Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general
Rules:
FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom
Banner image by Bernard Spragg
Got an idea for next month's banner?
Things have been quite good for me lately.
Neighbour/baking saga: after eating 3 lots of baking we made for them ourselves we eventually managed to give them a packet of biscuits!! They seem really nice. In related news, I am now on a diet.
Outside situation: I am not going to be a very good butterfly host this year as we don't have as many plants as usual. But I'm doing my best to care for what's here and maybe add to next year's.
We have lots of Swan plants kept for the Monarchs, unfortunately the caterpillars encourage the German wasps, which can be a bit aggressive when passing nearby. However, the Swan plants are somewhat invasive, so need ongoing managing.
Hey, cool! Yes swan plants can go crazy. I wish mine were allowed to.
What you could do though is consider adding in some South American milkweed. It's more manageable and has pretty flowers. The butterfly trust sells seeds on trademe.
Thanks for that hint. As you said, the swan plants go mad, and grow extensively.
I'm glad you finally managed to get them some biscuits! I'd given up hope 🙁
So had I! They actually didn't answer the door so we left the biscuits with a note and I thought maybe Dave is right they're avoiding us, but they came over later and gave us some chocolate!
That's awesome!
Yes I was pretty stoked!
Spam accounts all abound recently. Applying for accounts on lemmy.nz, as well as dozens from other instances spamming the same stuff. I guess Lemmy is being noticed.
I also added another alternate frontend, Tesseract.
It's a fork of Photon but it says there's a lot changed now. You can access it at https://t.lemmy.nz
That means we now have:
None of these actually store any data, they are just alternate front ends that you can use to interact with lemmy if you don't like the default one. They are all set up to automatically update themselves with new versions, but if you find one stops working or isn't updating then please let me know.
Thought for the day
I'm listening to a podcast, about poverty and mental health. It is based on an Irish perspective, but the issues they are talking about are generalizable to NZ. What do you think about poverty and the ways out of it?
A lot of what they are talking about is education, which resonates with me as I'm a firm believer in the power of education to transform society as a whole.
Where is my mind podcast https://pca.st/episode/5b707bf4-ba79-4a0c-97c6-fd383246c62a
I have a lot of thoughts on this. Having worked in tertiary, one thing you notice is at entry level, it's easy to tell what kind of school a student went to, and this seemed to be pretty closely correlated with decile. And this isn't just in their skillsets it's also in their expectations and level of entitlement.
Having used education to lift myself out of poverty when I was young, the only reason I was able to do that was ironically just as much of an accident of birth as my being poor in the first place. If I'd only been an average student, none of the opportunities I took would have been available to me.
Having been plunged back into poverty, I think people don't really factor in the huge underlying structural issues which entrench it.
Education is really important. But you can lift people out of poverty just by straight-up giving them money too. A properly-funded welfare system (or a UBI) would go a long way to truly ending poverty. Childhood poverty is such a strong predictor for anti-social behaviours like gang membership, crime, unemployment, that it blows my mind we don't just funnel money to people to break them out of the inter-generational poverty loop.
It is almost always cheaper and more humane to give poor people money when they need it (both directly and via services.) Than to mop up the mess with police, prisons, Healthcare etc etc.
People seem to think poverty is a choice, and maybe it is, but it's a choice by governments and citizens not to help those who need it.
This is a very good point.
I can't believe that it took so long for a government to specifically measure child poverty; because as they say once you can measure it you can do something about it.
If we didn't have a housing crisis, then also simply putting homeless people in a home greatly reduces the burden on the other services (healthcare, police, drug rehab etc...) that they make use of.
I think we rely too much on expecting people to dig themselves out of a hole they were born into, and not enough on government intervention. But unfortunately we don't have a good path to change anything.
I think I've talked about this before but I would love for us to do a (probably) world first trial where we pay everyone in the country with residency or citizenship a UBI, probably set at the level of a single person on superannuation (as I think this is the highest "benefit" style payment). Then adjust tax rates so that working people are taxed more to balance the extra money to basically make it the same. Then stop paying superannuation or benefits. Basically, set up a UBI but most people get no more or less than they get now. The important thing being the no strings attached money, so you can go and start a business or study or get an apprenticeship knowing that money is always there and you don't have to lie to WINZ to get it.
Other things I'd like to see are a very widespread government state house programme. Build heaps of new houses, so there are enough houses for everyone and then keep going, so increasing population is covered and any surplus houses mean people can move out of old cold places into nicer newer ones, removing the old cold ones from the housing stock. This would reduce demand on the health system, and create a proper housing market not driven by a lack of housing. It would also cause the rentals that politicians (or their donors) own to fall in value, so it's unlikely to happen.
Another thing is to stop throwing people into prison. The data shows the more people you throw into prison the more criminals you create, and the crime rate only falls short term. I'd like to see a more rehabilitative approach, where we don't put non-violent criminals in prison (especially young ones) and instead help them to get back on track. Prison leads to some pretty terrible financial outcomes locking people in poverty, so unless we have a firm reason to lock someone up I don't think we should. Instead we should spent that $150k per prisoner per year on rehabilitation programmes that happen out of prison.
These are only some things that come to mind to help pull people out of poverty, and they are all government interventions. The problem is the amount of people on the top of the pyramid who have a vested interest in keeping the system the way it is.
ETA: Dentists! I can't believe I forgot dentists. There are massive societal health benefits in having healthy teeth (one reason we have free dentists for under 18s), we should be extending dental care way past 18, and preferably bringing them into the public system.
As I have said to others in many conversations "you cannot punish your way out of crime"; society needs to decide what we want the justice system to do. Are we a restore and rehabilitate type of people or are we a punish and detain type of people?
Exactly! I also think there's a misconception that heavier sentences act as a deterrent, when largely they don't.
There isn't a lot of evidence that harsher punishments lead to less crime.
But harsher punishments intuitively seem like they reduce crime, to those already unlikely to commit crime. Because obviously getting into trouble with the justice system is the worst thing that can happen, therefore getting in more trouble is worse. Thus harsher punishments must make crime less likely.
What the people who think like this seem to miss, is that their experience of life is not the same as those that commit crime (as a general rule); these people are mapping their own experience onto all people rather than trying to understand the experience of the "other".
The way I see it, international statistics around recidivism rates are pretty conclusive. So at this point I have to wonder, is having punishments a higher priority than having lower crime rates, in our society?
For some, the punishment is the point. But I would say that given the choice between punishing people or having lower crime, almost everyone would take the lower crime rate.
If they would, then it's hard to explain why as a country we have chosen not to.
Had a persistent headache all of yesterday, took the afternoon off. This morning I realised I hadn't had any coffee yesterday. I truly am an addict.
To quote futurama: "You've been drinking too much, or too little, i forget how it works with you, anyway you haven't drunk exactly the right amount."
Anyone got a Weber Q? If so, how are you liking it?
Thinking of getting one and wanted to hear what people's experiences were with them
I see they've brought out a new updated Q range. I don't have one but always thought the smaller ones were underpowered and needed a lot of closed lid cooking to retain heat. E.g hard to do searing without losing too much heat. Maybe they've improved them now?
I might be a little biased as I'm a charcoal guy, but I'm also hoping to get a wood stove next year to play around with.
Yeah I'm trying to get the smallest one (Baby Q or Q1000), and I've been reading that you need to think a little differently to normal BBQ's (basically cook with the lid down). Was wondering what that would be like in practice, and if it limits you in what you can do with it.
Ideally we'd like to get a charcoal one too, but for us, we know we won't really get the use out of it due to the work it takes to get it up and running, and all the stuff afterwards as well. The idea with getting a small Weber Q was that the cleanup would be easy, setting it up would be easy etc, so that we end up using it more often.
Gas is definitely more convenient. But charcoal is not too bad to start up, I just use fire lighters and a chimney starter and leave it till they’re ready, about 15 mins.
Are you limited by space or wanting the portability factor of the Q’s?
Not really limited by space, but we did want something smaller so that it's easy to clean, packup and put it in the garage for storage, or for those rare times we may want to take it and go somewhere with it.
Plus it's just the two of us so we wouldn't necessarily need something large, with the thinking being that if it's smaller we're going to find it easier to whip out, use, clean and out it back away.
Fair points. For me personally though I find leaving it out means I'm more likely to use it rather than having to get it out each time. Makes it more convenient to just pop out and use it if I decide to while making a meal.
Can't speak for the Q's, but you don't really need to do a big clean after each use. I usually just heat it up and scrape down the cooking grates. Only do a big clean every few months if I'm using it a lot.
Actually that sounds about right - might be "CBF'ed" if I plan to pack it up after each time.
Regardless gas / charcoal, do you have any size recommendations? Do you think larger is always better for when you might need it?
Depends a lot on how and what you cook, do you tend to make more for left overs? Multiple dishes, using it for entertaining etc.
I think the baby Q is small even for two people personally. I think they are (and possibly the next size up?) are only single burners, which means you can’t do two zone cooking (lower indirect heat on one side, more direct on another).
I use a 57cm kettle which does enough for us (2 adults, 2 kids). But can be annoying if I’m doing a low and slow cook on it and need another hotter fire to make something else at the same time.
Hmm yeah, keep going between thinking the Baby is just what we need, and thinking it's going to be too small.
Any chance you have any knowledge on the Broil Kings? Been looking at the Broil King Porta Chef series.
Sorry, I haven't had any experience with them.
There's a store here in Hamilton (Aber Living) that has a Trademe account that often gets either ex-sample or display, damaged, damaged packaging BBQs. And they ship too.
I have them saved as a favourite, they've had some decent deals pop up now and then. Might pay to watchlist them to see if a good deal comes up: clearanceninja
Oh Sweet! Thank you for that. I'll keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks. Even if I end up going with a Weber or Broil King, waiting out in the hopes of atleast something during Black Friday