It was probably someone on Micro.Blog who linked through to this, but now I want to encourage others to get the free or paid Fix The News newsletter. If you're sick of doomscrolling, find out about the good stuff going on in the world instead:
Each week, we find 30-40 stories of progress from around the world, and summarise and share them in our email newsletter.
An enormous loss when we move will be the (lack of) views. 🏡
Here we look over paddocks or greenery to the hills, or barely visible neighbours. Every window has a view.
In the new place there will be a 1.8 metre wooden fence only a short distance away.
Joss Fong and Adam Cole do such a fabulous job in their Howtown videos. Love this one about Quetzalcoatlus — You're telling me this thing could fly?:
Quetzalcoatlus, one of the largest known flying animals, survives in science as sixteen wing bones pulled from Cretaceous Big Bend
Good news at Waikawa Beach — At-risk Waikawa Beach footbridge to be replaced | The Post (paywall):
It was recommended the bridge be replaced after a recent structural assessment.
The bridge provided the only pedestrian access to the northern part of the beach and was used by residents, dog walkers and council staff doing environmental work.
At Wednesday’s council meeting, councillors voted to pay for a new suspension bridge, which could carry 20 people and would last for 50 years.
It would cost $450,000, as well as $80,000 for consenting costs and $50,000 for dismantling the old bridge.
I'm enjoying this series and the wit sometimes makes me laugh out loud.
Between my daughter Franny and the Mel and Al duet, I’d been lectured so often on the effects of fat on women my age that I did most of my fat consumption in private these days.
Five Degrees of Murder (The Cat Caliban Mysteries Book 5) by D.B. Borton. 📚
Nothing but ash remains of the victim. Can Cat Caliban solve the case before more lives go up in smoke?
The painters have been at work inside our new build at Ruakākā. 🏡 This photo from the builder puzzled me until I worked out the painters have stood up some internal doors in the main living area, presumably to make painting easier.
Meanwhile our designer sent me this photo of a worker starting to erect the fence on the south side.
The lot next door is on the market too.
I was feeling very blah and 'untethered' this morning so took a brisk 5 Km beach walk at dawn:
- morning light and walking by water lift mood
- exercise is grounding and movement shakes off low feelings
- exercise is good for health
- fresh air
- I met and chatted with a couple of people I really like.
I had no idea there was a women-only labour camp in Nazi Germany! This was a very interesting ~30 minute listen. Lynne Olson - resistance at Ravensbrück | RNZ:
Lynne Olson's new book The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück tells of defiance in a notorious women-only Nazi concentration camp.
Already well-practiced in sabotaging the Nazis in occupied France, this tight-knit group of French women joined forces in the camp to defy their German captors and keep one another alive, including staging a music show to keep spirits up.
The archaeological research (PDF) I was looking at the other day reveals that around 150 years ago:
The 1887 electoral roll lists 69 voters in the Ruakākā area, 36 of whom were gum diggers. Gumdigging was one of the principal late nineteenth century and early twentieth century occupations in the area. The activity was focussed inland on areas between Marsden Point, One Tree Point and Ruakākā, a landscape of swamp and old consolidated sand dunes where great kauri forests had once grown.
Research ahead of big projects adds to the store of our local knowledge
One of the great things about Meridian building a huge solar farm very close to our new house in Ruakākā is that first all kinds of investigations take place.
That's how I came to know that all the birds listed below have been observed within a radius of about 5 Km of our house. 🐦
As well as matuku, a number of other Threatened and At-Risk species of birds have been recorded within the Proposal site, namely, spotless crake/pūweto, dabchick/weweia, brown teal/pateke, banded rail/moho pereru, pied shag/karuhiruhi, little shag/kawaupaka, little black shag/kawau tui and pipit/pihoihoi as well as South Island pied oystercatcher/torea and Northern New Zealand dotterel/tuturiwhatu.
The white dot on the map below showing where various birds were spotted is 2 Km in a straight line from our house.
I'm specially excited that Bitterns | Matuku are in the area.
I also love the special engineering provision to help prevent cars and bittern colliding as the birds fly to a nearby location:
A 2.0 m earth bund and vegetation planted on top will ensure birds flying directly from the wetland will have sufficient height to avoid the road corridor as they will need to gain elevation to pass over the vegetated bund.
First visit to Wellington in a while and everything's so quiet — almost certainly related to this awful government hacking back civil servants, services, everything really.
I'm waiting in the Library for Deb to finish a dental procedure next door. How can anyone concentrate in these environments?
How many people can be the parents of one child?
This is interesting (my emphasis) — Polyamorous throuple fight to keep their names on children’s birth certificates - NZ Herald:
A polyamorous throuple won the right to put all three of their names on their children’s birth certificates, but have been pulled back to court after the Attorney-General appealed the decision.
… the appeal wasn’t because of the family’s sexual orientation, but simply because it wasn’t possible to have more than two people listed in the system. …
Perkins said there was international consistency used in registering information from Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and allowing this throuple an exemption simply couldn’t work.
Seems to me there are places around the world where families differ significantly from two adults and one or more children. What about places where there are multiple spouses? Surely an internationally consistent system would have to allow for more options.
This was a bit of froth I got for free — Death by the Dunes: A Pelican Shores Cozy Mystery by Bessie Barr. 📚
Nothing ruins a gorgeous coastal sunrise quicker than…a dead body.
Bystander asks a few questions, solves the mystery.
Imagine the nightmare for word-processing software if this hadn't settled down:
Like the Greeks, the Etruscans and Italic-speakers wrote from right to left at first. Later they went through a phase called boustrophedon or ‘ox-turning’, when a line written right to left alternated with one written left to right, until they plumped definitively for left to right.
Source: Proto: A New History of Our Ancient Past, Chapter 5, by Laura Spinney.
I wasn't entirely gripped by Death at Dark (Martha's Vineyard Murders Book 2) by Raemi A. Ray. 📚
a summer squall reveals the wreckage of a legendary pirate ship … Conservationists, treasure hunters and media descend on the exclusive island to lay claim to the ship.
There were interesting ideas about the conflicting needs and desires of fishers, ecologists, salvagers and the people of the island.
One quirk in this series is the author often mentions the sound of feet or shoes on the floor and the verb is always in italics:
The soles of Kyra’s flip-flops slapped the herringbone floorboards.
This was a worthwhile 7.5 minute watch from Minute Food, a useful channel — The secret loophole in food advertising:
There’s a robust system in place to protect US consumers from misleading advertising…but that doesn’t mean you should actually believe what companies say.
Spoiler: puffery.
We went sightseeing today along the newly opened Te Ahu a Turanga | Manawatū Tararua Highway:
The road features a range of mahi toi (cultural art) at lookouts, roundabouts and on bridges that have been designed by the project’s iwi partners.
There is a shared path for pedestrians, cyclists and mobility devices.
It was very impressive, with big terracing work either side of the road and the sweeping arms of the wind farm all around.
The rest areas were full, so I simply grabbed one shot from the car. The shared path was busy too, with walkers, runners and cyclists.
We visited Nanyang Flavours in Shannon which now opens for lunch.
For $15.50 I had an extremely delicious and filling Sweet BBQ 'Char-Siu' Bento:
Roasted chicken marinated in a sweet BBQ 'Char-siu' sauce served with rice, hard-boiled egg and seasonal salad with 'Charsiu' sauce dressing.
LOL, our builder said the painters are working on the inside of our new house and wouldn't let him in because he'd track in dirt and muck. I'm glad they want their work to be best quality. 🏡
Meanwhile, someone from the firm who stays at a nearby house sent me this photo of the windows all screened off. Apparently the painters spray these days rather than brush or roll.
Also, the temporary fence has been taken down.
Why Puanga is the star of this Matariki:
Māori ways of marking time are inherently place-based, whakapapa-based, and deeply rooted in the local knowledge of each hapū.
… we don’t just read the stars – we read the land, the tides, the birds, the trees and the wind. Puanga’s reappearance in the pre-dawn winter sky is just one tohu among many. It signals a time of pause, of remembering those who have passed and of planting seeds – literal and metaphorical – for what comes next.