Aotearoa / New Zealand

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.

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?

When can we get this?

The study of New Zealanders' travel habits found that total weekly travel emissions were 79% higher for people in affluent areas compared to those living in lower socio-economic areas.

Olsen said while it is normal for New Zealanders to leave the country, it will be harder to convince people to return, if there are ongoing issues around housing affordability and job prospects.

That ‘brain drain’ could pose problems for society as the population ages, Olsen said.

“We need to have as many young people as we can who are still part of the economy … who are being innovative and bringing their new thinking to the game so we can be more productive,” he said.

“If we are losing our young talent and we’re not able to attract them back it makes all of [that] so much harder.”

A man has been shot by police after he hit one of them with a vehicle, and another remains on the run, after a raid in South Auckland.

Stumbled on this and thought it was worth a share. I had no idea you can eat gorse!

A delay in dropping petrol prices is costing motorists $15 million a year at the pump.

The Commerce Commission's analysis of fuel monitoring data shows retailers are quick to put prices up in response to increased costs, but slow when it comes to bringing prices down when oil prices fall or the exchange rate changes.

"We can see clear evidence showing that fuel companies maintain temporarily higher margins after a decrease in their costs, lasting up to two weeks - at great expense to Kiwi motorists.

This is a reminder to fill in the community census.

Direct link to fill it in here: https://survey.lemmy.nz/index.php/493338?lang=en

No questions are mandatory, just fill in what you are comfortable with.

I will leave this open until Sunday 16th, then will start analysing the data after that.

We currently have 42 completed responses, and based on the number of active users in the last month we can do a lot better. If you haven't filled it in, please do!

It doesn't matter if your account is on Lemmy.nz or not, if you're participating here then please fill it in!

Last week's 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?

A northern rātā (Metrosideros robusta), located near a cemetery in Karamea on the South Island's West Coast, has won the Tree of the Year award in a landslide victory.

The tree, known affectionately as The Walking Tree, as it looks like it is walking across the paddock in high heels as well as having a resemblance to one of J R R Tolkien's sentient, tree-like Ents from Lord of the Rings, won 42 percent of the votes in the annual competition.

NZ Arb runs the Tree of the Year campaign

"This award recognises the significant role that trees play within our communities, not only enhancing our local environments but also providing a sense of place for past, present, and future generations," he said.

Two multinational companies with close ties to the New Zealand police have teamed up on anti-crime surveillance inside stores.

It comes as New Zealand supermarkets, in step with overseas trends, are bringing in body-worn cameras to deter rising rates of assaults on staff.

Foodstuffs said just 16 of its 500 stores across the country used bodycams "to help keep team members and customers safe". Other stores used other measures.

Its North Island stores reported over 5000 incidents in the first three months this year - one a week per store on average.

"Footage is typically only recorded when the device is activated, with recordings later exported to secure systems.

"Footage from bodycams of retail crime incidents is usually only uploaded to Auror following a legitimate request by police, and always only by authorised team members for the purposes of combatting retail crime."

It would only be shared if police requested it for an investigation, the company said.

This is a bit of a personal rant, so please read it with that bias in mind.

There's a weird culture of management arrogance at TVNZ. It's persisted over the last two and a bit decades of personal experience with the company, despite restructures and staff turnover.

It seems to manifest in two ways:

• distrust of staff, as in management not trusting their reports at the bottom of the hierarchy
• cognitive dissonance between what is and what should be

Consultation with staff for restructuring has never been genuine: the plans are always already made and the "consulting" is actually just "telling".

Planning for the future has always been an ivory tower exercise by management, apparently because management have the "overview" but then don't place any value on the worker's knowledge of the actual work. Staff know there's plenty of penny-wise pound-foolish bullshit work done "but it's the TVNZ way so keep doing it".

In this case there's one of two root causes:

• ineptitude: no one thought that they'd better check employment contracts for relevant clauses they'd negotiated
• malevolence: they did but chose to ignore them

How does this keep happening? Taking public transport shouldn't be anywhere near as dangerous as it currently is, this is getting ridiculous.

TL;DR:

• Alcohol $7.8b
• All illicits: $1.8b
• Meth: $0.365b

I wanted a figure for cannabis and found this from 2020:

PDF https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/the-nz-illicit-drug-harm-index-2020-10-feb.pdf

• All illicits: $1.9b
• Meth: $0.824b
• Cannabis: $0.911

I notice that the per kilograms measure for harm is also useful to account for volume of usage, but think that per 'dose' would be better.

• Meth: $1.1m per kg with 743kg consumption
• Cannabis: $0.35m per kg with 58000kg consumption

These figures include 'associative crime' as harm. So it apparent counts the cost of buying it as harm, it also counts the tax loss of that expenditure, so IMHO it skews unfavourabley to higher expenditure. But put that aside.

These figures show that all illicit drugs combined are less harmful to society than alcohol, and tautologically the harm is inflated by illegality.

The four animals ranged in size from 11 to 12cm and weighed between five and nine grams, meaning they were likely less than a year old.

Council parks and recreation manager Caroline Rain said the enclosure had been thoroughly searched prior to the tuatara being moved in February 2023, meaning the babies had likely been in egg-form at the time.

"We did everything you'd expect us to have done to ensure that there wasn't anything there," she said. "They were genuinely just missed, they were not seen."

This fast track to corruption bill, is more worrying than the budget...

Im quite surprised by this, isn't Parliament a crown/british concept? And Te Pati Maori are usually quite opposed to Crown concepts.

Regardless, I think as much hate as ACT gets for this - it seems obvious that clarity on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi is required so that every New Zealander knows where they stand (legally speaking) and we can move on as a country.

The different interpretations from different groups are distracting from the real issues because the solution gets muddied.

Should we establish group-specific organisations that all do the same thing, just for different segments of society - or should we pour our energy and resources into making organisations work for all New Zealanders?

Major loyalty scheme FlyBuys will come to an end later this year.

The scheme allows customers to redeem points for items in its loyalty shop, get petrol discounts and convert their points into New World Dollars.

The programme, has been running since 1996 and has about 1.8 million active Flybuys members.

"The landscape for loyalty programmes has changed, and continues to change rapidly, with businesses now having greater access to technology and capabilities that enable them to create their own highly tailored proprietary loyalty programmes. The Flybuys model of a services and retailer alliance has run its course, so will close at the end of this year," Ryley said.

Flybuys members would be able to earn points up until 11.59pm on 31 October and would have until 11.59pm on 31 December 2024 to redeem them.

Fewer babies and migration that "fell off a cliff" during Covid-19 have contributed to slower population growth in New Zealand, the first Census results released today reveal.

The Census, conducted in early 2023, placed New Zealand's official population just shy of 5 million, at 4,999,923.

Nearly a million people (one in five) are of Māori descent.

The total number is slightly lower than estimates of 5.34 million, because it does not include people out of New Zealand during the Census, those who did not complete the Census, and those who have been born or moved to New Zealand since.

Overall, New Zealand's population has grown by about 295,000 since 2018.

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?

Hi all!

TL;DR: If you're reading this, please fill in the Lemmy.nz Census survey.

I have indicated in the past that I would like to do an instance census in the same manner as Lemmy.ca does. You can see the results of their survey here.

I have used similar questions and answers for much of the survey as I think it would be good to be able to compare between the instances. I have also made some changes based on their comments in the post, and have added other questions.

None of the questions are mandatory, so just answer what you are comfortable answering. I expect to leave this open for a while and have some reminders to make sure we get as many responses as possible. I'll do a results post once the results are in and I have had a chance to analyse them.

I am hoping to do this on an annual basis, with some tweaks but largely keeping it the same to allow for watching the trends.

Thanks for your participation!

Answer the Lemmy.nz Census survey

New Zealand is experiencing its highest peak in Covid-19 cases since December 2022, professor Michael Baker says.

Last week, the ministry reported 6146 new cases of the virus and 19 further deaths.

That was a substantial increase on the number of cases reported the previous week - which stood at 3922.

The data came from wastewater testing, Baker said, but hospitalisations were also up.

"We're up to about 35 people a day going to hospital with this infection," he said.