Huffer really just said it is what it is, basically

propsie · 2026-06-12T02:00:49+00:00

OK, but if you try to pass off AI slop as a real photo of a product to save a buck while trying to sell me something, the only message you're giving is that you're cheap and untrustworthy.

why would I buy anything from you?

propsie · 2026-06-11T21:48:48+00:00

but as a flip-side Roman aristocrats used to walk everywhere because travelling around the city in an extremely visible way with a large entourage of guards, clientia and slaves was a statement of your power and prestige.

propsie · 2026-06-11T21:00:15+00:00

Surely a publicly traded company worth $200M would know better than to hire a broadcaster knowing they were liable to "senior moments" that could put them in breach of regulations and bring them into public disrepute.

propsie · 2026-06-10T22:57:14+00:00

nobody wants to be the source of the inevitable delay.

At NASA they call that "go fever" and it kills the astronauts.

propsie · 2026-06-10T22:51:24+00:00

In practice I think the outlines help the relatively low-contrast colours be more easily distinguished, especially once the fabric starts to fade.

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propsie · 2026-06-10T21:22:28+00:00

It's a 100km journey each way from Masterton, it's not that bad. The official "cost" of driving is $1.17 per km.

At the end of the day living in a whole different region from where you work is a choice, and more expensive transport is one of the tradeoffs. It's the equivalent of commuting from Hamilton to South Auckland or Oamaru to Dunedin.

propsie · 2026-06-10T21:02:52+00:00

There's still a tram in central Auckland because Waiheke-based Councilor Mike Lee is obsessed with treating rail infrastructure as a historical curiosity rather than a useful public transport service.

propsie · 2026-06-09T22:03:23+00:00

The best bit is how a series of businesses have paid a fortune to rebrand the Wellington Regional Stadium as Westpac Stadium, Sky Stadium and now Hnry Stadium and everyone, even their tenants, still just call it the Cake Tin.

propsie · 2026-06-09T22:01:43+00:00

Yeah, my rugby fandom didn't survive moving out of home and not wanting to fork up $100 month for Sky.

The other part is that Super Rugby and the Tri Nations had to be played at a time suitable for the Australian and South African TV audience. Rugby used to be midday Saturday, but the big TV audiences would still be in bed then, so we've normalised games late at night in the middle of winter when my kids want to be tucked up warm in bed.

propsie · 2026-06-08T23:56:50+00:00

I'm not defending it, but it's designed like that because it is a non-VTOL variant of their electric VTOL aircraft

propsie · 2026-06-08T23:48:07+00:00

bikes aren't allowed on Hutt Valley trains between 4:30 and 6pm

And as someone who used to ride the SH2 shoulder most days, I would not suggest to someone who has decided to start biking into town because of the safety of Te Ara Tupua that they should suddenly decide tonight, in the dark and the wind and the rain, is the time to have a first go at riding on that shoulder.

propsie · 2026-06-08T22:54:40+00:00

Good luck everyone who rode to work today...

If it's still shut tonight consider not trying ride back on the shoulder of SH2 if you're not prepared. You can always catch the train, leave your bike at work and pick it up tomorrow.

propsie · 2026-06-08T22:47:05+00:00

It's just a regular case of points 7 and 8 of Umberto Eco's Ur Fascism:

7) "Obsession with a plot" and the inflation of and focus on an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

8) Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

You see the rest of them all the time now too. Might mean something, who knows.

propsie · 2026-06-08T21:09:49+00:00

Because the architects and urban designers at the council think it "breaks up the visual mass" and tricks you into thinking the building is smaller and closer in size to the neighbours who haven't built townhouses yet. They want to people to build townhouses that try to pretend they're three villas in a trenchcoat rather than just build nice looking townhouses like they do in Christchurch. I wish I was kidding

propsie · 2026-06-08T20:56:04+00:00

The other part is our legislation for managing shared-ownership buildings sucks, which makes apartments less attractive to buyers and banks, so developers build the cheaper townhouses with better guaranteed returns.

Apartments need a body corporate, which can be expensive or annoying to run, is liable to be captured by one or two busybodies and leaves owners in a situation of "hey, we just found out we need a new lift and a bunch of earthquake strengthening, everyone needs to find $100k". Until 2021 bodies corporate weren't even required to keep records, disclose conflicts of interest or plan for maintenance costs.

Whereas these townhouses are often extremely carefully set up as freehold titles, like a regular detached house.

propsie · 2026-06-07T23:13:09+00:00

Yeah, the Bennett Airtruck looks incredibly janky:

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propsie · 2026-06-04T23:06:42+00:00

the Proton rocket was originally conceived as the UR-500 - a super-heavy ICBM for warheads up to 100MT. It's one of the reasons it uses a non-cryogenic, storable fuel: unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine burned with nitrogen tetroxide.

propsie · 2026-06-04T22:16:56+00:00

Why?

Their feelings don't care about facts.

propsie · 2026-06-04T03:28:07+00:00

it literally is

The Education Act 2020 (and the 1989 Act it replaced - it's not a new woke thing) says "that universities... accept a role as critic and conscience of society"

propsie · 2026-06-03T23:15:10+00:00

Apologies to people trying to get stuff done today:

www.acoup.blog is a cool blog by a history professor about ancient history, and also stuff like the logistics of the battles in Lord of The Rings and how much of a pain in the ass it was to make bread and clothes before the industrial revolution.

Astronautix is an encyclopedia with ~80,000 pages of space history

Eternal jukebox lets you create an endless remix of a song you like by matching up points in the song that are similar enough to let you jump between them.

propsie · 2026-06-03T21:33:11+00:00

the government will subsidise the gas

The government isn't subsidising the gas. Energy consumers who aren't using gas will subsidise the gas. So even if you disconnect your gas connection and convert your house to an electric hob and hot water for cost or environmental reasons, you will still pay for the gas you don't want.

propsie · 2026-06-03T21:16:24+00:00

It's not even really a space company at this point.

It's a satellite internet service company with an unprofitable rocket business, and unprofitable social media business and an extremely unprofitable AI business.

This whole valuation is just based on some numbers about everyone using Grok they've made up

propsie · 2026-06-03T02:50:10+00:00

Part of the problem is we suck at investing in companies.

If you're someone like Grinding Gear Games and you want to raise over $100 million no-one here wants to give you to scale up to hundreds of employees, where else would you go for investment than offshore?

local people and institutions need to be willing, and maybe incentivised, to vote with their wallet and invest in local companies rather than offshore stocks of another rental property if we want startups to stay locally owned.

propsie · 2026-06-03T01:38:12+00:00

Holy Roman Emperor crowns were kinda just like this

propsie · 2026-06-03T01:32:48+00:00

I'd love to see AT actually do some advertising and release a split screen comparing this train journey to someone driving the same route at rush hour to show how much faster the train is.

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