People are leaving New Zealand in record numbers as unemployment rises, interest rates remain high and economic growth is anaemic
AFAIK they also have a somewhat severe housing crisis. No idea whether it’s actually worse than e.g. in Australia, though - who doesn’t have a housing crisis these days?
Think maybe as humans we just forgot how to build houses or something.
There’s some legitimate issues (e.g. investors buying up housing and trying to squeeze out as much short-term profit as possible, increasing prices for raw materials), but the main issue seems to be that most governments refuse to take effective measures for whatever reason. IDK, maybe they’re just all strapped for cash after the recent pandemic.
Instead of building houses to live in, we turned them into investment vehicles to justify the mortgages and expense of owning/maintaining them.
A house is now a pension, or a retirement savings account; primarily a place for capital to live (people living there isn’t necessary).
As such, housing value needs to continuously grow and anything that threatens that value growth is evil.
Since houses are now a place to park money and the growth in value is always supported, increasing amounts of money are moved into housing. Individuals justify larger and larger mortgages and investors start to move money into housing from other productive forms of investment.
Industries grow and are created to move money into, and extract money from, housing; investors also invest in these industries.
As housing becomes more and more expensive, it outpaces the growth in wages of homeowners; increasingly in successive years those who would have been homeowners in previous years can only afford to be renters or own smaller and smaller homes.
International investment and institutional investment, speculators and criminals looking to launder money get interested, since the value of housing has exploded so much it now looks attractive to these players; home values increase further as this additional capital comes into the market.
primarily land, but also raw materials and labour become more expensive as a direct or indirect result of the inflation of housing market; increasingly homeowners are priced out of new builds, and investors are necessary to finance the building of new housing.
because investors are financing new housing, it is built for them; cheap, small units that can be disposed of more easily and allow capital to be spread more effectively across a number of houses instead of lumped into just in one.
the humans living in the houses increasingly become renters, useful to investors only as a means of paying some of their costs via rent; protections for renters threaten the value of the investment, so rental protections are blocked or eroded.
in the end, houses are built but by investors, for investors, and in a manner that ensures the value of current investments cannot meaningfully decline.
We know how to build houses, but we built a system that builds houses for investors to house money, and not for people to house themselves.
Record number of people are leaving because things are so bad!!!
Wait, record number of people are arriving because things are worse elsewhere making net migration in positive? Let’s downplay that because predictions show that MIGHT slow down and it hurts our story about how bad things are.
When I see headlines like this about colonised places I like to dream that the indigenous people get their land back and eventually wave goodbye to the last settler/colonizer.
I understand and, in principle, agree with the sentiment, but I feel like “indigenous” implies people who’ve been there since prehistory and Aotearoa was uninhabited by humans until about 1320 CE. The “indigenous” Maori only beat the Europeans there by a few hundred years.
Like Vin Diesel said, “winning is winning,” but still, we’re not exactly talking about the kind of margin people like the Aboriginal Australians or the Native Americans had.
The Aztec Empire was founded in 1428 by people who migrated from the north to the Valley of Mexico.
By your reasoning, the Aztecs should not be counted as the indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico. They certainly are considered as such.
Similarly, the Inuit in Greenland only got there after the Vikings. The Vikings died out, the Inuit stayed. Again, they are considered indigenous.
In all three cases- the Aztecs, the Inuit and the Maori, they had developed unique cultures. In the case of the Aztecs and the Maori, Europeans then arrived and destroyed those cultures.
I mean if you really want to be technical, the only place humans are indigenous is the East African Rift Valley.
I would also suggest you look at the second definition here:
The Aztec Empire was founded in 1428 by people who migrated from the north to the Valley of Mexico.
By your reasoning, the Aztecs should not be counted as the indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico. They certainly are considered as such.
There are two ways of looking at your argument:
Consider the Aztecs narrowly as a fully separate and distinct people. In that case, no, they don’t count as “indigenous” because there were other peoples (e.g. Teotihuacan people and Toltecs) there before them.
Consider the Aztecs broadly, meaning you’re really talking about the Nahua people as a whole. Then yes, they do count as “indigenous,” but were also there way before 1428.
You don’t get to have it both ways, with Schrödinger’s “indigenous” being simultaneously the first and not arriving until 1428.
Your argument is like claiming that the Romans were the “indigenous” people of central Italy and have been there since 753 BCE and not a minute before, because (for some reason) the Latins and Sabines (and the Italic tribes they descended from) don’t count.
Here’s a question for you: who are the “indigenous” people of the Falkland Islands? Is it Europeans, or nobody?
I want you to say it. There are two possibilities, and the conversation can’t move forward until I know which one you think it is. Quit dancing around the issue.
Believe it or not, I’m not actually trying to troll you here – despite, at this point, you pissing me off with your cutesy obstinance.
You know what? Fuck it. I’ll just get to the point despite your refusal to cooperate:
I can only assume you’re thinking, but refusing to answer, “no, the European-descended people on the Falkland Islands don’t count as indigenous (definition 2) because they were ‘colonists’ and didn’t arrive before themselves.”
In that case, here’s the real point I was trying to get at: what definition of “colonist” applies to those Europeans but not also the Polynesians, without relying on some kind of European exceptionalism? In what way was the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific not an act of colonization, just like what the Europeans were doing in the Falklands? If the implication is that the ability to “colonize” is exclusively an Age-of-Discovery-European thing, or that Polynesians somehow lacked the capacity to “colonize” places because of some “noble savage” bullshit, I’m not buying it!
In other words, I object to that line of thinking not because I’m trying to diminish the Maori’s claim to Aotearoa, but because making Europeans exceptional sells the Polynesians short.
Now, there is another connotation of “colonist:” the kind that is starkly contrasted with “indigenous” in the sense that they’re newcomers who arrive at a place that already has people living there and subjugate them while claiming the “new” territory for the country they came from. In that context, we can definitely talk about how the Europeans who showed up in Aotearoa were “colonists” and the existing Maori population were their “indigenous” victims. That’s definitely a definition that differentiates between the two groups!
…Except that going by that meaning, the Europeans who settled the Falklands couldn’t have been “colonists” because there wasn’t anybody there to subjugate before they showed up. So does that mean European-descended Falkland Islanders do count as “indigenous” (definition 2) after all, since they were the ones who inhabited the place from the earliest times?
The conclusion I have to draw is this: either both the Polynesian-descended Maori in Aotearoa and the European-descended Falkland Islanders are “indigenous,” or neither of them are.
If you disagree, I would – genuinely! – love to know why.
I can only assume you’re thinking, but refusing to answer, “no, the European-descended people on the Falkland Islands don’t count as indigenous (definition 2) because they were ‘colonists’ and didn’t arrive before themselves.”
Well that’s a silly assumption since it literally goes against the definition.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say? After dicking me around and forcing me to spend a bunch of time trying to anticipate your half of the conversation (at least if I wanted to get a conclusion to it), you’re just going to mock me for guessing wrong?!
Goddamnit, this is why I wanted you to just give me a straight answer in the first place!
You’re a mod – ban yourself for violating rule 5 or 6 or something! Fuck!
I did nothing of the sort. I gave you a definition. I never said or even implied anything other than what the definition said. I cannot help what you assume just because I refuse to do what you order me to do.
I answered your question to begin with too. I told you to read the definition because it already told you the answer. And then you, for some reason, decided I was saying the definition meant the opposite of what it said. Much like I can’t control you, I can’t help it if you don’t accept my answers.
There’s a thing called Grice’s Maxims that describe the rules of conversations – specifically, about how things can be implied without being said, yet still be very real and expected to be understood by both parties to the conversation.
I told you to read the definition because it already told you the answer.
By asking the question after having read the definition – and in fact, reiterating that I wanted an answer after having confirmed to you that I had read the definition – it was 100% crystal clear to you that claiming the definition answered the question was not adequate. Yet you still claimed it. In other words, you were violating – not flouting, violating – the maxims.
You have been continuing to violate those maxims throughout this discussion. Why are you being deliberately uncivil?
Not following some rules you expect me to follow is not lack of civility.
Regularly ordering people to do things and then getting angry at them when they don’t salute you and say, “sir, yes sir!” is, however, not especially civil.
Yet again, I have no reason to do what you command me to do.
He won’t answer your questions if the conversation is going against what he wants. Usually because someone has beaten him in the argument.
Two things he does have is time. He will waste more time on this than you. And he is a mod. He will threat or use that power to silence you then comment and act like he was doing the honourable thing to silence someone showing him up.
He’s not worth the time. But I think you made some good points.
The only people that live in new Zealand are locals and immigrants. Even if you removed all the immigrants it would still be full of full blooded white kiwis that have never lived anywhere else and potentially never even met a relative that has lived anywhere else. They are a New Zealander.
It was so weird as an American to find out that country music is huge in Australia.
It reminds me of how Mexican music was (and maybe still is) really popular in the Balkans because they were so closed off from most of the world when they were united as Yugoslavia.
You should look into Australian country music, it’s different from American. American country music is still popular here but we’ve had a rich history of country music that is our own unique style.
Some does. A lot does even, but not the best country music, not by a long shot.
“Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore”
Edit:
Figured I should share some tunes:
Cruel world - Willie Nelson for rdr2
Angel from Montgomery - John Prine, cover by Daniel Donato is also excellent
Boombox, hogkill blues, 1922 blues - all by Charlie Parr, all excellent. Hogkill blues is abt a strike in which union workers were killed by counter-strikers.
Prison Trilogy - Joan Baez - makes reference to the term wetback to refer to an immigrant (“his back was wet, but he thought he could get, some things to start a life”) but is otherwise an excellent song abt the fucked up American prison system
Lots of love, hope you enjoy at least one of these!!
I get that. It just seemed to me, at least before I found that out, that it was a uniquely American form of music.
Like imagine if you were from Mongolia, and someone was like, “throat-singing? We love that shit in Paraguay!” You’d probably think like I did about country music.
Carbon credits were the biggest climate scam ever invented. Corporations either emit carbon or they don’t. This whole concept of ‘corporation A could’ve produced 1 million cons of carbon but didn’t, so now corporation B pays them a few millions and gets to emit that same amout while claiming to be “carbon neutral”’ needs to stop, it’s too ripe for abuse.
Reuters - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Reuters:
> MBFC: Least Biased - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Very High - United Kingdom
> Wikipedia about this source
“Such battery information has not been available to the public so far and the measure is to reduce EV owners’ fire anxiety,” the office of government policy coordination said in a statement.
I don’t think tech people understand how bad it is that Microsoft owns GitHub.
GitLab is one of the few places people could go if GitHub enshittifies too much. Google’s stake in it (or full ownership of it) would probably be a good thing, because it would be seen as an important strategic hedge against Microsoft. If it’s bought by a smaller player, I can see GitHub squeezing it into irrelevance.
Too bad. Microsoft is using it as part of their extremely long term plan to control the software that developers use to do their jobs. VSCode is another front in that battle. Things are going slowly, but they’re winning.
VSCode is another front in that battle. Things are going slowly, but they’re winning.
They replaced Atom with VSCode, but some of the Atom devs are now working on Zed, which finally has Linux support. Or for a paid alternative, we have the Jetbrains suite, which can be excellent if that’s your thing.
For Github, we still have Gitlab as an alternative, but once that goes, we have Gitea or Forgejo to move to.
The thing is that many developers are a vengeful bunch who hate big corps with their enshittification fetishes and love open source solutions. Microsoft has to tread really carefully here.
Ok… but just because someone’s working on an alternative doesn’t mean that alternative will be able to unseat VSCode. Microsoft is spending tens of millions per year to gently lock people into VSCode.
The thing is that many developers are a vengeful bunch who hate big corps with their enshittification fetishes and love open source solutions. Microsoft has to tread really carefully here.
And they have been treading carefully for decades, and it’s working. The people who supposedly hate big corps mostly use GitHub and VSCode. They’re heating the water very, very slowly, and the frogs are staying in the pot.
Something funded by the government but ran by a public org would be ideal.
“the government” which government?
I don’t want software beholden to any state interests. I see donationware as the way to go; or if donations can’t sustain server costs, donations for sustaining development, and then a public flagship instance which people can pay to use, or self-host for their own server costs.
Why the government? There are plenty of free git hosting services out there, take your pick. If gitlab goes away, move to gitea, forgejo, gitosis, etc.
I've been using raw Git for a while now. Glad I switched from GitHub for personal projects.
Can't share worth a shit that way, but 90% of my code is highly specific, personal scripts that I just want to maintain history and notes for. And a book I'm writing.
Yeah, I use personal git repos for most things. But, it’s not as convenient if you want to collaborate on something, or if you want to access features like building docker images and having them put into a repo. There’s definitely a need for a place for open-source and free software projects to live. And, I personally don’t want them on a platform owned by Microsoft.
The moment I realized that “SSH login” on hosted git forges like GitHub literally just means “there’s a folder on a computer that you’re connecting to over SSH” was crazy to me. I realized that there’s no need to selfhost gitlab, gitea, forgejo. Just put a folder on user@host in the repos folder, then set the origin url to user@host:~/repos/myrepo
I think there may be some init commands needed before, like git init --bare or something
I view Gitea as the real alternative to GitHub. I was very big on GitLab for a long time, and think any competition is good, but I’d really like it if more people could seriously invest in Gitea.
Yeah, I don’t see how that’s an issue at all. If Github kicks them, they’ll just push to their own instance. They’d lose a few days to reconfigure the CI/CD or whatever, but that’s about it.
It always was going to, because of the amount of money thrown at it (and the amount of money that could be saved by firing workers to try to replace them with AI software). Only now are folks actually talking about what was found in the product announcements (because now there’s a reason to).
A PC with a CPU that integrates an NPU, I think. That’s mostly laptops, and often not intentional from the consumer point of view as chip vendors just throw in NPUs to make money off the AI hype.
If Macs were still PCs, every Mac would be an AI computer. Reuters still considers Macs to be PCs, so this number includes all Apple laptops and desktops as well.
reuters.com
Oldest