Spyke

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Teacher struck off after refusing to use student's pronouns

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.

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Reddit CEO: We're Sticking With API Changes, Despite Subreddits Going Dark

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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.

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So that's it r/newzealand?

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.

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I know they're pests and we're supposed to hate them, but it's hard not to love our resident hedgehog

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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.

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Gangs to face 'tougher consequences' under National Party Government - Christopher Luxon

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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A football pitch in the valley below Aoraki / Mount Cook created for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023

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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.

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I know they're pests and we're supposed to hate them, but it's hard not to love our resident hedgehog

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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.

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Newsable: Why are firearm owners so against the new gun registry?

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