Aotearoa / New Zealand

$60 for enough nit shampoo to treat five kids is pretty brutal, I'd have thought we could do better than that.

I think I can guess what Kent Terrace got changed to.

A former car dealer with a history of sending explicit pictures to disgruntled customers has now been caught sending photos of genitalia to a woman attempting to recoup money from his company.

Trees are down and there are widespread power outages after a tornado in Northland's Mangawhai.

Hato Hone St John transported two patients from Mangawhai in a serious condition. One was transported to Auckland Hospital by helicopter, while the other was transported to North Shore hospital by road.

Northpower's outage map showed three "widespread" outages covering Mangawhai, Mangawhai Heads and Langs Beach.

The power went out just before 3am Sunday.

"We have a widespread outage affecting all of our network due to a TORNADO damaging property and power lines in the wider Mangawhai Area," Northpower's website said.

Hey all, I hope I'm posting to the right place. My gf and I are both trans women considering immigrating to New Zealand from the US. We both have green list careers so we're not too worried about eligibility but we are wondering if we would be welcome/fit in in NZ.

Everything I've seen or heard in media makes NZ look about 1000 times better than the US. Every country has their problems but from my limited viewpoint NZ looks pretty great. We'd appreciate any advice or perspective you'd care to share. Thanks in advance.

That's why they are rich and we are poor I guess.

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
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Clinical trials are underway for a neural implant to monitor brain pressure in those living with hydrocephalus.

The condition causes fluid to build up in the brain which, if untreated, can be fatal.

Patients can be born with hydrocephalus or develop it later in life.

It is typically treated with a small tube, called a shunt, implanted under the skin which drains fluid from the brain into the stomach.

However, shunts had a 50 percent chance of failure in the first two years.

To tackle this, researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Kitea Health developed an implant to measure pressure in the brain using an external, wireless wand.

The implant is only two by three millimetres, and weighs 0.3 of a gram.

Clinical trials in adults are about 50 percent complete, and trials on children have begun.

It is a world first, the smallest brain implant ever developed, as well as the first implantable medical device developed in New Zealand.

When Northland ear specialist Marg Hunt was driving to work on Thursday morning, she was not surprised to hear on the radio that there were hundreds of ACC claims relating to cockroaches in ears over the past five years.

"I was laughing because I was thinking 'oh gosh, you know, that's bread and butter for me'," Hunt, who has been in the ear-cleaning field for 40 years, said.

That same morning she removed a pesky mosquito lodged in a person's ear canal.

"It's mainly flying bugs [like moths and mosquitos]. I've only seen a cockroach [in ears] a couple of times actually."

If you have ever been paranoid about getting a bug in your ear, you may want to close your ears now: According to Hunt, it is mostly a coincidence when it happens and it is often while we are asleep.

"When the person's asleep, the cockroach is looking for something warm and dark to hide in.

"But flying bugs at night ... just happen to egress into the ear and flutter and cause all sorts of irritation for the person.

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?

Why do people think racism works like noise cancelling?

If you're racist the "other way", it doesn't cancel out the initial racism, it just creates more racism.

Sam Neill might describe the article as follows:

Ah, what a fascinating tale! Imagine this, if you will: in the quiet of 19th-century New Zealand, amidst the sheep paddocks and rolling hills, a gentleman by the name of Samuel Butler pens a prophetic letter. The year is 1863, and he warns of a danger not from invading armies or natural disasters, but from machines.

Now, Butler was no ordinary farmer. With an intellect as sharp as the Canterbury wind, he saw in the Industrial Revolution a glimpse of the future—a future where machines could evolve, much like Darwin’s finches, into entities surpassing their creators. Writing under the pseudonym "Cellarius," he likened this mechanical evolution to humanity's domestication of animals, suggesting that one day, the tables might turn. We, the creators, could become subservient to our creations.

Butler's letter, aptly titled "Darwin among the Machines," is chillingly prescient. He imagined a world where machines grew more sophisticated, more autonomous, and potentially more dominant. And though his era’s most advanced devices were little more than mechanical calculators, Butler extrapolated with eerie accuracy to a future where artificial intelligence might challenge humanity’s supremacy.

Fast-forward to today, and the echoes of Butler’s concerns are unmistakable. From OpenAI’s GPT-4 to debates in legislative halls, the question of how to control our technological progeny remains as pressing as ever. Butler’s call for a dramatic rollback of machine progress might seem extreme—he proposed nothing less than the destruction of all machines—but his fundamental warning about humanity’s growing dependence on them rings true.

Ultimately, Butler’s legacy isn’t just his prescient fear of machine dominance but his reflection on humanity’s relationship with progress. His voice, carried through the ages, reminds us to tread carefully as we march toward an uncertain future. A Canterbury sheep farmer warning of AI takeover? Remarkable, isn’t it? And perhaps, just perhaps, a tale worth heeding.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17144386

Well well well

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?

I wonder if this was planned right from the start that they would be back for more?

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?

Naltrexone works by reducing cravings and the pleasurable effects of alcohol. All the person has to do is take a pill daily. The person doesn't need to change any other behaviors or quit cold turkey. It just makes people want alcohol less.

The person doesn't need to be a total train wreck to get help. It has been prescribed for "hazardous drinking", which affects about 670,000 of us. Talk to your GP for more info.

https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/datasheet/n/naltrexonetab.pdf

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?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Wishing you a day full of joy, good food, and great company. Hope you’re all making the most of the holiday season. Take care and have an awesome day!

So, we're preventing Kiwis from fishing here to protect declining fish stocks, yet commercial fishing is still allowed to operate in the same area?