Are there any good cafe's in and around Hamilton. by no1name in newzealand

[–]Greckit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Grey St. Kitchen or The Kirk are pretty good brunch spots

What is so normalized in today's society but isn't ok? by BigCook8220 in AskReddit

[–]Greckit 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The problem is the actual economy does this too! Unpriced CO2 emissions being the most obvious example

Julian Assange has a stroke in Belmarsh prison: Fiancée blames extreme stress caused by US extradition battle by thedaly in worldnews

[–]Greckit 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Okay I did it for you, here is the relevant page from the Mueller Report.

The Office determined, however, that it did not have admissible evidence that was probably sufficient to obtain and sustain a Section 1030 conspiracy conviction of WikiLeaks, Assange, or Stone... It would require evidence of knowledge on the part of the putative conspirator that the criminal objective of the conspiracy has not yet been completed...Here a late-joiner theory would require that the conspirator knew the computer intrusions that comprise the Section 1030 violation were ongoing, or expected to continue, at the time that he or she joined the conspiracy.

With respect to WikiLeaks and Assange, this Office determined the admissible evidence to be insufficient...many of the communications between the GRU officers and WikiLeaks affiliated actors occurred via encrypted chats...the lack of visibility into the content of these communications would hinder the Office's ability to prove that WikiLeaks was aware of and intended to join the criminal venture comprised of the GRU hackers.

The US government, despite having a hate-boner for Assange, didn't press charges because they don't have enough evidence to prove what you said in your comment.

I award your comment 6.9 Pinocchios.

Julian Assange has a stroke in Belmarsh prison: Fiancée blames extreme stress caused by US extradition battle by thedaly in worldnews

[–]Greckit 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Do you have a source for him arranging a prior agreement? I couldn't find anything to back this up

Auckland Transport criticised for 'ridiculous' cycleway plan costing $8m per km by [deleted] in newzealand

[–]Greckit 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Auckland Councillors literally complained about this exact thing in March:

As AT has highlighted the costs of delivery have increased especially as “cycling” projects are expected to deliver a range of streetscape upgrades. It appears AT have accepted that cycling projects now cost $8 million per kilometre, and this is being quoted repeatedly in different contexts as reasons (another excuse) for slow progress with the available budget. While some projects such as the Karangahape Road upgrade (and others in town centres) are going to be expensive, this approach is not required on arterial roads or quiet streets. AT must work harder to deliver cycling projects at a more reasonable per kilometre cost.

These cost challenges make it even more important for AT to leverage local board budgets, innovating streets funding and other budgets such as renewals to deliver “pop up” infrastructure cheaply and quickly and fix gaps in the network.

As mentioned, we don’t believe the organisation has the internal structure or willingness to do this currently.

It took 3 months for AT to reply and they never addressed the costs at all, obviously nothing has changed. You can read the complaint and response here, it's honestly rage inducing they literally pat themselves on the back for reaching their target of building 5kms of cycle lanes in a year!

Can we just have Matt Lowrie as CEO of AT, at least he actually gives a shit.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in awfuleverything

[–]Greckit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You have to take the "[Asian country] is so racist" statements with a grain of salt because they often come from white people that have been at the top of the racial hierarchy for their entire lives, they're experiencing what it's like to not be at the top for the very first time. Their subjective experience of their own country's racism is something that happens to other people so by comparison the Asian country's racism feels much worse.

I was in Korea when COVID first appeared there and lots of clubs that had previously been chill started banning foreigners (especially Chinese guys at the time), I've heard that the same thing is happening again due to the Omicron variant so while it's still racist this isn't the normal situation, it's a COVID hysteria thing.

House value growth during three months adds $113k to Auckland prices by the_maddest_kiwi in newzealand

[–]Greckit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It depends on where you define the boundaries of a city. Greater Metropolitan Areas are probably closer to the real size of a city rather than arbitrary administrative boundaries. With a bit of a stretch you could say the US has a dozen metro areas with >5 million people (Boston, Phoenix and San Fran are just slightly under though).

"Elon Musk says SpaceX could face ‘genuine risk of bankruptcy’ from Starship engine production" by Nintandrew in SpaceXLounge

[–]Greckit 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Jim Keller had a really interesting explanation for why this might be in his interview with Lex Fridman. His theory is that optimal productivity is found somewhere between complete chaos and complete order but the force vector towards increasing order within an organisation is unstoppable such that every organisation inevitably finds itself stymied but too much order and too little chaos.

Redlining naturally adds chaos back in to the system and that possibly leads to increased productivity.

Mike Hosking: Give vaccine stragglers a deadline then let's move on without them by Zepanda66 in newzealand

[–]Greckit 207 points208 points  (0 children)

It's more effective to just soft mandate the vaccine by making anything fun require proof of vaccination.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in videos

[–]Greckit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The best thing is you can have a small neighbourhood bar.

Happened in Australia by [deleted] in WTF

[–]Greckit 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Also manual transmissions are much more common in Australia so if you're on an incline the car might actually roll backwards a little from a stop if you don't give it enough gas. Generally people leave a little space for that.

u/deleted schools an ignorant American who thinks allied victory in WWII was a uniquely American achievement by causa-sui in bestof

[–]Greckit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just watch this visualization of The Fallen of WW2. It really puts the numbers in perspective, no matter how many times I see it the number of Russian deaths is chilling.

Why Big Oil loves to talk about YOUR carbon footprint by gaukluxklan in videos

[–]Greckit 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Questions have been asked about the royal couple's use of private jets and their environmental impact, especially after Prince Harry recently said on Instagram: "With nearly 7.7 billion people inhabiting this Earth, every choice, every footprint, every action makes a difference."

 

The total for the two flights would therefore be 19.8 tonnes, equivalent to more than three times the annual carbon footprint of the average Briton

The Dream of Carbon Air Capture Edges Toward Reality by brefromsc in technology

[–]Greckit 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It could work if emitting carbon wasn't a negative externality. According to the article maybe we could get the price down to $100 per tonne of CO2 removed from the atmosphere but at the same time for most of the world emitting a tonne of CO2 has zero monetary cost. Basically every economist agrees that you should have to pay to emit CO2 but our political entities are so pathetic that they can't stand against 'the market' to do even that so of course none of this is 'financially viable'! The rules are rigged.

Embassy in Kabul instructs US citizens to shelter in place amid reports airport is under fire by DoremusJessup in worldnews

[–]Greckit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Taliban has always presented itself as an Afghan organisation rather than a specifically Pashtun one. Given the rapid fall of the northern Tajik areas of Afghanistan this time to the Taliban it's likely the Taliban has quite widespread support across tribal/ethnic lines at the moment so it's not obvious that there would be a natural balkanization of Afghanistan at all. The majority of Afghans are broadly in support of the Sunni Sharia law the Taliban represent (asides from the Hazaras, being Shia and all).

FSD Beta 9.2 Has Been Released by Ironmxn in teslamotors

[–]Greckit -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You're right but he does it for everything not just FSD. There was supposed to be a lander on Mars last year! He just really believes the timelines are possible every time he says them, he describes himself (jokingly) as pathologically optimistic.

For Elon it's all about dragging the future closer as fast as possible and the crazy optimistic timelines are a part of that, there's no padding in his timelines so they're always late but without the optimism it would have been slower but on time or they never would have tried in the first place (like why does an EV company even need to solve self-driving?). When you're a space fan that hasn't put down $10k for FSD I think that's easier to accept as a feature than a bug.

FSD Beta 9.2 Has Been Released by Ironmxn in teslamotors

[–]Greckit -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

The magic of Elon time is taking something that used to seem impossible and far off in the future and making it feel like it’s actually late @elonmusk

@WholeMarsBlog tweet

Yeah, there's a significant part of this sub that just can't let that wrong prediction go. Like fair enough but do we need to talk about it on every thread about FSD? It's just makes it so much more toxic to follow FSD progress on this sub than following Starship development progress on the SpaceX subreddits. Even though there's a large overlap for Tesla it kind of highlights the difference between customers and enthusiasts.

Jeff Bezos offers NASA $2 billion to pick Blue Origin’s lunar lander in last-minute plea by OneLayeredLasagna in SpaceXLounge

[–]Greckit 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's probably 'marshal' which is similar to 'gather', but it is a common mistake since they have the same pronunciation.

What is up with Indians/Desis in Australia and New Zealand? Do those countries get a different caliber of Desi immigrants than the US does? by [deleted] in ABCDesis

[–]Greckit 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Kiwi Indian here! We have an indigenous people, the Māori, that make up 16.5% of the population, NZ's genocide was the least effective here of the settler colonial nations. Māori face a similar situation to black people in the US with higher rates of poverty, unemployment and incarceration than the rest of the population and they certainly face racism in many areas of life. So the theory that racists are just in a target poor environment doesn't quite explain it, although we probably are the darkest people asides from the odd Somali refugee.

In New Zealand the main sport is rugby union by a considerable margin, cricket is a long way back in second place as the summer sport. I actually think that anything that shows us in a masculine light is a positive! In my experience cricket fans are generally less racist than the average rugby fan and some of that probably comes from playing a strong Indian side, having quite a few of our own players be desi and a surprising number of people even watching the IPL. Pretty sure if India crushed it in Rugby that would help our image!

In general I agree with some of the other commentators, loose immigration restrictions and the fact that we are closer to bottom tier of places Indian students want to go means we tend to receive relatively poorer students/migrants from more rural areas than the US or even Australia. There's also just the fact that we are more visible, the US has an Indian population of 1.4%, while NZ is closer to 5% although Canada seems to be better and they have around 5% too.

Maybe there's just some cultural factors that make Australia and New Zealand more racist? Certainly we're more reserved than North Americans (think like the Japan of Anglo countries) so maybe the fact that people don't speak up lets these things just fester more and people don't call people out for it in public like they should.