and red and grey squirrels. Fish tend to grow wild and very few species grow large enough to kill a man, as most birds. Fatal attacks by large fish like sturgeons are possible but rare, as are kills by ostriches and cassowaries.
Basically, bears, big cats and venomous reptiles, some spiders and scorpions, crocodilians and sharks are most of the threats. Elephants, Hippopotamuses, and large cattle and deer species make up most of the rest. Horses were only small until we bred them big, so they don't count.
Most other species men can physically overpower or at least scare away.
As for bigger, more dangerous game? This would of course be why we invented spears.
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The Atlantic Salmon is probably farmed in Australia, most likely Tasmania. Your food choices were certainly not "representative" of Brisbane, but, you know if that's what you wanted to eat on that day there's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing your go to foods. After all these are things you haven't chosen to eat for a while while on tour in Australia and it's perfectly normal to want something comforting. As a Brisbanite I would consider the Salmon serve pretty good and well presented, but the Spaghetti didn't look great value. The Mud cake looks good with a good quality icecream and almond biscuit. Yum.
Viewers should remember those prices include taxes, that tipping is not normal in Australia, and the price needs to be multiplied by 0.6 to get down to US pricing, as you mentioned. As a tip you might round up to the nearest $10 amount and that would be considered absolutely fine, but it's not expected. If you wanted to be generous, if your order was close to that $10 mark you would round up to the next $10. None of this 25-30% stuff.
Garlic bread is usually a side order to a meal, or a garlic and cheese pizza. We wouldn't call it toast unless the bread was browned on the surface, not just the outside. A lot of people don't want to eat bread for "health reasons" despite them ordering the carb loaded pasta :D because that's just how people are now.
Brisbane has a really good and somewhat unique Asian fusion food culture. It's a completely different food culture to Melbourne or Sydney and it took me some time to adapt to, although you can find all the traditional international foods if you want to.
Thanks for the display of the CBD. There are plenty more places to see and eat in there. The streets around the Southbank Beach (also called Streets Beach) have a lot of restaurant options too.
Also, during mid winter, we have a temporary public ice skating rink in the King George Square, with Gluhwine and Hot chocolate and various european winter treats. It's still 70 fahrenheit during the day though it might get down to 50 during the night. The free public beach and Swimming Pool in Southbank are usually closed for maintenance as that's too cold for Aussies to swim.
I'm glad you enjoyed your visit.
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1st woman delusional.
2nd woman insulting.
3rd is hateful but not totally wrong. Much of that advice I'd give to a guy dating
4th is evil. pure and simple. Evil, manipulative, gaslighting, delusional and insulting, selfish and narcissistic, as well as just plain crazy. Cheating and then trying to dump a kid on someone should see jail time.
5th is insane. Every video I've seen of her just shows how insane she is. Crazy eyes, belligerent attitude. Her personality is probably based on an incident of rejection, btw, which makes her whole attitude unintentionally hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
6th is shallow and narcissistic. 2 dates and "she's in love" but plays games. She effectively ends it with her comments, and then expecting him to chase. It was a test, pure and simple. He passed the test and she gets upset about ending it.
7th is totally wrong. It's projected narcissism.
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Nah. You need standardisation of the main logistical demands. Infantry and artillery ammunition, fuel, maybe missiles and tank gun rounds but these last two are less essential. We can all eat the same food and transport trucks are really more or less interchangeable.
But of course, that's not really happening - the US pretty much forced it's standards on NATO way back when. Turns out the Brits were right about a caliber of roughly .280 caliber all along, rather than the 5.56x55 and 7.62x51, and these NATO standards are getting dropped like hot potatoes. 5.56 doesn't have the punch for body armour, even in the 77 grain projectiles, and the knockdown has never been good.
One thing covid taught us is that relying on global manufacturing and just in time logistics is a recipe for shortages and disaster. Add a major conflict and you better have a big stockpile, but no one can afford that sitting there. So for smaller nations like Belgium or the Netherlands, without the production capability of the France, Germany, Italy or UK, agreeing to stock something that a bigger player uses, so long as they can get an agreement to also manufacture at home really matters. Keeps them able to churn training stock for peacetime but when the big show happens they will need to rely on someone else to provide a big chunk of their gear.
For the nations with the production capability and logistics capability to project force on their own if needed (remembering how late the US has been to not one but two world wars) then having your own capability is more crucial. You think the US is gonna get involved in the next Falklands War?
Just remember, keep those m4's and strykers in a reserve depot somewhere, just in case. It's much easier to chuck some new optics and battlefield computers on some stuff than it is to manufacture billions of dollars worth of gear in a month.
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Why is the world ignoring Sudan's Civil War?
Because every time we send peacekeepers there to put it out, one side or another just tells the west that our interference is unwanted, everything is the "coloniser's" fault, another corrupt dictator gets appointed and starts either joyfully ethnically cleansing their own people based on tribal allegiances, religious ones, or invades a neighbor, because why the heck not.
Lets look. 2001- 2023 we've had wars there in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023. You have about 30 armed militant groups willing to start a war at any given time. If that isn't enough, cattle raiding is a cultural pastime so that young men can gain enough wealth and prestige to get a wife, and in an area with scant resources and regular famines keeping your cattle is a literal life and death proposition, so whole tribes will go to war with other tribes over raids.
You've shown you don't want peace. This is your substitute for television, football or cricket.
Can you at least organize some sort of umpiring system so we know who wins each weekend, so the bookies know who to pay out?
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Technically, not quite. AIF soldiers sent outside of Australian Territory legally had to be volunteers in WW1 and WW2 (although not Vietnam).
But there was a loophole. The infamous situation of the "Chocos".
"Chocos" were not a racist slander, nor a breakfast cereal, but a derogatory term used by volunteer Australian Infantry to deride the conscripted militias. (it's not race related, they were expected to melt like chocolate in the heat of battle).
These undertrained and under resourced conscripts were a sent to face absolute hell during the Kokoda campaign. New Guinea was after WW1 considered home territory to Australia until we granted the Papua New Guinea people independence in 1975. Some covered themselves with glory, such as the 39th Battalion. Some less so ahem 53rd Battalion.
As such, it was part of Australia and militia could be conscripted to be sent there, in some of the most underdeveloped part of the world. Even in WW2 cannibal headhunters were common in New Guinea.Yet the locals, having been exposed to Japanese atrocities willingly supported the Australian soldiers and many died supporting our troops, even suffering horrific tortures to protect Australian soldiers.
The 39th suffered massive casualties in Kokoda. In the end, with 7 officers and 25 men out of the entire battalion it was ignomiouly absorbed.
A normal battalion numbers around 1000 troops if you need to know. So 32 out of that.
You think they melted in the heat of battle?
Everyone around the world , not just Australia, needs to know the story of the chocos, and how willing the average Aussie is to throw his life on the line for his mates. Never underestimate Australian courage and mateship.
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Australia's other critical defence method is simple.
Do you think China would be allowed to invade and get all those minerals by India, South Korea, USA, UK or Japan? Or take control of all those mines that British and American companies paid to build?
Or the same goes for any other invader. If India were to try, China, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, USA, UK etc would all be most upset.
Really the best defence here is effectively selling everyone what they want.
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The crazy bird noise is one of the Australian Corvids . There are 6 main species of Crows and Ravens in Australia, and 5 are native.
If you can tell them apart even after seeing them you're some kind of expert, because they all look very similar. That sounded exactly the same as the Torresian Crow that is the dominant species near me, but based on geography it should probably be the Australian Eastern Raven.
The larger ones are a notorious pest to farmers, especially attacking newborn lambs. Sadly they have been known to snatch small puppies and "teacup" sized dogs from people's backyards too.
They also catch rabbits and even young fox cubs, although they're more commonly a carrion bird. These are quite a big bird, with a body over a foot and a half long, and a wingspan of over 3 feet, and they are LOUD. Worse, they come in big flocks (or to use the correct term, a "murder of crows") and they tend to shout over each other like family at a christmas dinner.
They were heavily hunted in days gone by, but now like most native animals they are protected, and are in plague numbers everywhere, because they are very intelligent and adapt well to human behaviour.
Yes, like magpies they can also attack people, but usually do not do so unless provoked, but they normally fly away rather than attack.
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