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6:00 am, October 24th, 2025 - 30 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
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Step up to the mike …
CoC tells us we are 'on our own!!'
"Hollow men" indeed. (Thanks Nicky Hagar book.)
"Out in 26!!"
14 homes?
Murdoch's 16 July cartoon is bang on – the CoC is ‘govt’ by the sorted, for the sorted.
https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360758343/cartoon-july-16
It wasn't hard to predict this. The language used to justify leaving people on their own is a masterclass in elevating 'personal responsibility' to the highest moral principle that must never be violated. It cynically pulls this trick, even though the assumption that 'personal responsibility' is even possible in an unpredictably changing climate, is bogus. Who can possibly predict with any accuracy what extreme events might hit your home over the next (say) 30 years? This is the first small knife in the back of the 'climate change just transition' idea that the left has been wittering on about for years. Still, it will open up business opportunities for landlords and trailer park owners. so I guess that's 'all good'.
this is from the ACLU in the US in an article on sport and trans people. What I'd really like to know from people who support this position: if you believe males have no real physical advantage over women, how do you explain rape? Seriously.
https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/whats-at-stake-as-the-supreme-court-takes-up-transgender-sports-bans
There is now a wide body of research on adult male bodies and how they differ from women's bodies, including research on trans women using hormone treatments. This research is a solid body of evidence for exclusion of trans women (trans identified males) from women's sport on the basis of fairness and safety.
And if there are no significant differences between men's and women's bodies because women's bodies are diverse, why have women's sports at all?
How is it that there are a significant number of trans IDed males who participate in women's top tier sports, but no visible trans IDed females competing at the highest levels of male sports?
I'm guessing it's because of the idea that trans women aren't men, so are somehow special. Maybe because they're altering their bodies with hormones, but the position seems to run deeper than that. True believers really do seem to think TW don't have male bodies (which is weird given the whole born in the wrong body thing).
It's just blatant prioritising the rights and needs of trans identified males over women, and then making up arguments to try and justify it. I'd have more respect if they were honest.
It is a cult of a Gnostic belief system. That the body is irrelevant, the "soul" is the only important thing.
Followed to it's logical conclusion, this says that there is no point in having women's categories in sports (because some elite women athletes are better than some couch potato men). Or, presumably youth categories (after all, they, too have size, weight and ability distributions).
I haven't read the whole piece to see where they stand on that, but I've seen the argument many times, it's basically nonsensical.
The article doesn't specifically mention that, although reports claims that trans IDed males who take female hormones are not biologically male because of the impact of hormones on their bodies. It incorrectly says that there's no scientific evidence of the impact on things like muscle mass, which is incorrect.
While there is some impact on male bodies (muscle mass etc) of taking female hormones, it doesn't reach female levels and the impact platforms after a couple of years. Plus, the androgenisation of male bodies begins in childhood and escalates at puberty, and that impact is retained in spite of the slight drop-off through taking female hormones.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that all the males competing in female sports take female hormones. And many transactivists demand that identifying as female is enough, and it doesn't require taking female hormones.
The article quotes an incorrect claim that there's only a small number of transgender people in female sports, says probably under 10 and that some of those may not be males who ID as female (they must mean they are females who ID as trans participating in female sports).
In fact, seems to be more than that according to available evidence. Also in terms of numbers, the males competing in female sports tend to be over-represented in winning prizes and prize money. The same trans IDed males have won several times, denying a far greater number of women those awards and prizes.
Internationally it's been recorded that,
"578+ Male* Victories in Female Sports: A Nine-Month Tally"
In the US, (no mention of the time period these were recorded from)
it's astounding they get away with those lines. That piece is written by their comms strategist, who is a trans identified male (who uses block lists on twitter 😉 )
Not really my position. I am objecting to the daft solipsistic arguments used by proponents of gender based discrimination in sport on the basis of 'fairness'. Or even having a discussion about sports at all
As I have said all along. All sports events are inherently unfair by any criteria you care to mention when you're talking about it as a competitive system.
The categorisation required to 'make it fair' always always excludes virtually all of of the population and of the people who may interested in participating. That is done with massive numbers of exclusionary conditions, like affluence, age, disability, grandmother nutrition at time of conceiving a female child, access to medical technology, access to coaching … the list or random requirements is almost endless.
So you are literally arguing about an artificial scarcity system imposed by sport bodies to maximise the number of participants wanting to compete in their sports by providing a facade of 'fairness' – in other words – having a lot of prizes to give out in activity that is inherently a economic luxury system.
Do I give a shit – NO absolutely not
Yes that and access the toilets do appear to be the only criteria you have when discussing something that appears to me to be a personal choice of people to do something that they want to do, and doesn't appear to have the potential to significantly harm anyone apart from themselves.
You know – exactly the same kind of populist crap about threats to life 'as we know it' that has had widespread movements trying to stop people making a choice to have bad tattoos, stop women going to university,
What you haven't done is to provide any viable instances where trans people participating in society in whatever way they choose has caused actual harm to anyone else. Upset parents and people who feel that it was their place really don’t count. That is the norm in any case when dealing with children and peers.
And FFS don't start on the genetic males in womans prison myths again. I still haven’t seen any viable evidence of a actual problem. Just the same kind of hysterics that resulted in lynch mobs at various times in history.
Frankly, when I read these kinds of self-reinforcing bitching sessions, youall just read like some kind of bigot to me.
And yes those last bits are deliberately insulting – I think that you deserve the comparisons.
It's no more daft or solipsistic than arguing for 'ability discrimination' (the Paralympics), 'age discrimination' (under-18s, veterans etc) or 'weight discrimination' (weight categories in boxing) on the basis of fairness. The arguments for them are anything but daft, which is why we have them.
The reason we have a female category for sports is the same as for those other categories, and it makes no sense to allow people who aren't in the relevant category to self-identify into it, regardless of how inherently unfair sports competition otherwise is.
OK, let's treat it like a typo, and assume we know what she meant. Is 16 minutes an unreasonable amount of ads for one hour of television? Is this a significant increase over whatever period she's talking about?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
She said the amount had been increasing, which sort of means a rising trend to where it is now.
I don't actually know how much time ads have taken up on New Zealand TV throughout its history. I do know that commercial American broadcast television has had about 45 minutes of scripted content per hour, going back to the 1990s.
In NZ, there's historically been use of speed compression on free-to-air TV. IE the content is fractionally speeded up so that more ads can be fitted into an hour TV.
This has been noticeable to those of us watching US content back in the days when we got some off-air video content recorded in the US and sent to us in NZ. When the content was finally shown on NZ TV we could see the discrepancies, as discussed on this Reddit chat 10 years ago.
Well I guess it's a slight improvement on what used to be done in less technologically sophisticated times. Which was to cut out parts of scenes (or even whole scenes) sometimes to the point where the storyline became unintelligible. (It was referred to as “blackaddering”, after a particularly egregious example involving a popular comedy series.)
mod note: please stop and pay attention to what the mods are saying to you. Your comment here is basically trying to run an argument line based on a guess that has no evidence or substance. We take Guest Post commenting more seriously than elsewhere on site, and you’re close to getting banned from that post if you continue to ignore moderation.
Fair enough, no guessing. 61 minutes of ads in an hour is an obvious error, and we can't know what she actually meant. So the guest post doesn't actually provide any information about ads during TV news. Would you say that's a fair conclusion?
it's an opinion piece by someone who is informed and experienced in the area she is writing about. Myself, I'll wait to see if that sentence gets corrected before commenting on it.
Thinking overnight, almost a blessing that the strike had schools closed in Otago, Southland, perhaps other areas yesterday.
It would have been a nightmare from noon on and great difficulty for getting students home, parents collecting etc etc
true, although I think schools would have closed earlier anyway (or just not opened that day)
State of emergency declared in Southland. Surprised it wasn't done sooner tbh. Lots of powerlines and trees down, large number or households without power, some for several days.
Central government are doing it because the Southland mayors haven't been sworn in yet. I didn't realise it needed the mayor.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/state-local-emergency-declared-southland-region
Reading Newsroom, regarding the matter of Public Submissions.
Tighter rules may be needed to stem flow of public submissions, says MP
https://tinyurl.com/bdenurnz
"He did not believe the coalition Government’s use of urgency and truncated select committee processes was behind the rise in submissions, and instead attributed it to the rise of social media and the ease with which political groups could coordinate campaigns."
The Nats really do live in their own bubble. If the use of urgency was curtailed, we the people, would have a proper chance to contribute.
It's not just the use of urgency, but the sweeping, long-term changes that have been included in those Bills.
Good to see McDonald's have signed up in a proper Wanaka commercial zone within a masterplanned site, not right in the front of town. The sneaky after-work apple pies are coming.
The BSA (traditional broadcasting – essentially free-to-air television and radio) and Media Council (a non-governmental group to which media outlets can voluntarily ascribe to) do not really cover digital content, except where they do.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360864254/old-rules-new-media-bsa-move-triggers-calls-reform
https://www.dia.govt.nz/media-and-online-content-regulation
Fast track consent for Onslow hydro project is being sought.
Onslow first team to win the Jubilee Cup. Fast as.
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/360865684/group-lodge-fast-track-consent-bid-axed-lake-onslow-hydro-project