Evacuations are under way in parts of Tai Rāwhiti, with police going door to door, as heavy rains and wind continue to lash the district.

Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

Three bodies believed to be those of the missing fishers have been found on the shore at Māhia this morning.

Police said formal identification was under way but the bodies were believed to be of the fishers who were reported missing on Monday.

Quite fascinating that illegally manufacturing cigarettes is now a worthwhile endeavour for someone.

What in the actual fuck.

How cartoonishly evil does our government have to get?

This, along with Luxon's "I don't care..." about bootcamps from this morning, is just plain evil.

Perhaps, just roll with me here, we don't need another $10b of roads and could be happy with $9.9b of roads, so we could instead feed our most desperately poor and struggling citizens?

This is Captain Planet level evil.

A man who scammed people out of nearly $300,000 by pretending to be a police officer has been arrested.

On Monday the 25-year-old man, a UK national, was chased by police through Auckland central on foot.

The scam involved a call to a landline by someone pretending to be a police officer and providing a fake badge number.

There were 18 Aucklanders, aged between 56 and 90, with the majority over 80, allegedly duped out of money.

"The scam will always involve this so-called officer asking for financial information or asking you to withdraw cash to be collected as part of an investigation into banks," Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Bolton said.

I didn't learn about this until today.

Updated story

They undid the bolts, and it fell over.

Have downloaded the Beeper app which seems to nicely integrate a few of my favourite chat protocols. I noticed Matrix in the mix however.

I've heard, obliquely, of Matrix, but just assumed it's yet another messaging protocol. Would appear that's not the case though? Where would one get started? Why would I even want to use this vs the multitude of others? Is there an NZ Matrix server? Does it even matter? Why did the last season of GoT go so badly off the rails (oh wait, we know the answer to that one)...

TIA!

There is an article linked within that one that goes into more detail, but the cause of the grounding has been confirmed as a steering failure.

She's a long way up the shore, so it will take a lot of force to get her off the beach, I think.

Wot did I just read..wtf??

Wow

Facebook post

Hey all.

Canadian here. A number of years ago my family visited New Zealand, and while falling in love with the country and the culture, I also discovered the Hei Matau - the Maori fish hook.

This has haunted me ever since, and I want to carve one for myself. However, we've spent the last decade starting to understand the relationship between European settlers and the North American Indigenous people.

So what I do in my basement with carving tools is my own business, but I ask honestly if wearing a Hei Matau in public is considered respectful or appropriation. And also if the material matters in this context. (It would likely be from a tagua nut - "vegetable ivory" - although it's possible I could get some whale bone from my coastal friends.)

I've never seen an entire tower fall over like that, that's kinda terrifying.

Luxon with foot-in-mouth disease again

Companies have the right to monitor employees to ensure productivity but they must also protect the employee's privacy, an Auckland University Business School lecturer says.

Last week US banking giant Wells Fargo sacked more than a dozen people for allegedly faking keyboard activity, pretending they were working at home when they were not.

The bank has not said how it picked up on the problem.

But a survey last year of 1000 US-based companies showed 96 percent of them were using some kind of monitoring to check up on employees working from home.

All of this raises questions around ethics and productivity.

This is such a strange thing to require someone to know, especially when she doesn't deal with Maori land, and all sale is the same legally regardless of the ethnicity of the buyer. And the justification given for making this mandatory is incredibly tenuous, in my view.

Flames were seen coming out the back of a Boeing 737 that departed from Queenstown on Monday evening, before landing safely in Invercargill.

Virgin Australia flight VA148 departed Queenstown Airport at 5.59pm, bound for Melbourne with 67 passengers and six crew on board, before turning around and heading south.

"It experienced an issue just after take-off and has been diverted to Invercargill Airport," Queenstown Airport said in a statement earlier.

The plane - a 737-800 registered VH-YIV - landed safely in Invercargill shortly before 7pm.

The airline later said it was a "possible bird strike on take-off".

"The aircraft has been met by emergency services at Invercargill Airport," Virgin Australia chief operations officer Stuart Aggs said. "The safety of our guests and crew is our highest priority."

The airline later on Monday night said it was not aware of any injuries.

Technology company offers novel way for accommodation providers to fix prices.

This is what happened with a similar company in the US: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/rental-housing-market-doj-investigation-00147333

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/3740832

turns out I did my math wrong, so it’s a little less than 30 days

July 12th, 2024 @ midnight EDT

https://canvas.fediverse.events

✨ this year’s event also supports the entire fediverse not just Lemmy!

(you have to be able to make/receive text posts, like mastodon, lemmy, pixelfed, etc) (peertube accounts will not work)

you can get update announcements on other fedi platforms with @[email protected] link

chat about Canvas on Matrix or Discord (they’re bridged)

Super cool. I was excited to see Frankie Adams in the cast, loved her in the expanse. But was even more excited to see Rena Owen as Gramma Tala....perfect casting.

Hi everyone, can we do a Photo Friday?

@[email protected] used to post them, but I haven't seen them for ages and @[email protected] said it'd be okay.

Theme: Something you like!

Rules: no NSFW and has to be a snap you took yourself.