Last 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 prime minister and social development minister have offered an apology to thousands of pensioners who did not receive their Winter Energy Payment this year, after an error in a law change meant people who were supposed to get the payment missed out.

The law change, passed under urgency last year, has meant beneficiaries receiving certain payments like the Supported Living Payment, Accommodation Supplement, and Disability Allowance have had to re-confirm their circumstances at least once every 52 weeks, to confirm whether they are still eligible.

However, the Winter Energy Payment, which is supposed to be automatic for superannuitants, veterans, and people receiving a main benefit, were not excluded from the legislation, meaning some people who would have expected to receive the payment did not.

Labour said it is the consequence of rushed legislation, but Social Development Minister Louise Upston is blaming it on a policy omission.

The Post has reported the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) had started to receive complaints, with the ministry working around the clock to correct the error and ensure the correct amounts were backpaid.

The Ministry of Social Development said between 1 May and 7 August, 14,862 superannuitants and veterans had their Winter Energy Payments affected.

My selected quotes:

The Opportunity Party is vowing to "clean up politics" by regulating lobbying and reforming political donations.

It would look to cap political donations and establish an independent anti-corruption body to centralise and coordinate action against corruption.

The underlying principle of the policy was simple, she said.

"New Zealanders should be confident that political decisions are made in their interests, not because somebody has the biggest cheque book or the best access to a minister.

In order to regulate lobbying, the party would introduce a Political Influence and Lobbying Bill that would create a one-year cooling-off period, "closing the revolving door" between ministers, senior staff and officials, and lobbying roles.

It would also create a mandatory, public and searchable lobbying register, with quarterly disclosure of who lobbied which office-holders, as well as a statutory code of conduct for lobbyists and foreign lobbying safeguards.

The party's proposal would introduce a $30,000 cap per donor per party per electoral cycle, limit donations to registered voters, lower the public disclosure threshold to $1000 and apply advertising spending limits across the full three-year electoral cycle for parties and candidates.

The party would also establish an anti-corruption body with "investigative, prevention, and education functions, integrating and co-ordinating existing anti-corruption responsibilities".

Last 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?

Sylvia Park Mall in Auckland is in lockdown

A shop worker says they've been told a person with a gun has been seen in the area

The worker has seen armed police and police dogs

Reporter Bella Craig describes the situation from outside the mall to Checkpoint.

She says the lockdown is still in place

Shop workers told her they heard gunfire and shop keepers were told to lock their doors.

She said around 20 mins ago a fire engine was leaving with several police cars still outside.

Craig said people told her they could see people running.

Edit @4:20

Auckland City District Police said in a Facebook post that police had responded to an incident near Sylvia Park Mall this afternoon.

"The incident has concluded and there is no risk to public safety.

"There will be a continued police presence in the area as enquiries are undertaken however, the public is asked to avoid the area.

TL;DR if you haven’t already, please fill in the Lemmy.nz Census (even if your account is on another instance). Open to all. Skip any questions you aren’t comfortable answering!

This is a reminder post to please fill in the 2026 LemmyNZ census survey if you haven’t already.

You can see the previous post here.

None of the questions are mandatory. They cover questions about where you’re from in the country/world, who you are (demographic info), how you use Lemmy and the fediverse, and some extras at the end. Skip anything you’re not comfortable answering.

Everyone is welcome! If a question doesn’t apply to you then just skip it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Answer the Lemmy.nz 2026 Census

My abridged version:

When a Wellington second-hand bookstore started to get bulk book orders, owner Anne-Marie Thorby smelt a rat. A Canadian buyer was sending multiple book orders to Book Haven in Newtown, sometimes minutes apart, for niche texts on New Zealand specific subjects.

“They were local non-fiction niche books, so New Zealand local history, a tourist pamphlet on Waitomo Caves, Māori language books, New Zealand cookbooks, biographies, political cartoons, very niche - the local anglers club.”

“A $10 book could end up costing $40, so ridiculous. It had to be something else. That's when we did some sleuthing and contacted AbeBooks, their little online forum.”

These kinds of odd orders were happening around the world, she says.

“Tens of thousands of books being bought by this one company to go to a warehouse in the USA. It was India, it was Europe, it was us, and it wasn't just us in New Zealand, there were other bookshops.”

AI companies are buying these books and training their large language models, sometimes destroying books in the process. It's the only way for them to do it, she says.

“They're not recycling, they're devouring them, they're destroying them. One of the quotes from the Anthropic court case was, Project Panama - so this is from the company, from Anthropic - Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.”

When she realised what was happening, she cancelled all the orders, she says.

Her advice to fellow bookshop owners?

“Don't do it. Don't feed the machine. Pause and think.”

TL;DR I'd love if you filled in our 5 min LemmyNZ census survey so we can learn more about the people that hang out on the Threadiverse, even if you're not from NZ: https://survey.lemmy.nz/279766

LemmyNZ has done a census survey in 2024 and 2025, inspired by the Lemmy.ca instance census. We now have our 2026 survey open.

The survey is open to anyone, but we've never managed to get many responses from people outside of LemmyNZ communities since there isn't anywhere else to share it. There's Nowhere else to share.

I'd love to have a wider view of people outside of LemmyNZ, and if we can get enough responses I'll do an NZ focused results post as usual, and also a separate post here that includes everyone.

The survey does lean towards an NZ audience, for example we list all the NZ regions for people's locations but everyone else just selects a country, but overall it should allow for anyone to answer.

No questions are mandatory, only answer what you are comfortable answering. Your responses won't be counted unless you go right to the end of the survey.

Find the survey here: https://survey.lemmy.nz/279766

Last 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?

Jetstar will soon charge customers money for using overhead lockers on its aircraft, with prices starting from $23.

The Qantas-owned budget carrier said it was part of a change in its carry-on model, which included removing its 7-kilogram carry-on weight limit.

It would instead move to a size-based carry-on baggage model and a fee to use the overhead bins.

From 2 February 2027, all Jetstar bookings would include one underseat bag such as a backpack, handbag or laptop.

A person has been arrested after reports a stolen car hit a group of cyclists, with five people hurt.

A dog was also killed at the scene during the incident in the Auckland suburb of Epsom, RNZ understands.

It's understood a man allegedly stole a car before he crashed into a group of cyclists.

**Petrol station worker Manthan Patel said he heard a "crazy" sound before he witnessed a man driving a car crash into another vehicle.

He said the man then got out of the car and attacked a dog.**

"There was a guy shouting in the streets next to where I'm working.

"It seemed as though he had no pants on."

Soon after, customers told cafe staff that the man had crashed a car and punched a woman, she said.

AA research suggests the majority of drivers wouldn't score more than 70 percent in a basic road rules test. The shocking figures have prompted the association to call for optional knowledge refreshers when licences are renewed.

AA research and road safety manager Dylan Thomsen told Checkpoint it was "quite concerning" that not a single person was able to get all 24 questions in the test correct.

To gain a learners licence a theory test must be passed with 90 percent accuracy.

Thomsen said of the 535 surveyed drivers, only a handful were able to reach that mark.

Hi all!

TL;DR: If you’re reading this, please fill in the 2026 Lemmy.nz Census survey.

For the last two years we have done a census to get an idea about the people using Lemmy - both who they are and how they use Lemmy. You can see the results from 2024 and 2025.

This year we have relegated some questions to being asked every two years, and are back to hopefully 5 mins or less to complete it.

None of the questions are mandatory, so just answer what you are comfortable answering. I expect to leave this open for a while and will post some reminders to make sure we get as many responses as possible. I’ll do a results post once the results are in and I have had a chance to analyse them. I'm excited about this year, it's the third year so we might be able to graph some trends!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Answer the LemmyNZ 2026 Census

Kiri and Lou began airing in 2019, and is voiced by Liv Tennet as the feisty, emotional, little yellow dinosaur named Kiri, and dreamy, placid and purple Lou, gently played by Jemaine Clement. They’re friends in a Jurassic-era forest setting that sounds and feels like an ancient Aotearoa. The show airs on Sky NZ and TVNZ+ and each episode is a sweet 10 minutes long.

I feel like the article doesn't cover this well, but there's a claymation TV series made in NZ about a dinosaur and another seemingly unclassified creature with a long trunk. It ran from 2019 to 2024, and now there is a movie coming. It's about an hour long, aimed at preschoolers, and appears to be released to cinemas next weekend, though not every cinema website I checked had it on their upcoming list so I'm not sure how wide the release is. It seems to start to appear in schedules from 8th August.

Some quotes from the article:

ACT wants to give teachers the legal power to remove "seriously or persistently disruptive" students from a classroom.

Announcing the policy in Auckland on Sunday, ACT candidate Paul Henry said the law would give teachers clear legal protections and the power to regain "order" in the classroom.

"Let's be honest, there are a lot of little shits in classrooms, and we need to address that if we're going to lift education standards.

The current guidelines allow school staff to physically restrain students as a last resort to prevent harm. The method must also be "reasonable and proportionate".

Asked how the policy was different from the current guidelines, Henry said his party would be "very specific what that behaviour the teacher can use is".

ACT would make it so assaulting a teacher, staff member or student would cause an immediate removal and mandatory stand-down or suspension. Serious assaults would be referred to Police Youth Aid.

Parents would be required to get involved when behaviour became serious or repeated, and could be held liable for deliberate property damage caused by their child.

If a parent failed to attend a mandatory meeting without a reasonable excuse they could be fined up to $300 for a first offence and up to $3000 for subsequent offences.

Parents may also be held financially responsible for the cost of deliberate property damage caused by their child at school, which could be recoverable as a debt if unpaid.

Last 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?

Myself, @[email protected] and @[email protected] have been working on a new help site for LemmyNZ. Instead of various Lemmy posts to explain rules, donations, and FAQs, we now have:

https://help.lemmy.nz/

On this site, we have a Join LemmyNZ page that I hope does a better job of onboarding than a registration page.

I've updated various links around LemmyNZ to point to pages on this site instead of the posts that previous had the content.

If you have any feedback, let's hear it!

A strong earthquake jolted the central North Island early on Saturday.

Geonet said the 'severe' magnitude 5.9 quake happened around five kilometres southwest of Taumarunui at 4.51am.

The earthquake was nine kilometres deep and the intensity was severe.

The quake was reportedly felt across much of the North Island, including Auckland, and as far as the top of the South.

By 6am, nearly 23,000 'felt reports' had been filed to Geonet.

At least seven aftershocks, ranging between magnitude 2.7 and 3.7, followed.

Fire and Emergency said far it had recieved only a sprinkler-related callout stemming from the big quake.

There is virtually no bridge too far for the man behind the new Hooker Valley suspension bridge at Aoraki Mount Cook.

The marvel of design and modern engineering is due to open next week and replaces the old one that closed due to erosion caused by storms in April last year.

It spans 189 metres across the Hooker River, making it the longest suspension bridge in the country.

Last 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?