TagMeInSkipIGotThis @ TagMeInSkipIGotThis @lemmy.nz

Posts

4

Comments

334

Joined

2 yr. ago

I don't know if they'll get nominated or not but Shane-Os in Hastings are Supreme in my Friday Pieday heart.

Since I read more of their proposal and now see that they're proposing doubling the size of the Hawke's Bay Expressway to four lanes I have more thoughts.

Firstly, given the expressway goes over two major rivers with high stopbanks, that means two bridges somehow either expanded or additional bridges built, or the bridges replaced - none of which is cheap.

The expressway between the Ngaruroro and Tutaekuri is already susceptible to being blocked by flooding as there are two streams that go under it at low points. Even after Gabrielle those points have had water encroach upon the road so doubling the length of those culverts probably also means doubling their capacity as well - or, a more resilient solution might be to raise the height of the road entirely on an elevated causeway given we know the flood plain between those two rivers is where the water goes in historical floods that breach stopbanks.

Outside of local freight traffic the bulk of the volume is rush-hour transfers of vehicles from either of the two cities as people go to work. A lot of that traffic is stuff like sparkies, plumbers etc who can't mode shift - but there is still a volume of traffic that could be moved by public transport. A fast and regular railcar service between Waipukurau and the Airport could make a lot of sense.

The other thing we really need to do is to shift long distance freight off the roads altogether - the two north of the expressway are far too prone to closure - and even SH2 south got closed during Gabrielle. As much as i'd love it to be trains its probably better for that traffic to be both coastal shipping and train - and a lot already is (ie logs shipping internationally direct from Napier port).

In any case, my opinion is that 4 lanes on the expressway is 150% more capacity than it needs 95% of the time, and would most likely just shift the congestion point from around the Tutaekuri bridge south of the Taradale on ramps to somewhere else. The problem isn't even really the road's capacity.

As the hand-drawn sign at Taradale says (I paraphrase) "Merge like a Zip, not f$%king Velcro".

Breathtakingly stupid policy in my opinion.

Rather than inducing more traffic onto roads I would rather see freight moved onto rail and coastal shipping instead.

I guess some of it will come down to how much was already built and the increases in construction costs in general since the start of the pandemic. But also, its pretty common - every Olympics since 1960 have gone over budget; and if the Commonwealth games work like the Olympics then the whole financial risk is born by the city - none of it by the games organisations themselves. And the IOC is a haven of corruption and grift as far as I understand it.

Running these big tournaments - even for stuff like Rugby barely makes any economic sense nowadays with requirements to spend so much building stuff that'll often barely get used outside of the 2 weeks or so of competition.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-07/what-japan-learned-from-olympic-white-elephants/100329488

I think that 2002-2020 period was also probably informed by a lot of older voters who got spooked by the instability of the National-NZ First coalition and it became more desirable to have one really strong party for those voters too.

But there's now a whole generation of voters who weren't alive when Shipley rolled Bolger basically because he was moving slowly to keep his coalition partner on board, only to find that pissing off your coalition partner kinda destabilises your government. I wasn't yet a voter, but that National Party shift was basically from a PM trying to work within the new rules of MMP to one that wanted to act as though National had an outright majority.

I imagine a lot of the frustration of this Labour government is that they didn't do a lot with an actual majority :) But then there's an advantage to being able to pin unpopular policies (that you still really want to do) on your small coalition partner - ie Act pull National governments further right than National parties campaign. But it strikes me that they're quite happy with the policies, just know they can't campaign on them.

I started 6 pots for the courgettes, 2 seeds per pot; and pulled the weakest out. Then I gave away 3 of the seedlings and planted the other 3, trying to balance the level of growth so they would hopefully stagger harvest.

In the end the strongest seedling produced the most courgettes by a long way, the middle seedling produced very little - possibly because I planted them in order so it was crowded out by the others maybe; but the smallest one did live up to the plan of having a longer running harvest rather than just a huge glut of them.

We did end up with more courgettes than we could eat, but that partly comes down to not picking them early & small enough when they tasted a lot better. I made many chocolate-zucchini cakes which was one way to get rid of the excess, and gave away what I could.

There's a local app for gardening & sharing called Magic Beans - that's an option for trading excess produce, and having a different kind of courgette/zucchini to share would probably be a help i'd guess (not actually tried it!). It was in beta for ages so hasn't got a huge population, but I think just launched - pity its not Fedi :) https://www.magicbeansapp.com/

Depends on the pot... I have a bunch of cast-iron & carbon-steel pans and most of those would get a hot rinse, and then a wipe with an oily cloth after going back on the element to heat back up & dry off any excess water.

My cheaper saucepans I probably wouldn't bother unless there'd been a mishap and an egg had cracked - but we also have really hard water here so its often a good idea to wash from time to time.

Ah interesting, do you direct sow them? I should still have half a bag of seed from last year and i've got a good shadey spot I can plant in.

Yeah its very silly really.

One of my favourite things to grow is radishes, there's dozens of different varieties, all sorts of different internal and external colours and combinations, and some are firey peppery in flavour while others are mild and sweet.

What's dumb is that say come apple season you can see the evidence for the Supermarket's supply chain stupidity. There's probably 6 different varieties of apples proudly on sale all different colours, shapes & flavours.

Well why isn't the same true for carrots - there's a myriad of different kinds, why are there only 2 kinds of Onion in NZ supermarkets?!

For a real eye-opener I highly recommend checking out Kings Seeds catalog (https://www.kingsseeds.co.nz/) it blew my mind. Eg the Cocozelle I found way more enjoyable than the average zuchini you find at New World (https://www.kingsseeds.co.nz/results.html?q=courgette)

I self-host a bunch of stuff and don't bother paying for a static IP.

I just have a cron job running that checks my IP and then uses API calls to update my DNS settings. I've got the DNS setup with Zonomi which are a local company, it costs maybe a couple dollars a month & i've got 8-10 domains running at any one time.

Oh! That sounds like something I need to try then, I had very little luck with Celtuce; planted a whole row of it and got maybe 3 thin stalks :)

There's a massive amount of vegetables our supermarkets just do not stock. Its really sad - the same 20 or so product lines all year and so many other things (particularly seasonal) that never get a look in.

Occasionally my local New World will have Kamo Kamo when they're in season but compared to the variety of veg you can pick up at the farmer's market (usually for less) its just not worth shopping at Supermarkets for veg if you're privileged enough to be able to avoid it.

Same goes for the meat sections too - so many cuts they just don't bother with.

There's such a meme about Sam Cane; and I really think its far from the truth and more that folks don't understand his role at 7, especially when we have Ardie Savea playing. He's there to tackle opposition to a standstill on defence and on attack to clean out their defenders or tidy up when there's bad ball or the structure has gone.

It'd be handy if he could get over the ball a bit more as well like a traditional jackalling 7, but more often than not when he's in a collision its as the first tackler which means he can't and somebody else should be having a go.

If you look at his performances with an eye to those tasks, he's clearly the best 7 in NZ, more so this year than last as Papali'i has fallen away a bit, but even last year he was doing his role better than most ABs were doing theirs.

There's an angle from behind the posts which makes it look like a more aggressive chop than a foot-trip. I think the only reason for the apology was that it turned out to be a teenager and not your normal adult pitch invader.