kgwilson

If the US really wanted to know how the F22 would perform in combat they should lend a few to Ukraine after training up some of their pilots.

I'd hardly call shooting an almost stationary, unarmed item the size of 2 busses a combat kill. What would have been news is if the missile had missed.

There was drone footage of the badly organised attack by the Orcs. It was over flat ground with no cover & they lost an entire armoured battalion of 40 armoured vehicles including 7 tanks. Again they drove in close formation rather than space out & zig zag. Ukraine occupies the high ground of 2 artificial hills by the coal mines so directing fire was easy for them. The Russians had 3 goes, each time losing armour and an entire platoon of men killed. Also Ukraine carried out a HIMARS attack on Melitopol airbase with apparently 7 direct hits within 40 minutes which included several ammunition dumps a warehouse of heavy equipment and a Russian barracks. The Russians also fired about 100 cruise missiles & Iranian drones at civilian infrastructure yesterday. 61 cruise missiles & 5 drones were shot down. Only a few got through and caused minor damage and no casualties. Ukraine is getting better at its defence every day with new equipment and well trained personnel, whereas Russia keeps doing the same thing and expects different results. At present the reports are that an average of 1000 Russian troops a day are being killed since they sent in extra troops using the Stalingrad tactic of overwhelming manpower. This worked at Soledar but Ukraine changed its tactics for more solid defence against hordes of infantry headed by some armour with devastating results.

He's got the hard right, the hard left, Wagners boss, & all the military heads he's sacked to keep eyes on plus most of the rest of the western world to look out for, not to mention 40 million Ukrainians.

For most Kiwis it is just a day off. I went to the 150th anniversary at Waitangi. It was very impressive with several warships in the harbour, thousands of people & Maoris in their best regalia lots of pomp & ceremony with local Maori kids jumping off the bridges into the water & others having a picnic with BBQs and hangis smoking everywhere. The best thing about the day IMO was the launching and re-enactment of Maori War canoes paddling out to greet the Brtish dignatories on the 4 masted sailing ships. The replica of the Endeavour was there as I recall. The biggest War Canoe (Waka in Te Reo Maori) is a double hulled ornately carved canoe hewn out of a huge Totara tree. It was built in 1940 to commemorate the centenary of the Treaty of Waitangi and is launched at the commemoration every year. It is 36 metres long over 2 metres wide, has 80 paddlers and can carry another 55 passengers. In the day these would have all been fierce, ruthless, blood curdling warriors. It's name is Ngātokimatawhaorua. Try to pronounce that. It's not Surprising at the time the Poms decided a treaty was a better option than trying to subdue them.

Great thread. We have progressed from politics and religion to boobs and silicon. I confess to admiring the female form with a nice pair of well proportioned natural breasts as an integral part of a womans beauty. Of course some are massive and some virtually non existent with size and shape seemingly concerning women more than men. There are also those who have breast reduction surgery as the size and weight can cause back and shoulder problems. A lot of women with a nice figure tell me that some men talk to their breasts not their face. That must be disconcerting.

They keep you busy and broke but not young.

LiFeP04 lithium batteries do not have the possible thermal runaway problem. These are being used in a a large number of EVs now. Even so standard Lithium batteries do not have this problem very much and as far as cars are concerned EVs are far less likely to catch fire that ICE cars. A study in 2020 found that fires per 100,000 sales were. ICE 1530, Hybrid 3475, and Battery Electric 25. It is not even close. EVs are far more fire resistant than anything else. Hybrids are the worst by a country mile. Having a volatile fuel around a lot of electrics is a recipe for disaster as it seems to prove. Once sodium ion batteries replace lithium the problem goes away as well as being at least 30% cheaper to produce.

I reckon it would buy me a few more nights with a 20 year old supermodel.

It's probably the only colour they have. Ordered for the Summer in Ukraine and delivered in the Winter to Moscow. About on par for Russian Logistics.

It would be OK for a picnic at the beach with 2 decent Esky's on the back.

No it isn't about the money but how and who spends it. Of the millions or billions spent so far a pretty large portion has lined the pockets of the so called aid organisations hierarchy and the amount allocated to government organisations who can not organise a p!ss up in a brewery let alone even understand the needs of aboriginal communities.

Now if I was 90 and bonking a 20 year old supermodel I wouldn't want to be shot. I'd want to read the headlines in the news when it was discovered, give TV interviews and collect a few million in rights to the story.

Which goes to show that the GOP has millions of complete morons that vote for it.

I keep hearing of first peoples assemblys and aboriginal representatives etc but most of these are from the few who have managed to become part of the "White" system. Most of the real aboriginal people get ignored by these so called representatives. These people don't really feel part of Australian society and they are not. They are mentally still part of their old original culture although they are living in what seems to them to be a completely foreign state ingrained now by alcohol, drugs and violence. Many can't or won't get jobs. Again this is not a thing that their subconsious considers. These are the people that those who have managed to rise to an acceptable level of understanding of modern Australia need to slowly bring out of their despair by using the Voice to get funding and use it in their way to improve their lot. Creating or using existing government structures and departments or creating new ones has never worked and never will. When people say I've never seen an aborigine here or there they are right. Most were either killed or kicked out of these places over the past 250 years. In 60,000 years there would not be a square metre of Australia where they have not been at one point or another.

There is little cohesion or agreement within our European/Asian society either. The mobs and tribes need the opportunity to discuss and agree or disagree on every issue that affects their society and how it interacts with modern Australia. We have been doing that for over 200 years and they have been doing it for 60,000 years and working things out for 99.5% of that time, sometimes peacefully and sometimes with conflict and war. As conquerors we haven't allowed that to happen so far. Not even small steps. We started with genocide, progressed to exploitation, then assimilation, all the time infiltrating their society with our values and creating the grand design of what is yours and what is mine and secretly hoping they would all disappear. That's why a voice has to be given a go. It may work or it may end up a total disaster but we'll never know if it is rejected.

At least he wouldn't be around to see it.

That's why I find people with their beliefs in all these writings from different religions total suckers. The books are written by some bloke based on that persons reasoning of what he has learned or what he has invented in his mind to justify things he doesn't or can't understand and then decides it must be his invented God's word. Then once it is all written down in a book people start believing it because they have no better explanation and it saves them from having to come up with an alternative. Using the prose to incite fear is also a great way to suck them in. And so it goes and another religion is born and add another version of God. God number 3001, given there are 3000 identified gods already.

Everything done to date has been reactive. The standard ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Talking to the actual community isn't on the agenda. If it was would officialdom listen anyway? So far they have done neither.

Introducing alcohol to aboriginals is by far the single most devastating thing Europeans have done to destroy them and their culture after the attempted genocide of course.

Americans are so addicted to guns and their so called freedoms they have become obsessed with anything that they believe infringes those freedoms. There were 647 mass shootings in the US in 2022 and as of yesterday there had been 50 so far this year, 7 on New Years Day alone. Now they are removing laws to allow people to carry concealed weapons anywhere and anyone can just walk in to Walmart & buy a gun without any ID or permit. There is not any age limit set in some places. My brother managed an MDF plant in a town called Broken Bow in Oklahoma about 20 years ago & the redneck locals used to drive around in F200 Utes with a Gun rack on the back with 6-10 semi auto rifles in it plus they always had hand guns in the cab. One bloke he befriended was a gun collector and had his own shooting range and literally hundreds of guns. He showed me a video of him firing a 50 calibre pistol this bloke had. It misfired first & the southern drawl was "Pull the hammerr raaaght baaaack" which he did & pulled the trigger. The boom and flash was like nothing I'd ever seen & all my brother could say was "FAAAARRRRKK". It was hilarious to watch but a sad indictment on a completely faarrkked culture

Written from someone who has no concept of another culture that had no need of technology and inventions of Europe and Asia. They were in tune with the harsh land they lived in and managed to survive in every corner of it for those 60,000 years without building empires and monuments. The concept of ownership didn't even enter their minds.

As a Kiwi married to an Aussie & having lived here for 18 years now my observations are these Australians in general are racist. Aboriginals are seen as not equal to Europeans and cause problems. There is a culture of Us and Them. No government has ever done anything effective to deal with what they see as an Aboriginal problem. Politicians have their public opinion and their personal opinion (which is never admitted) but influences their decisions. Historically the treatment of aboriginal people has been absolutely appalling. Obviously these are generalisations and do not apply to everyone. Everything done to date with apologies for past injustices, Closing the Gap, providing handouts, etc has been an abject failure. How could it be anything else with current Aboriginal incarceration rates and the Alice Springs current issues among the hundreds of other things. Some recognition in the constitution and providing a Voice to Parliament may not be perfect but I think it is a good first step. The aboriginal Tribes and Mobs need to become masters of their own destiny and current processes don't provide this. Maybe the Voice will enable them to get together and get some consensus on issues that confront them. Maybe it won't. Trying to modify a many thousands of years old culture in 200 years is far to big an ask. The No campaigners seem to want something more in a sort of Treaty. How can you have a treaty 200 years after conquering these people? I'll be voting yes not because it will make anything perfect but because everything else done in the past has failed, and failed miserably.

So it's Gun God help America. I'll bet Moloch is in cahoots with the god of undertakers, I presume being America there is one among the 3000 or so identified gods around the world.

Somewhere way, way back in this thread there are examples from studies done in Australia of cropping and grazing in solar farms. The panels are not 100% cover like the picture shows over the canals and the result was very low loss of productivity from co-cropping/grazing with reduced water loss and shade/shelter provided by the solar panels. Wool growers reported better quality wool and higher yield from fewer sheep. The term agrivoltaics has been coined to describe the practice https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/05/31/graziers-in-nsw-agrisolar-trial-report-improved-wool-quality/ https://esdnews.com.au/growing-crops-under-solar-panels-agrivoltaics-takes-off/