Nath

This makes sense to me. Aussies are travellers. Something like two-thirds of us have active passports (it varies by age and numbers are a bit down post-pandemic).

The 'travel to exotic places' aspect of a cruise ship just won't be that big of a draw most if us. We get around for ourselves just fine.

Coupled with the fact that a two-week cruise from Sydney might take you to such fascinating destinations as New Zealand or perhaps Fiji - and 90% of that view is just ocean (no shade on those places, but I can hop on a plane and be in either place by dinner).

Yeah, nah. If you desperately need to go on a cruise for some reason, it makes zero sense to do it from here. Go to Europe and do one from there.

Dude, this happened in living memory. Americans are completely open about it.

Operation Ranch Hand had two primary objectives: (1) defoliation of trees and plants to improve visibility for military operations, and (2) destruction of essential enemy food supplies. Source

Attacking civilian food sources is a war crime. Source

It's all a bit moot, since the USA gives zero shits about the UN, ICC and when they can hide it, the Geneva Convention. Hell, the ICC list of War Crimes is like a runsheet of what the Americans got up to in Vietnam. And we haven't even discussed Napalm.

Have they improved? Yeah, probably. But then you watch the Collateral Murder video, and question that.

I haven't equated the Americans with ISIS. But I can understand why an Iraqi would and would give their position serious consideration.

Using an example where the USA breached the Geneva convention against chemical warfare is not proving whatever your point is.

To answer your question, they justified it at the time as a herbicide to kill the jungle the Vietnamese were using for cover. This was only a cover story however. They clearly knew how dangerous a toxin it was, given the safety protocols they had around the chemical for it's troops. At best, if it were merely a herbicide, it's use would still constitute a war crime for destroying civilian and non-combatant food sources.

It's actually a bit of an International scandal even today that the USA has not formally apologised for its use. They have at least provided limited compensation for their victims in Vietnam with long-term effects of exposure to Agent Orange. Though I'm not certain those programs continue today under their present administration.

To be honest, the USA should apologise for being in Vietnam in the first place. It had no business being there, and nor did Australia.

That's no longer a deal-breaker. They ask if you've had multiple partners in the last 3 months, or taking prep treatment.

Even then, I'm not sure that would stop you (not sure what the policy is), that's simply what they ask.

It's probably worth calling and asking if you do want to donate.

Ok, I can spare 30 minutes. To be honest, I was due months ago, but it's so easy to be bogged down in the day-to-day and not get around to it.

It honestly only takes about half an hour, and you can book it on your phone and just walk in.

50c here after dropping the surcharge.

I'm in the process of changing banks, going through old statements I noticed I was paying $1 less last October.

In fairness, that was $5 in 2025 and probably the cheapest in town. But $6 a cup comes out at around $1,500 per year and I'm questioning the value in that.

ABC introduced me tot he concept: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-07/solarpunk-design-architecture-sustainable-future/103667452

A website is not a broadcast. So, it can (and would) disallow the content from being broadcast on TV. But not from a webpage.

While we are at discussing the idea, it kinda won't work. You can block all of the Internet or none of the Internet. You can't block some of the Internet. If you 'block' a site from Australia, people can and will simply VPN to another country and access it there.

That's a little inaccurate. What ISPs log is the IP addresses your IP address interact with and on what port. So, upon visiting www.jihad.com just now, some server somewhere logged the fact that my IP connected to 103.224.182.244 on port 443. Looking up the IP 103.224.182.244 on my name server takes me to the destination:
"lb-182-244.above.com".

In IT parlance, "lb" usually stands for Load Balancer, though I have no way to know whether that's what it really stands for in this instance. The ISP can't log the actual page(s) I visited, that's encrypted traffic. There are probably several websites behind that load balancer, and my ISP won't even know which I visited.

For huge sites like Netflix, Google, Hotmail etc, everyone will know the IPs will belong to those sites, so they'll know you visited Facebook for two hours between time-a and time-b. They can give this information to someone like ASIO or the Police who are then able to go look on Facebook to see what you were doing at that time (Your ISP can't).

I read the actual paper, and while I am not a member of the relevant scientific world, I was not at all stunned. In fact, the whole story felt like sequel to Jane Goodall's Chimp war of the 60's and 70's. Sure enough:

While these results are consistent with the hypothesis that kin selection affects male chimpanzee behavior (see also Morin, Moore, Chakraborty, Jin, Goodall, & Woodruff, 1994), our study also indicated that unrelated individuals cooperate frequently (Langergraber, et al., 2007).

Ok, then.

Like - sure, this is useful scientific study and does increase our knowledge of Chimps in Africa. But, I'm hardly stunned by it as well. As he himself acknowledges, it's consistent with previous studies. Is there a biologist reading this who can explain why the scientific world would be stunned by any of this? Or is this 2026 article about a paper published in 2020, expanding on papers dating back to the 1960's all a load of click-bait?

Wait. You genuinely believe there are women somewhere who would consent to a conga line of unknown guys just having their way with them while passed out?

That is absolutely not a thing.

You missed girls of all shapes and colours in the 10-15 range. Potentially older as well, but this is the range I know because of my kids.

The first time I noticed White Fox was at band camp and so many of the girls were wearing the hoodies that I thought it was some sort of band uniform.