SamC

@SamC@lemmy.nz

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SamC,

Yes, but apart from the by-election, it won’t give them any extra seats in parliament. They’ll lose list MPs if they gain electorate MPs, so the overall totals will stay the same.

SamC,

A little bit worried with some of the rhetoric from both NZF and National around elections. Seems like they want to reduce voting rights “because it takes too long to count the votes”. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the fact the later votes tend to go against them…

SamC,

Thanks, might try it out for a while. Voyager is great on mobile (and there’s now an app on FDroid), but don’t really like it on desktop. The official Lemmy web interface is a bit… limited.

SamC,

By “limited” I just meant the UX is not the greatest. It has all the functions though.

SamC,

I cannot begin to express how little I care about this story.

SamC,

I think generative AI can be a very useful tool. But I don’t see it transforming society. Smart phones have had and will continue to have a much bigger impact than this iteration of AI. Partly because of some of the drawbacks (hallucinations, difficultly improving and even maintaining quality of responses, cost and energy impacts of usage), but also just that there are a finite and fairly narrow set of use cases where it really makes a difference. Within those use cases it might change a lot, but I don’t think that will cascade into other areas, significantly.

SamC,

In the series before the WC, Sodhi got mankadded against Bangladesh, but Liton Das (who was captain at the time) called him back.

Shakib needs to learn a bit of class from his team mates.

SamC,

Yes, I support open source and open science (which have some overlap). I’m pragmatic where necessary, but use OSS whenever I can. I have to use Windows for work reasons, but Linux for everything else.

SamC,

I’m sure Act had previously said the will refuse to work with NZF so coalition agreements may take some time

My suspicion is we’re about to see that a lot of what Seymour says is bluster. He’s also threatened to sit on the cross-benches and only support the government vote by vote. I doubt very much he’ll stick to that, but we’ll see I guess.

Either way, Act are potentially setting themselves up to fail. They’ve promised a lot, but probably won’t be able to deliver on much of it (e.g. treaty referendum, much weaker climate policy). Minor coalition partners can find themselves badly punished by voters if they’re not careful. Greens have managed to do a good job in recent years, but Act may not be able to do the same.

SamC, (edited )

Biggest disappointment is turnout. 72% is the lowest of the MMP era by a long way…

I also love how Luxon kept saying “The special vote counting is taking too long! Wah!” and now he’s like “This is very serious, we need to take our time forming a government”… classic upper management 🤣

Edit: the RNZ article is possibly wrong about turnout, I think it’s 78.2% (they said 72.8%)… can’t find the official figure though.

SamC,

TPM are a very different party than they were during the Key era. It would be very difficult for National & TPM to work together on anything but a handful of issues. It would probably be easier for National to work with the Greens.

SamC,

Another election is also possible, and I’d say more likely than NZF going with labour. NZF will come around eventually to a deal with National. They know the alternatives could be bad for them. Same for Act

SamC,

I’ve been dealing with something along these lines with a UK bank account. It’s been a long time since I lived in the UK, but it’s useful to maintain an account there. But for reasons I don’t fully understand, they decided to make my account “dormant”, even though there was money going into it within the last 12 months. This is a thing in the UK they’re allowed to do, and eventually the government can claim the money. In principle, it’s a good idea, because the govt can make use of money that’s otherwise sitting around doing nothing. But in my case (and I’m sure many other’s cases) it’s been very frustrating.

You can’t do much without going into a branch, which is not helpful since I don’t plan going to the UK any time soon. So I’ve spent a lot of time on calls with them figuring out what I need to do… I sent them everything I thought they needed… but, my application got rejected. At least now they’ve sent me clearer instructions, so hopefully I can get it right this time. But I’ll probably have to have another call with them to check, and then there’s time to collect the documents, have them certified, and send it out (and then wait a few months until they actually process it).

Gotta love bureaucracy! It’s definitely not as bad in NZ as in a lot of other countries.

SamC,

It doesn’t have to be about the public being dumb, just that the public doesn’t have the time/inclination to engage fully with complex political issues that don’t really affect their life. People might also be happy to vote for something to reduce minor inconvenience or cost to themselves, that has massively detrimental affects on others.

As a thought experiment: should we allow a referendum on whether a majority ethnic group should be allowed to enslave a minority ethnic group? If most people voted purely on their own interests, that referendum could be won by the majority, even though it would infringe on human rights. Obviously, that’s an extreme example, but the point is not everything should go to referendum.

SamC,

I guess it’s November 😐

SamC,

OK, let’s get a protest movement going

SamC,

Did not know about the Whēkau / Laughing owl… twice the size of a Ruru!

SamC,

Pretty hard to understand a lot of the reffing decisions, and that was what decided the match… the major one obviously being Cane’s card getting upgraded but Kolisi’s wasn’t

Definitely reminded me why I got bored of watching rugby… so many of the big matches get decided by the officials

SamC,

Agreed, the TMO even acknowledged he fell on the player’s leg. It’s a full contact sport, people are going to fall over. Maybe a penalty was justified, but a card is ridiculous, even if that’s what the rules said.

This turned out to be pretty prophetic (unfortunately): rnz.co.nz/…/a-red-card-could-ruin-the-rugby-world…

SamC,

Didn’t stay up, but was a fantastic match. Doesn’t really hurt our chances of making the semis either…

SamC,

Sometimes, I feel like we’ve really lost our way as a species…

SamC,

I find it fairly easy to make “casual” friends, and I have a few different things I do to catch up with people. Not so easy to make good friends, and the close friends I have I don’t get around to seeing too often (everyone’s pretty busy)…

Group chats can be quite a cool thing these days if you manage to get some going… I’ve got a group of friends in various places around the world who I chat with on Signal…

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