slipknot taking notes

Been off on stress leave the last couple of days but I’m lucky to have an extremely supportive manager. They let me take the days off without using annual or sick leave. Also found a good psychotherapist through work’s EAP services which has helped.

Been having an ultra shitty week but this has put a smile on my face. What a time to be alive that I can watch this all the way in NZ with decent sound and visual clarity.

Not just the US. Can’t access it from NZ either.

I definitely prefer the vibe of lemmy but there’s still communities I visit on Reddit for reviews and discussions about more niche topics.

Just buy a Hugo Boss suit circa 1930s. That’s who designed the nazi uniforms.

Thought it was underwater for a moment based on the thumbnail. Cool find!

“Thanks, I hate it” is the phrase you’re looking for.

Good question, I have no idea.

To be honest I only stumbled across this news article a few days back and hadn’t heard anything about the trial until then. Seems like a success story that needs to be broadcast loudly and widely to make sure it continues.

I really hope they don’t cut the Counselling in Schools programme.

A scheme that provides counselling in more than 200 primary schools makes distressed children feel better, improves behaviour, and raises attendance.

An Education Review Office (ERO) report - published today - provides evidence that Counselling in Schools, a $44-million scheme introduced in 2021, worked well.

Teachers told review officers the scheme reduced disciplinary problems and children who received counselling were less likely to "punch first, talk later".

Encouragingly, eight in 10 students report improved psychological health after receiving counselling, and students with the most psychological distress have the largest improvement. Of the 71 percent of students who entered counselling reaching the clinical cut-off for distress, almost half no longer reach the cut-off for psychological distress at the end of counselling. This is a very positive outcome."

This seems to be one of the most effective mental health initiatives of recent times and hits a number of National’s supposed priorities. Unfortunately though I don’t have much faith that they’ll keep investing in it.

I was extremely excited by the recent news that Control was going to be adapted into film and or TV. This could be a massive risk to that going ahead.

He had a portable tv and was watching himself as he said it in the debate.

Trumpception.

Fishy Joe’s in “The problem with Popplers” iirc.

Sounds a lot like war crimes.

Having to performance manage one of my direct reports and it is incredibly time consuming, frustrating, and above all demoralising.

I hate working at the best of times so this is really making me want to call in sick for the rest of the week.

Hydro homie respect

If only he’d used the correct shade of purple pen then he would have been home free!

190GB of space needed? What the actual fuck???!?

Yeah and Flava Flav supporting the women’s waterpolo team after his domestic abuse charges is also pretty wild.

Came here to say exactly this.

If you want to dive even further into why the foundations of modern macroeconomics are bunk, then I can also recommend reading Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.

T

A Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t meant to be a roadmap.

I’m also a life long halo fan. However I came to terms a long time ago with the fact that the media I love will change over time.

Would I prefer that Star Wars had stuck to Admiral Thrawn being the big bad post Return of the Jedi? Absolutely, but I didn’t throw a fit when the sequel trilogy retconned all the books I read in the 90s. I was more happy to get new media after so long and despite the movies being awful we at least got some decent side projects like Andor and Rogue One.

Edit: Sorry, to be clear, I’m not saying you are throwing a fit, I just remember all the toxic wailing and nashing of teeth on the Halo subreddit. The first season was bad television regardless of whether it was Halo or not.

Bit of a shame as I thought the 2nd season redeemed itself. Fall of Reach was well done.

Matt Smith as the Doctor

Yeah that’s the problem; this has probably clinched the election for him as he can play into martyrdom.

How many idiots can argue on a pinhead?

The really big issue, especially with the prioritisation of development on the outskirts of the current urban areas, is that councils cannot afford the infrastructure costs to serve these new homes.

I’ll refer to a live Auckland example that I know well. The Supporting Growth programme, led by NZTA and Auckland Transport, has been planning the necessary transport corridors for the next 30 odd years of housing development. The aim is to protect these corridors so that they don’t get built out thus reducing future construction costs, and to give developers clear signals about where the government agencies will invest and in what order.

They are currently submitting notices of requirement. This creates present day property liabilities. There is, however, not enough money to meet the required property purchases and this is completely undeveloped land that we are talking about. The remaining land will be even more expensive in the future. There absolutely will not be enough money in the future to actually build all of the transport infrastructure without some significant funding regime changes, and this is just one example, in Auckland, for transport. It is compounded across all of the high growth urban areas and other horizontal infrastructure like the 3 waters.

So far I’ve only talked about the pure financial cost, but there are other economics costs due to the increase in car travel that will occur. More deaths and serious injuries, higher levels of congestion, increased greenhouse gas and other pollution emissions, etc.

There is a reason that so many professions have been calling for greater intensification and the MDRS, while it wasn’t perfect, was a much better solution AND was originally bi-partisan.

Spoiler: It won’t be.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The premise of OP’s post is that it is not possible to win an election by changing the party’s candidate close to an election. I provided evidence that it is possible.

Whether the DNC has someone capable of doing so is another question.

Unfortunately we’re no socialist utopia and we recently swung to the right in the election last year. The deputy prime minister is a noted xenophobe, pay-to-play corruption is on the rise, and most of the social policies of the last 6 years are being rolled back and then some.

These changes aren’t necessarily popular, lots of people voted against the incumbents rather than for the new government, but the next election is 2 years away and the electorate has a short memory.

It’s also worth knowing that much of our international reputation is a smokescreen. We’re not clean and green despite what our tourism marketing says. Almost every party in our parliament subscribes to neoliberalism to varying degrees and thinks deregulation will solve our productivity problems. We have one of the worst housing markets on the planet which is more like a Ponzi scheme thanks to a lack of capital gains tax and incentives for speculators. Finally the cost of living is extreme due to a lack of competition in the food, banking, petrol, electricity and water markets.

We have been falling in the OECD rankings on most metrics since the late 80s when we embraced Thatcherism/Reaganomics.

That’s splitting hairs. Notice I said “vote” rather than “elect”. I’m well aware of how the electoral college functions and that you can lose the “popular vote” but still become president (e.g. Bush Jnr and Trump).

The fact remains that on ballot you directly cast a vote for the president.

We don’t have ranked choice voting either and don’t directly vote for prime minister. It’s a proportional system. If anything this should reduce the effect that a leader has on the popularity of the party compared with first past the post jurisdictions.

Given that the US does directly vote for President, personality and popularity have much more weight, and therefore a more popular candidate could turn it around. How likely that is I’m not sure, as I don’t know a huge amount about the alternatives other than AOC and Sanders, but Jacinda did show that it’s possible.

Not American, but am anti-fascist so anyone is better than Trump. However it’s wrong to say that there is no other option.

The New Zealand Labour Party (centrist-left) won the election in 2017 by switching leaders much closer to election day:

On 1 August 2017, just seven weeks before the 2017 general election, Ardern assumed the position of leader of the Labour Party, and consequently became leader of the Opposition, following the resignation of Andrew Little. Little stood down due to the party's historically low polling.

Jacinda Ardern Wiki

It’s also gluten free!

I play D4, Last Epoch and PoE.

I enjoyed the D4 story for my first play through and the recent changes for season 4 have made levelling to endgame much more enjoyable. It is much simpler than PoE and I play it knowing that as something fun that I can pick up and put down at will.

Last Epoch I’m playing to try out each mastery. Even though it’s now a 1.0 release it’s still a bit barebones. Give it a couple of cycles and it’ll be more fleshed out especially in the endgame. I think of it as a middle ground between the simplicity of D4 and complexity of PoE. I like that I can easily try off meta builds through passive refunds and make my own builds.

PoE scratches the D2 itch for grinding. I’m an addict who like spreadsheets.

Moved into our new house and discovered 2 leaks in the recently refurbished bathroom. Anybody got recommendations for a decent plumber in Auckland?

But we should totally trust Recall because MS is committed to security /s

Boozy Bay is my kind of place.

Yeah, I’m not giving them biometrics. There had better be an alternative option.

Sorry, damn work keeps on getting in the way of social media. Yeah that price isn’t amazing for the bambino; checked priceme and it definitely goes on sale with steeper discounts. Could always check again for Matariki at the end of June.

The barista express is the same machine as the bambino but includes a grinder. I think you said you already have a grinder?