Urgh! So glad I have recent phone, laptop and watch. AI boom creating shortage of key elements for consumer technology | RNZ News:
Since the AI boom, manufacturers had pivoted away from making hardware like RAM and hard drives for general consumers - instead focusing on creating the more lucrative equipment for AI and data centers.
It was creating a shortage of key elements for phones, computers, even cars and dishwashers, prompting supply chain problems - driving up prices.
A few nights of restless sleep, not eating as well as I might, not exercising so much, and maybe still the after effects of a Covid jab a couple of days ago have led me to feeling under the weather today.
I forced myself to a very short gym session today and have been eating carefully… We'll see…
Visiting a friend today. Boo is tired out. 🐶
Our beach visit this morning was to take part with hundreds of others in a protest to Save Bream Bay Sand:
McCallum Bros are using the Fast Track process to green light its proposal to extract 8,450,000 m3 of high value marine sand for private profit.
Through the window. This morning's visitor. 🐦
March 15 [2019] taught me how to read the world:
I invite people to consider one thing: that violence rarely appears without warning. It whispers first – in speeches, in comment sections, in policies that quietly divide people into “us” and “them”. When we ignore it long enough, it shouts. …
remembrance is not only about looking backward. It is about learning how to see the present clearly – everywhere. It is recognising the sound of hatred before it grows loud enough to become another memorial– whether it arises here, or elsewhere.
- Sara Qasem
It's been a long while since the previous book in this series I enjoy, and I suspect this is the last — Something Prowling in Paradise Park (The Accidental Detective Book 7) by Kris Bock. 📚
It was a quick but enjoyable read.
three cases—all brought by friends—fall into [Kate's] lap. Squatters in a snowbird’s house, local pedigree dogs disappearing, and smash and grab burglaries at local pot shops.
The view from The Anchorage (retirement village) cafe is very enjoyable.
Covid booster jab achieved. 👍
Next up: breakfast at The Anchorage almost next door. I love living here.
I popped down to the beach on a muggy evening. It was cooler and moody down there.
I saw someone on a jet ski speed past.
I hadn't realised when I started watching The Closer on Netflix that I was using a VPN that put me in the US.
Today Netflix noticed that and declined to let me watch any more. 😫
Luckily NZ Neon has Major Crimes, the spinoff, which was also excellent. Rewatching …
Half way through The Antique Store Detective (A Bella Winter Mystery Book 1) by Clare Chase I decided to skip to the end — something I don't usually do. 📚
finding eccentric local historian Professor Oliver Barton dead in the ruins of Raven Hall is a bigger problem than she could have anticipated!
Glowing reviews abounded when I picked up this free book, but I found it not specially interesting and rather formulaic. It was as though the author had followed a set of rules for cozy mysteries.
I watched The Closer when it was first on TV a couple of decades ago and am rewatching on Netflix. 📺
The Closer is an American police procedural television series starring Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Leigh Johnson, a Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief. A CIA-trained interrogator originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Brenda has a reputation as a closer—an interrogator who not only solves a case, but also obtains confessions that lead to convictions, thus "closing" the case.
I'd forgotten how excellent the series is and how amazing Sedgwick's performances are. Really enjoying the rewatch.
This news item inspired me to book a Covid jab for Saturday — As Covid hits again, New Zealand confronts its pandemic past | RNZ News:
Another wave of Covid-19 is circulating again through New Zealand communities … in a single week, 50 hospitalisations and 19 deaths linked to the virus have been reported
That's a lot of deaths.
Just learned about this, bird lovers — Kākāpō Cam: Rakiura the kākāpō – 2026 nest 🐦.
A hidden world revealed: We’re live from the nest site of female kākāpō Rakiura on the remote, predator-free island of Whenua Hou/Codfish Island in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
This view, on a clear day, normally shows Mt Manaia behind all the yachts. Today we have drizzle.
Whew, 3.5 hours later the power's back. Now for that hot drink (water as it's too late for tea).
The power went off 2 hours ago so of course I’m desperate for a cup of tea. 😆
It's encouraging to see notices like this one up by Rainbow Falls in Kerikeri. 🐦
A huge amount of work is restoring native birds to a few areasof the New Zealand landscape.
Interesting:
Only 16% of US dairy farms are pasture-based, although some estimates put the figure at 5%. In New Zealand the dairy cows tasked with supplying milk to Fonterra are 96% pasture-fed. The yellow colour of our butter comes from the beta-carotene in grass.
Via: — Burtfield’s & Co’s salted butter is cheap, but is it any good?.