Raffe Smith

I really enjoyed the book when I read it earlier this year on your recommendation. Pleasantly surprised by the humour too.

*coughs*

"software architect"

To show good faith and be useful they should pivot to campaign constructively (no pun intended) for a replacement bridge. An at grade crossing will be a worse urban outcome.

Heh. Completely forgot about Red Orchestra as it was to play with a friend but then found it wasn't for me. Still bought physical media, plus 2 kids in this timeframe explains the 6 year span. But does include two of my favourite games of all time (Civ5 & Cities Skylines).

Institutional trauma after the warning failures of Cyclone Gabrielle - they are now hyper sensitive and the threshold for issuing warnings has dropped.

Sq south elevation needs to work properly in a public way. Maybe in a few years after the CRL midtown station helps bring more life to the area there will be renewed interest and something non-bad could happen.

I would not be sad to see this building be redeveloped, despite the early 2000s nostalgia from some out there. On the other hand I don't see the path forward to a good replacement in this political-economic state - Council does not have the capacity (or even interest) to steer it and the Aotea 1/

Never had this at home but played at mate's place late into the night on a number of occasions. Thoroughly engrossing.

Also this sad story:
Coroner finds cinema barrier too low - NZ Herald share.google/aal9Dy6GMJy9...

Silo is good fun too.

When walking into PBTech on Queen St in Auckland, Stephen Fry was walking out. He gave me a withering & despairing look at my double take when I recognised him.

My pet theory is that rates are like a bill or direct debit, you notice when you have to pay. PAYE is much more frictionless. I also think this makes a mooted wealth tax much less viable as for many there will be no liquidity at time of payment. Estate and capital gains taxes would be simpler.

I feel like giving Hipkins too much credit in one week must be some sort of portent, but he got it kinda right on MR yesterday when he argued that we should decide what level of govt service the NZ public expect and want, and then debate how to fund it - which is the opposite from current discourse.

Nah, it's Alvar Aalto up here mate...

Agree with this. They have decided to focus, for good or ill, on the matters that currently have political salience. For example I for one would like climate policy to regain the salience it had pre-covid, but that will take work from across the CL. We can criticise them if they don't do that work.

If using a tool does not create the outcome you expect or desire, then it is likely that human error is at fault. There is a cognitive relationship and the human can learn and adjust the use of the tool accordingly.

I've had this conversation with people. I use a tool analogy: using a tool should provide a predictive outcome and there is direct feedback between user and tool so the user can adjust. This can be a physical or digital tool. AI makes this relationship opaque & inconsistent, so why would I use it?

Homestar standards for level 7+ require solar heat gain calculation and if this creates overheating & high cooling demand/energy, mitigation through design. This is of course optional and needs to be folded into the building code. Should have been done at the same time as insulation was.

Not to worry, Civilization 7 (VII) (Seven!) comes out next month, which feels like another mile marker down the road...

I recently watched Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny (from 2023) and I consciously thought that the filmmakers were making a deliberate point of having as many Nazis punched as possible, that these were indeed Nazis, Nazis are bad and punching them is good. It also felt sadly anachronistic.

Also, name a better 7 year period for music than 77 to 83.

Definitely a thing. Previous workplace had Gen X owners and Millennial younger staff. I was in the middle and did not fit in either group.

I feel there is a book to be written about the mishandling of LR by the last govt. My sense is we didn't have the expertise, so bad advice begat bad political decisions. I feel it was engineer run, hence the embiggering without client pushback on cost, and poor conception of how people would use it.

Yes - it is a tragedy how much industry capacity and expertise we have lost in the last 18 months.

I know! The tunneled LR was a bad project at those estimated costs however. For eg an underground station at Kingsland might have been a billion as it would need to accommodate capacity for Eden Park, all the fire exits, circulation, heavy rail interchange - would req digging up a city block!

All answers are bad sadly. My view is that SLR will come back as the logic and need is compelling, but expect we will build it at 2030s costs rather than 2010s.

Yes: patrol, ASW, AS&R, disaster relief should be key req. And assets that can defend themselves against modern ASM. No point in offensive capability, blue water assets will have low % survival in a hot war. It won't be like the Pacific theatre in WW2.

Yes, they would have swung our costs higher!

Not disputing the clear fact that our costs are too high, but the data for NZ could well come from one project: CRL.

I feel weirdly sorry for the editor having to wade through that amount of slop.