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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, December 12th, 2025 - 13 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
NATO chief Mark Rutte, IMO, in full hyperbolic flight..( I note he doesnt mention Pres trumps meddling and Putin aggrandising…)
I also note Chief Rutte earlier views on Israel/Gaza…..
And Pres trump on Europe…
And, I include my usual FYI for those who would think this somehow makes me a putin supporter? Ha …..I dont support scumbags like him, trump, netanyahu, modi, etc etc..
And why wouldnt he? He has support….
IMO we in NZ should not be schmoozing Pres trump or his cronies. Problematic at present with Govt NAct1 …and of course Ol' Wily Winnies friendship with far right xenophobe Farage..FFS.
Yeah, schmoozing T seems a distasteful prospect. Yet apparently it is essential for the left, as per the recent trip of the NYC mayor to shoot the breeze with him: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/21/politics/takeaways-zohran-mamdani-trump-oval-office-new-york
So the left/right love fest went down really well. Mamdani has not since created any headlines by calling T fascist and pointing out that doing so has been officially authorised by T. Could be he's still mulling over the opportunity.
I really shouldnt….but you need called out on your usual IMO left trolling.
left trolling
Your perception has no basis in reality. The left have always been into consciousness-raising, so I help that by reporting the facts of political developments. It is significant when top leftists and top rightists put an effort into building bridges across the ideological chasm.
You could put your intellect to work to explain why they do that, huh? It would raise the consciousness of other leftists if you did. No point bleating.
Imported cement can't go on imported ship with imported
slavescrew, so they say it will go on trucks driven, presumably, by imported drivers.Call their bluff. This is going to cost them an arm and a leg. Maybe they spend the $ on the Buffalo maintenance and hurry up with the upgraded vessel.
Once again big ups to Meagre for the decision to not allow a slave crew to work in our waters.
Now if only the same would happen with the fishing licenses that fish our fishing quotas.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/581604/associate-transport-minister-bars-holcim-from-using-foreign-flagged-ship-for-transport
They may struggle to find the truck drivers (even imported ones) – following the recent decision to scrutinize documentation more thoroughly.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/459-truck-licences-cancelled-after-nzta-audit-finds-fraudulent-conversions/NZ5JNFUQIRHGJEJUFJNXIKGLDY/
(Oops. Meant as a reply to PSA at 2.0)
There are some people on this list who might want to tell Trump to "get the hell out" But then again, there were a few reports in 2024 of native Americans turning to support him. So, God knows what to make of that.
Though we can say that Trump is an irony-free, memory-free, history-free and thought-free zone, as is his poisonous sidekick Musk who is a double immigrant: the descendant of European immigrants to South Africa and then himself to the US. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the problem for Trump and Musk and their ilk is not immigration as such, but the spectre of 'blackness'. And that 'blackness' is something that is not simply evidenced in the presence of black people, but is a deeper metaphysical terror of all that is unpredictable, unknowable and threatening to their need for total mastery over the human and physical worlds. Herman Melville created the character of Ahab in this vein, presumably because he saw it everywhere in the nineteenth century American colonial project.
Goodness, if the current proposal is implemented, the US may well find itself short of tourists in the near future. The additional data required [pdf] in this proposal for those people wanting to go to the US from visa waiver countries (which includes NZ) includes:
So close relatives of applicants could have info about themselves submitted to US authorities without their permission – plus the applicants DNA!!!
Unbelievable!
And Musk has been heavily promoting propaganda about the EU being an undemocratic bureaucracy – I doubt he really believes that or cares, as he and Trump seem to not give a fig about democracy, and have already implemented a high level of dubious bureaucracy
The Health Dept in late November issued a warning for people to avoid Lake Rotorua for recreational purposes, because of toxic blue-green algae: https://info.health.nz/news/health-alerts/health-warning-for-lake-rotorua
What a wonderful advertisement for our supposedly "clean, green New Zealand".
Well to be fair the algae is somewhat green.
All the president's degenerates.
/
Days before Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, Andrew Tate got some good news.
Mr. Tate and his brother, Tristan, swaggering influencers in the so-called manosphere, had been under criminal investigation in Romania since 2022, accused of coercing women into pornography. Andrew was also accused of rape and of having sex with and beating a 15-year-old. The brothers, American and British citizens, had been barred from leaving Romania while prosecutors built their case.
Now, in a Jan. 14 text message, Mr. Tate indicated that help was on the way.
“I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things,” Mr. Tate wrote to someone close to him, in a message reviewed by The New York Times. “Ive been told ill be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami,” he added.
The next month, an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government, a Times investigation found. The prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.
“We’re massively back,” a grinning Mr. Tate announced in a video recorded for his followers on Feb. 27, as a private plane whisked the brothers to Florida.
https://archive.li/AkL8w (nyt)
If you have the time and the inclination:
.
RuxandraTeslo
Does motherhood drive the gender wage gap? Yes. But in 2023 papers claiming it doesn't went viral. I was skeptical of them at the time & have been proven right since. I describe the whole saga and why you should use common sense to judge these results.
https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/of-course-motherhood-drive-the-gender
https://xcancel.com/RuxandraTeslo/status/1997340117258653699
Of course motherhood drives the gender wage gap
[…]
A recent example of how economics can become enamoured with its own methods, at the expense of revealing the truth, was revealed in the renewed debate over the gender wage gap. Conversations about this topic had long been saturated with layers of unhelpful mythology, largely because the topic is so “politically sensitive”. Depending on who you asked, you’d hear wildly different explanations. Many feminists insisted the gender wage gap was primarily the result of discrimination. Red-pill commentators, on the other hand, would tell you women are just stupid.
Economists, on the other hand, had long held that in developed countries most of the gender wage gap is attributable to motherhood. The career interruptions, reduced hours, and constrained job choices that follow from having children set women back in their careers, often irreversibly. Shedding light on this topic with empirical studies is what earned economist Claudia Goldin the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics. In this debate they were, in my opinion, the camp closest to the truth.
https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/of-course-motherhood-drive-the-gender