That wiki article got more nuts the further I read. How people still believe after all those failed prophecies is beyond me, and the idea that this group demands young female members meets Korean beauty standards is even crazier. Thanks for the share.

Wow. I vaguely recall the name but I was just a little kid when that all broke. I didn’t realise how much shit went down there. That Wikipedia article makes for quite a read.

Wow there is some pretty whacky groups and people on the list. Love that they’ve for the advance + freedom parties there too.

According to the cults website the other guy mentioned “cults have a strong tendency to harm and control their members” so… Mainstream religions tend to have numbers on their side I guess, but a mass delusion is still a delusion.

Don’t know what part of China you were from but damn for me it’s the food. Sichuan food is about the best thing I ever put in my mouth. So many flavours.

I had the opposite experience as you as I moved to China from NZ in my early 20’s, and I loved the life and liveliness there, and as a clearly non Chinese person, the people were super friendly (some well beyond the point of invading my privacy) but it was still an overall great experience.

When I did my deep diving certification one of the things they got us to do was try and do maths of varying complexity (compared to previously doing it on the surface). I didn’t feel high at all, but most of us had slower response times and more errors at depth, apparently as a side effect of the increased nitrogen. Pretty wild.

That’s a really interesting read. Also blown away by how low user numbers are still. I haven’t been back on Reddit since the 3rd party app shutdown, and I know plenty of others have left. Makes it seem more important to me to build community but it’s a tricky balance to strike.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I am enjoying having the kiwi community to interact with so your obviously doing something right.

Yeah busses are potentially part of the solution, but decent rail connections can be more disruptive (positively) over longer distances e.g Welly - Palmy, Auckland - Hamilton etc.

Having previously lived in China and experiencing the amazing train network there I definitely see the benefits of a solid rail system. Way more efficient than busses too.

Nuts to me that places like Wellington had pretty good electric bus systems with trolley busses but replaced them largely with diesel. Not sure what the bus fleet is like now though.

Also not sure why you are being downvoted for a pretty reasonable discussion.

But if they reduce the speed limit to zero that should put paid to many of the problems.

I do hear talk of reducing rural roads in my region to 70-80kph (which they’ve already done on long straight sections of state highway) and I find it’s made it worse because people are now behaving even less rationally than they used to.

Why, is there something else going on as well? I generally avoid the news so genuinely ignorant in this case.

Yeah, had to scroll way down to see the comments, but although I think they are a bit dumb, there were other hexbear comments in that thread I agreed with. I’m generally in favour of keeping the community open, supposing you have the ability to ban the trolls if you think it needs it (no idea if you can do that in Lemmy). Defederating just seems like a big step, and your right I find those comments mildly offensive at best but of course it’s your server so up to you the standard you want to keep.

On the votes front, I believe as the admin you can see the vote counts? Are the really outweighing the local voices? Or is the proportion of lemmy.nz vs other instances consistent over time? I previously used my lemmy.world account to access lemmy.nz, and I imagine there are loads of people with accounts on different instances.

Given the low numbers currently I think finding ways to be more open is good, but I can also appreciate not wanting to deal with shitty behaviour.

I can’t see from the two threads I read through anything particular bad or offensive. Are you able to give some examples of where you feel their dialogue is impeding lemmy.nz in some way?

I stopped using my lemmy.world account nearly as much after they started blocking a bunch that I was interested in, and I’d hate to see that going on here, but if there are valid examples I’d like to see them.

This has my vote. Beautiful spot.

Do you have to access lemmy from the web to see the banner images? As a Reddit refugee because of Apollo I’m pretty much mobile only. Is there a way to see them on mobile or is it app dependent?

I would have said a winning rugby team but I’m not sure we can claim that any more. I guess we’d be pretty solid at cricket, league and netball at least.

My biggest takeaway from the article was the avenues are supposed to be tree lined. I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of them around that don’t adhere to that naming scheme, although it perhaps depends on the definition of tree lined.

Dang dude, that’s some dedication. I’ve started playing a year ago and just reaching around 1000 now. Mainly blitz and bullet as with kids it’s hard to focus on longer games. I really enjoy puzzles though - not sure if that helps me much. Apparently my puzzle rating is 1750 for whatever that’s worth.

I find it really satisfying when I improve again though as I’ve definitely plateaued or taken breaks a few times. Any advice for someone at my level?

Damn. That’s a very solid rating. I feel that improve and plateau as well. Did you do any study or really just through playing games?

Guess it depends on which time format you are playing, but even ten thousand games of bullet adds up, and it always amazes me how much time increments can add to total duration too. What’s your rating after that many games?

I’d like to think you were right but look how people and countries are cozying back up to Saudi Arabia now. There is a lot of people who would sell their soul for a little bit of money.

They said other than when she was working, and before and after she left the number was around or close to 0-2 per year, so pretty obviously an anomaly and certainly worthy of an investigation. The doctors that reported her were punished by the administrators and actually forced to apologise to her so I think they are pretty guilty in the circumstances.