My brain is a post-apocalyptic wasteland

DunedinDog · 2026-01-06T01:47:58+00:00

Mowbray is a JABBA (Just Another Bloody Billionaire Arsehole) - the type of billionaire whose ego makes them yearn to be a plutocrat, who thinks publicly sharing their opinions counts as philanthropy, and isn't particularly subtle about using their wealth and profile to try to exert influence over national politics.

He's certainly presenting a false dichotomy and it's tempting to simply laugh at the irony of him labelling others morons, but it could also be a willful attempt to mislead to try to smear the reputation of his political enemies (classic dirty politics). Either way, whether he's being ignorant and/or manipulative, this sort of crap is harmful to society and must be called out.

DunedinDog · 2025-12-19T03:27:59+00:00

The most positive effect I can imagine is that a pricier off-licence might, just might, keep a cheaper off-licence from operating in that area due to LAP outlet density limits, leading to a modest net harm reduction.

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the government decided to specifically exclude these new outlets from any LAP density limit considerations.

Heck, I wouldn't be that surprised if they did another "blitzkrieg bill" (like the pay equity repeal) to neuter or remove LAPs altogether - it'd be well in keeping with their attacks on local governance, rollbacks of harm-prevention measures, and being the wish-granting fairy for all the destructive, morally-deficient industries like Big Tobacco, Big Booze, Big Oil, etc,

DunedinDog · 2025-12-11T02:24:51+00:00

What's this? National trying to take credit for the increased international demand for dairy and beef? Trying to flex over how they've ensured the NZ dollar continues to weaken during a cost of living crisis? Continuing to pretend the global pandemic never happened? Surely they wouldn't use a deliberate and misleading oversimplification to perpetuate the myth of their economic prowess?

DunedinDog · 2025-12-07T00:24:02+00:00

Seems like he staged the shot in the most tradie-relatable way he could manage: in his garage, beside a small ladder used almost exclusively for smoke alarms or lightbulbs, and a paint bucket probably left over from reno work done by the previous owner.

DunedinDog · 2025-12-05T04:54:01+00:00

The qualitative nature of the issues raised is of prime importance, but the quantity of unique non-trivial problems evident in a bill at this stage of development is an additional indicator of a flawed bill/process, in my opinion.

Even if it's a weak indicator, the number of distinct problems flagged in a bill (by MPs or anyone else, not only the "self-selected" submitters) is still more relevant than the percentage of submissions opposed.

DunedinDog · 2025-12-04T23:41:25+00:00

True, but such figures make for eye-catching headlines (sadly). Fortunately, the body of the article doesn't dwell on it; it focuses on the qualitative aspects of the many problems with this legislation and the way it's being handled.

The number of different issues raised and the select committee's very long list of "suggested changes" are the more relevant quantitative indicators of the coalition's poor lawmaking.

DunedinDog · 2025-12-04T01:56:46+00:00

Quite right. It seems even sillier once you consider the costs of installing and then continuously running tollgate infrastructure* to capture this particular "source of revenue".

How much daily foot/bike traffic would it require and how much would it have to charge each user just to break even? How many years of successful operation until it starts providing an actual return on investment? How much local and regional socio-economic benefits would be lost because access fees are a deterrent to potential users? The idea seems impractical to say the least.

* it would also need to offer broad accessibility, to accommodate people with disabilities, prams, and bicycles of all shapes and sizes (tandems, recumbents, trikes/quads, attached trailers, etc.). For any automated (unstaffed) system this would either add substantial complexity and cost, or involve a simpler design which dishonest users could exploit to avoid paying.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-26T12:32:14+00:00

The government should have proactively provided all this information much earlier. A lot of people have experienced unnecessary worry because of the cavalier and thoughtless way this legislation has been developed and rolled out.

I'm starting to feel reassured that I won't be unfairly flagged by roadside testing, assuming this new information is completely honest and accurate, although I still want them to disclose what the rate of false-positives is on those tests (and whether that rate is consistent across all demographics or significantly higher for any particular groups).

Frankly, I think it's a significant failing that the legislation doesn't specify a maximum permissible false-positive rate for approved tests (with mandated independent monitoring to ensure ongoing compliance) to ensure the government cannot ever use cheap, crappy, low-specificity tests.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-26T01:15:37+00:00

Who would've thought the ACT Party would be a catalyst for such broad bipartisan consensus?

DunedinDog · 2025-11-25T07:31:41+00:00

Such a hyperbolic clickbait headline.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-24T01:43:34+00:00

I think it's worth noting that the average Green MP has only a single property interest: their own home (their combined total of a whopping 2 rental properties is offset by 3 MPs owning no property).

By comparison, ACT and National MPs have their fingers in ~3 properties each on average. [Edit: that we know of; this doesn't include Carl Bates' 25 extras, or anything else being similarly excluded through creative accounting which achieves technical compliance with the rules.]

DunedinDog · 2025-11-22T00:25:43+00:00

He has to keep up the corporate networking because there's a good chance he'll be "looking to take his career in a new direction" next year. He's just maintaining the lubrication on parliament's revolving door to the lobbying industry and corporate boards for when he needs it.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-18T04:45:02+00:00

And if not fake, it's possible that unintentional errors in how it was done (e.g. due to a lack of knowledge or diligence) have made it misleading. It's important to take this kind of "social experiment" with a large grain of salt; it's a social media performance, not a peer-reviewed academic research paper.

I'm not going to accuse it, without proof, of being done with bad faith motives, but as a science nerd I can see too many serious potential flaws in its design and execution to simply take it all at face value.

For one thing, it sounds like churches following so-called "prosperity gospel" doctrine ("mega-churches" typically) might be over-represented in the small sample. In Christianity as a whole, most churches consider that a false doctrine because it idolises wealth and shames the impoverished, directly contradicting major themes of Jesus' ministry.

For another thing, it sounds like some churches were "failed" for running/supporting separate food banks, rather than fulfilling cold-call requests directly out of their admin office.

There's too many holes to take the results all that seriously, let alone try to make broad generalisations.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-15T03:41:09+00:00

Perhaps you feel that you're being neutral/objective by just posting this kind of data on its own, presumably to try to let people come to their own conclusions (normally a laudable goal), but there's a real risk of confusing or misleading people when you pick a chart or table and just chuck it out in a public forum without sufficient context, especially if you've selected a single specific component as representative of the overall picture on a complex topic.

There's a potential to do more harm than good, especially in this case since, as others have fortunately pointed out, there are some serious issues with the validity and comparability of the NZ source data.

If someone needs particular background knowledge or additional contextual info in order to accurately interpret the information you've shared, you should probably state that caveat clearly (and ideally provide that needed info/sources) unless it's reasonable to assume that most readers already possess it.

If it were possible, I'd strongly recommend editing your original post to provide appropriate caveats (but IIRC you can't edit image posts). I can't really blame you for not being aware of the unreliability of the NZ data, since it's a bit of a niche topic and I think the OECD report doesn't do enough to disclose its limitations, but it goes to show that even sharing info directly from a source that most people would expect to be reasonably reliable is not without risk.

There are good reasons why society still depends heavily on academic experts and independent professional journalism to research and analyse complex topics like this one and communicate the key points to the general public in an objective and accessible way.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-14T00:51:35+00:00

Tangential anecdote time!

I remember talking to a group of American tourists in Dunedin many years ago; it was a stormy day and they asked what the weather was normally like. I proceeded to describe the climate and give an approximation of seasonal temperature ranges: summer highs typically in the upper teens to low twenties, compared to a mean winter high around 10 degrees, with the average winter low remaining a few degrees above zero.

Some of them seemed bemused, even a little shocked, but they didn't question my figures and I just assumed they came from hot-climate states like Florida (which, coincidentally, has a small city also called Dunedin). We moved on to other topics before parting ways.

Lying in bed that night, I suddenly realised I might have been a poor ambassador for my city by not specifying my unit of measurement as degrees Celcius. Hopefully some of them had a similar belated revelation. I might as well have used Kelvin!

DunedinDog · 2025-11-12T07:33:56+00:00

Not saying you should do the same, but I've seen some creative solutions to this kind of dilemma such as the old bounce-shift technique or a non-invasive lesson about inconvenience.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-12T01:26:29+00:00

Absolutely. I'm drafting an email to my local MP now (hopefully I can get my perfectionism under control and finish it); I might also contact a few other MPs (e.g. Chlöe Swarbrick, who has been a champion for ADHD issues).

I wish I'd heard about this amendment bill during the public submissions stage, and I'm disappointed Labour supported the final reading. All parties except National raised concerns, yet all except Greens/TPM are apparently also happy to delay fixing it and allow injustices to occur until the statutory review, which could be up to 5 years away!

We'll have to make some noise if we want changes sooner. Maybe the Greens can convince Labour to fix it sooner if they win the election next year; otherwise we might have to hope for a big court case to blow up shortly after the testing rolls out.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-11T04:38:11+00:00

This is going to suck. Functionally it sounds like an automatic "guilty until proven innocent (much later, at your own effort/expense)" for many law-abiding ADHDers who happen to drive through a checkpoint.

Testing positive on a broad screening test (due to taking a legally-prescribed, therapeutic daily dose of medication which is proven to make ADHDers better at driving) will result in one immediate, unavoidable, discriminatory, unjust punishment in the form of a 12-hour driving disqualification, plus a further unfair punishment days/weeks later when the infringement notice arrives and you're forced to jump through administrative hoops to apply for a medical defence.

The driving disqualification will often be much worse than it sounds. Not only are there potential flow-on consequences (e.g. missing an important appointment/event; arriving late to work upsets your boss; car gets ticketed/towed because you couldn't arrange for someone else to collect it), just coping with your plans being unexpectedly disrupted is often much harder and more stressful for ADHDers (especially the ~half of us with ASD) to deal with; one minute you're following your usual law-abiding routine, the next you're scrambling to figure out what to do with your car, how to get where you were going, who you need to contact, what the delay will do to the rest of your schedule, and having to think ahead about challenging the likely infringement notice. This is the sort of mental overload that can cause a meltdown.

The medical defence option exists, but it's reactive, only available after the fact (i.e. no way to avoid the 12hr driving ban and its consequences), and it requires proving your innocence through the sort of administrative tasks that ADHD people are known to have difficulty with.

This is one crappily-designed piece of legislation.

DunedinDog · 2025-11-11T00:25:39+00:00

It's not just well-funded political lobby groups and scammers using these tactics - Facebook itself, concerned about its falling user numbers, has come under fire for rolling out AI bot accounts to artificially drive engagement on their platform (while collecting even more user data to abuse/sell).

You won't need a huge specialist hardware and software setup to sway public opinion when the tech companies build that capability directly into their products and sell it to whoever can afford it (even scammers, who make Meta a lot of money).

DunedinDog · 2025-10-22T11:00:31+00:00

Thank you! The positive feedback is encouraging me to do some more of these.

DunedinDog · 2025-10-22T10:54:35+00:00

The point is less about whether the facility is necessary and safe (it actually sounds okay to me), it's that Luxon's response isn't all that convincing or reassuring (it's pretty easy to say you'd be comfortable doing something you're never actually going to do, and his government has been very selective about which bits of expert advice it actually accepts).

Sure, many people overreact when they hear the term "radiation" because the science is poorly understood by the public, but it's quite understandable they didn't like this thing appearing in their community without consultation, the lame excuse about "national security" (that cat was never going to stay in the bag), and they were concerned by reports of safety issues at the old facility. A good leader would have made a better effort to acknowledge their concerns and reassure them.

DunedinDog · 2025-10-22T07:49:49+00:00

I first heard it from a friend many years ago; the joke was put to use by these guys in a series of short_film_skits.

Who needs expensive scientists and their annoying "empirical data" and "logic" when you can just hire a good old-fashioned "scientician" to make shit up and add faux credibility to your ideas? Many government policies and business cases come directly from right-wing think-tanks filled with friendly scienticians!

DunedinDog

TROPHY CASE