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August 14, 2024 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 14 August 2024

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Yvette

Forget political point-scoring: Māori culture wins gold on the Olympic stage – sports academics

With the growing anti-Māori rhetoric invading many facets of New Zealand society, we must remember others around the world do not share these sentiments.
While certain New Zealand political parties spew hate against Māori culture for being “useless” and “woke virtue-signalling”, it is nice to see the rest of the world embrace the beauty of Māori.
To hell-bent, right-wing New Zealand, Māori are seen as “disgruntled natives” who are a nuisance to colonial empire and power.

To the rest of the world, Māori are seen as global leaders in indigenous cultural survival and sustainability.

Globally, many international politicians and celebrities have deep respect for Māori and their customs. Many say they stand with Māori and their culture, which makes New Zealand unique.
As indigenous academics who have both lived in New Zealand and abroad, we have seen the stark contrast first-hand toward Māori culture here and abroad – from having Americans ask us to teach them a few words, to Caucasian Australians begging for more hāngī and boil-up.
Interestingly, not only have we seen non-New Zealanders overseas embrace Māori culture, but we also see this among the non-Māori New Zealand diaspora.
We have seen Caucasian, Fijian, Samoan and Indian New Zealanders join kapa haka groups and enrol in te reo Māori classes across Australia.
That’s gold medal material all day long.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/forget-political-posturing-maori-culture-wins-gold-on-the-olympic-stage-sports-academics/AB6W6IZIG5HMFGV7Y6U6CMRBA4/

Is this just a link without comment?
No – the comment is that it has been linked to
_________________
Dion Enari is a senior lecturer in sport leadership and management at Auckland University of Technology. He has a PhD in Fa’asamoa and holds the ali’i tulafale title Lefaoali’i from Lepa, Samoa.

Levi Fox ( Ngāti Porou Tūwharetoa) has worked in mental health and social work practice across Australia and Aotearoa. His PhD research focused on understanding the role of indigenous spirituality and ancestral healing frameworks. He is an academic at Gold Coast Griffith University.
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August 14, 2024 8:05am
- Benedict Yu
  
  Your entire comment is a cut and paste from the New Zealand Herald. 😳
  
  “While certain New Zealand political parties spew hate against Māori culture for being “useless” and “woke virtue-signalling”, it is nice to see the rest of the world embrace the beauty of Māori…”
  
  I don’t see many folk “spewing hate” against Maori culture. I can’t think of any MPs who do so
  
  Also the “rest of the world”, well 99 percent of them, are unaware of Maori culture.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:02am
  - Loddenthinks
    
    “I don’t see many folk “spewing hate” against Maori culture. I can’t think of any MPs who do so”
    
    Actually, Yvette and the article are quite correct. It was then-Minister for Maori Development, Willie Jackson, who in March 2022 called David Seymour a “useless Maori”.
    
    So they were correct, just not in the way they thought!
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:08pm
- Cassandra
  
  Hating Maori? Nonsense. There’s no “anti Maori” going on, just a desire that we treat each other equally. Maori people and institutions are demanding things for themselves alone eg who else partners with the Crown? Who else demands a stand alone health system for their race alone? Who else demands representation on councils for their race exclusively? The racists here are Maori.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:06am
- Damocles11
  
  ‘Growing anti-Maori rhetoric? That’s misinformation in itself. Resisting the agenda of a cabal of leftists and radicals is not the same as being anti-Maori. Either submit to the leftist / separatist agenda or be labelled anti-Maori and / or racist is the message out of that opinion piece & others like it.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:10am
- cmm
  
  Two more PhDs that could take up break dancing.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:14am
- Swifty
  
  Yeah but hang on, some overseas people thought Ardern was a great leader too.
  
  Shows how misinformed they were.
  
  😂
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:32am
  - cmm
    
    “thought”, no not past tense. They still do.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:07am
  - Paulus
    
    Did not 53% of the voters vote for Ardern ?
    And they are now complaining about inflation and such as redundancies – which is what they voted for, and it will take generations to move away from that feeling.
    They will still vote left at the next election anyway.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:41am
- Damocles11
  
  Willie Jackson equates Hobsons Choice to the Ku Klux Klan –
  
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/525042/nzme-to-review-advertising-policies-after-hobson-s-pledge-ad
  
  ‘Labour Party media spokesperson and former Minister of Broadcasting and Media, Willie Jackson, said while it was a good decision by NZME – which owns the Herald – to review its policies, this was not enough and it should issue an apology.
  It was a “disgraceful” decision by the Herald, Jackson said, “I don’t accept and Māori do not accept this type of decision that is trampling on Māori people and the mana of the Māori nation.”
  He said the Herald took money from Hobson’s Pledge without considering where the money was coming from.”I suppose the question is what’s next? Are they going to take money from the Ku Klux Klan, from the White Supremacist movement?”
  Jackson said the coalition government was enabling racist rhetoric, and said while he understood it did not have to step in when it came to business decisions, it should be making some public statements addressing the issues.
  It was not about freedom of speech, he said.
  “This is about taking money from people who are actively poisoning the country with their negative and hateful rhetoric about Māori.”’
  
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  August 14, 2024 1:19pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Willie J is a dickhead and proves it every time he opens his mouth.
    
    Best just to ignore him.
    
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    August 14, 2024 3:17pm
    - Damocles11
      
      Pretty hard to ignore the onslaught from the activist cabal, although no doubt John Key won’t pay any attention to any of it.
      
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      August 14, 2024 6:04pm
  - AitchW
    
    Apart from a tiny minority of redneck morons the only real racist rhetoric is being spewed by an almost equally small number of Maori extremists who include Willie Jackson in their number.
    For some reason the Maori racists get a lot more oxygen from the media.
    
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    August 14, 2024 5:27pm
Cassandra

Common sense from Andrew Little: “Dismissing the threat from China is naive”. Pity Helen Clark and Don Brash can’t see beyond their ideology or is it something more tangible? Brash worked for a Chinese bank, perhaps he still does?
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August 14, 2024 8:06am
- RoboRob
  
  Clark is a commie and loves everything socialist. Brash has a chinese wife which I expect colours his view somewhat.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:31am
  - cmm
    
    I don’t see how the ethnicity of a wife impacts on your view of a government.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:08am
- Grunter
  
  I agree – dismissing the CCP as a potential threat is naive, they are arguably one of the worst and most corrupt of all Governments.
  
  But equally, tying ourselves to the equally corrupt US government is also naive, and we don’t need to do it.
  
  This is a Government military argument, not an argument for/against our two largest groups of international customers (Chinese and Americans).
  
  The only logical conclusion IMO is to stay well clear of ALL corrupt militaries/governments. That includes both the CCP and the US Uni-Party. Focus our energies on making stuff that these customers want to pay top dollar for.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:35am
- cmm
  
  What threat from China?
  China are our largest trading partner (20%) – as much as the next two combined (Australia and USA: 11 and 10%).
  Why would they want to invade NZ when it already operates as a vassal state?
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:43am
  - Jack5
    
    CMM’s comment about China trade sent me into the maelstrom that is the NZ Statistics web site, but I gave up.
    
    Is there any web site in the world that would benefit more from an artificial-intelligence guide, a guide tailored for us dumb-fuck citizens?
    
    Compared with the simplicity of the printed Year Book in days of old, the NZ Stats internet site is Mensa-entry level.
    
    However, I note that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade elsewhere says:
    
    “Australia is New Zealand’s most important economic partner. Australia is one of our largest export destinations, export markets and sources of foreign investment.”
    
    Factors will include: Australia’s dominance of NZ’s banking; the frequent handling of NZ business from Australian offices or subsidiaries; the world’s linking NZ shipping services to Australia’s; just plain geography.
    
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    August 14, 2024 12:34pm
- Conservatarian
  
  I listened to Little be interviewed by HDPA on this issue last night (or perhaps Monday) and was surprised by how lucid he sounded and how much I agreed with him.
  
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  August 14, 2024 1:07pm
  - greybeard
    
    I agree. I heard that interview as well ( on Monday ), and immediately sent HDPA this email:
    “The Chinese:
    They already control our dairy, timber, sheepmeat and wool industries.
    China is still a communist country which hates the west and is currently waging a war with the west: not a militaristic war but an economic war.
    They intend to invest in / buy out / trade with / whatever to the point where they control the economies of western nations.
    And not just the West: Africa and the Pacific are prime examples.
    I was very surprised to hear Andrew Little say what he did just now, and can only applaud him for it. “
    
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    August 14, 2024 3:10pm
    - Jake Dee
      
      “a communist country which hates the west and is currently waging a war with the west: not a militaristic war but an economic war.”
      
      This is where what could be a useful and intelligent discussion about important issues veers off into lunatic fear mongering. What evidence do you or Andrew Little have that China hates the West and is engaging in “Economic war”? What would even count as evidence?
      Hundreds of years of economics and thousands of years of evidence show that trade is a benefit to all parties. That the counter party in a trade deal becomes richer DOES NOT make you poorer.
      trade with China has been of massive benefit to New Zealand and the richer China gets the more trade they will be able to do.
      Those who wish to shut down, restrict or choke off international trade are running contrary to human development and civilization.
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:36pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Perhaps he’s fallen & banged his head
    
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    August 14, 2024 3:18pm
    - AitchW
      
      Or he’s escaped the cult of Ardern and the poisonous effects are finally wearing off.
      
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      August 14, 2024 5:28pm
Ipanema69

To cut or not to cut that is the question!
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August 14, 2024 8:21am
rouppe

Wellington Girls College students are going to protest that they weren’t told about the nps score of one of their buildings.

Let’s see if any of the following pop up:
* honor the Treaty flags
* Tirorangatiratanga flags
* Free Palestine flag
* climate change flags
* anti government flags
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August 14, 2024 8:34am
- Suze Wainwright
  
  Considering this problem went back to Dame Jacinda’s days, there’d better be some anti-COVID jab mandate flags as well…
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:38am
- Eastlander
  
  First two are most likely.
  
  Easy to ridicule them, but what else should they think when they hear that the building is 15% NBS? You can repeat until you are blue in the face that the risk to life is low – as Dave Brunsden has – but if you give them that low figure of course they’re going to panic.
  
  The problem is that the assessment methodology gives a single figure for categorising buildings and doesn’t differentiate between stability hazards and life safety hazards. From the way the Red Book is written you can tell it wasn’t meant to be used the way it has been but in practice it tells engineers that the lowest element – structural or not – governs.
  
  What we ought to have is an assessment methodology which rates buildings for stability and life safety separately, so that you can advise a building owner that, example, the reinforced concrete frame of the building is at very low risk of collapse in a design earthquake, but the parapet is at risk of toppling out into the street and needs to be strengthened and tied back.
  
  Instead building owners and occupiers are given a number which looks like cause for alarm on its face, and then they’re told not to worry – of course they don’t believe they shouldn’t worry!
  
  And that’s when a proper Detailed Seismic Assessment has been done. Worse still when all that has been done is a single Initial Evaluation Procedure spreadsheet and some brilliant local authority decides that’s the whole assessment and labels a single storey timber frame classroom built in the 1940s as earthquake prone.
  
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  August 14, 2024 10:24am
  - rouppe
    
    If any one single component of a building is 15% the whole building is marked 15%.
    
    So it could just be a stairwell in one corner.
    
    That’s the problem with reporting. Headlines only
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:43am
    - Eastlander
      
      Could be a stairwell, could be a parapet. Could even be an actual structural element but the NBS score and newspaper headline wouldn’t tell you.
      
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      August 14, 2024 2:12pm
- artemisia
  
  The principal said they were not told. The Ministry of Ed said they were.
  
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  August 14, 2024 12:12pm
- Damocles11
  
  Video of the protest is in the link below –
  
  https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/08/14/wellington-girls-college-protest-building-disruption-at-parliament/
  
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  August 14, 2024 1:29pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Ha, good protest.
    
    It has to said that Dub GC has been a building site for the last decade and more. The few playing fields they had are just about swamped with prefabs. Mother’s & daughters from the leafy suburbs have a right to be unhappy with Min Ed.
    
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    August 14, 2024 3:31pm
I remember when

The one Olympic record that is almost certain to never be surpassed.
Diana Taurasi won her sixth consecutive Gold Medal (2004,2008,2012,2016,2020,2024) with the US women’s basketball team.
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August 14, 2024 8:39am
- Biscuit
  
  Pretty impressive, Irw, though that of course was in a team sport.
  
  The record for the most consecutive gold medals won by an individual at the Olympics is held by Mijaín López from Cuba. He achieved this remarkable feat in Greco-Roman wrestling, winning gold in five consecutive Olympics from 2008 to 2024.
  
  Loved that after his 2024 gold, he left his wrestling shoes in the centre of the mat, signifying his retirement from the sport.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:06am
  - alex Masterley
    
    That is an amazing record. I doubt very much that it will be eclipsed.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:48am
pdm

Wow 8.45am and I am first.

I don’t believe it.
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August 14, 2024 8:45am
- fightingtemeraire
  
  8.50 and I am the 2nd!!!!
  
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  August 14, 2024 8:50am
- Biscuit
  
  pdm, you have no idea much of my not-very-hardly-earned dosh I had to fork out to ensure you began the day in such a good mood!
  
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  August 14, 2024 8:52am
- Benedict Yu
  
  I held everyone else back just to make your day. 😀
  
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  August 14, 2024 8:54am
  - Biscuit
    
    We’re saints, ain’t we, Benedict!
    
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    August 14, 2024 8:57am
    - imalwaysright
      
      Agree, its wearing a bit thin.
      
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      August 14, 2024 9:36am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      Some here think I am Satan. 😀
      
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      August 14, 2024 9:43am
      - Pineapple Lumps
        
        I don’t think you are Satan Ben, but I do think he has got you fooled.
        
        It’s funny how intelligent, materialist, aetheists will mock others belief in a spiritual realm as being fairy tales when their own beliefs are quite fantastical. For example the ‘theory’ of evolution infers that complex interdependent systems have simultaneously occuref in the briefest of timeframes, yet the whole ‘theory’ depends on deep time to allow for trillions of progressive mutations to explain how these very complex interdependent systems exist. That we see no evidence of evolutionary mutation today is dismissed due to insufficient timeframe for observations. Note adaptation is the expression of existing biological programming not the development of new biological programming required by the ‘theory’ of evolution. While we are genetically programmed to adapt, has there been one positive progressive mutation discovered in the past century?
        
        One example of a complex interdependent system is the lifecycle of the fig and the fig wasp. For these to exist they would need to co-evolve simultaneously, there was no way for them to evolve over deep time. No it would have required split second co-evolutionary progressive mutations. This is a fantastical belief, there is no scientific experiment that has provided evidence of this occurring.
        
        So ultimately as an atheist you are placing your faith in your own intelligence – you are your own god. Mock all you want others whose faith is in the super intelligent divine creator of the universe — but I would caution you not to mock God. At the least be humble enough to recognise the deficiencies in your own faith and that there are plenty of questions you are unable to answer.
        
        When you say Satan doesn’t exist, what proof can you provide? Can you disprove the existence of a spiritual realm? Can you prove your ‘theory’ of evolution?
        
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        August 14, 2024 7:58pm
- Cassandra
  
  8.06 and I actually was first. Or perhaps 2nd.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:07am
  - Biscuit
    
    We need the TMO, Cassandra!
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:23am
Damocles11

A great article below on the hopelessly woke faux academic ‘Raygun’, brainwashed into revelling in her own self-importance and entitlement. Her farcical ‘performance’ mocked and insulted the very people she purports to champion.

https://x.com/Conquestsbook/status/1822423421592244270

‘Rachael Gunn, an Australian breakdancer with a PhD in Cultural Movement, is a symbol of the disillusionment brewing in modern academia. With a doctorate from a prestigious university, she was the poster child for what happens when academic institutions prioritize ideology over practical skill. Gunn was not just a breakdancer; she was a product of the system—a system that glorifies theoretical knowledge while neglecting real-world applicability.’
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August 14, 2024 8:46am
- cmm
  
  “PhD in Cultural Movement”
  This is why taxpayer funded academia needs to end.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:02am
  - Damocles11
    
    She’s been grifting off the Australian taxpayer for donkeys years. Imagine a world where you can live the life of Riley writing nonsensical papers on break dancing while other people have to work hard every day to earn a crust. And to cap it all off she used her privilege to go to the Olympics instead of genuine break dancers from deprived backgrounds. It’s the ultimate irony. The academic world has devolved into a sick joke at society’s expense.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:19am
    - cmm
      
      “The academic world has devolved into a sick joke at society’s expense.”
      
      It has been that way for decades. Just getting a bit more exposure.
      
      It would be better to revert to a model where everyone pays to go to university. Those getting useful degrees could get loans and pay them off from their income.
      
      Useless degrees with no financial return would suffer market forces and fade away.
      
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      August 14, 2024 9:51am
      - sirknz
        
        Why would you deny the joys of underwater basket weaving to the poor browns who wish to do these things?
        
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        August 14, 2024 10:43am
      - cmm
        
        sirknz: The browns are the least of my worries (though they are short-changed by thinking that a degree of any form is something worth having).
        
        What really needs culling are the blue-haired mainly white wimminz like this PhD in break dancing chick.
        
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        August 14, 2024 12:08pm
    - Gravelroad
      
      Yes. Let’s say one of my kids spent years and years practising breakdancing and was quite the expert at it.
      Good enough to get selected for the Olympics.
      But not selected in order for some other entitled person to game the system and make a mockery of it all.
      Never mind kid, try again for the next Olympics.
      Oh wait. No breakdancing in the 2028 Games.
      Still, some middle aged person who couldn’t actually do breakdancing got to go.
      For what?
      
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      August 14, 2024 9:59am
      - Ghost
        
        She was selected because she won the competitions leading to selection.
        
        https://thetab.com/uk/2024/08/13/breakdancing-officials-reveal-how-raygun-actually-managed-to-get-selected-for-olympics-380376
        
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        August 14, 2024 10:35am
      - sirknz
        
        Hey Ghost, do you know if anyone else actually turned up to these competitions?
        
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        August 14, 2024 10:44am
      - Ghost
        
        Why she did that at the Olympics will have to be explained, but she appears to be highly ranked
        
        Article
        
        1) WDSF World Championships in Belgium 2023: The winner would qualify for Paris.
        Raygun was the first-ranked women breaker in 2021 and second-ranked breaker in 2022 and 2023, so she was selected to compete alongside her teammate Molly Chapman. Raygun finished 64th, while her teammate Molly Chapman finished 79th out of 80 contestants.
        
        2 ) WDSF Oceania Championships in Sydney 2023: Local qualify contest, open to the public.
        Regardless of Australian rankings, anyone eligible to compete at the Olympic games could enter this contest. There were 37 male and 15 female entrants. Contestants were judged by a 10-judge panel that included judges from other countries such as Japan and Korea. Raygun’s coach and husband was not listed on the judging panel. Through the two-day competition, Raygun defeated every other breakdancer and qualified for the Olympic games.
        
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        August 14, 2024 10:56am
      - cmm
        
        Ghost: There are some claims (maybe just unsubstantiated rumours) that her winning the competition was somewhat linked to her relationship with the judges.
        
        It would be hard to believe that that was the best breakdancing any Australian could deliver on a level playing field.
        
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        August 14, 2024 10:50am
      - Ghost
        
        From the article, her husband is a judge, but did not judge the trials because she was in it
        
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        August 14, 2024 12:13pm
      - Loddenthinks
        
        You realise you’re debating the selection criteria of a pointless joke of a “competition” that will never feature at another games?
        
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        August 14, 2024 10:42pm
    - imalwaysright
      
      Dam
      
      “…she used her privilege to go to the Olympics instead of genuine break dancers from deprived backgrounds.”
      
      Hilarious.
      It reminded me of the Bidenism: ” Poor kids can be as smart as white kids !”
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:23am
- Ghost
  
  She may get the last laugh
  
  https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/how-raygun-could-be-set-to-make-millions-from-her-olympic-fame-as-expert-reveals-the-rivers-of-gold-that-await/ar-AA1oHFFX?ocid=BingNewsSerp
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:23am
  - cmm
    
    She’s been laughing on the taxpayer for a very long time already.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:30am
  - Damocles11
    
    If all that concerns ‘academics’ is making $$$$, then she will get the last laugh (while always being a laughing stock). But these academic virtue signallers trade on being morally superior people uninterested in the sordid business of commerce.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:38am
    - cmm
      
      “But these academic virtue signallers trade on being morally superior people uninterested in the sordid business of commerce.”
      
      That might be what they say, but they’re pulling salaries they could never achieve in the real world.
      
      What could this woman do in the real world? Receptionist @ $40k maybe?
      
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      August 14, 2024 9:53am
  - rouppe
    
    Her reputation in Australia isn’t that great, but she is famous across the world
    
    Sounds familiar. Who else can we think of, in a New Zealand context, with similar contrasts…
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:42am
    - Conservatarian
      
      Did our one represent NZ at the Olympics for fish and chip wrapping?
      
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      August 14, 2024 1:11pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        Doing, doing, doing the fish n chip rap, yeah
        
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        August 14, 2024 6:30pm
- MCōs
  
  I started watching some local rugby programme on Sky last evening that droned on about Saturday’s test and I kind of couldn’t stay awake
  Next minute
  It’s an Australian sports programme sponsored by that tabloid rag, Herald Sun and they went on about Raygun as if she was the only Aussie at the games.
  All games throw up someone way behind the field, but nobody takes much notice unless there’s a heroic dimension to the story
  Nothing heroic about Rachael Gunn
  
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  August 14, 2024 10:04am
  - sirknz
    
    There was that chap, Eddie the Eagle in the ski jump some years ago, I think that every Olympics brings up someone so utterly out of their depth, that they wind up as some sort of cultural meme for a while until they eventually end up as a gag in something like The Simpsons or Family Guy.
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:48am
  - Damocles11
    
    She has deflected from real Australian athletes that trained their butts off to get there. Loud Leftist ‘look at me’ types are the bane of our existence.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:10am
    - MCōs
      
      She hasn’t deflected anything
      It’s the media that’s made the big deal out of the whole non event
      
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      August 14, 2024 3:15pm
- Burtland
  
  Raygun is Australia’s Eddie the Eagle
  – to his credit Eddie never pretended to be an academic
  
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  August 14, 2024 10:41am
  - Nobby2
    
    Don’t forget Eric the Eel in the swimming. I can’t remember which games he was at but it was after Eddie the Eagle.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:40am
- Damocles11
  
  ‘Perhaps it will all turn out well for the Macquarie University lecturer who can marshal her Olympic experience and doctoral study (her Macquarie Ph D thesis being “Deterritorializing gender in Sydney’s breakdancing scene: a B-girl’s experience of B-boying”) to explain the deeper, decolonised, postmodernist meaning of her empowering kinetic art.’
  – EMERITUS PROFESSOR REX AHDAR
  
  https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/emeritus-professor-rex-ahdar-au-revoir-paris-olympics
  
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  August 14, 2024 11:40am
kowtow

The Methanex and gas shortage story in NZ is huge .
It’s buried deep in the Business section of the Herald and seems to barely rate a mention in $1uff .

We really do need to get back to indigenous , secure , reliable , plentiful , efficient coal use.

If we don’t , third world brown out status beckons.
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August 14, 2024 8:46am
- Spam
  
  Well, Methanex doesn’t use coal to produce methanol. Other companies do, which is called “carbon leakage”.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:20am
  - kowtow
    
    ‘Well, Methanex doesn’t use coal to produce methanol’
    
    Er , did I say they did ?
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:33am
  - rouppe
    
    No but methanex is closing operations for 3 months so the gas can be used for power generation instead of imported coal.
    
    I wonder if there will be a knock on effect of no methanol being produced here, similar to what’s happened when oil refining here stopped.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:44am
    - peterwn
      
      Methanol can be imported as other liquid fuels are. 95% of Taranaki methanol production is exported so the temporary closure of the plant may make little difference. The plant was closed for three months or so for maintenance not long ago and the main issue was the lack of carbon dioxide production for the food industry. The other source of carbon dixoide at Kapuni was also temporarily closed at the time.
      So the three month closure is not going to cause any significant issues. Indeed Methanex can probably currently make as much profit on the gas by selling it to Contact and Genesis for electricity production as it can by producing methanol. The only losers are NZ through slightly less overseas funds and the Asian users of methanol who would pay a slightly higher price for it.
      
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      August 14, 2024 11:20am
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        And the missing forex
        
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        August 14, 2024 6:32pm
- Damocles11
  
  The Green / Leftist wreckers are clamped over this country like an alien facehugger. They will destroy our living standards if allowed to continue to obstruct and prevent measures that must be taken to avoid catastrophe.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:21am
- Clyde
  
  There is approximately 7 billion tons of coal in Otago and Southland which could last for something like 300 years. But we are paying Indonesia to mine the same stuff and then transporting it from there to here. Does that make sense?
  
  We are not building more hydro generation because of some weird East Polynesian poppycock that rivers are a real person. FFS. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:24am
  - peterwn
    
    It makes sense if the use is temporary such as dealing with ‘dry years’ since the cost of establishing mining and transport options would be costly and take time. It is better to use gas fired generation to ‘firm’ hydro, solar and wind power, but the ‘Captain’s Call’ limited this option for now. Setting up a gas importing infrastructure cannot be done in an instant, while the infrastructure already exists to receive and use imported coal. Even when more energy storage is provided there will always be a need for cheap capital cost ‘firming’ plant and gas is the most expedient fuel for this.
    Just take a look at Great Barrier Island where there is no network power. A typical household power setup is:
    1. Solar panels.
    2. Possibly a wind turbine.
    3. Batteries – historically used lead acid batteries from telephone exchanges. Probably now also lithium batteries from scrapped EV’s.
    4. LPG for cooking and heating.
    5. Generator to firm up solar/wind and to run the washing machine and make the toast for breakfast. Generator also firms up decrepit batteries until user gets around to replacing them.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:35am
- RoboRob
  
  The reporting on this is TERRIBLE. It doesn’t answer the obvious questions.
  
  1) Methanex is going to lose sales and still have expenses while not producing. Are the generators covering this cost, the government, anyone?
  
  2) What does Methanex gain from this. Good will? I think not. Are they being bribed or pushed into this?
  
  3) What about the lost export revenues to the country?
  
  Non Methanex specific questions
  
  a) Why only just now? The generators knew this would be an issue last year, what were they doing to avoid this situation?
  
  b) Last year during winter we had a number of close calls and businesses cut production to avoid blackouts. Transpower said huge additional generation was coming on line and it wouldn’t be an issue next winter. Now we have the same issue this winter and Transpower / generators saying this is a blip while additional generation is coming in 2025. Who is lying and why are they not held to account.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:38am
  - wsk12345
    
    To be fair, the generators are between a rock and a hard place. Their boards are all on board with Net Zero bc they basically have no choice or the media will destroy them. They are building what they can – but given they can’t build coal (dirty), gas (scarce and dirty thanks to Ardern), hydro (environmentally problematic plus iwi issues and costs plus very very expensive) or nuclear……they have geothermal and solar/wind plus some pissy waste to energy type things.
    
    We need someone to call out this nonsense, and get on with building a new Huntly. But how to manage the impact on shareholder value plus the risk that they may face big levies to operate in future?
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:07am
    - Grunter
      
      Just to add to the “rock & a hard place….”
      
      Banks that provide funding to build stuff. They are as woke as woke can be (all of them). So none of the energy companies will get capital to build a coal mine/dam/gas field etc.
      
      This Global Boiling nonsense is now so baked in that it is too late to avoid the chaos it was intended to create. Remember that when your power bill doubles or triples….!
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:32am
    - Tom Hunter
      
      It’s going to take blackouts to change anything for the good. I wish that were not so but we have a lot of idiots in our population.
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:36am
    - Burtland
      
      half the shareholders in these companies are mun & dad investors who have been sold on ethical investment – it will take a major shift in thinking to change this
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:53am
    - Matt Long
      
      Who’s better placed rhan the generators to lay out in public why power cuts and brownouts are going to be more common going forward without policy change away from magical thinking?
      
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      August 14, 2024 11:07am
  - peterwn
    
    95% of Methanex production is exported. Methanex is on-selling its gas during shutdown to Contact and Genesis. The profit from the gas sales would most probably cover the profit on the export of the gas plus standing costs. The overseas customers would be able to purchase methanol elsewhere and the commodity price of methanol would increase very slightly in response.
    NZ loses the overseas funds from the exports, but if NZ imported gas (which NZ cannot immediately do) that would require overseas funds.
    Seems a sensible win-win stopgap solution.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:41am
  - SoloView
    
    @ RoboRob
    I think your first two questions are covered in this “Stuff” article re Methanex gas sales:-
    
    “Methanex would sell gas to the power companies over the next three months and expected to earn more from the arrangement than the methanol income lost.”
    
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/350376670/methanex-temporarily-shutting-new-zealand-methanol-plants
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:43am
  - kowtow
    
    Will they pay their employees and contractors during this shut down?
    
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    August 14, 2024 12:16pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      Employees, yes. Contractors – only those that continue to provide a service.
      
      Would be my guess.
      
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      August 14, 2024 6:35pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  The projected shortage of gas from the mid 2020s was well known when Jacinda banned gas exploration. Instead of being treated as a mad person, she was celebrated in the media.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:47am
  - Grunter
    
    And then rewarded in the 2020 election with 51% of the vote + Greens…..
    
    We get what we deserve!
    
    Vote to stop Global Boiling…….Vote to ban the evil Oil & Gas……. nek minit Power Bill goes up 3x
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:35am
RoboRob

I see NIWA has just splashed out $20m of our money on a new supercomputer. Wonder if they will share it with Metservice?

Considering we have TWO competing weather services, who authorised this purchase. Hopefully NOT the current government. These two agencies can and should be merged into one. Unfortunately the resale of super computers is close to zero, so no money to be made there BUT surely huge staff and building savings at the least.
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August 14, 2024 8:52am
- cmm
  
  We have one weather service and NIWA.
  
  I might be wrong, but as I understand it, NIWA’s supercomputer is aimed at climate modelling: garbage in, garbage out – just faster.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:00am
  - RoboRob
    
    NIWA now also does weather forecasting too.
    
    But even if they were just ‘climate modelling’, why not combine them into one agency? They both have huge computing resources (by NZ standards) and its not like there isnt any crossover between short and long term forcasting.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:22am
    - cmm
      
      Weather modelling does require huge computing resources because it is modelling real world with fine grained models.
      
      The models all operate at a point on the computation curve where increasing the computation by a very large amount only yields small improvements in weather prediction accuracy.
      
      So, for example, increasing the computation power by a factor of 5 might improve weather modelling by an extra day into the future.
      
      Climate modelling is rather different. Climate and weather are not the same. Climate modelling does not operate anywhere near the same level of accuracy and throwing more computation at it really does not help improve accuracy.
      
      We’re told sea level rise is going to be somewhere between 5 cm and 1 metre (or so) by 2100. With such vague models a new supercomputer is not the limitation.
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:03am
- Grunter
  
  Why do we even need a Government-owned weather forecaster? If the State didn’t do it, and enough people needed/wanted to get a weather forecast, then someone would create a business around that need. And I bet that business would NOT spend $20m on a computer system!
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:14am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    There is a market failure argument. It is for that reason that every nation has a well resourced government owned weather forecaster.
    
    Weather forecasts and warnings save lives.
    
    There is an excellent private forecaster in New Zealand. Weatherwatch. However it does not provide warnings because there is no money in that. The money is in providing specialised forecasting services to niche markets.
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:50am
    - cmm
      
      The market failure argument actually goes both ways…
      
      Yes, each nation has well resourced government agencies, but – like many similar organisations – these become fiefdoms that stagnate progress.
      
      For example there are new developments such as https://planetiq.com/ who use 20 GPSRO satellites to measure the atmosphere on a global basis – world wide – tens of thousands of times a day.
      
      Many weather service people see these breakthroughs as a threat to their way of doing business and are obstructing it.
      
      On the other side there is also the question of when is good enough, good enough? We have all the weather prediction we need to save lives and have had that for over 20 years.
      
      $5000 gaming computer of today could run all the weather forecasting that required a supercomputer of 20 years ago. Do we really need an upgraded supercomputer that will just give slightly more information?
      
      Or, in other words, I severely doubt that a new $20 million supercomputer would save more lives than a $5000 desktop computer.
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:25am
    - Grunter
      
      Market failure is spending $20m on a computer!
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:37am
      - RoboRob
        
        $20m is probably pretty low end for a ‘super computer’. For the unitiated, todays super computers are essentially 1000s of computers connected together with very high speed connectsions so they can work as one. Very specialised and expensive, but massively powerful.
        
        I dont have an issue with the computer or the price. The issue I have is that metservice also has super computers. We dont need to weather agencies with duplicate facilities.
        
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        August 14, 2024 1:23pm
    - Matt Long
      
      “Weather forecasts and warnings save lives.”
      BY, this only happens when an agency doesn’t suppress historical storm information in order to push a climate alarmist agenda.
      https://x.com/investigatemag/status/1822863550941217237
      
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      August 14, 2024 11:12am
    - peterwn
      
      Not sure but Weatherwatch probably relies on Metservice raw information that is in the public domain. Met Service has a big fleet of weather stations and rain gauges and a fully separate alternative service would need to duplicate this.
      
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      August 14, 2024 12:57pm
  - Jake Dee
    
    Meteorology is an excellent example of something that just can’t be left to the free market to sort out. There are several reasons, firstly as the climate is global and not simply local it has to be coordinated through national governments.
    Benedict has already mentioned the lifesaving disaster prevention reason, but I wonder how many have considered the military reason?
    Accurate meteorology is essential for military operations, look back through history and you will see that the Navy and later the Airforce were right there from the very beginning.
    it is grossly short sighted to think that the magic of the free market will just sort all this out.
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:53pm
- Master Mariner
  
  Interesting for sure,
  Thinking exactly the same, Then I seen that it was AI powered / Learned.
  As time goes on , I’am becoming more sceptical about AI and its relevance.
  As you have , I have serious concerns about data sharing with NIWA and Metservice.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:16am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Mm
    AI seems to be merely a poll of its database on any particular question.
    I still can’t see the evidence of “Intelligence”, artificial (whatever that means in this context), or real.
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:52am
- Damocles11
  
  New Zealand is becoming a place where if you are not engaged in some sort of rort of the taxpayer then you are in the minority. I can’t keep up with all the current waste and graft, the stories are everywhere.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:24am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Yep, that’s the 4th “super” computer NIWA has purchased since 1999 for its climate modelling.
  
  Value for money?
  
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/524986/niwa-unveils-new-climate-and-weather-modelling-supercomputer
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:42am
  - rouppe
    
    Are you still using your phone from 1999, Maggy? 2009? Or even 2019?
    
    Computational power has changed quite a bit since 1999. The old ones might be able to mine a few bitcoin…
    
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    August 14, 2024 9:47am
    - cmm
      
      If you use an old computer to mine bitcoin you will lose money. The energy needs to find a bit coin using old computers will be way higher than the value of the bitcoin you mine.
      
      Does a 1999 phone actually make better phone calls? Nope, all that has changes is a few wizzy graphics.
      
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      August 14, 2024 10:28am
      - rouppe
        
        That’s not all that phones are used for now, and you know it.
        
        Navigation, messaging, video calls, I write documents and spreadsheets on it.
        
        Voice calls are a minority. And in fact since CDMA technology was about in 1999 and now it isn’t, yes today’s phones do make better calls
        
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        August 14, 2024 11:04am
      - Jack5
        
        CMM’s …. If you use an old computer to mine bitcoin you will lose money …
        
        Bitcoin crunching relies more on the power of graphics cards than on a computer’s CPU:
        
        https://medium.com/@markfoss62/the-role-of-graphics-cards-in-cryptocurrency-mining-4f2d359bc290
        
        How to set up a crypto “mining farm” on an old computer with a rack of graphics cards:
        
        https://medium.com/@blockchainbytes/reviving-old-computers-building-a-budget-friendly-crypto-mining-rig-725a7a15e1ed
        
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        August 14, 2024 12:57pm
      - cmm
        
        Jack5: Bitcoin mining depends on compute power.
        
        GPUs (aka graphics cards) provide more compute power than normal CPUs, so they are more important. This is because graphics cards can do many operations in parallel.
        
        However older computers will have less powerful graphics cards too.
        
        The real cool kids use FPGAs and ASICs which provide even more compute power and are specifically configured to perform the bitcoin calculations extremely quickly (and efficiently).
        
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        August 14, 2024 5:20pm
- imalwaysright
  
  “I see NIWA has just splashed out $20m of our money on a new supercomputer”
  
  When I read that I had a mental picture of monkeys on typewriters writing the works of Shakespeare.
  
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  August 14, 2024 11:19am
- Burtland
  
  NIWAs new SC has been in the pipeline for a while – Woods will have approved it.
  
  “NIWA is the science lead in the international satellite mission (MethaneSAT) detecting global emissions of methane — including those from agricultural sources. But if it’s windy, the methane will be blown away from its source, so we need high-resolution weather models to show us the origin of the methane. That requires huge computational resources.”
  
  looks like theyre going to track cow burps …
  
  “It will also be used to help keep us all safe in the outdoors” – John Morgan
  
  John has our safety at heart – his supercomputer is keeping an eye on us all. 🤡
  
  https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/08/13/niwa-purchases-20m-climate-and-weather-modelling-supercomputer/
  
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  August 14, 2024 11:27am
  - Chris Nisbet
    
    “so we need high-resolution weather models to show us the origin of the methane”.
    Do we really? Would we really need to blow all that money if we realised that methane is an insignificant contributor to “Climate Change!”?
    
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    August 14, 2024 2:36pm
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Sell the old one to Peter Jackson
  
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  August 14, 2024 6:36pm
cmm

A few days ago someone made an interesting claim that the oxygen created by photosynthesis is locked up in wood and that growing trees does not release oxygen into the atmosphere.

That sounded interesting, so I thought I’d apply some Intermediate school chemistry to see if that passes the sniff test.

Wood is pretty much made up of long chains of cellulose (C6H10O5)n and lignin which is variable but is approximately (C31H34O11)n

Cellulose’s C6H10O5 is constructed from carbon dioxide and water, releasing oxygen (O2).
6CO2 + 5H20) -> C6H10O5 + 6O2. That 6O2 is 6 mols of oxygen gas.

The molar mass of CO2 is approx: (12 + 2 x 16) = 44, of water (2 x 1 + 16) = 18, cellulose (12 x 6 + 1 x 10 + 16 x 5) = 162g.

So 6 x 44 g = 264g of CO2 + 5 x 18 g = 90g of water produces 162g of cellulose and 216g of oxygen gas.

That is for dry wood. Wet wood would have a whole lot more free water in it.

While lignin is a different formula from cellulose, the ratios are roughly similar, so we can use the above proportions for wood in a hand-wave calculation.

So basically we can say that the process of making wood in trees generates approximately as much dry wood by mass as gaseous oxygen.

But maybe the oxygen is trapped in little bubbles in the wood which is why wood is spongy? Nope.

That 162g of wood (maybe a cup full) comes with 6 mols of oxygen gas. That is approx 130 litres of oxygen gas. There is no way the bubbles in a one cup of wood hold 130 litres of oxygen gas. That would need pressures of approximately 500 bar – far higher than that in SCUBA tanks.
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August 14, 2024 8:58am
- rouppe
  
  Whoever made that claim is an idiot.
  
  W⁵
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:50am
  - cmm
    
    Idiot? Naah, just a product of the NZ school system.
    
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    August 14, 2024 11:10am
    - Keith White
      
      “and”
      
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      August 14, 2024 2:17pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  It was a very confusing post by jackRabbit about the Drax Power Plant.
  https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/08/general_debate_12_august_2024.html#comment-3603401
  
  he was wrong on a number of points…
  https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2024/08/general_debate_12_august_2024.html#comment-3603521
  
  and since he used the molecular formula of oxygen, I had no idea if he was referring to the oxygen content of cellulose/lignin in wood or free gaseous oxygen.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:55am
  - cmm
    
    Yes, very confusing. Maybe the result of not paying full attention in class…
    
    The general claims about Drax were generally right, but for the wrong reason. After shipping all that biomass form the UK, there is unlikely to be much benefit left.
    
    I think he was meaning the oxygen embedded in the cellulose/lignin molecules, but there is no surplus oxygen there. It is all taken up by the hydrogen first, and combustion of the carbon part would need external oxygen (the same oxygen released in gaseous form by photosynthesis).
    
    Also the bit that claims “that’s why wood burns so well” is wrong, but has a slight element of truth to it.
    
    Wood can “burn” without external oxygen to an extent. That is how charcoal is made. The H and O bits burn off (to make water), leaving the carbon behind.
    
    This is very different to, say, the combusion of black gunpowder, where heating the saltpeter actually releases surplus oxygen which can combine with the carbon in the
    charcoal.
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:39am
    - cmm
      
      A downticker… NZ schooling at its finest.
      Probably going to give me another down tick saying I should have said “it’s finest”.
      
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      August 14, 2024 11:13am
      - cmm
        
        Yup, thought so…
        
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        August 14, 2024 12:10pm
      - Benedict Yu
        
        No. “its” is the possessive pronoun of “it”. “it’s” is the contraction of “it is”.
        
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        August 14, 2024 2:19pm
      - cmm
        
        BY: woosh.
        
        Yes you know that, I know that, but likely the downticker doesn’t.
        
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        August 14, 2024 5:23pm
- James Stephenson
  
  I think my response to such a claim would be a simpler “Where TF do you thing the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from then?” and an instruction to google “Great Oxidation Event”.
  
  Can’t fault your back-of-the-envelope algebra though.
  
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  August 14, 2024 9:57am
  - cmm
    
    TBF, the claims were specific to wood – not photosynthesis in general.
    
    The Great Oxidisation Event was largely caused by cyanobacteria and predates the existence of plants or other multi-cellular life.
    
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    August 14, 2024 10:47am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      No,
      Jackrabbit wrote this:
      
      Lichens and moss, and later grasses are what created our oxygen rich atmosphere.
      
      He seemed to be totally unaware of the composition of Earth’s atmosphere through time.
      
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      August 14, 2024 11:13am
      - cmm
        
        Well that’s partially right and wrong…
        
        The Great Oxidisation Event was caused by cyanobacteria and maybe early algae, but no multicellular plants.
        
        But the GOE only got the planet to about 2% pO2 (about 10% of modern day oxygen levels).
        
        Still it is called the GOE because 2% O2 is massive compared to most atmospheres.
        
        Then the atmosphere farted along at 2% for a few billion years with single cellular life.
        
        The rest (ie. what made our planet oxygen rich) was created by subsequent plant species (I assume mainly algae) in the last billion years or so – corresponding to the rise of modern (complex) plants.
        
        Whether the complex plants created the rising O2 levels or the rising O2 levels created the plants is worthy of a PhD thesis.
        
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        August 14, 2024 12:05pm
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        I think he must have been reading this chap’s work
        
        https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1604787113#:~:text=Instead%2C%20the%20earliest%20plants%2C%20which,ever%20since%2C%20shaping%20subsequent%20evolution.
        
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        August 14, 2024 2:03pm
      - Mike
        
        I think it might have been Jackrabbit who claimed recently that a humanoid civilization existed on Mars.
        Perhaps it’s not worth spending too much time analyzing his science.
        
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        August 14, 2024 2:30pm
RoboRob

The Government is proposing to scale back the responsibilities for Te Arawhiti – the Office for Māori-Crown Relations – and shift them to the Ministry for Maori Development, Te Puni Kōkiri.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/08/13/govt-clarifying-functions-of-te-arawhiti-and-te-puni-kokiri/

More tinkering by the National government.

Why does NZ need 10+ (no I dont know the exact number) of agencies designed specifically around Maori relations? Surely one or two could do the same job without the huge trough for leeches to drink from.
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August 14, 2024 9:00am
- Damocles11
  
  Probably they are doing as much as Potaka will allow.
  
  5 2
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  August 14, 2024 9:24am
- cmm
  
  “Ministry for Maori Development,”
  
  How is “Maori Development” any different than just human development?
  
  Are they a different species? I don’t think so. Most Maori are genetically Westerners.
  
  Do different laws of physics apply? All mass in the universe obeys pretty much the same laws of physics as far as we know. Surely it really isn’t so different for those molecules that make up Maori people.
  
  So c’mon National – how about some honesty and call it what it is:
  
  Ministry of Maori Troughing.
  
  22 1
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  August 14, 2024 9:27am
  - RoboRob
    
    Im on record here for pushing for the closing of all the ‘ministries for ….’ (be it chilren, Maori, Woman, pacifica etc).
    
    But if we are not going to do that, which seems the case, surely we could cull down to just 1 ministry for Maori.
    
    12 1
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    August 14, 2024 9:40am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    “How is “Maori Development” any different than just human development?”
    
    Because the Crown is a partner with Maori and has myriad responsibilities under the Treaty to protect hundreds of Maori taonga, including language, and the radio spectrum. That requires hundreds of public servants.
    
    No I am not being sarcastic. That is the reality of the current interpretation of the Treaty.
    
    If Maori are a partner with the Crown, the government requires enormous resources to serve the partnership. There are I would estimate a combined total of about 2,000 public servants employed in EVERY government agency to advise on the Treaty partnership.
    
    Why? Because in 2020 the government introduced a new Public Service Act to require that. Every agency needed to respond. However apart from me, nobody seems to think that the Public Service Act warrants amendment. 😅
    
    20 1
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    August 14, 2024 10:02am
    - Mike
      
      The Public Service Act 2020 needs replacement by something more like the State Services Act 1962.
      
      0 4
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      August 14, 2024 4:04pm
      - Benedict Yu
        
        I very much doubt that. The 1988 Act would be a good starting point.
        
        1 0
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        August 14, 2024 9:18pm
    - Quail
      
      BY,
      The chart in today post referring to increases in bureaucracy and their remuneration says it all.
      Spending according to resources is something that is not considered.
      Yes the PSA requires urgent reform!
      
      0 0
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      August 14, 2024 9:16pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  Leeches don’t drink from troughs.
  
  11 1
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  August 14, 2024 9:54am
  - Mike
    
    Sucking the life blood from the body politic?
    
    1 2
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    August 14, 2024 4:05pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Last night Lisa Owen, Checkpoint RNZ, stated that Te Arawhiti had failed to pay Lawyers hundreds of Thousands of $$$ in fees….. and the Minister stated that he’d discovered te arawhiti was $18 Million over budget.
  
  https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018950983/govt-proposal-to-shake-up-te-arawhiti-under-fire
  
  Looks like it didn’t take long for Kelvin Davis’ great idea to start bleeding tax-payers $$$$$$.
  
  18 1
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  August 14, 2024 10:05am
  - Jack5
    
    Again, thank God that Labour wasn’t re-elected Government at the general election.
    
    5 1
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    August 14, 2024 1:05pm
softail 1450

As a younger man I restored Corvettes ,Camaros, Mustangs ,Trans ams etc so I nearly fell off my couch this morning whilst risking the news on Maori TV number 2 (TV1’s breakfast program) when an add with a well dressed 40s something couple driving around in their EV Ford Mustang that looked less like a Mustang than my 1st car a Skoda Octavia from the 60s appeared on the screen, FFS the Western World has well and truly jumped the shark 🥲🥲🥲
13 3
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August 14, 2024 9:31am
- rouppe
  
  They call that Mustang an SUV.
  
  When people buy a mustang they don’t want an suv. They want a fastback coupe.
  
  6 0
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  August 14, 2024 9:52am
  - cmm
    
    The SUV categorisation is to get around various emissions and other hurdles that are placed on cars in USA.
    
    3 2
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    August 14, 2024 10:54am
    - rouppe
      
      You realize @softail was talking about the EV Mustang, right?
      
      1 1
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      August 14, 2024 12:49pm
Grunter

From Doug Casey’s Blog….

Consider this…

During the first oil shock in 1973, about 5 million barrels were removed from the global oil market. Daily global oil production was approximately 56 million barrels per day at the time, which means about 9% of the supply vanished.

Oil prices roughly quadrupled.

If Iran were to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, it would remove a whopping 21 million barrels of oil from the global market. Today, global oil production is approximately 94 million barrels per day, which means about 22% of the worldwide oil supply could disappear.

If war with Iran proceeds and Tehran closes the Strait of Hormuz, I think the effect on the price of oil will be at least as severe as it was during the 1973 oil shock, which saw oil prices go up 4x.

A similar move today could see oil prices above $300 a barrel.

– Personally, I think a 4x increase is conservative. What would that do to our inflation target of 0%-3%.
13 4
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August 14, 2024 9:40am
- Matt Long
  
  Iran produces about 3.5 million barrels per day, I wonder what the effect would be if Israel destroys their facilities?
  
  4 1
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  August 14, 2024 11:18am
- Handyman
  
  North America is self sufficient for oil and natural gas.
  Europe would do a deal with Russia to take Russian oil currently bound for China. (maybe with a Ukraine reconstruction tax).
  
  That leaves China and Asia as the main victims. Iran will face an ultimatum. Allow Saudi oil to pass or have Kharg Island destroyed.
  The world can get by without Iranian oil, as it did during the Trump years.
  
  6 2
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  August 14, 2024 12:02pm
Matt Long

The suicide and infanticide rates associated with postpartum psychosis sits at 5% and 4% respectively. According to the book Because I’m Not Myself You See.
“Unlike postnatal depression, which occurs in one in seven new mothers, postpartum psychosis (or puerperal psychosis) is rare – it affects around one to two in every 1000 mums. That’s around 600 women in Australia each year.”
It’s also 30 suicides and 24 infanticides.
6 1
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August 14, 2024 11:28am
rouppe

Well here’s the first person that should be fired in Health NZ.

Dr Lester Levy contacted health workers yesterday, after a Health NZ staff member presented information to a meeting that outlined potential and significant cuts to headcount, across the country.

That caused Levy to send the email, which was co-signed by Deputy Commissioners Ken Whelan and Roger Jarrold.

“Earlier today, a staff member presented some information to a meeting around potential cost savings in Hospital and Specialist Services. For the avoidance of doubt, what was presented is in direct conflict with our thinking and should be dismissed” Levy stated in the email

Whoever sent that should be fired on the spot
12 2
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August 14, 2024 11:35am
- peterwn
  
  ‘Yes Minister’ all over again – remember the new hospital that was staffed with administrators, cooks, cleaners etc but there was insufficient budget for doctors or nurses so there were no patients!
  
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  August 14, 2024 7:13pm
Mike

I really thought Trump would wait until he had sold his shares in Truth Social before further destroying that brand by returning to its competitor to appease his new bestie.
Can anyone explain this 4-D chess for me?
4 14
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August 14, 2024 11:44am
- Libertarians are right
  
  Because maybe it’s not all about the money?
  
  5 3
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  August 14, 2024 12:05pm
  - Mike
    
    Implausible.
    
    5 9
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    August 14, 2024 2:11pm
Ghost

I hope this wasn’t given to them intentionally

The Auckland City Mission is contacting up to 400 people after lollies with methamphetamine were included in food parcels, the City Missioner said today.

To date, at least eight different families have been affected – Missioner Helen Robinson said, adding on current information no-one had been hospitalised.

There was at least once instance of a child being given one of the lollies – Robinson said they spat it out immediately.

Article
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August 14, 2024 12:07pm
- cmm
  
  OK, am I the only one asking the Big Question?
  
  Why are City Mission handing out lollies at all? They are not food.
  
  11 3
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  August 14, 2024 12:51pm
  - Damocles11
    
    Will rot kids teeth necessitating trips to the dentist which the parents can’t afford. Daft.
    
    4 1
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    August 14, 2024 1:33pm
    - MCōs
      
      Dentist is free for kids
      
      2 2
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      August 14, 2024 3:05pm
      - cmm
        
        For various definitions of “free”.
        
        2 1
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        August 14, 2024 5:40pm
  - mandk
    
    It’s no big deal.
    
    They were probably donated, so why not hand them out?
    
    5 0
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    August 14, 2024 2:27pm
  - MCōs
    
    Treats for the kids.
    If a family is relying on food parcels I expect the food is pretty bland
    
    3 1
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    August 14, 2024 3:04pm
  - MCōs
    
    “They are not food”
    Can’t argue with that!
    
    2 1
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    August 14, 2024 4:33pm
Inandout

The NZ population of the years of power blackouts was docile in comaprison to now. A history of our electricity makes interesting reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Zealand
6 1
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August 14, 2024 12:11pm
Damocles11

A better copy of the ad that the spineless wokesters at NZME and the NZ Herald wouldn’t run is in the link below –

https://x.com/rosey_nz/status/1823092508408316334
4 2
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August 14, 2024 1:32pm
Damocles11

Canned food: the latest dastardly deed identified as being perpetrated by ‘colonists’.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/08/13/whats-the-beef-with-canned-food/

‘When I asked an academic why canned food gets so much shade, he said there could be a variety of reasons, but there was one common theme – colonialism.
Auckland University of Technology senior lecturer Rob Richardson says there’s this idea that these “are products the West doesn’t want, so we’ll dump it on other cultures”.’
7 1
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August 14, 2024 1:37pm
- Mike
  
  IIRC canned pet food became more popular in Rarotonga once jet services were introduced in the 1970s.
  
  4 3
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  August 14, 2024 2:53pm
- Swifty
  
  I wasn’t aware our food producers held guns to people’s heads and made them buy and eat it.
  
  You learn something new everyday.
  
  9 1
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  August 14, 2024 2:57pm
  - Ghost
    
    I wonder what the professor thinks about Māori owned companies that can products….
    
    7 1
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    August 14, 2024 3:04pm
    - Swifty
      
      Indeed.
      
      1 1
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      August 14, 2024 5:19pm
  - mandk
    
    It’s true.
    
    And brown people are also forced to smoke, consume alcohol hazardously, and smoke meth.
    
    2 2
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    August 14, 2024 4:22pm
- fightingtemeraire
  
  In PNG they used to put a picture of the product on the tin as the locals only spoke Pidgin.
  
  NZ Started exporting Highlander Condensed Milk to there and they wondered why it didn’t sell!!!
  
  3 0
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  August 14, 2024 3:09pm
- cmm
  
  “are products the West doesn’t want, so we’ll dump it on other cultures”
  
  Interesting. It’s not because canning is a great way to keep food from spoiling then?
  
  That is after all what canning was invented for – keeping food from spoiling for feeding soldiers.
  
  You could try some fresh beef instead, but chances are it would be pretty manky by then.
  
  South African soldiers in Angola during the conflict there ate well if they came across SWAPO camps. Canned salmon from Norway sent to feed the “refugees” but actually ended up feeding the SWAPO soldiers – unless the SA troops captured it. It was often a few years past its best before date, but was still a treat for soldiers living on ration packs.
  
  It is difficult to see food surviving a trip from Norway through Africa (or beef in the Pacific) followed by a few years without refrigeration any other way.
  
  2 2
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  August 14, 2024 5:14pm
slightlyrighty

I had a bit of a thought the other day, while musing on Race Relations in this country.

There has been a resurgence in the wearing of Ta Moko or Moko Kauai in this country, and the most high profile wearers of these facial markings has been in the political Arena.

It seems to me that those in Parliament who have themselves so adorned are from the Political left, and the further left you are as a Maori, the more likely you are to be wearing Ta Moko.

It is also obvious that those in parliament who are so adorned, see themselves as a “Better Sort of Maori” than those who do not.

and I figured out this morning what it reminded me of.

The Sneetches, by Dr. Suess. Where the Star Bellied Sneetches proclaimed themselves superior.
8 3
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August 14, 2024 1:54pm
- MCōs
  
  A lot of people in Mangere Bridge CBD too
  What’s your reading on that, slightly?
  
  6 2
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  August 14, 2024 3:46pm
  - cmm
    
    Clearly beneficiaries aren’t on the bones of their arses if they can afford tats.
    
    2 5
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    August 14, 2024 5:03pm
  - slightlyrighty
    
    My post did explicitly refer to those in Parliament, but I would think that if you did a survey of the political leanings of those with Ta Moko, you would see an overwhemling level of support for the left side of politics.
    
    There will be, of course, a group who choose to wear it as a measure of Mana. The individual reasons are thiers alone. But it should be noted that many of the parliamentarians so adorned, (Waititi, Ngawera-Packer, Kemp, Kerekere, Darlene Tana, Mahuta) have not particularly covered themselves in Mana during their time in Parliament.
    
    I’m not saying that there is a correlation, but the wearing of Ta Moko has almost become a political statement in this country, as has a number of fusions of identity and politics.
    
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    August 15, 2024 8:01am
- Jake Dee
  
  I love that story, it’s one of Dr. Seuss’s best. The real winner was Sylvester McMonkey McBean who drove off at the end with his car stuffed full of money.
  Winning!
  
  0 0
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  August 14, 2024 11:20pm
Bobba Fret

Orr has cut the rate by 0.25%
2 1
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August 14, 2024 2:11pm
mogg

What did I say the ‘RBNZ will not cut rates today’.
Me and my big mouth, what’s the saying ‘if you can’t be right be wrong at the top of your voice’.
4 1
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August 14, 2024 2:12pm
- Damocles11
  
  It will be interesting to see where inflation goes from here. I can hear the sound of wallets opening and the NZD falling.
  
  4 1
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  August 14, 2024 3:45pm
  - mogg
    
    In the small print it says possibly two more cuts before end of year. Funny business lower NZ$ will be great news for exporters but bad news for imports.
    Equities up across the board today.
    
    1 1
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    August 14, 2024 4:32pm
Swifty

I absolutely love the NZ venison industry.

I love the product and I have huge admiration for the farmers – however it does rankle that NZ families are being tapped to contribute to industry expansion plans, notwithstanding that’s a relatively small sum of just over a million bucks.

If this initiative is worth doing then the industry players, farmers, processors and exporters should fund it fully themselves.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/rural/350362623/venison-coming-us-retailers
7 1
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August 14, 2024 2:55pm
- Mike
  
  That’s not how capitalism works.
  
  1 3
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  August 14, 2024 4:00pm
- cmm
  
  I am significantly against any of these handouts to pet industries. Why should a bloke running a bakery be taxed more to prop up the venison industry, race horse industry, etc?
  
  This is no better or worse than all the other industries that get hand outs:
  * yacht building
  * space
  * tourism
  * electronics
  * game development
  …
  
  I can see some argument to give a fledgling industry a few breaks for a few years, but many of the industries getting hand outs are well established.
  
  Worse yet are those industries that are owned overseas and, essentially, pay no local tax and generate very little ancillary employment (eg. the foreign owned electronics & software companies that still take R&D funds off Calaghans).
  
  2 1
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  August 14, 2024 5:38pm
- Jake Dee
  
  Did you notice that you wrote a million bucks for the venison industry? That’s a LOT of venison!
  
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  August 14, 2024 11:22pm
kevn

Still no Maggie Pie… 🙁
6 3
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August 14, 2024 3:14pm
MCōs

Trump figuring things out
https://x.com/jesuschryslerii/status/1823126325541929349?s=61&t=yFkzCNMWRCaVt1p5eRxUog
4 2
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August 14, 2024 3:43pm
- Inandout
  
  Some comments on X are really sewer stuff, but heck I still love free speech.
  
  2 1
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  August 14, 2024 4:20pm
- Gussy Fink-Nottle
  
  The poster asks the question ‘why do some people want this guy to be president???’
  The answer is simple: because he’s better than the alternative.
  
  2 4
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  August 14, 2024 5:09pm
cmm

Here’s one for the apostrophe pedantic’s :-).

Apparently people who debate whether it is “Harris’s comment” or “Harris’ comment” are now grammar nerds.

In high school, Mr Collins’ cane was the authority on that.

But here in Aotaroa it would seem to be a matter of opinion according to Stuff.

It makes you wonder what they teach them in wordsmith school.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/350377710/how-kamala-harris-sparked-apostrophe-battle-among-grammar-nerds
4 2
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August 14, 2024 5:31pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Trump shooting.
Secret Service and FBI doubts.

https://patriotpulse.net/a-disturbing-video-from-the-trump-assassination-attempt-has-everyone-asking-this-question/?
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August 14, 2024 5:58pm

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