The teacher's submissions read: "I have been accused of serious misconduct and deny this charge.

"On the contrary, I believe I would be guilty of serious misconduct and child abuse if I was to call the girl... in my year 10 class by a boy's name as I was compelled to do."

The teacher's lengthy submissions went on to quote the Bible, and make a number of other references to religion.

He also pointed out the conditions required in New Zealand for a person to legally change their name.

"Compelling me to call a girl student by a boy's name is asking me to go against my core Christian belief, the belief that is also foundational for New Zealand," the teacher's submissions read.

Wow. I bet this isn't the first problem they've had with this teacher.

the student suggested a compromise: that the teacher use his preferred name, but could use the pronouns she/her.

It's fucked up the student felt like he had to compromise at all, but then "[the teacher] refused to agree to this and said that 'he didn't want [the student] to go down the path of sin' or words to that effect". I'm glad they cancelled his registration. Poor kid.

Made in NZ Kiwi

Reddit could have charged the actual lost revenue plus a reasonable mark up. Then the 3rd party apps could have survived on a paid subscription basis, and Reddit would've made more off those users than if they'd moved to the official app.

Now a bunch of them, like us, are jumping ship instead. It was a dumb business decision. And this kind of stubborn disregard for their users is the kind of thing that destroys companies.

I love that you commented this on a post in the trees community

That seems to depend on the community or instance. I can see them on some, but not others.

Unfortunately, I think it probably means we won't see a lot of growth in Lemmy now. Shame.

There could be another big bump when 3rd party apps shut down at the end of the month. If everything's going strong here at that point, we'll probably get a fair bit of growth.

They're locally endangered in the UK, but they're considered a pest in NZ - "Hedgehogs pose one of the greatest threats to our unique and threatened ecosystems. ... Hedgehogs hoover up countless endemic birds’ eggs and chicks, lizards, and invertebrates. ... One hedgehog can cause an entire colony of endangered black-fronted terns to abandon their nests." It's a bit like how possums are valued in Aus but hated here.

Neither the hedgehog nor possum species we get here are in danger of actually going extinct. They're all on IUCN's least concern list.

I always regret opening the Daily Mail

It would be nice if this put an end to the accusations that it was the police, false flag, yada yada yada

I'm sure it won't, but it would be nice

Increasing sentences is a common knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of things, but it doesn't usually play out the way people think. Humans are complex, and longer sentences usually result in higher crime rates in society. Which seems to defeat the point.

I think a better solution would be to develop some kind of RICO Act-like legislation, with various changes to avoid some of the strange ways it's been used in the US. The RICO Act destroyed the Mob's stranglehold on America, and has been used successfully to eliminate gangs and other criminal organisations since.

Essentially it would be a law that allows leaders of criminal gangs to be charged with the actions of its members, or a prohibition on being a leader of a gang. These kinds of laws allow the police to simply establish someone is the leader then put them in jail. When they are inevitably replaced, the next leader is taken out too. As this continues, being the next leader will be very unattractive, and with the good leaders gone, the organisation falls to pieces.

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Modern Hundertwasser Koru

I just went and watched it. Would not recommend. Dolphin gang rape is not pleasant. I was laughing before, but I 100% agree with the BSA - not "G".

If you've got the same disturbing curiosity as me though, it's the last segment of this episode, starting at about 38:40.

Oh, I know. I live rurally so we get the full range of pests out here and I end up thinking the same thing.

We've got these humane possum traps that work really well, but I've had to pull live joeys out of their dead mother's pouches and smash their heads so they don't slowly starve to death. I'm a vegetarian with a lot of empathy with animals. It was not fun.

Maybe it's just that the rest of the world is going downhill faster

Absolutely. My first thought was that it could screw up the land, but the Herald article says

The full-size pitch, measuring 105x68 metres on the tussock plains of Mackenzie Country in front of Aoraki Mt Cook was created by hand over six weeks using the strictest environmental and sustainability principles to ensure the land could be restored to its pristine condition after the game.

[...] Tourism New Zealand worked with local iwi and the Department of Conservation to ensure the project respected mana whenua and had no lasting impact on the land.

A bunch of dumb reasoning here. The Council of Licenced Firearm Owners spokesperson starts with a straw man right off the bat:

The first is probably the claim that has been constantly made that bringing in this register of firearms or legal firearms is going to suddenly overnight reduce firearms crime as a whole.

I've yet to see anyone claim it will "suddenly overnight reduce firearms crime". And then he moves to:

It's the same as saying that registering cars is going to prevent all ram-raids happening.

Well no one's saying that either. And we do register cars, even though we know it won't completely stop every single problem. This "if it doesn't completely fix every problem immediately it's not worth doing" attitude is peak stupidity. It's like they don't understand the concept of improvement.

It would be really interesting to see police investing more into the sources of crime, such as mental health, to reduce crime rates.

¿Por qué no los dos? As the Firearms Safety Authority executive director says:

I think that we need to be tackling gun crime in every way that we can. So police have invested in organised crime and in a firearms investigation team. We, as the regulator of firearms, are looking at how we can stem the flow of firearms to gangs and criminals. There's not one solution to fix here. There are multiple ways that we need to be tackling the problem.

The registry is a minor inconvenience to those who are following the law. The only people who should be worried are these guys:

we do know that there is a small proportion of licence holders who were diverting legitimately purchased firearms, to criminals and gangs, and we want to stem the flow of that. And the registry will help us to do that.

Edit: A word

It's fine.

The Climate Change Commission recommended that the government sets a date to stop new gas connections. It won't affect existing gas connections and it won't affect the supply of gas. And they're not going to stop anyone using their gas bottles.

That article is a fantastic example of what I was saying:

The media’s awfully good at stirring up fear by concentrating on specific subsections of crime that are rising amidst an overall downward trend.

And look at what the article says:

Between 2017 and 2022, the number of serious assault reports increased by 121%, while reports of acts intended to cause injury went up by almost 30%.

They cherry-picked some subsection of crime and time-frame to present an impression that crime is going up, whilst conveniently saying nothing about the overall rate of serious crime.

You won't find decent statistics in the media. The long-term gradual reduction in crime rates does not fuel fear and drive clicks, so it's rarely reported on. There's enormous amounts of academic literature, but if you want a quick rundown, look at the Crime Rates section of this page.

Besides, going looking for statistics can give you false conclusions. Interpretation is complicated, and needs to be viewed in the context of things like changes in reporting and categorisation of crimes over time. For example, the article you linked to mentions that the reporting of retail crime went up significantly once the police released an app that makes it much easier to report low-level offences. That's likely where that bump came from.

In view of the complexity, it's much easier to look to experts in the field, rather than attempting to do their job better than them. I've read and heard enough from experts to know that the gradual reduction in crime since the 90s is a well-known phenomenon, and is happening in many developed countries. I'd never be able to remember their names, but there's one in that article I linked.

Read the article. Crime has been going down steadily for 20 years. The media's awfully good at stirring up fear by concentrating on specific subsections of crime that are rising amidst an overall downward trend. They've been doing this for decades, and a very large chunk of the population swallow that narrative hook, line and sinker. People will actually say things like "you can tell crime is increasing" without considering how they came to that conclusion, or that the evidence shows the opposite.

So that's the path we're on - one towards lower crime, and a better outcome for everyone. But no one is proposing that we do nothing to make things better still. It's just a case of where we put that attention. Don't we want to spend our money and effort on solutions that actually work?

There are experts who have done huge amounts of research into works and what doesn't, like the academic in that story. And yet you still find people who think they know better because "criminals can't commit crimes if they're in jail", as if that was something experts hadn't considered. I'm always surprised how many people think the first solution they can think of will be better than the findings of an expert after decades of research and consideration.