• 0 Posts
  • 57 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
cake
Cake day: June 4th, 2024

help-circle
  • I reckon Port Arthur is a solid contender with its low population of 251 (known for being the site of a mass shooting that led to significant changes in Australian gun laws). It is fading in name recognition as time goes on though, after all that was approaching 30 years ago and lots of people have been born since then.

    My top pick however would be Bega with its population of 5013 and the name recognition the cheese factory has brought. It’s hard to go past a name that’s printed on cheese (and assorted other products now) in the vast majority of supermarkets across Australia, and they even export overseas to get a bit of international cachet.


  • Yes, while they look interesting there are reasons why saw blade lookalike wheels aren’t commonly used. I hate to think of how the weight of those dirt bike ones would affect the handling (probably not so much of a problem over smooth ice, but rougher terrain would be a challenge).




  • And it’s a very weird and frightening feeling if I do get disoriented.

    I know what you mean, there has been a couple of times in my life where my internal idea of direction has been turned off course and it is a very weird feeling indeed trying to reconcile the direction you internally believe you’re facing against the different direction a map or compass is telling you is actually true.

    As a kid I also once spent a weekend in Melbourne feeling somewhat disconcerted due to not being able to get a sense of direction. I’d never been there before and flew in on an overcast day which never ended up letting up until I flew out so never ended up getting my bearings while we were down there (didn’t help that this was before the smartphone era so maps weren’t available at the drop of a hat).









  • I’m sure I’ve read worse but one that stands out as making me question the time I put into reading it is Out of the Dark by David Weber. I go into it expecting a military sci fi, and for the vast majority of the book that’s what you get - aliens invade Earth and plucky humans resist etc etc. The aliens however have more reserves and air superiority so are slowly winning as the end of the book approaches, at which point you expect the main characters to pull a rabbit out of the hat and do something different. Except that’s not what happens.

    spoiler

    What actually happens is that Count Dracula appears out of (almost) nowhere and flies with a bunch of vampires up to the alien spaceships to kill the aliens, winning the battle for Earth.

    I was definitely not satisfied with this ending, even if there was some foreshadowing earlier in the book that made sense after knowing this was a possibility in this universe.




  • gnutoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldOk boomer
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 month ago

    Self checkouts that just let you scan items without issue and accept payment are a nice enough idea for a bag or less of shopping, my problem with them is how they are implemented in reality (in Australia anyway). The first implementations I encountered I considered an useful addition but both the machines and the staffing changes due to them have steadily gone downhill in terms of user experience.

    Instead of a quick painless experience you get a horribly touchy weight sensor which can’t reliably handle particularly small items, particularly large items, or non-standard bags (and there are no longer standard bags due to plastic bag bans), a machine which demands assistant intervention at the slightest issue (and the assistants are understaffed so never arrive quickly), and when you finally get to payment it makes you click through an annoyingly slow interface to tell it you don’t have a rewards card and don’t care to donate to some charity before it will activate the card reader. To make things worse the manned checkouts are never staffed at a level - if any are even open - to cater for people with full trolleys so these end up clogging up the self checkouts (which have tiny bagging areas and are not intended to handle a trolley load) and making everything slower.

    The icing on the cake is the self checkout treating you like a thief and throwing errors if the camera system thinks you didn’t scan something in the trolley or letting off an alarm like you’re trying to make off with something when you just want to buy a can of paint.


  • gnutosolarpunk memes@slrpnk.netHives
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    The bees would still overcome the wasp, assuming it’s a large hive. The wasp will have practical limitations on the amount of ammunition for the weapon (also the question of whether it can reload before getting swarmed) and the ceramic armour won’t help against the bees massing together to form a ball of bees around the wasp and overheating it until it dies.

    Edit: Apparently it depends on the type of bees as to whether they do the heat ball of death thing, so your mileage may vary.


  • gnutoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldHome Depot
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    2 months ago

    As in plasterboard sheets? I don’t see why not if hand loading, plenty of vans will fit a 2400x1200 sheet (my Transporter fitted a bunch of plywood with room to spare). Loading one with a forklift is harder due to no side access long enough to fit 2400mm but that’s a problem shared with tub back utes. If however your plasterboard pallet is side accessible a van with barn doors (like you’d buy if pallets were a priority) will allow you load it in fine.



  • The thinking involved in driving a manual is very minimal once you get used to it, so I reckon any safety issues caused by that would be outweighed by a reduction in the unfortunately common situation of unintended acceleration crashes. You are lot less likely to drive through the nearest wall (or kids) if your instinctual reaction to moving when you should not be is to also go for the clutch and cut power instead of just pressing harder on the wrong pedal.