After 5 years work, Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Dark Sky Park is near Whakatū (Nelson) at the top of the South Island:
International Dark Sky Association has recently accredited Wai-iti Recreation Reserve and Tunnicliff Forest.
Because a 10 year old saw an aurora. 👍 🌌
Another excellent (re)read of a Cari Hunter book: A Quiet Death (Dark Peak Book 3). 📚 Very difficult subject matter: sex trafficking, but well-handled. Now I want to buy more by this author, but first I’d better read other books I already own but haven’t yet started. 📚
I bought a new 4TB portable hard drive to replace the 1TB model that no longer seem sufficient for Time Machine backups. I’m now about 5 hours in on copying the backup from one drive to the other. I suspect there’s a week or two to go yet…
I think Tauhou are one of my favourite birds. I put up a bird feeder near the front door a couple of days ago, and three have been visiting off and on all day. Photo through the window. 🐦
Kiwis, and others with an interest in Te Reo Māori, the podcast: Everyday Māori has mainly short episodes with very clear and useful info.
Helping you to learn and speak everyday Māori, every day. Hei āwhina i a koe ki te ako me te kōrero i te reo Māori o ia rā, i ia rā.
Well, that was an interesting 28 minutes: Allusionist 118. Survival: Bequest
Europeans … imposed cisgender monogamous heterosexuality on Māori as if there had never been anything else … Māori culture had included myriad sexual orientations, gender fluidity and polyamory. 🏳️🌈
Another excellent (re)read: Cold to the Touch by Cari Hunter. 📚📚
how can she investigate a crime when no one cares about the victim? And how can she stop a killer who has no identity, no motive, and no conscience?
Turns out I really like this author.
This Micro Monday I suggest @vanessa who often walks with her dog in some very lovely places.
We drove to Wellington yesterday. Just north of Peka Peka traffic slowed and we passed several each of cop cars, ambulances and fire engines. It looked like a car had rolled and at least one person was being cut out. Later a helicopter came apparently. It was all very sobering.
The Daily Quake. 〰️ Just a little ‘wave’ preceded by a sort of click then clunk like a door closing. Weak earthquake occurred 15 km north-west of Paraparaumu. Magnitude 2.9.
Perspective matters so much.
Scared to Death had passages describing a female victim from the male captor’s perspective, including his sexual arousal. Very disturbing. Yuk!
No Good Reason had a female captive escaping, told from her point of view. That was empowering. 📚
No Good Reason (The Dark Peak Series Book 1) by Cari Hunter was a darn good mystery story. As it was apparently the first time I read it. I was surpised when my Kindle told me I’d already read it, but I did recall bits and pieces as I went along. Excellent read — both times. 📚
Ok, I got a bit ranty but some days the injustice is just too much. ♀
Pink hair has nothing to do with online abuse!
Dr Siouxsie Wiles is an Associate Professor and head of the Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab at the University of Auckland. She's also a hero of Aotearoa New Zealand's reponse to the Covid-19 pandemic, communicating extremely clear facts and opinion about what's been going on.
Thanks to her collaboration with artist Toby Morris we've read brilliant articles with amazing illustrations that helped us understand how to beat the virus.
As of 04 July 2020 there is no community transmission of the virus in this country. That took the combined efforts of our population of 5 million, stunningly good leadership and superb science communication.
So it's infuriating to not only see that Dr Wiles has suffered extreme (but all too common) online abuse, but that anyone can even hint that it's anything to do with how she is as a woman, rather than the fact that she is a woman. So this is well-meaning but way off track:
Australian political scientist Jessica Megarry, who has spent years studying the online abuse of women, says part of the problem is that we expect women to look a certain way.
"It's hard to win this, right? if you're too feminine – if you're too stereotypically attractive – you're going to be ridiculed on that basis. If you're not feminine enough, you're going to be ridiculed on that basis."
It's not about how people expect women to be. It's about silencing women. Full stop.
Wiles' University of Auckland colleague, physicist Shaun Hendy…
"In general, the online abuse is often targeted at women or minority groups, and the white males like me generally get an easier ride," says Hendy.
"She's an extrovert, she's got pink hair, she really stands out, and I think that really annoys some people... You often see her being accused of attention-seeking, when actually she's just doing her job."
It's not about the pink hair or standing out. It's about her being a woman.
Women who go online get abused. Women who don't go online get abused. Women get abused.
Covid-19 has been and still is a global threat to everyone, and we have rightly taken extreme measures to defend against it. It's far from the only global pandemic though. Try an online search for covid-19 domestic violence
and you'll quickly see that everywhere the existing problem of violence against women has been escalated by those measures. Just as domestic violence increases during the Christmas break and at other times when families are pushed together.
There are also global problems of poverty and many other issues, of course, none of which have fared well, but there is one single division of people of every race, skin colour, age, economic status, religion or any other characteristic that you can think of, and that is into male and female. These days there is increasing understanding that that division is way more complex than has ever been imagined before, but it is still the most fundamental division in all our societies.
And wherever you look, whenever you look, women suffer abuse.
It's not a matter of pink hair, or body shape, or expertise, or any other damn thing. It's because Dr Wiles (and all the millions of other women who've ever spoken a single word anywhere) is a woman.
Bazillion dollar response? No. Shut-down society? No.
A woman's individual characteristics have nothing to do with online or offline abuse. It's because we're women.
Aotearoa New Zealand has now had
41 consecutive months in which the temperature has not slipped more than 0.5ᵒC below the long-term (1981-2010) average. And of those 41 months, 20 have had above average temperatures and 21 have been near average.
I like warm, but this is bad.
Oh dear, I can see why this spammer needs to blackmail folks. Sorry your ‘a' key isn’t working fellow, but I won’t be sending you any hush money.
Today I finally managed a shot of the goose that lives along the road a bit.
My favourite notice at the vet clinic.
My camera feels so wrong with the 16–50mm zoom, but here are two photos of snow on more southern parts of the Tararuas. One at 16mm and the other zoomed to 50mm.
