As lost as Alice

What I remember most was the cancelling of the KiwiRail ferry contract. Having sold the Aratere, our only rail-enabled ferry, we are left with an aging fleet (pushing 30), no rail-link across the strait, and are $500 million down with nothing to show for it. Forcing the $14 billion worth of freight that crosses the strait annually to be moved with trucks, a method that is much more inefficient in terms of cost and logistics, not to mention the emissions associated with it. That is, until Peters' $600 million ferries get here in 2029. I wonder if the costs saved from the new ferry contract are enough to cover the impact of not having proper infrastructure for the next four years when Labour's iRex ferries would have arrived by now.

Are we meant to believe the coalition government that spent time and money putting the English name of government agencies first, and put forwards the Treaty Principles Bill, English Language Bill, and the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill have the everyday person's situation at the forefront of their minds? Does that give you the impression of a government that is laser-focused on rebuilding the economy? Maybe attacking transgender, non-binary, and intersex people and refusing abortion to those under-20 is actually the secret to making cost-of-living better? Maybe the key to fixing unemployment is to take away support from tertiary students in a time where Kiwi youth increasingly move to Australia for better pay and jobs that will actually hire them.

I think worst of all is the government's stance on our environment. Tourism is the second-largest export earner in the country at 7.7% of our GDP. Suffice it to say, I don't think tourists are visiting 100% Pure New Zealand for all the sights in Auckland. What NACT has done is eliminate public input in the fast-tracking of coal, gold, and seabed mining. Make it easier for our waterways to be polluted. They've pulled support away from renewable energy initiatives in favour of instead importing LNG into the country despite not needing it at all. Assimilated the Ministry of Environment into MCERT, where they assure us "environmental responsibilities will continue seamlessly under the new arrangements." There's a reason people visit New Zealand and it's the same things NACT seems so insistent on destroying.

Te Kaihinaki/Moeraki Boulders, Otago, Aotearoa

They are a phenomenon known as a concretion! My basic understanding is that minerals precipitate through sediment and then start bonding with each other around that sediment, cementing it in place (though I'm not a geologist and this might be off a little). Apparently most concretions are spheres, like these very familiar looking boulders in Kazakhstan:

full version as well bc tumblr butchered my quality