"Of course the Little Spotted Kiwi isn’t spotted very much! Otherwise, it would be called the Frequently Spotted Kiwi."

A comment at the Metafilter discussion of the RNZ article "Little spotted kiwi found on New Zealand's mainland for first time in 50 years" ("Knowing kiwi pukupuku have survived this whole time in our takiwā is incredible. We are extremely excited and looking forward to working with DOC to secure the future of kiwi pukupuku").

While I'm on the subject of New Zealand birds, let me link to this from a few days ago: "First the dire wolf, now NZ’s giant moa: why real ‘de-extinction’ is unlikely to fly": "[B]irds are harder to 'de-extinct' than placental mammals. One would need a surrogate egg to bring chicks to term, and for many moa species there are no eggs from living birds big enough to house a developing chick. In this case, artificial eggs would need to be developed.... Genetically engineering a tinamou or any other birds in this group to create a moa hybrid would be... much harder than genetically engineering a grey wolf. And in any case, this would not recreate a moa, but merely something that may look like a moa. As one critic put it, it would not have the mauri (life force) of a moa."

I asked Grok to give me more about "mauri" in this context. From the answer: "As one expert reaction put it, 'Genetic tinkering with the fundamental features of a different life force will not bring moa back,' highlighting that mauri cannot be replicated through science alone; it is an irreplaceable, holistic quality tied to the species' natural history, whakapapa, and place in the ecosystem. This critique underscores broader ethical concerns in de-extinction debates, including cultural heritage, interdependence with nature, and the limits of human intervention in restoring extinct beings."

"Blown away by the massive ordnance penetrators that have phallicized our world, female political stars seem to have disappeared off the map."

"We were promised Mamala and instead we got Mountainhead.... Why is mighty-voiced Michelle Obama relegating herself to that sappy podcast with her brother? Why are we supposed to admire 44-year-old former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, once idolized for her brave gesture of donning a hijab after a 2019 terrorist attack on a Christchurch mosque, for drippily dropping out in January 2023 because she found politics 'pretty unrelenting.'... And Gretchen 'Big Gretch' Whitmer [has]... now come out from behind the folder, but still… Meanwhile... Liz Cheney... now describes herself on X as 'proud rodeo mom, soccer mom, baseball mom, hockey mom, constitutional conservative'—in that order. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski... gives a full-throated waffle at the suggestion of daylight between her and the rest of her insane party. 'There is some openness to exploring something different than the status quo,' she said. To the barricades!"

Writes Tina Brown.

"There are basically only two major continents. Antarctica and everything else..."

"... since South America is connected to North America through Panama, North America is connected to Asia through the Bering Strait, and Asia is connected to Europe, Africa and Australia through the Urals, the Sinai and Indonesia, respectively."

From "How Many Continents Are There? You May Not Like the Answers" (NYT)(free-access link so you can read the definitions and so forth).

I've quoted the position of one geologist, but another says that there could be a third continent, Zealandia, which might not be sufficiently connected to Australia to deserve inclusion in the everything-but-Antarctica continent. There are also geologists who say 6 or 5 or 8 or 9. Just don't say 7.

"Groups of young people cruise the streets of Porirua, New Zealand, in the dead of night, their cars and bicycles stacked with high-powered speakers..."

"... designed to emit the loudest, clearest sounds. The groups, known as siren clubs, use late-night musical battles to express their identities and create community... A popular sound... is the voice of Celine Dion.... Siren clubs are made up mostly of young men, many of them in Porirua’s Pacific Islander community, known as Pasifika....They get together to modify cars and bicycles with public-address system speakers, which they call sirens. They spend hours wiring and soldering multiple sirens and amplifiers to car frames or onto bicycles.... Dion’s 'My Heart Will Go On' and 'The Power of Love' are siren club classics.... Residents calling in to report noise complaints often cannot home in on the source. And even when they can, the competitors have often taken off by the time police arrive...."

From "New Zealanders are blasting Celine Dion until 3 a.m., leaving some miserable/‘Siren battles’ in the streets are driving some residents crazy" (WaPo).

Porirua Mayor Anita Baker is quoted praising the Pasifika in the manner one expects from mayors:  “They’re an awesome community. They love music, they love dance, they love church. They’re a really close-knit community … and that’s what we love about Porirua. We have such diversity here.” 

"We unearthed this hunk of tuber, and we thought to ourselves, ‘what is this? Was it some sort of a strange fungal growth?'"

"...recalled Colin Craig-Brown, 62.... 'It looks like a big tumor. A great big bumpy gross looking thing.' Eager to identify the strange growth, Colin bravely executed a taste test... After swirling the bite around in his mouth, he turned to his wife and confidently said: 'Honey, it’s a bloody potato!'... They named the potato Dug — 'because we dug him up. Plain and simple,' said Colin, adding that many media outlets have misspelled the spud’s name, calling it 'Doug' instead. The couple also made the potato its own small transport cart.... Since eating Dug would be 'sacrilege,' he continued, the grand plan is to eventually turn the potato into alcohol. 'We’ll have a wake for him, and I’ll get all my friends around, and we’ll toast him off with his own vodka'...."

From "A couple stumbled upon a 17-pound potato in their garden. It’s probably the biggest spud in the world. They’re waiting to hear from Guinness World Records about the spud they named 'Dug'" (WaPo).

"I felt that it would give women the confidence to be able to request that leave if it was required, as opposed to just being stoic and getting on with life, when they knew that they needed time, physically or psychologically, to get over the grief."

Said Ginny Andersen, the New Zealand legislator who drafted the bill discussed in "New Zealand Approves Paid Leave After Miscarriage/The measure, believed to be among the first in the world, would apply to couples who lose a pregnancy at any point" (NYT). 

Ms. Andersen added that she had not been able to find comparable legislation anywhere in the world. “We may well be the first country,” she said, adding, “But all the countries that New Zealand is usually compared to legislate for the 20-week mark.” 

The new law does not apply to abortions, Ms. Andersen added. New Zealand decriminalized abortion last year, ending the country’s status as one of the few wealthy nations to limit the grounds for ending a pregnancy in the first half.

Is New Zealand in the vanguard — or is this another manifestation of a culture that outlawed abortion until only last year? The bill highlights the importance and reality of the child that was lost, even though it never reached the age where it could have survived outside the womb. This is the stage of development where, in America, the woman has a right to end the pregnancy and the state cannot intervene to save the life of the child. 

Now, New Zealand has created a benefit that officially cares for parents who experience the early end to a pregnancy, but it excludes the parents/mothers who chose to end the pregnancy. The gesture of exclusion of the aborters means something, doesn't it? But what does it mean? 

• We don't think you have any grief that you need 3 days to get over. 
• Don't ask us to help you with this particular pain, which you chose. 
• By aborting, you declared that what was in you was not a human being, so, within your own concept of of the universe, there was no death to grieve. 
• We want you to feel bad about aborting.
  

New Zealand is trying to kill all its rats — "Predator Free 2050."

It's the non-native rat against the native birds.  When the rats first arrived — via ship in the 1200s — there were no mammals at all in New Zealand.

"To have my name associated with something so unspeakably vile has affected me in more ways than I might have shown."

"I just didn’t want to address it right away, and I didn’t want to give the terrorist any more attention. I didn’t want to make it about me. Because I don’t think it has anything to do with me. To put it plainly, I didn’t want hate to win. But it’s clear to me now — the ‘Subscribe to PewDiePie’ movement should have ended then."



From "‘I didn’t want hate to win’: PewDiePie ends ‘subscribe’ meme after Christchurch shooter’s shout-out" in WaPo.

With more than 95 million subscribers, [Felix] Kjellberg [AKA PewDiePie] long held claim to the title of YouTube’s most popular channel until recently. But as he promoted an anti-Semitic YouTube channel, produced videos that cracked dark jokes about anti-Semitism and Nazis and once yelled the n-word while playing a video game, critics raised alarms about his influence on the young and impressionable.

The “Subscribe to PewDiePie” movement evoked some of those same concerns — culminating, of course, with its invocation during the Christchurch massacre. The grass roots effort started harmlessly enough last year, with viral videos and pranks....

"He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless. And to others, I implore you..."

"... speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name."

Said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, quote in "New Zealand Is Loath to Use Suspect’s Name to Avoid Amplifying His Cause" (NYT).

"The Fake News Media..."

The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

"'I don’t really,' Trump said when asked... whether white nationalists were a growing global threat. 'I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. It’s certainly a terrible thing.'"

WaPo reports.

Trump said he had not seen a manifesto, purportedly from one of the attackers, that named him as an inspiration for white identity ideology.... The alleged shooter wrote that he was a supporter of Trump in one sense but not completely: “As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policymaker and leader? Dear god no.” In the document, the man also stated that he was following the example of notorious right-wing extremists, including Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

"Forty-nine people were killed in shootings at two mosques in central Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday..."

The NYT reports.

The police said that four people, including three men and one woman, had been taken into custody....

A 17-minute video posted to social media appears to show part of the attack. The clip, ... may have been taken from a helmet camera worn by a gunman.... “There wasn’t even time to aim, there was so many targets,” he says at one point...

Before the shooting, someone appearing to be the gunman posted links to a white-nationalist manifesto on Twitter and 8chan, an online forum known for extremist right-wing discussions. The 8chan post included a link to what appeared to be the gunman’s Facebook page, where he said he would also broadcast live video of the attack.....

In his manifesto, he identified himself as a 28-year-old man born in Australia and listed his white nationalist heroes. Writing that he had purposely used guns to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms, he also declared himself a fascist. “For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist,” he wrote.

ADDED: Why would a right-wing fascist want to "to stir discord in the United States over the Second Amendment’s provision on the right to bear arms"? I understand that the man is (he says) Australian and may not understand American ideology and politics and there may be something wrong with trying to make sense of the thinking of a mass murderer, but it seems to me that discord over the Second Amendment boosts the cause of limiting the right to bear arms. When Americans are not under stress, our resting state is to accept widespread gun possession.

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:

Someone posted the video he took of his own shootings on a thread in Twitter. I didn't want to see it. It just started playing.

Twitter should disable autoplay.

ALSO: Daily Mail reports:

The gunman, who identified himself as Brenton Tarrant from Grafton, New South Wales, Australia, named [Candace Owens] as his biggest influence in his 74-page manifesto [posted on Twitter]. [He] said that Owens helped 'push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness' - but claimed some of the 'extreme actions' she calls for are 'too much, even for my tastes'.

Owens is getting attacked for reacting to that tweet with a laughing emoji. She also reacted in words (including "LOL"):

'I’ve never created any content espousing my views on the 2nd Amendment or Islam. The Left pretending I inspired a mosque massacre in...New Zealand because I believe black America can do it without government hand outs is the reachiest reach of all reaches!! LOL!' she said.

She continued to tweet over the next several hours that she refused to be blamed for the massacre. When followers pointed out the impropriety of her response, she was indignant.

'Laughter is not the response one would expect after these murders,' one follower said.

Owens shot back: 'No. But a bunch of racist white liberals flooding my mentions is almost exactly what one would expect. You guys will never de-platform me.'

It's a mistake to use laughter as opposed to straight outrage.

MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said:

I actually read his screed. He's not a right winger. He's an eco-fascist. He's not a fan of capitalism or conservatives or Marxists. He wants the United States to have a civil war and thinks that will come about by provoking people to fight over the Second Amendment.

This is the minister for women of New Zealand, who bicycled to the hospital to give birth.

Beautiful Sunday morning for a bike ride, to the hospital, for an induction to finally have this baby. This is it, wish us luck! (My partner and I cycled because there wasn’t enough room in the car for the support crew... but it also put me in the best possible mood!) #42weekspregnant #cycling #bicyclesarethebest

A post shared by Julie Anne Genter (@julieannegenter) on Aug 18, 2018 at 3:42pm PDT

Via "Pregnant Minister Cycles to Hospital to Give Birth" (NYT), which includes this info:

[Julie Anne] Genter, who was born in Minnesota and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, joined the left-leaning Green Party as a volunteer shortly after migrating to New Zealand in 2006, and she has represented the party in Parliament since 2011....

On its Twitter account, the Green Party declared Ms. Genter’s bicycle journey to the hospital “the most #onbrand thing ever.”

ADDED: That's an e-bike.

CORRECTION: She's not the prime minister (as I originally had in the post title). She's the minister for women and associate minister for health and transport. (The first paragraph of the article is about the prime minister, a bit confusingly.)

Like the men who prefer robot women, Nigel the Gannet wanted only the concrete bird.

Articles about Nigel — like this one at The Guardian — stress his popularity with humans as he seemed to embody loneliness. There were 80 concrete decoy gannets on the New Zealand island of Mana, and for years Nigel was the only live gannet. Nigel had his one decoy love. He groomed "her." He built nests for her for years. This was deemed tragic.

Then 3 other real gannets came to Mana.

But [Nigel] never showed any interest in the real-life birds, said [Department of Conservation ranger Chris Bell], instead remaining “aloof”, chattering to his concrete mate while the real-life birds got on with business in a different part of the colony.

Within 3 weeks, Nigel died. Bell found his body in the midst of the concrete birds.

Now, what lesson do we learn? If this were a children's book story, it would be saying something about human beings, but what?

1. True love is what really matters. Nigel loved. He loved when he needed love, and no matter how little love he received in return, he remained loyal to the end.

2. Some individuals commit so hard to a mistake that they'd rather die than admit they are wrong.

3. Some individuals are oriented toward things that you cannot understand. Maybe you should respect their difference rather than deploring their inability to get with the crowd.

4. If you allow yourself to become fixated on something that is not a real fellow creature, you will lose your capacity to see real fellow creatures and you will die in your ignorance. Tragic!

"We have got a concerted effort on opossums, rats, mice, mustelids, but the one that stands out is cats."

"Everybody is too bloody PC and scared to take on cats. So I thought, I can handle that...."

Woman found guilty of giving cannibis to her baby... via breast milk.

In New Zealand, where the senior court official said: "Child abuse is family violence in these circumstances, and it is clear this baby and its mother needed help."

"Two [University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point] students trapped in the New Zealand wilderness by a snowstorm survived for nine days..."

"... by rationing their supplies of peanut butter and rice - and warming themselves in hot springs."

"All the women here are lovely. We spend a lot of time sitting and talking. I'll stick it out a bit longer."

Prostitution in New Zealand. Brothels are legal, and it is now very easy for a woman who needs or wants money to do sex work. That sounds like a terrible idea, but consider the up side:

Bon Ton [is] an exclusive establishment in the capital where an hour-long session costs NZ$400 (£140; $200). [Prostitutes have] the opportunity to work for a legitimate business in a safe environment....

"[The Swedish approach of prosecuting the clients instead of the prostitutes] would scare away the quality customers," she says. "We would be left with the dangerous sort. The nasty men won't go away."

Bon Ton - which thrives on "quality customers" like lawyers and civil servants - certainly looks like an ideal showcase for New Zealand-style liberalisation.

The bedrooms look like luxury suites, the upstairs office looks like - well... an office, and the workers say they are treated with respect....

Across the industry, she says, women are now aware of their rights and exploitative brothel owners are becoming marginalised as a result of the reform.