liv

Pumped hydro sounds super useful! There's no hydro in Northland but if it had a better infrastructure there is room for geothermal and solar.

I don't know much about pumped hydro but it sounds good!

This is really dumb of me but I just realized someone tried to describe this battery facility to me and I somehow thought they were talking about this fish farm.

Could be... seems to hate macrons. Out of curiousity I don't suppose you know what software they use? The only editing software I'm familiar with is nondestructive.

What a despicable crime.

Side note, what's with the eccentric use of "[sic]" in that article? All bar one are misuses of it. I wonder what the person who put it there thinks it means.

Idk I'm in two minds about that. When I was at university I knew plenty of people who were living rent-free in their parents' houses. One guy was even having his mum cook meals and do laundry.

Whereas I was just out there by myself, so without an allowance my loans would have had even more of a chilling effect. In practice most suggestions for a UBI seem to involve lowering the amount poor people get. I guess the devil's in the details.

If I were in charge I'd make tertiary free instead.

The procedure is homelessness.

Seriously though I remember for student allowances, when I was studying there were circumstances in which you could apply for a parent not to be counted (serious estrangement for example) so it actually wasn't as unfair as it seemed.

I wouldn't be surprised if all that has fallen by the wayside though.

I somehow had no idea that was what they were doing there. Interesting! Climate change plus neglected infrastructure is going to = more power outages for sure.

larva

So most likely a maggot or a moth caterpillar? My money's on maggot.

This lunch saga was already Kafkaesque without bringing in an actual insect.

It will, especially since a lot of the proposed fast-track mines seem to be in high-value tourism areas such as the Coromandel (there's a proposed mine right near Cathedral Cove FFS).

For a nation to go along with this feels like self harm. Mining revenue is way more likely to all wind up offshore. Also tourism is theoretically infinite if it's managed properly whereas mining is finite.

Another factor is some of these proposed mines treat infrastructure load as an externality so there are a bunch of hidden costs to ratepayers/taxpayers.

I think you're right about the EU. We have them to thank for C cables on everything.

• if you specifically need MS Office and the web version won’t do, or if you need the Adobe suite etc, then you’ll struggle

Those are the exact reasons I had to stick with windows. Office was essential at work (much as I like Libre Office it just doesn't quite cut it when you need perfect compatibility) and I used to use photoshop a lot (and Dreamweaver ha ha ha those were the days).

GIMP latest release seems to finally have non destructive editing so I will have to take another look.

Thanks for sharing this. I hadn't seen it.

I don't feel like anyone really represents my views anymore.

I would like us to turn towards doing things that are international best practice and demonstrably work, and I'd also like to see an end to neoliberal economic orthodoxy (and while he's at it Santa could bring me a pony - by which I mean I know that's just a dream).

For question 3, sorry to do this but it makes me uncomfortable to come up with an equivalent to the Circus had beautiful architecture or the trains run on time.

I'd rather contribute something I see as positive and also meaningful, so in terms of NZ politics that's things like the small grassroots groups that are still fighting to save the environment, the degree of unity and political revitalization in te ao Maori resistance around treaty issues, the way the care workers I know are keeping their dignity and still fighting for decent working conditions... I guess just that ordinary people are not just sitting there defeated.