Open mike 07/10/2021
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More children are going hungry and statistics showing children in material hardship continue to get worse. ...2 weeks ago
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Today, Te Pāti Māori join the motu in celebration as the Treaty Principles Bill is voted down at its second reading. “From the beginning, this Bill was never welcome in this House,” said Te Pāti Māori Co-Leader, Rawiri Waititi. “Our response to the first reading was one of protest: protesting ...3 weeks ago
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The Green Party is proud to have voted down the Coalition Government’s Treaty Principles Bill, an archaic piece of legislation that sought to attack the nation’s founding agreement. ...3 weeks ago
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My very first avian friend from the stream to visit my place, Charlie Drake, demonstrating his stunt piloting skills.
Carefully calculates: weight, distance, height for clearance, angle of takeoff, climb rate, landing gear retraction point, lift required (BPM), drop point, landing zone.
Like to see anybody here do all that, and skip over that fence like that, just by flapping your arms!
https://i.imgur.com/V26sx6b.gif
Whoopee❗️
It's been nearly 18 months since I've been able to start feeding my eels again.
I've been throwing chunks of bloody sheep's hearts into te wai for a week from 20 feet up atop my side of the stream bank, but the water's been flowing so strongly from rain it's been rolling the meat downstream & into the rapids, & I haven't seen any eels for months.
This morning the flow's more sedate. Within 10 minutes of throwing six big chunks into the water – 3 out into the middle, & 3 just pitched down into my Eel Spot, Elvira Longfin hove into view. Swimming up the rapids, then slowly traversing the width of the stream, getting on to the scent of (now very smelly) heart chunks & gobbling them down.
I know it's Elvira from her length, her colour (she's a light grey) & how after she'd got the mid-stream meat chunks, she made her way over to the Eel Spot, where she's probably going to lie in wait to see if that man comes down with some more meat on his Feeding Stick.
I am a happy hermit. 👴🏼
And … Yay 😀
My (hopefully resident) Muscovy Duck just swam silently & sedately downstream again to just below my fence. It’s just started raining so I can’t use the camera, but I dashed inside & quickly got a slice of Molenberg Toast bread.
Broke it into big chunks & threw them down to it & I learned three more things about this Muscovy Duck:
1. It responded to being called “Hey, Muscovy. What a good boy. Just wait…” by cruising up to just below my bank & watching me.
2. It’s not as placid as I thought. The first bread chunk I threw down, a mallard drake half its size went after. Muscovy bit his side feathers & chased him off!
3. Every time it got a bread chunk, it WAGGED ITS massive TAIL FEATHERS! Like a happy dog. 😀
Amazing. This is a very good-looking creature. I’m gonna have so much fun interacting with this waterbird, with a bit of luck. 👍🏼
We really like these guys. What this clip doesn't mention is the booming mating call of the males that can be heard over quite long distances. You never see them fly, although they can – and rarely do they go on land. The only time we ever saw one out of the water was because it had been chased there by another male:
We like to think of them as the nuclear subs of the duck world.
Love it Geeza. Apparently birds have a large cerebellum which is the centre of the brain concerned with balance
I get mistakenly called Geeza so often, now that I’m 66, I sometimes wish I’d chosen that monicker instead of Gezza. 😀 (Pronounced Jezza, btw.)
My apologies Gezza! I make those sorts of mistakes sometimes
All good, Anker. I liked your comment. My own, now extensive, observations of all the different kinds of birds I regularly interact with around here is that ALL birds are smart. They figure stuff out (especially food-related stuff) very quickly.
And some birds are standout clever. Parrots, spring to mind.
Pūkekos I would also put in that category (notwithstanding the number who get clobbered by cars on the road every day, because they prefer to walk to get somewhere rather than fly).
Pooklets invent games with “toys” to amuse themselves.
Gezza I remember my Dad showing me hens could not figure out how to get food on the other side of a wire netting fence. They would be back and forward keeping an eye on it getting agitated. Until one of their number would find the end of the fence go round it, then others would follow.
Some till did not "get it" and he would lift them over.
He said it explained 'Bird brained" but also talked about parrots and breeds who were problem solvers unlike the chickens.
Gezza I remember my Dad showing me hens could not figure out how to get food on the other side of a wire netting fence. They would be back and forward keeping an eye on it getting agitated. Until one of their number would find the end of the fence go round it, then others would follow.
Some till did not "get it" and he would lift them over. He said it explained 'Bird brained" but also talked about parrots and breeds who were problem solvers unlike the chickens.
Could the moderator remove the above unedited copy Thanks.
I suspect there have been advantages for humans in breeding “dumbed down” domesticated chickens, Patricia.
Different hens from ours.
We used to joke that the movie, Chicken run, was true.
And "free range" is BS.
With 5 acres to range over they spent most of their lives camped by our back door, and shitting!
Even though you rarely saw them far from the food, they still managed rotten egg traps all over the place.
Bloody dickheads wrecking everything for the rest of us following the rules.
Covid-19: Jet Park MIQ rooms trashed as staff battle guests with gang links | Stuff.co.nz
FFS❗️ Bastards. Hope they throw the book at them. Wonder if the Army's Military Police have a lockup that could be made suitable for scrotes such as these?
Love it Geeza. Apparently birds have a large cerebellum which is the centre of the brain concerned with balance
I suspect there is going to be an extraordinary outpouring of contempt and hatred of gangs because delta has "outsmarted " our failures to contain it. The gangs are not the only shortcomings of our society.
I think the contempt is well earned. Lock these MIQ guys up. Corrections appear to have Covid Sussex. If I was a Miq nurse, it would be the bloody last straw.
needs to be a social contract. Rights and responsibilities
two things.
1. we're 18 months in, I would expect there to be security plans in place for people that are causing this kind of trouble
2. good to see the statement about the challenges for people going into MiQ from the community (as opposed to returnees). Maybe there needs to be culturally appropriate support as well. Hold the individuals accountable, and adapt around who is coming into the facility, everyone has their own needs.
I think it must be tough in MIQ.
What would cultural support involve? I guess everytime you bring a new person into the Jet Park, they risk infection and transferring it into the community.
From what I have heard from people who have been through MIQ the nurses are really busy, rushed off their feet. They are kind when taking temperatures etc, but the work swiftly due to time pressure.
I am not sure what arrangements there are for people at Jet Park for pastoral care, etc.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the hotel set up and processes are designed culturally around middle class Pākehā (in the same way that the Health system is). Many people can cope with that, some won't. The more you meet people culturally, the easier it is for them to manage their stress.
By culture I don't just mean ethnicity, but also class and so on.
and some people are just arseholes, so I'm talking about increasing the chances of things working out, not absolutely guaranteeing it.
I think putting them in MIQ in Mt. Eden prison for say six months or until they pay for the damage may help.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-delta-outbreak-hamilton-index-case-has-gang-connections-and-long-history-say-sources/RJDMT47ANTGCSH52R7L67BLAKA/
I rest my case your Honour
I love this part:
It said the man, who is currently in hospital, had "been supplying to the communities of Raglan and Kawhia for many years", and urged people who had been in contact with him to destroy their supply and get a test.
After going to so much trouble and breaking the law to get it, I can't imagine too many people would then destroy their supply!!!!
Just tell 'em that's where they really put the microchip trackers.
I think you will find that, that evidence is heresay. So unless you can back it up with other evidence in court to prove your case, I wouldn't rest it there.
Yaneer Bar-Yam is an American scientist and activist specializing in complex systems. An expert in the quantitative analysis of pandemics, he advised policy makers on the Western African Ebola virus epidemic and founded EndCoronavirus.org, a global network of over 4,000 volunteers formed in February 2020 to provide information, guidelines, and policy advocacy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. (from wikipedia).
He wrote a long thread on twitter two days ago (31 parts), the early parts quoted below, and it is a thought-provoking read. Yes, the arguments for one policy or the other are well canvased but this nails some interesting points.
https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1445476098154790918
Pretty much says it all.
So much for all the apologists' arguments for abandoning New Zealand's Elimination Strategy for the Suppression Strategy championed by the likes of Australia’s Scott Morrison, and the UK’s Boris Johnson. And now our government.
I fully understand the sentiment aj. Exactly one year ago I was making the case here that we had enough information to eradicate COVID if we had the political will to do so. But if you pay attention to the origins of COVID and the politicisation of the responses to it – that opportunity was never going to be taken.
Instead we've been fed endless lines of of bullshit talking points. If you're disappointed with the outcome you sure have my sympathy.
Yeah you read articles like this
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300424689/revealed-wuhan-and-us-scientists-planned-to-create-new-coronaviruses
and realize that its no real suprise that there isnt much appetite to dig too deeply into what really happend or be overly critical of China as it seems likely USA was donkey deep…
A novel corona virus made as an average of corona viruses, what could go wrong… only takes 1 accident.
Yup. I've been quietly following that story for a long time now. In Jan 2020 we were living with a Chinese family who have very good connections – and what we were told then about the Wuhan labs has been confirmed in almost every detail since.
As usual with these things it's non-trivial sorting the relevance and reliability of the information – but there are now multiple cross-linking sources that all back up that story Stuff has run. And I'm 90% certain there is considerably more to the story than even this.
Yes, disappointed, given up hope, no.
I applaud the thousands of people working their butts off every day, working in MIQ, the contact tracing teams, the staff in hospitals, the vaccination and testing teams. Every soul who won't have given up in the fight against this disease. I don't imagine many of the decision makers sleeping long at nights.
And I hope the public work hard to keep to the rules around mask wearing, social distancing. Because people can protect themselves and others.
One thing for sure: there will be many, many twists and turns over the coming year or two.
Here,here.
Zero can still be done. Even with Delta
Key points:
– mandatory scanning and rapid testing and masks and vaccines.
– disinformation by media has lost its potency
– public buy-in
"By my count, Taiwan has now had five brushes with Delta, including two sizeable outbreaks. Thus far it has prevailed, and in a sense, I’m breathing easier with that knowledge. But I’m still haunted by our lapse earlier this year and hope we don’t fall prey to our complacency once again. And so anxiety is par for the course. Each day I wear my mask and watch the vaccination rate inch up… And then I remember what it is like in so many other countries and remember how lucky I truly am."
Taipei reports zero local COVID cases for full week
Interesting article. They seem to have managed through this without the same reliance on lockdowns. The key elements have been mandatory scanning, rapid antigen testing and mandated mask wearing in public. The MoH seems to be resistant to rapid antigen testing, and our border saliva testing regime seems to be "held together by sellotape".
I feel we'll here more about rapid antigen testing in the near future. We followed Taiwan before (the parts of their response that seemed to suit our situation) and I hope we'll be doing the same again.
Contact tracing involves people's cell phone gps records
I suspect mandating contact tracing in NZ would not go down well.
Privacy issues for sure. That would be a reason why we might always have short sharp lock downs – to allow the contact tracers to catch-up with the spread
Other key points are a comparative lack of ethnic diversity.
"According to government figures, over 95% of Taiwan's population of 23.4 million consists of Han Chinese"
And a comparatively well educated population.
"Although current law mandates only nine years of schooling, 95 percent junior high school students go on to a senior vocational high school, trade school, junior college, or university."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Taiwan
Which is one of the great things the MoH, government and advisors did in the first lockdowns – adapted what they'd learned from places like Taiwan and South Korea to better fit our needs. They can do that again.
Thinking about Mark Mitchell not running for the Mayoralty in Auckland.
Thought 1, he fancies his chances in a coup battle.
Thought 2, he's been told to stand down to make way for someone with more profile, either Paula Bennett or Steven Joyce.
He's also benefitted from the oily orca's services, not a great look.
Auckland City needs a root and branch overhaul of it's culture and operational effectiveness. Our 'employees' at AC have lost any kind of connection with communities, and the city is being run by a cabal that consists of Goff's 'A' team and a small group of unelected bureaucrats. Mitchell was probably not the right man for the job, but Joyce just might be.
You must be joking. Everything either privatised or paved.
Since the implementation of the super city, we have experienced the gradual erosion of the democratic process in the city. The local boards are largely toothless. CCO's such as Panuku and AT are run by incompetent ideologues who have a total disregard for the community. And if you want to be tribal, this has all developed under the oversight of two Labour mayors, and a current Council that is dominated by Labour/City Vision. What I'd like to see is a truly independent mayor, with the cajones to break up the stranglehold political groups have on the city.
The council structure was set by Rodney Hide and National. The last thing they wanted was democracy.
Well if so, Brown and Goff have well and truly proven the structure effective!
The plan to get Banks in charge, and sell everything which wasn’t nailed down, was thwarted by Aucklanders, who remembered previous asset thefts/sorry, sales. They wannabee crooks still stuffed up as much as they could in revenge, led by Hyde.
Which is why National and ACT’s opposition to three waters is so blatently hypocritical.
If they had their druthers, it would have all been in private ownership by now, along with POAL, and other council assets, without even a hint of “Democratic control”.
Not sure if the structure proposed is the answer, but like DHB’s the current “local Democratic control” is illusion, not reality.
Not disagreeing with you on Banks etc. The supercity (and for that matter previous amalgamations) is a good example of how bigger is not always better.
Which brings me to 3Waters. Local democracy may be an illusion, but local control isn't. Despite a multi-million dollar misinformation campaign, and a $2.5bn 'inducement' offered to Council's, it seems certain the government is going to have to legislate control these assets away from ratepayers for what are very dubious reasons.
Only if you think that trying to fix the fuckup, that so many of the self perpetuating, old boys clubs have made of council' infrastructure, is 'dubious reasons".
“Local control” has often meant control by the self interested local well off who have the time and money to run for council. You can see it in council’s ignoring things like rural river pollution.
“Democratic consultation” is a joke.
I'm not convinced that an overpayed managerial monstrosity is the answer, either.
But if something isn't done we will have many more, Hastings, and worse.
Currently National is opposing it, but their favoured solution would be infinitely worse.
I live in Auckland. As ratepayers we have invested billions of dollars in water infrastructure, and unlike the scare tactics deployed by the advertising, we don't have 'nasties' in our water (a claim which brought an apology from an apology from the government). I also can see right through the financial sleight of hand that funds an inducement from money taken from ratepayers in the first place. If this plan is so good, why are 60 of the 67 councils opposed, why is the government spending millions of dollars selling it, and why the misinformation?
The current system may need reform, but before developing a solution, let’s actually understand the problem.
Councils are opposed out of pure self interest. Losing power and in some cases, things to borrow against. The Government criticism of councils is warrented. Of course they don’t like it.
All the mis-information I've seen has been from opponent's, such as Luxon. I wonder why.
The problems are pretty obvious. Lack of capability and investment by council's combined with our rapid increase in population.
Councils have been asking central Government to fund it. They must be aware that shouldn't come without central Government accountability. Otherwise money would just disappear into general council funding often to pet projects or contracts to mates.
Auckland may not have nasties in the water supply, but the sewage and stormwater systems are hopelessly inadequate and outdated. Needing billions in investment.
"Councils have been asking central Government to fund it.''
Because they have restricted their borrowing! And this is exactly what central government have been doing – criticising local Councils on one hand, and tying their hands behind their back with the other.
"but the sewage and stormwater systems are hopelessly inadequate and outdated. "
Not in Auckland. We've invested in upgrading those systems, including the central interceptor project currently underway.
"All the mis-information I've seen has been from opponent's"
Ah no. The advertising has shown green sludge coming out of taps. It talked about 'nasties' in the water. And there's plenty more examples.
Perhaps the most ironic thing in all this is that the Hawkes Bay Council, the district whose problems prompted a review of the way water is managed, don't support 3 Waters. That says something about just how bad the plan is.
The "nasties in the water is untrue".
I don't think so.
Hastings was just one example.
If you think Aucklands sewage and stormwater systems are adequate. I have a bridge to sell you.
I always liked that restauranteur John Palino. Who wanted to devolve the CBD and create satellite stand alone communities.
If you want to build a gazillion houses in Pokeno or Ararimu then you better have a plan to build retail, commerce and manufacturing jobs as well. The aim being for a self sufficient district. Thus reducing the need for travel.
Unfortunately he had an American accent which possibly ruined his chances. He seemed to be a good thinker with no political baggage.
To win the Auckland mayoralty, you need to have serious connections and/or backing. Labour have been smart and recognised the importance of a politically aligned mayor in the country's biggest city. Unfortunately both Brown and Goff have been poor performers on so many levels. Goff has overseen the city becoming a dysfunctional mess, with the private agenda's of his 'A' team taking priority over democracy and the best interests of the city.
This 2nd jabs not a very good tech upgrade, still need glasses and my back still hurts, gates needs to up his game.
Windows 11 is on it's way I believe.
They're not going to waste those expensive microchips on you. You're not the target demographic.
Surely Bill doesn't need to type a big long search string like that – unless the Ask Epstein feature is broken?
Well, he’s dead, so …
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/bill-gates-odd-comment-about-jeffrey-epstein-well-hes-dead/RZE3D3DJGKANWMXTHIVBT4WFMY/
Heh
Got second vax on Tuesday. Side affects? I've had worse hangovers but at least there was some fun acquiring them.
At this stage ,5 hrs in just the same sore arm as last time . Went straight back to work and docked a few hundred lambs.
You are a person who will help see us through – even though you might not know it, or even care for that matter.
95% immunity in four weeks time bwaghorn. Cheers
New research show Pfizer vaccine reaches its maximum efficacy at 1 month after 2nd dose waning after 4 months but still preventing hospitalizations after 6 months. Recommendations for a 3rd dose for those over 65 and those with compromised immune systems.
Just how dumb are the Police? It turns out they did not roadblock the Tuakau bridge (near Port Waikato) when he covid border was established, and merely occasionally patrolled the backroad route from Waikato to Auckland. Good god… the mind boggles.
I gather it was due to the people at Port Waikato not being able to access a Supermarket during previous lockdowns, so they allowed access from Port Waikato to Tuakau.
Dumb as. Know that area well. They obviously didnt ask the local plods for advice. Typical know it all management
WTF ! there's your waikato outbreak being assisted folks. Not so much dumb more like negligence.
A few locals from Raglan reckon it's been full of Jaffa's as soon as levels changed. What's the bet word got out Police werent there and everyone piled in.
It's tempting to set up a go fund me to bring this guy out to a Density Church rally. Except he's sure to have much better uses for that money.
https://twitter.com/FilmThePoliceLA/status/1445566038855217158
Classic.
This is what twitter was invented for.
So 'dumb fucks' can get their arse handed back to them on a plate.
Unbelievable.
Smartly dressed palagi door to door salesman, no mask, knocking on every door in our street hawking home insulation deals.
Really?
In a low decile area with with two gang houses.
In a South Auckland suburb of interest where everyone has been urged to get tested.
https://home.nzcity.co.nz/news/article.aspx?id=340742
Sounds like an aspiring National Party candidate?