More on where our aid goes: https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/the-detail/2026/the-strategically-placed-aid-game

Can we not eat the algae and clams; perhaps with some bacon?

Not sure who these people are but worth a read: https://wiseresponse.substack.com/p/what-can-i-do-in-response-to-the

“When the Trucks Stop: Mutual Aid Arrangements for a Fuel-Constrained Aotearoa New Zealand”: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S2sWsBXqtwgkP-AGDtp-PsMRALIXtAOBXi2D6RouS6w/edit?tab=t.0

When National halted research into the $16 billion scheme two and a half years ago, Kaikoura MP Stuart Smith told Newsroom that if the project was viable, private enterprise would build it.

Instead of us owning it, they gave it to “large global entities” so we can rent it back from them, forever.

The Lake Onslow project could actually get us much, much closer to 100% renewables. It’s sad to see it being thatchered out to the highest bidder.

I think National just wanted the headline of “undo everything Labour did” and it came at a great cost to future generations.

Is anybody held accountable or are there any incentive structures to prevent it from happening in the future?

I read they inked a deal for 140 MW, which would require ~300 hectares of panels to generate. The 78,000sq m facility is about ~8 hectares. So, that would generate about 4-5 MW. They should definitely do panels, even just for the PR / optics.

From: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/datagrids-51b-southland-data-centre-the-three-major-hurdles-facing-the-plan-to-build-nzs-largest-ai-factory/premium/CWUEVJCRZJDQHFPABSJOZOGOUY/

Mercury and Datagrid said in a press release that Datagrid has signed a 15-year “140-megawatt (MW) long-term power purchase option agreement” with Mercury.

and later it says:

Transpower expected 1300MW of new projects (generation and battery storage systems) to be commissioned in 2026, increasing capacity by around 13% nationwide.

Mercury chief executive Stewart Hamilton told the Herald his company’s new wind farm in Southland “will provide some of that power”.

Kaiwera Downs will have around 180MW capacity once its second stage goes live. “But the wind only blows about 40% of the time, which brings that down.”

That disclaimer was just a joke but it is interesting to use polymarket as an odds indicator: https://polymarket.com/event/us-x-iran-ceasefire-by

Currently the odds of a cease-fire:

Accurate. We do live in a headline-driven society. Fuck TikTok and everything that is trying to emulate it now.

DISCLAIMER: The odds on me looking like an idiot are pretty high: https://polymarket.com/event/bacon-wrapped-enigma-looks-like-an-idiot-2026

Good summary. It is hard to believe that Labour and National are the two most popular parties.

Yeah, it’s good. It’s funny and sad. The music is epic. The spotify playlist isn’t really enjoyable to listen to on its own but it goes great with the show. The music is by https://www.nzonscreen.com/profile/lachlan-anderson

I found it from an RNZ podcast: https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/the-detail/2026/turning-kiwi-pain-into-a-punchline-watched-by-a-global-audience

You can watch episodes: https://www.threenow.co.nz/shows/crackhead/1770578150021

I just realised the other post had upvotes already. I deleted it because it was paywalled. Now I feel like this one will just be spamming people that have already seen it. I’ll try again next week. Deleting this one for now…

Like when MBIE tested for herbicide / pesticide residuals in food, and then it came back too high, and then ten years went by where they didn’t publish any new testing numbers, and then they tried to increase the limit of some by 100-fold, and then thousands of people submitted on it?

Do you know if anything is done in town supply water to remove nitrates, or do they just aim to use water sources that are less affected?

We would need some transparency on which “suppliers” have had high readings. One would think that data would be readily available given that the suppliers are supposed to collect the data and report it. All I can find are aggregate data reports, at least from Taumata Arowai.

Here is the part of the Water Services Act 2021 where it says:

A drinking water supplier must report the results of the supplier’s source water quality monitoring to the Water Services Authority, and the Water Services Authority must provide regional councils with monitoring results annually.

Having the producers check their own work can create measurement bias. Yeah, the testing happens via accredited labs but think of the case where a single unelected person can decide to time collections around weather events to obtain more desirable results.

The long and boring “Factsheet: Drinking Water Regulation Report 2024 and Network Environmental Performance Report 2023/24” points our that:

Nitrate is an emerging risk in some parts of New Zealand.

I can’t find any consistent raw measurement data on Taumata Arowai’s web site. It looks like the 2023 data had median nitrate concentrations per supply (seems to be median for the year) but they’ve further aggregated / obfuscated that in the 2024 data.

My guess is that the data is a mess with a bunch of missing measurements and they are embarrassed to make it public. It doesn’t seem like a scandal so much as just slow uptake. Their most recent annual report boasts increases in reporting compliance.

AFAICT, an OIA would be required to get a jumble of messy data; and then, likely, a weekend to make sense of it all. You might be able to see some outliers pretty quickly though.

If your water comes from a lake / river, or is pumped up from a valley with upstream agriculture, then you probably want to check the measurement data. For my town, there’s a catchment up in the hills that feeds the towns water supply. Less than 100km away, they are pumping ground water out of a bore at the base of a valley with a high level of agriculture. Even the old measurements from the Greenpeace Map show the difference in testing levels between those two setups. The catchment in the hills has low / barely any; while the valley shows elevated levels. That jives with the explanation from LAWA on “How does nitrate enter groundwater?”.

N.B. A normal water filter doesn’t remove nitrates. You need ion exchange or reverse osmosis which aren’t the standard charcoal filters used to make drinking water taste better.

I think QSV is the new “easiest” way if you have an Intel CPU. Here are some docker compose values that might help:

    group_add:
      - "110"
      - "44"
    devices:
      - /dev/dri/renderD128:/dev/dri/renderD128

110 is render

44 is video

You can grep render /etc/group to find your values.

I found CPU accelerated transcoding to be as effective as using GPU acceleration for my small media server setup. Nvidia wasn’t worth it for me.

The book they mention is “A Field Guide to the Native Edible Plants of New Zealand” by Andrew Crowe

There’s some type of irony in the penalty being free housing (jail), or blood from a stone ($2k penalty).

I was just looking for the cost of keeping someone in jail fro 90 days and it looks like Bernard HIckey beat me to it:

Govt threatens to imprison homeless for 90 days at a cost of $49,680 per person Govt to empower Police to ‘move on’ homeless with threat of three months prison, costing taxpayer $552 per person per night; Govt adds 2,000 prison beds since election & delivers 420 new homes

From: The Kaka https://thekaka.substack.com/p/govt-threatens-to-imprison-homeless

cutting the amount of time applicants must spend in the country to establish residency from three years to three weeks.

Three weeks is enough time to really get to know a place and mint some golden relationships.

Bishop prioritising the few over the many. These few just happen to all be his friends.

The Electoral Commission last week published a return for a $50,000 donation from Les Mills gym franchise managing director Phillip Mills on January 8 to The Opportunity Party (Top), formerly The Opportunities Party.

Now, if only they can figure out the whole connecting-with-voters problem that TOP seems to have.