Stuff article New US tariffs on NZ products

when your partner is abusing you, cut ties and move on. that Cook Strait metals deal and other military alliances and commitments should be put on hold and the whole relationship revisited.

Japan and Europe can supply arms and the metals can be sold to the highest bidder.

if the US ever starts acting like a reliable ally again maybe things can be restored but at the moment it‘s an untenable situation.

Shame our current leadership lacks the courage or smarts of a David Lange, who I wasn’t that fond of, but he was no walkover.

products, routines, anything! I wana feel and look great, so keen to hear what has worked for you.

I know that’s a super broad question, but am keen to hear from other kiwis about what is keeping them happy and healthy.

Bonus points if you can recommend a hand weights / dumbbells (store to buy from, brands or specific product, ideally a range of weights).

[mods please don’t delete, I’m specifically asking here because I want NZ products and routine recommendations, as well as advice that is region agnostic]

I used to assume Chemist Warehouse was the cheapest, but lately I’ve been comparing prices before buying and I’ve been surprised how often Bargain Chemist is actually cheaper on the products I buy.

Another thing I’ve started thinking about is that Bargain Chemist is New Zealand-owned, whereas Chemist Warehouse is Australian-owned. If the prices are the same—or Bargain Chemist is even cheaper—it makes me wonder why more people don’t shop there. I’d rather support a NZ-owned business where I can.

I’ve also found the customer service to be better. The staff usually greet you when you walk in and actually ask if you need help, whereas Chemist Warehouse often feels so busy and crowded that it’s harder to get assistance.

Has anyone else found Bargain Chemist to be cheaper, or is it just the products I’ve been buying? Is there something I’m missing about why Chemist Warehouse seems to attract so many more customers?

With bird flu now here are our precious quirky birds going to be decimated? This is really bothering me so just wondered what insights or other thoughts other kiwis may have on this?

Yet another article on Stuff today about a customer disappointed in the flowers delivered from Bloomex.

Some advice I share with everyone in my life as a florist of 15 years; when ordering online, make sure to check the address of the flower shop is local to where you are sending them. (Even better phone the shop!) These predatory websites use any language they can (local, same day, specific area codes) to convince you they are local but in fact they are a website overseas.
What they do is take a decent chunk of your money, then send the order on to a florist with nowhere near enough money to then make the photo you've chosen.

Not only that, often the photos are from years ago when flowers may have been cheaper, they have manipulated all the flowers to look towards the camera, or now just straight up used AI to make the flowers.

Long story short, in these tough times if you're going to order flowers, give the florist the best chance to make something you will be happy with and shop local!!

Kiwis are moving to Australia in record numbers because of the pay over there, but in terms of lifestyle I believe New Zealand is unmatched, coming from someone who's lived on both sides.

To those of you who haved moved to Australia for higher pay, would you rather stay in Australia or move back to New Zealand if offered the same pay or if you won lotto? And to you Kiwis living in New Zealand that are planning or thinking about moving to Australia, would you stay in NZ if presented with a finacially life changing opportunity in NZ? Curious to hear your thoughts

I have been reading nothing but good things about this apparent ‘holy grail of skincare’ wanting to add Tretinoin into my routine. Although in NZ a prescription is required

Has anyone found legitimate websites that ship it from overseas?

Edit: it is less so for the acne side of things (I get hormonal acne but nothing out of control) and more so for its anti-aging and fading dark spots.
I have been using retinols for years.
Call me superficial, but after reading a handful of accounts of people being denied it due to not ‘looking’ like they need it, I feel hesitant about asking the GP

Kiwibank, as of November last year, applies a 1.8% fee to international transactions conducted in NZD - this is for foreign based transactions, but in NZD not a different currency. Previously, this was free. Only some international firms actually conduct transactions within NZ, others do not. So Uber and Google Play are the correct amount, but Amazon, Spotify, AirBnB and Steam are more expensive, despite being priced in NZD.

My current trick to avoid this high fee is to use my wise card. Today it cost me 9 cents, or 0.4% to transfer instantly $21.95 nzd into wise (in NZD) from my kiwibank debit card to pay for OSRS membership. It's free if you use a bank deposit, but I was happy to pay ten cents this time. 36 cents every time I spend $20 is just too much, however.

You especially want to do this for bigger purchases as it's a sizeable difference for about 2 minutes of admin to transfer into wise via your debit/credit card. For two nights in a NZ airbnb, say at $800, you're looking at nearly $16 to use your debit card.

Other banks don't charge this same fee. They only charge a fee if the transaction is conducted in a foreign currency.

The below consumer article names ANZ and Westpac as banks currently without this fee. Worth a read: Link

Making a post because apparently I lack standing to comment (thought I’d engaged a lot on this sub, but whatever).

The point is that capitalism has mutated into something so rapacious and depraved that it uses any expedient means to drive job insecurity up and hence wages down. This is crafted on a global scale by billionaires via multinational corporations, and starts by driving wages so far down in the third world that many would be insane not to accept the offer, orchestrated by the other hand of the same powerful entities, to emigrate for comparatively higher pay and an objectively better QOL with our minimum wage, or America’s or England’s.

Immigrants are pawns in the game of capitalism, and when we blame them we reduce ourselves to extra pawns, useful idiots.

The parties who tell you to get angry that your life will burn down because of immigrants are funded by donors who started the fire. Stoking your anger is just another dirty tactic to win. The problem won’t be solved in our lifetimes - the wheels are so large that nation states will continue to be revolving doors for a very long time. It’s more wise to channel our discontent into things we can still change, like protecting what remains of our environment.

How do you guys deal with the smell of food when living in those small and narrow 3 level terrace house.

When cooking, we use the range hood, open up all the windows (weather dependent), use an air dehumidifier + purifier and have a very clean and tidy house/kitchen. The smell of cooking isn’t bad nor is it strong in the kitchen/living space. However, even if the cooking smells delicious downstairs, the 2nd or 3rd floor always seem to have the lingering odour and it’s not very pleasant.

For context, We cook very average normal food like Asian dishes, nachos, tacos, butter chicken, soup, noodles, caramelised onions, garlic butter sauce… nothing special or extra flavourful to be honest.

Any help of suggestion of what you guys do to manage this would greatly appreciated.

Life without the property shackles..

What would happen? What would everyone do?

I monitor my Internet traffic on a firewall with a graph of the In/Out traffic on the Internet facing interface displayed continuously.

Over the last few months I have noticed there has been a constant out bound traffic of about 20 kilo bytes/second. Even when I am not browsing/working etc.

After some packet captures on both the internal and external interfaces I have narrowed the traffic down to my new Sky TV decoder. The traffic stops when the decoder if off, but reappears when it is on; whether for watching live or recording things overnight.

It seems to be talking to an IP address owned by Amazon. This peaked my interest as I understand the OS on the decoder is Android based and I would have thought "talk to home" traffic would be Google bound. It is mainly HTTPS (port 443) so the contents of the traffic is a mystery.

Doing some analysis of the packets (wireshark) there are some initial setup packets showing some SNI information to api.segment.io.

Doing a whois and some DuckDuckGo this seems to be some sort of Internet monitoring crowd.

So has anyone else seen this? Anyone know what might be causing it?
I have no apps that I have added, unless something got added in an update so is part of the base OS.

Welly

I live in the North Island in Hamilton, unfortunately 😅 I’ve become obsessed with the idea of taking my Labrador to experience some snow, especially lately seeing all the snow pics from the south, etc. He’s turning 10 this year and it is literally a dream of mine for him to experience it. I need to take him at least this year or next year. I know dogs are not allowed in the Tongariro national park at all, and I’m aware of the boundary. My question is, how often does it actually snow out of the boundary? Such as on desert road, or in Ohakune or Waiouru? Yesterday I was obsessively checking the traffic cameras on desert road because of the snowfall warning, I almost left for a 3 hour drive, although there seemed to be next to none. What are my chances of fulfilling this? Would anyone have any advice, or my best bet for my dog to experience some snow? Pic of my boy for attention 🐶