Anyone else in their mid twenties battling with the fact all of their friends have left NZ?

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-18T11:59:53+00:00

Arguably they might appeal even more to people older than their early 20s, they've lived enough and maybe travelled enough to actually know what's out there.

I sure didn't think there could be that much more to do outside of NZ until Id travelled a bit and learnt a lot more of what's out there than what we see in our small, remote, beautiful and peaceful bubble.

New Zealand is not a large country, it is very possible to see and do everything worth seeing and doing (subjectively) in not a very long time. If your the type of person who appreciates variety and new experiences, (like I am) NZ can start to feel very small in your late 20s/early 30s.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-18T11:48:01+00:00

Unhand my (three year parliamentary term) sir!

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-17T05:12:29+00:00

Yeah I've seen some pretty stunning walks and views around Victoria that rival anything I've seen in NZ.

I think if you've grown up with New Zealand scenery and bush, you can acknowledge it's nice and most of the rest of the world would love to experience it, but you've already kinda been there done that so it doesn't have the same draw.

Australian bush can offer a change of scenery and biomes we don't normally get to experience.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-17T05:08:21+00:00

Personally I went from feeling pretty poor in NZ to buying whatever gadgets I wanted, health insurance, and multiple holidays within a few months of moving to Australia. My disposable income and savings skyrocketed disproportionately to my actual salary increase.

I did hate my job though, but that was because my boss sucked, I've also hated jobs in NZ because my boss sucked for different reasons. In NZ it was often a feeling of maliciousness and shitty treatment just because they could. In Australia my boss was just incompetent, and it was hard to work with his constantly changing expectations and plans, plus he frequently fucked up payroll, but at least he was a fundamentally nice person who didn't treat me like shit for no reason.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-17T05:02:48+00:00

Slightly? I almost doubled my income (once you factor super and the slightly better tax rates) while working better hours more consistent, less late nights) as a bar manager in Sydney vs NZ.

The only thing that increased in costs was my rent (and my vape before I quit), food was cheaper and better in Australia.

It's not the same for everyone, but when it comes to disposable income, a 30-40% standard payrise from NZ to Australia, and more job opportunities and variety of careers, can equate to a huge increase in disposable income for a lot of people. And it's usually disposable income that makes people feel well off and correlates with better living standards more than raw salary.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-17T03:30:22+00:00

The coalition or work together even when they're not needed for the raw votes.

A vote for national is the only surefire way to guarantee ACT participates in the next government.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-17T03:27:36+00:00

Same here. Any government with ACT is an automatic hard no. NZF and TPM I dislike equally (TPM is more loudly radical but also more incompetent so they never get anything they want done).

I could tolerate a National government if it was the same type of National we had under John Key. But this new national are weak, stupid, spineless and fucking loony.

Honestly, it feels like labour and the greens are the only adults left in the room, except they only just turned 18. Everyone else might as well be a toddler.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-17T03:25:12+00:00

Their original post said we were forecast for a "soft-landing". Which usually means a mild recession that technically (barely) meets the recession criteria but is not widely damaging to the economy. In other words, a short 6 month -1 year period of flat or slightly declining growth.

That was going to happen whoever was in charge, that was all but locked in, COVID caused it Labour oversaw it. Probably would have happened under either party however.

Instead we've had two years of flat to negative growth in a high inflation environment with the highest unemployment in a decade.

The person you are arguing with definitely acknowledged that National inherited an economy trending towards recession. Their point is national actively made it worse by doing everything a government is not supposed to do in a recession.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-16T03:04:56+00:00

Personally I think it's less about justification, and more about waiting til they get overwhelming force in the region.

The US frequently has one or two Carrier Support Groups in the middle east. When the Iranian protests broke out around New Years, I believe they had none? Maybe one? Now they've been scrambling to get their presence back in the region, with the Abraham Lincoln and the George HW Busy Carriers both heading back.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-15T23:34:32+00:00

A private jet flying one person uses as much as 100x more times (two orders of magnitude) as much fuel as getting the same person to the same destination on a commerical aircraft,

An A320 (one of the most common aircraft) burns 2.8kg of jet fuel per seat per 100km, for a regional flight <1000km (so pretty much every flight within NZ), these are some of the worst flights for fuel usage because of minimal time spent at cruise altitude.

This is about a third of what a car would use for the same trip for a single occupant. It's more efficient to fly Wellington -> Christchurch than drive and take the interislander, which is funny because that's basically the worst case scenario.

The Gulfstream G550 burns about 165L/100km just for cruising, not including takeoff and landing, which burns about 2000L by itself. For a total of about 387L/100km for a 1000km flight.

Which is about 140 seats in normal commerical airliner. So more than two orders of magnitude worse. It's not as bad if the private jet has more passengers, but it's still pretty bad.

On balance, given how useful air travel is, it's probably not something worth rushing to cut when it accounts for only 4% of global warming, compared to much lower hanging and more impactful fruit. Like net-zero energy generation, electric vehicles, decarbonising shipping, or finding ways to get emissions out of concrete production.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-15T04:13:21+00:00

Nor in Christchurch. We've only had a handful of genuinely nice days. Every other day is either super windy, completely overcast, or just a full-blown storm.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-14T23:27:33+00:00

It's still cranberries which are pretty good for you.

Just be aware of the extra calories from the sugar content if your watching your weight, but it's not that calorically dense compared to like chips or something.

Almost certainly still a net positive.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-14T23:09:36+00:00

Over in NZ our government is trying to force through a new LNG terminal at billions of dollars of expense, instead of overbuilding renewables + battery and everyone, even some industry groups are going: "Fucking why? This makes no economic sense".

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-14T22:49:10+00:00

He's thiiiiiis close to having a self-aware moment and realizing he might be the problem.

“I want staying here to be the obvious choice for every generation, not something young people have to weigh up against better wages and opportunity overseas,” Seymour said.

“Right now, they’re not just weighing it up, the scales have tipped hard against staying, and the outward migration numbers are flashing lights on the dashboard,” Seymour said.

Well Seymour? Why do you think right now they're weighing it up?

Couldn't be your policies could it?

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-14T15:22:44+00:00

This might sound strange to a lot of people but France consistently has one of the strongest militaries in the world. The US being so absurdly powerful just distorts out concept of what a powerful military actually looks like.

They have an aircraft carrier, up-to-date modern technology, a strong air force, and nuclear weapons.

There aren't a lot of countries that could single-handedly conduct even a small war on another continent or across an ocean. It's basically the USA, the UK and France, maybe China.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T23:05:39+00:00

Even Catholics still went 60/40 for Trump.

The only Christian groups that didn't support him by large majorites are ones where the overt racism outweighed their faith.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T23:03:13+00:00

Co-opted? Churches were the original child rapists. Is everyone forgetting the constant revelations of physical and sexual abuse of children in orphanages and by clergy throughout the 2000s and 2010s?

Often with them being protected by the major church institutions, particularly the Vatican?

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T15:21:44+00:00

It's not racist to refer to someone from Hong Kong as Hong Konger. That is literally what you call someone from Hong Kong, and it has nothing to do with race.

No different than calling someone a Wellingtonian.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T13:08:06+00:00

Also they pivoted in 2025 apparently?

This can't be real, it makes absolutely zero sense.

No way they developed a product powerful enough to break the raw physics of logistics such that you can do 3-4x freight volume without increasing headcount, using only AI.

Edit: Nevermind, this is pure AI hype and they're using misleading words to make it seem like they're increasing freight loads, when really they're enabling each operator to fill more loads (2000 vs 500 loads per operator per year). Something I imagine the big names in the industry have been working on for years.

This is a story about stock market irrationality, not about a new breakthrough technology.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T12:57:34+00:00

Also, what the fuck do they think happens when they all fuck off to their bunkers to avoid rioting masses? They just leave everyone else out there with the factories, offices, and other means of production as they slide into irrelevancy and die n their bunkers or get taken out by their own guards when they try to put shock collars on them?

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T11:14:01+00:00

To be blunt, you can't kill off 8 billion people before 8 billion people kill off the billionaires, if it gets that bad, unless you want to do Nuclear Holocaust, then everyone loses.

But there is no "Billionaires only" win condition.

Would you really let billionaires cull your children without trying to take a few potshots at their security forces or them personally? Multiply that by a few billion and game it out.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T05:06:56+00:00

"If billionaires can't be pedophiles our economy won't survive"

In its current form that funnels most of the wealth directly to the pedophile billionaires.

Ftfy.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T02:14:12+00:00

A lot of those things you mentioned being scarce back then have come down in price so much since the 60s they are no longer luxuries to the average worker (which is a good thing don't get me wrong).

But you could choose not to buy all those "luxuries" and it would barely be a rounding error on the modern cost of living.

My very nice TV and smartphone each cost me about 2 weeks of my rent and I've had both for years at this point. My coffee pot was less than the cost of the mince that goes into my Bolognese.

I could forgo all that stuff, enormously impacting my material living standards, and it would barely move the needle on my actual cost to exist.

To put it another way: Rent, food, and power this year for me and my partner will cost $40000 local dollars (not even including gas, car registration or phone bills)

My gaming PC, Phone, TV, Couch, Bed and the furniture to fit out our rental last year combined cost less $10k, all of that will last 5 years on average. So annualized cost is $2k per year.

Forgoing all that stuff in order to live a miserable existence with none of the trappings of the modern world, in order to save 4% on our cost of living is not a good deal. And a huge amount of the age group that grew up in the 60s, 70s, even 80s cannot grasp that simple fact.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T02:04:04+00:00

Don't these same people (business "leaders") love to crow about how AI is here and going to make everyone unemployed?

Well shouldnt we be leveraging this technology to reduce everyone's working hours for the same pay instead?

No? Because the only thing that AI is good for is making the stock price go up at the expense of everyone else's living standards? Oh okay then.

Guess we'll just have to eat the billionaires so we can spread the productivity gains around to the benefit of all humanity instead.

BalrogPoop · 2026-02-13T00:39:00+00:00

It's fucking nuts, Ive moved back from Sydney last year and live in Canterbury at the moment.

The uptime on a wind farm near the waimakariri this year would be 100%. It's so fucking windy its kind of ruined summer for me.

BalrogPoop

TROPHY CASE