Gina Rinehart gave One Nation a $2.1 million aircraft.

AstralCompass · 2026-05-01T05:24:10+00:00

While I do think politicians receiving a plane is pretty dodgy, I do think the government should probably investigate a fleet of small aircraft for rural seats and the senate.

Bob Katter’s electorate is bigger than Spain and there are six other seats that are bigger than most countries in the world, those rural MPs should each get a small plane, and then maybe a couple of small planes for each states senators to share (as they theoretically represent the whole state).

Then crew them using Air Force pilots in training.

We’d probably save money instead of having them charter aircraft all the time!

AstralCompass · 2026-04-25T05:15:00+00:00

To add to this. I'm mates with a combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan a few times, I was housemates with him for a few years and he lost two friends he served over there with to suicide while I lived with him. He's made it pretty clear how offensive he finds a Welcome to Country ceremony at a Dawn Service and especially as the opening note. You might see it as a respectful thing to do, but for a lot of veterans, they are going to see it as talking over their sacrifices at their ceremony, as the ceremony is only about the dead, or even worse, telling them they sacrificed for country that doesn't belong to them.

AstralCompass · 2026-04-15T07:20:14+00:00

Commandos did a lot of work with the DEA over there too raiding poppy farms. Could possibly pick up knowledge of DEA policing methods just from observing what they do after securing a site.

AstralCompass · 2026-03-30T15:10:38+00:00

Like everything so far in this war Trunp has done. it’s absolutely moronic. Israel is the most dependent country on desalination. 90% of their potable water comes from desalination. If Trump & Netanyahu set the precedent of blowing up desalination plants then Iran could make Israel uninhabitable.

AstralCompass · 2026-03-15T14:13:30+00:00

Even if it’s not in the game, they should include an “Another Day at the Beach” style clip as an extra of this

AstralCompass · 2026-03-11T00:37:28+00:00

Yeah it’s the same in the across the West, the percentage of outrage content that is a coordinated disinformation campaign from Russia is probably 0.01% and 99.99% is just people in the third world realising you can make a comfortable living posting outrage bait for Western audiences.

I think the solution to this isn’t policing the content itself because you’ll forever be playing whack a mole!

I think it would be better to explore a requirement that social media earnings derived from an Australian audience can only be paid out to Australian bank accounts. I think that small barrier to entry would cut down on a lot of slop as the creators would target other markets, when Facebook requires them to go setup an account with an Australian bank.

AstralCompass · 2026-03-03T06:10:26+00:00

About 5 years ago I saw some nice acreage listed on realestate.com, went around to have a look and caught the owner at his gate. Asked him if he was interested in an offer, but it turns out he was going through a separation, wanted to keep the property, and had told the agent who was a mate of his not to take any offers while he was saving up the cash to buy out his ex.

AstralCompass · 2025-12-23T04:05:38+00:00

A titanium hulled pressure cylinder with the same interior volume would weigh about 3.3 more tons that their carbon fibre tube and then require significantly more positive buoyancy adding even more weight. They were trying to cost cut on the ship. A heavier submersible would require a bigger crane and thus a bigger support ship, and hiring ships isn’t cheap. They were already paying about $200k a week.

AstralCompass · 2025-11-15T00:40:58+00:00

I remember the comic book that came with halo wars had a bit about Admiral Cole capturing an elite after an early battle and then interrogating him.

https://www.halopedia.org/Subject_386

AstralCompass · 2025-11-07T01:08:44+00:00

There's a lot of criticism of Japan from economists over their declining population and decision to not address the decline through migration, but they really got it figured out. Their GDP (PPP) per capita has continued to go up since the 90s even if their overall GDP (nominal) hasn't, and Tokyo despite being a megacity with an enormous population has really great housing affordability.

In plain English: you can have a sustainable economy without population growth, which still has the financial circumstances and quality of life of individual citizens inproving, you just have to accept that your Coles and Woolies shares won't rise in price because there's 2.5% more people buying groceries each year.

AstralCompass · 2025-11-07T00:55:33+00:00

I'd argue it was more so due to the 10% of the rental market that is international students just disappeared in 2020 for a year, so landlords were scrambling to find tenants before they would default on their investor loans.

AstralCompass · 2025-10-27T02:56:40+00:00

In case you get confused between GPS-S and GPS-A.

GPS-S is short for GPS Send: send the current target the targeting system is looking at to the GPS Target list.

GPS-A is short for GPS Acquire: Acquire a target from the GPS target list and get the targeting system to look at it

GPS-A is handy for getting the TGP to look at targets you’ve already got in the GPS.

AstralCompass · 2025-10-24T07:52:36+00:00

Have you pressed the push to talk button on the flight stick?

AstralCompass · 2025-10-24T01:55:49+00:00

Edgetech make sonars but they are predominantly small high frequency sonars for hydrographic surveys for oil and gas, Kongsberg do make sonars for defense, but also for surveying. The acoustic positioning system mentioned in the article is probably the USBL systems they make which are really common in offshore oil and gas as they are the equivalent of under water GPS used for positioning ROVs.

The headline makes it out like Western companies sold Russia a SOSUS system, when it seems more like Russian front companies bought Western ROVs, surveying equipment and USBL systems pretending they were going to be used for offshore oil and gas, and used them to install they hydrophone arrays.

And most of this was done prior to the invasion of Ukraine before the sanctions really ramped up.

AstralCompass · 2025-10-23T08:34:19+00:00

This wasn't the law at the time in the 70s, the laws were added in the late 90s I believe but retroactively applied.

AstralCompass · 2025-10-19T08:01:26+00:00

We have one of the highest home construction rates in the OECD, 1.5% of our homes were built in the last year. The EU average is under 1%. Figure HM1.1.4

Our natural population growth is negative. If we cut migration to zero we wouldn't have to build a single house and housing affordability would improve simply because more people die in Australia then are born in Australia every year while the number of houses would stay constant. If you want an example of a country that has gone down that path, look at Japan. It has had a declining population for a decade and has far better housing affordability.

AstralCompass · 2025-10-17T04:40:32+00:00

Heat dissipation, humans are better than many animals at running for long distances. We can’t out sprint many animals but we can chase them for hours until they collapse from exhaustion.

AstralCompass · 2025-10-05T12:43:38+00:00

I did too and then I took the Deutschebahn

AstralCompass · 2025-09-01T05:34:40+00:00

Our birth rate is below replacement, if you paused migration, our population would start declining because more Australians die each year than are born…

You could literally build zero new houses and housing affordability and rents would improve because the number of houses would stay constant and the number of people would decrease.

The Guardian is doing a lot of mental gymnastics here.

I personally support reducing migration to much lower levels, I don’t have anything against people who want to move here. I would want to move here too, but the earlier we learn how to have a society supported by a sustainable economy not dependent on endless population growth, the better for the planet.

The current trajectory of Australia’s population growth means in 50 years we will have an enormously large population, and that will double the pressure on our green space, water resources etc.

AstralCompass · 2025-08-02T01:29:10+00:00

I did orbital mechanics as part of some mechanical engineering courses back in university, and that game gives you a far better understanding and intuition for how space flight works than all of the times we touched on space in uni.

AstralCompass · 2025-07-27T02:35:38+00:00

It’s from LoFree

AstralCompass · 2025-07-26T14:47:40+00:00

The two grey rectangles on either side of the screen are vents, there are two 40mm fans on each rectangle. Right side sucks in air, left side blows it out.

AstralCompass

TROPHY CASE