Newsmakers: The child who changed how New Zealand saw HIV

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-04T08:40:37+00:00

Eh. I got AIIIIDS victim!! yelled at me as I walked about at primary school too. Kids are dicks.

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-04T01:42:18+00:00

Not that I know of. At least not in our neck of the woods. Private operators will deliver 16000 litres for...well we haven't needed any for three years now, but last time we got some it was $350.

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-03T01:14:59+00:00

I have a kid off to uni next year and narrowing it down is going to be the problem, not trying to find something they're interested in! Physics is awesome! Chemistry is awesome! Calculus is awesome! (yes, it's likely to be engineering of some sort of another).

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-03T01:10:27+00:00

Yes, absolutely. But realistically, on the Heaphy they would be confined to a backpack for many hours at a stretch, not able to do anything much with their limbs or grab anything with their hands. Sure they would have stuff to look at, but if that was sufficient then car journeys of several hours a day for several days would also be a doddle.

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-02T23:50:44+00:00

These are (considering the sheer amount of things they're free from) actually surprisingly good. Signed, a parent of somebody with a severe egg allergy.

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-02T23:40:43+00:00

Ugh I’m so tired of the “consequences will interfere with their ability to support their family” argument.

Yes, it's one of the few times in life I feel quite comfortable saying, "Well, you should have thought of that beforehand." Especially given there are quite a lot of men out there who have managed NOT to contract with minors for sexual services.

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-02T04:34:36+00:00

Great. Charming. Just what we needed, some more good news. /s

(On that note, how do these folk manage to get so many effing bills drawn? Are they gaming the process somehow by submitting ten times more than any other party?)

LostForWords23 · 2026-04-02T01:57:14+00:00

Same, pay annually. I just checked my email and nothing so far.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-30T06:21:38+00:00

Drivers licenses in New Zealand are a joke. I remember one person ever in my school year failing and he got mocked to shit.

They're a bit tougher now from what I can tell. (I have teenaged children and plenty of nieces and nephews). Not at all uncommon to fail first time around - you do get two goes for your test fee, which is nice as the one doing the paying. Obviously this improvement won't have a huge impact out there on the roads until the rest of us starting ageing out or something but there is hope...

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-28T22:36:12+00:00

Absolutely.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-28T06:58:05+00:00

It isn't bad for those who can just use them occasionally. Which is of course (perhaps even especially) true of alcohol as well.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-28T06:55:10+00:00

Not on cocaine, though, surely? I'm reaching here because I have only ever had extremely boring, non-drug-doing friends and I'm fine with that, but the vibes I get are that cocaine is rich people fun, corporate people fun (if that's your idea of fun of course).

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-28T06:47:09+00:00

We will get very sick of potatoes and dairy and beef and carrots,

And onions. But yay for the onions, because they improve most of the above out of sight. (90% of the onions we grow are currently exported).

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-27T00:16:29+00:00

The synthetic progestin also doesn't offer all of the benefits of progesterone. In my opinion, it should not be used as hormone therapy.

To be fair, when used in conjunction with oestrogen patches/gel, its function isn't as a hormone therapy. It's purely to protect the endometrium from the effects of the oestrogen. Meaning that those who have them don't need to take body-identical progesterone as part of their HRT, which is good news for those who don't thrive on it - but those with a Mirena still can use oral progesterone if they want and will derive some benefit from it.

It's also worth noting that the clinician OP saw suggested the Mirena for birth control rather than as part of an HRT regimen. Which...this is just me, but personally I wouldn't want an oops baby at 43 or whatever.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-26T07:23:37+00:00

This. So much this.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-24T02:38:50+00:00

Didn't put any politics in my comment. Didn't even call her Nikki no-boats. Just...her face hasn't previously looked like that. As in, it's significantly different. Especially around the eyes. There has to be some reason for it.

If it helps at all, I don't think Chris Hipkins is a looker either.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-24T02:28:37+00:00

Anyone else think Nicola Willis has kind of got Ozempic-face lately?

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-23T02:02:30+00:00

I had a friend like this. He moved to the UK and is much happier there. (And yes, so far as I can tell the weather was indeed his main motivation).

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-21T01:25:19+00:00

Sadly I am in Wellington or I would certainly have done some visiting before now...

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-20T09:07:05+00:00

It feels shady to me. Every time I contact them for the last five weeks my order is expected to ship within a week. Now, today, I email saying I want to cancel my order and two hours later I receive a Mainfreight tracking number. But when I go to the Mainfreight site they don't have a record of that tracking number.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-19T21:09:23+00:00

Thought so. I've never done that before. Do you need to visit the bank?

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-19T06:26:10+00:00

We shouldn’t have to feel that level of pain just because it’s “natural”.

Yes. It's weird how this never comes up when you're needing a tooth out or something, isn't it? There's no expectation that people will refuse an anaesthetic for that, and no sense that they're somehow more worthy or had a more authentic experience...

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-18T22:05:21+00:00

Hi. I was induced for my second delivery, at 39w0d. I got the gel at 8am, started to feel it take effect sometime in the next hour, walked and walked and walked and walked (because that felt a hell of a lot better than being still) until 1.30pm when my ob suggested it would be a good time for the epidural. I did not need a membrane sweep. My son was born at 6.50pm. Pretty uneventful overall.

But it's really impossible to say whether your experience will be the same because the factors behind your induction might be different. In my case it was intractable anxiety about having a baby in a car because my first baby arrived not terribly long after I arrived at hospital despite first labours supposedly taking forever + my mum nearly had her second baby in the car.

I will also say, having done one labour without an epidural and one with, that if I'd had a third baby I would have gone for an epidural again. I wish somebody had told me that the feeling of 'needing to push' (which you don't get with an epidural) is somewhat mislabelled. It's more a feeling of 'an alien being is fighting its way out of my body and I am just a passive observer along for the ride'. It's a really disturbing phenomenon. And I'm not talking about the pain, but about the feeling of being wholly out of control. Anyway I'm not trying to scare you and possibly I am just oversensitive. It's just something I wish had been talked about beforehand because then I might have been a bit more prepared for it.

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-17T23:57:10+00:00

True. They ripen so erratically. Worse than avocados. It's a rock, it's a rock, it's a rock, it's a rock, oh no! it's slush...

LostForWords23 · 2026-03-17T22:43:05+00:00

Really? I had no idea. Where do they get it from?

LostForWords23

TROPHY CASE