It follows Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Education Minister Erica Stanford's selling their new maths policy at the National Party conference over the weekend, claiming just 22 percent of Year 8 students were at the expected standard for maths.

However, Aotearoa Educators Collective on Monday raised concerns the 22 percent figure was not comparing apples with apples because it was benchmarked against a new curriculum which was not yet being taught to Year 8 children.

"The original implementation of the refreshed curriculum was to begin in 2026, with a logical expectation that, as students moved through the school years, their maths achievement would be advancing. Year 1 students starting with the refreshed curriculum in 2026 would be in year 8 in 2033," AEC spokesperson Prof Jodie Hunter said.

"We question the use of data based on assessments where student tasks are based on a curriculum that is not being taught.

"The result of around only one in five students working at the appropriate curriculum level in Year 8 seems questionable given it contradicts previous national and international studies, including NMSSA, TIMMS, and PISA, which all show higher levels of student achievement."

Cryogenic burst test of a Neutron stage 2 test tank last October.

This crucial test involved filling the tank with liquid nitrogen & pressurizing it to expected flight pressures, then pushing it all the way to failure to test extreme tolerances.

https://x.com/SpaceOffshore/status/1819097810517586100

Rocket Lab is currently hiring for numerous marine positions related to the development of the Neutron rocket landing barge. The available roles include:

• Marine Operations & Logistics Lead
• Recovery Engineers (II, Senior, and Lead)
• Marine Commodity Managers (Supply Chain)

https://www.rocketlabusa.com/careers/positions/

Interesting that Rocket Lab is now considering barge landings for Neutron. This contrasts with one of the early concept videos where they stated that Neutron would always RTLS (return to launch site), and not land on a barge.

Wasn't expecting to read that headline today.

Croatia and Slovenia are ahead on the Gold medals per capita ranks, but we're top for total medals.

Five people have been rescued after their boat capsized in the Manukau Harbour.

The Coastguard said the incident happened near Puketutu Island about 8.20am on Saturday.

The Police Eagle helicopter, Coastguard units from Titirangi and Papakura and Auckland Airport's hovercraft helped to get the boaties out of the sea.

Just wow!

What a psycho.

Looking at the photos, it definitely looks like a body from a distance, I don't blame anyone for making that mistake.

Told you !!!!

Hayden Wilde had hoped it would come down to this. Just him and his long-time friend and rival, Alex Yee of Great Britain, duking it out on the run leg on the picturesque streets around Paris for the Olympic triathlon title.

Just 400m from the finish line alongside the gilded columns on the Pont Alexandre III, Yee summoned one last push to streak past the Kiwi. Wilde could not respond.

"I was just depleted. I was gone. I was done. I had nothing left and I just had to survive to get to the finish line," Wilde says of that moment Yee ran past him to snatch the gold from his grasp.

The New Zealand Herald’s publisher NZME says it should have employed more “journalistic rigour” when it used artificial intelligence tools to create an editorial that appeared in the Weekend Herald, online and in regional papers recently.

Truncated sentences and repetition of key words appeared characteristic of generative AI applications like ChatGPT.

The Black Ferns Sevens have won New Zealand's first medal of the Paris Games with a 19-12 victory over Canada in the final.

We live next to two kiwi fruit orchards, and have just had messages saying they’ll be spraying Hi Cane soon. They do give us at least 24hr advanced notice. It’s potentially dangerous stuff, we will not go out of the house during any spray time.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18104463

Air New Zealand has abandoned a 2030 goal to cut its carbon emissions, blaming difficulties securing more efficient planes and sustainable jet fuel.

The move makes it the first major carrier to back away from such a climate target.

The airline added it is working on a new short-term target and it remains committed to an industry-wide goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

The aviation industry is estimated to produce around 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which airlines have been trying to reduce with measures including replacing older aircraft and using fuel from renewable sources.

Owl For One, One For Owl

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-08-02 16:39 | |

|

| | Scheduled for (NZST) | 2024-08-03 04:39 | | Launch site | Rocket Lab LC-1B, Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | | Booster recovery | No | | Launch vehicle | Electron + Curie | | Customers | Synspective | | Payload | StriX satellite | | Mission success criteria | Successful deployment of spacecraft into desired orbit |

Livestreams

| Stream | Link | |

|

| | Rocket Lab (official) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdikUDvKYmc | | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svnhIFuI4ro |

Stats

• This will be the 9th launch for Rocket Lab this year.
• This will be the 51st overall launch for Rocket Lab.

Payload info:

Rocket Lab mission page

NextSpaceflight:

StriX Launch 5

This is the first of a bulk buy of two Electron launches by Synspective to deliver their StriX satellites to low Earth orbit. StriX satellites can collect data with a ground resolution of 1-3m and a swath width of more than 10-30km. Each Electron launch will deliver 1 StriX satellite into orbit. This will be the overall 5th StriX satellite launched by Rocket Lab for Synspective.

Previous mission: No Time Toulouse

Next mission: A Sky Full Of SARs

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!

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 truth is, political parties probably aren't getting a whole lot more in donations than they have in the past. It's just that they're now required to tell us much more about what's coming in.

For the first time, parties have been required to report on the value of donations they received under $1500 where the donor was known. Previously, they only needed to report on the value of anonymous donations of this value. This new reporting rule has brought to light huge amounts of donation cash which had previously been hidden to the public.

Victoria University of Wellington senior lecturer Max Rashbrooke said the change to require reporting of these smaller donations closed a "baffling loophole" which left people guessing how much parties had in their bank accounts to campaign with.

Rashbrooke said it also put a misconception to bed. "There was always a view that the playing field was a bit more level than it might seem," he said. "Because it might seem that National out-fundraises Labour massively in the big donations, but the argument was always made that Labour did very well in the small donations."

In fact, it was National, not Labour, that dominated the small donation rankings in 2023. Out of National's $10.3m donation total, $4m came from 44,000 smaller donations of less than $1500. Labour raised less than $3m from smaller donations.

This is just an amazing series of events, with the greens now being forced to threaten to use the Waka Jumping legislation in order to try and make her do the right thing.

Just changed my theme to Vaporware dark, it is really funky.

I really like the monospaced font and retro-futuristic look.