Hey all.

Canadian here. A number of years ago my family visited New Zealand, and while falling in love with the country and the culture, I also discovered the Hei Matau - the Maori fish hook.

This has haunted me ever since, and I want to carve one for myself. However, we've spent the last decade starting to understand the relationship between European settlers and the North American Indigenous people.

So what I do in my basement with carving tools is my own business, but I ask honestly if wearing a Hei Matau in public is considered respectful or appropriation. And also if the material matters in this context. (It would likely be from a tagua nut - "vegetable ivory" - although it's possible I could get some whale bone from my coastal friends.)

No Time Toulouse

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-06-20 18:13 | |

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| | Scheduled for (NZST) | 2024-06-21 06:13 | | Launch site | Rocket Lab LC-1B, Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | | Booster recovery | No | | Launch vehicle | Electron + Curie | | Customers | Kinéis | | Payloads | Kinéis 1-5 | | Mission success criteria | Successful deployment of spacecraft into Low Earth Orbit |

Livestreams

| Stream | Link | |

|

| | Rocket Lab (official) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYpQkHw9s1I | Everyday Astronaut | | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjEdn_6evjs | The Launch Pad |

Stats

• This will be the 8th launch for Rocket Lab this year.
• This will be the 🎉 50th 🎉 overall launch for Rocket Lab.

Payload info:

Rocket Lab mission page

NextSpaceflight:

First batch of five satellites for the French Kinéis IoT constellation designed to operate with 25 nanosatellites of 30 kg each. The constellation will enable Kinéis, a company backed by private and public investors including the French government’s space agency CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales) and CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites) an international space-based solutions provider, to improve its global IoT connectivity.

Previous mission (PREFIRE And Ice) | Next mission (Owl For One, One For Owl)

Please post small launch updates, discussions, and questions here! Also feel free to leave feedback or suggestions for the mod team. We’re a relatively new community, so feedback is very valuable!

I've never seen an entire tower fall over like that, that's kinda terrifying.

Luxon with foot-in-mouth disease again

Copper wire thieves are wearing hi-vis vests to look like legitimate lines workers in Christchurch, as repeated vandalism costs city businesses thousands.

Police have charged seven people with stealing copper wire from power lines near schools, preschools and residential streets.

The thefts began last year in the suburban red zone but have since spread to areas where the electricity is live.

He said thieves had left live powerlines hanging and cost the business thousands of dollars in fees.

What got me the most was:

"I am really comfortable with asking government agencies to consider, are there ways that you can innovate to deliver the same level of service while taking less taxpayer dollars to do it."

"In fact, that should be how we conduct ourselves every day, not just in the lead up to a Budget"

Honestly, we've been doing that every year for decades, now!

Companies have the right to monitor employees to ensure productivity but they must also protect the employee's privacy, an Auckland University Business School lecturer says.

Last week US banking giant Wells Fargo sacked more than a dozen people for allegedly faking keyboard activity, pretending they were working at home when they were not.

The bank has not said how it picked up on the problem.

But a survey last year of 1000 US-based companies showed 96 percent of them were using some kind of monitoring to check up on employees working from home.

All of this raises questions around ethics and productivity.

This is such a strange thing to require someone to know, especially when she doesn't deal with Maori land, and all sale is the same legally regardless of the ethnicity of the buyer. And the justification given for making this mandatory is incredibly tenuous, in my view.

Flames were seen coming out the back of a Boeing 737 that departed from Queenstown on Monday evening, before landing safely in Invercargill.

Virgin Australia flight VA148 departed Queenstown Airport at 5.59pm, bound for Melbourne with 67 passengers and six crew on board, before turning around and heading south.

"It experienced an issue just after take-off and has been diverted to Invercargill Airport," Queenstown Airport said in a statement earlier.

The plane - a 737-800 registered VH-YIV - landed safely in Invercargill shortly before 7pm.

The airline later said it was a "possible bird strike on take-off".

"The aircraft has been met by emergency services at Invercargill Airport," Virgin Australia chief operations officer Stuart Aggs said. "The safety of our guests and crew is our highest priority."

The airline later on Monday night said it was not aware of any injuries.

So two points here, first, didn't this dingus promise to take commercial flights to save money anyway?

Second, this is getting embarrassing for NZ that this keeps happening.

I'm trying to work out the series of events here, because it's quite bizarre. This person was in a car crash, and then decided to cross the center median barrier, and walk in front of traffic coming the other way? Looking at the photo, they had to walk a reasonable distance and cross a safety barrier to reach the other lane.

Technology company offers novel way for accommodation providers to fix prices.

This is what happened with a similar company in the US: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/rental-housing-market-doj-investigation-00147333

cross-posted from: https://toast.ooo/post/3740832

turns out I did my math wrong, so it’s a little less than 30 days

July 12th, 2024 @ midnight EDT

https://canvas.fediverse.events

✨ this year’s event also supports the entire fediverse not just Lemmy!

(you have to be able to make/receive text posts, like mastodon, lemmy, pixelfed, etc) (peertube accounts will not work)

you can get update announcements on other fedi platforms with @canvas@fediverse.events link

chat about Canvas on Matrix or Discord (they’re bridged)

Super cool. I was excited to see Frankie Adams in the cast, loved her in the expanse. But was even more excited to see Rena Owen as Gramma Tala....perfect casting.

Hi everyone, can we do a Photo Friday?

@sortofblue@lemmy.nz used to post them, but I haven't seen them for ages and @Dave@lemmy.nz said it'd be okay.

Theme: Something you like!

Rules: no NSFW and has to be a snap you took yourself.

Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

The infrastructure minister wants more private sector financing, such as public-private partnerships (PPPs), to pay for major projects.

In a speech to Local government New Zealand on Thursday night, Chris Bishop said he wanted government grant funding to become a last resort for councils.

"Infrastructure has to be paid for and at the moment, it's largely paid for by the Crown - which is taxpayers - or it's paid for by ratepayers. And what we're saying is that user-pays has a role to play here as well. Things like water metres, things like congestion pricing in our major cities and things like toll roads.

House values continue to fall, with some main centres seeing an increase in the rate of decline.

The latest QV House Price Index shows home values fell by a national average of 0.2 percent over the three months to the end of May, which was down slightly from the 0.1 percent quarterly growth reported in April.

The average house value was sitting at $923,713, which was 3.9 percent up on the year earlier, though 13 percent down from the peak in late 2021.

Auckland led the market down with a 1.4 percent drop in quarterly values for the fourth month in a row.

A recent Master's thesis has found a Milford Sound tsunami - triggered by a landslide - may leave no survivors, with as many as 3500 dying if the wave hits during the peak of the tourist season.

The new modelling, which builds on more than a decade of research, shows the best chance of survival relies on people running for higher ground before the shaking stops.

The best-case scenario shows 5.2 percent of people would survive the wave, and in this case the tsunami would have to hit at night, during the winter offseason, when only a few hundred people would be in the area.

Edited title to make it sound less like there was just a tsunami and everyone died.

When can we get this?

The study of New Zealanders' travel habits found that total weekly travel emissions were 79% higher for people in affluent areas compared to those living in lower socio-economic areas.

Olsen said while it is normal for New Zealanders to leave the country, it will be harder to convince people to return, if there are ongoing issues around housing affordability and job prospects.

That ‘brain drain’ could pose problems for society as the population ages, Olsen said.

“We need to have as many young people as we can who are still part of the economy … who are being innovative and bringing their new thinking to the game so we can be more productive,” he said.

“If we are losing our young talent and we’re not able to attract them back it makes all of [that] so much harder.”

A man has been shot by police after he hit one of them with a vehicle, and another remains on the run, after a raid in South Auckland.