oh and the "Luxon stays on" scenario has the National coalition losing the election

So what's peoples guesses on the outcome of the National caucus meeting? My two guesses:

* Luxon rolled by Bishop who will lead National to election victory
* Luxon stays on, Bishop ousted, he leaves and ends up standing for Opportunity instead, wins, brings Opportunity into parliament

57.7% of NZers, 2.9 million people, can reach public transport within a 10-minute walk. Auckland hits 87.8%. The govt's new fuel subsidy targets 143,000 families. Free fares could reach 20x as many. NZ has the access. What's the argument against?

Why can't they have a direct service go from my door directly to precisely where I want to go, for free? Because it's all about me

You can't lug a utefull of tools and gear on the bus, even though I don't have any tools

I'm allergic to walking

What if someone on the bus looks at me funny

Why you don't let an algorithm pick the photo to go with your news article...

Oops the photos are out of sequence. The single bird was there first, joined by its partner in the subsequent shots.

Two small grey and yellow birds on a branch. Rail lines and a platform in the background, out of focus. The birds are snuggling together, facing away from the camera.

Two small grey and yellow birds on a branch. Rail lines and a platform in the background, out of focus. The birds are snuggling together, facing away from the camera. In a slightly different position from the previous photo

Two small grey and yellow birds on a branch. Rail lines and a platform in the background, out of focus. The birds are snuggling together, facing away from the camera. The birds are snuggling more closely than the earlier photos

Two small grey and yellow birds on a branch. Rail lines and a platform in the background, more in focus than before and zoomed out revealing it to be Newmarket Station, as it was in January 2003. The end of a ramp is visible to the right, a re-used bus shelter in the dark gray asphalt island platform. Some signage with graffiti is visible.

Cute photos I just found that I took in 2003, look at these two 🥹

View of Auckland city centre across the harbour. In the foreground is tidal mud and a boat is on a 45 degree angle. Two people are standing off to its right. A speech marker has been added to one of the people with the text "Can't park there, mate"

Golden Auckland city sunset shot, taken from the top of Forrest Hill towards the city centre from 10km distance. Dark shadows of suburbia and trees in the lower past of the photo already in the shadow of hills off-camera to the right/west, the city centre in the middle in soft focus due to atmospheric blur, Maungawhau behind the Skytower, other city centre buildings visible including the still-incomplete Seascape and its crane, all lit on their right hand side from the setting sun. Further left, a tiny Maungakiekie and its obelisk are just visible. The sky is an orangey-brown.

Next day: much better

You also miss out on a lot of the EV advantage if you are unable to charge at home or equivalent

Map screenshot of route 147 from AnyTrip.com.au with a rough sketch of an idea for an extention from Waitakere Township, up to Taupaki, and then east to Westgate.

Hey @hendowest.bsky.social during transport debate with a Taupaki local on Desley Simpson's Facebook page, I came up with a random idea that bus route 147 would be real handy to that town and others if extended past Waitakere township, thru Taupaki, to the new Westgate Station. What do u think?

We were due to sell the older of our two EVs (2011 Leaf with 45km range, probably just 40 by end of this winter) - that's on hold.

More bus and active transport too, for sure.

Ok so it will come down to fuel cost vs time cost for you - with a commute of that distance, not sure what more can be done about that

What's your drive commute time?

In my experience journey planners exaggerate the transfer time from NX1 to train due to unused fat in the NX timetabled arrival time.

What about time cost clawbacks - can you tick off some life admin tasks, read etc while on train + AIR bus (seat pretty much guaranteed in counter-peak direction)?

Screenshot of part of Auckland's present day (2026, pre-CRL) schematic network map with an arrow pointed at the airport.

here?

The same shot as the previous post, with hue, contrast, white balance and colours mostly corrected, but still noisy and looking faded.

This is the above image cleaned up, but still not great. Looks like reviews of this camera say it's difficult to take a good photograph with it.
Challenge accepted, I'm going to try and learn how to actually learn this thing properly!

A photo taken by the SP-500UZ camera described in the previous post. Shows some bush and houses in the foreground, with the Auckland city centre buildings behind. The image and colours are terrible - washed out blue, hazy, and noisy.

I only had a few mins free time to quickly grab some practice cityscape shots from the top of Forrest Hill, didn't notice the camera had some settings wrong (ISO too high at 200, white balance set to indoor) and the shots were terrible. Atmospheric haze didn't help either.

Foreground of this photo shows a 2007-era Olympus SP-550UZ camera mounted on a miniature tripod with the strap dangling around it. In mid-shot is lawn, and in distance downhill is suburbia followed by a somewhat hazy and very small view of the Auckland city centre 10km distant. The shot was taken from Greville Reserve in Forrest Hill on the North Shore, but the topography means you cannot see any of Waitemata Harbour. The camera that took this photo is an even older Olympus Camedia C-70Z from 2004.

Front view of a silver coloured 2004-model Olympus Camedia C-70Z compact camera, sitting on a fake-wood desk. The camera has a number of signs showing its age including some scratches around the lens telescope edges and a slightly worn rubber grip. The photo of the other camera was taken with this camera.

Suddenly finding myself interested in (but not very good at!) digital photography, which began as a side-quest of ditching my smartphone but I'm finding interesting (yet challenging). Picked a couple of cameras up off Trademe lately

Photo of a black Dell Latitude E4300 laptop from 2009, on a shelf in front of a white wall. Bits of cables and one other white piece of equipment at the edge of a photo (unidentifable, but those who read the alt text would find out it's a Mikrotik router). Photo taken with an even older digital camera.

I just realised the laptop that primarily drives my home automation (amongst other things) is now 17 years old. Still going pretty well!

Can we have the social media services but without the (whether intentionally so or not) manipulative algorithms that drive both extremism and addiction?

The phone from the previous images out of its box, flipped open and just powered on. The bottom half has a white T9 physical keypad which has twelve buttons - numbers 1-9, star, 0, and hash. Above that the colour changes from white to black with a small panel with some more buttons, then the flip hinge, and above that the display showing a clock that is not set yet, showing 00:00 as the time.

The same now flipped closed. The bottom half is white and shows the NOKIA logo, the top half is black and has a smaller screen showing 11:58 as the time.

Going for something simple - I'll be leaving the social media to devices that deliberately do *not* fit in my pocket.
Nice to have a phone with a bit of design style too, not just a glass box.

A photo of a semitransparent plastic box with a black rectangular object inside. What the object is is unclear due to the plastic only being semitransparent.

A photo of a box with cardboard and semitransparent sections. The right side has an image of a flipped-open flip phone with a sample image on the screen. The semitransparent plastic side reveals the side of the phone, flipped closed.

New fone, who dis?

This is actually brilliant

www.stuff.co.nz/society/3609...

Why is there a bus stop here? A small-town mystery with a surprisingly complex answer A mystery bus stop outside a Featherston shop has confused drivers for years.

My customers should be able to park right outside my shop. What, you expect them to walk a few metres? What even is walking?

Also: bus users can just walk to the next stop.

www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

That comma 😅 - screams out "yeah, we know"

Framegrab from Arcane season 1 Episode 3, Vi with pink hair to the left, back to the audience, putting her hand to her younger sister Powder's cheek lovingly, but with a sense of foreboding that something terrible is about to happen

Finally watching Arcane, just got up to the end of S1E3 - my god I was not prepared for that. Really good - but also actually gut-wrenching and has me a little afraid to continue

Looking diagaonally from the footpath into a shop. In the foreground, a street sign for a shop called "AllAbout". The text is in a child's writing and has an image of what we are 80% sure is our cat wearing a birthday hat with a pompom. In the background, a diagonal view of a bit of the inside of the shop with a table with a pot plant on it, and some lighting. An out-of-place folded up shade umbrella sits inside because we forgot to move it. A table and two seats is visible outside the front window.

omg we finally made it! Not quite finished, but open.

Logo design by Ms 5 (done when she was 4)

Please don't plug keyboards or other devices into random USB ports, ok?

Yep - but a lot of work to do first. Gonna be a real family effort to get this space ready