Thousands queued up outside the Wellington Central Library Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui on Saturday as it reopened for the first time in seven years.

The building had been closed since March 2019, due to earthquake risk, with pop-up libraries in the city in the interim, while it underwent a $217 million makeover.

A Department of Conservation (DoC) livestream of a nesting Kākāpo on a remote island off the coast of the South Island, has attracted international attention.

Through a hidden camera, viewers can watch Rakiura as she raises her chick, who looks more like a sentient ball of fluff than a bird, at this stage.

Link to live stream

I think this is not directly politics but rather a discussion on nitrates so have posted here.

A selection of key quotes from the article:

Greenpeace is calling on the government to drastically cut the legal limit of nitrates in drinking water as the Danish government moves to drop its legal limit by almost 90 percent.

The Danish government plans to lower its limit to just over one milligram of nitrate-nitrogen per litre (mg/L) of drinking water, a steep drop from its current limit of 11.3mg/L.

New Zealand's current legal limit for nitrates in drinking water is 11.3 mg/L, but there was growing evidence of health impacts at levels as low as 1mg/L.

"The Danish government aren't operating off a secret playbook or anything, they don't know anything we don't know. They're just following the scientific evidence and choosing to prioritise people's health. Meanwhile, our government is burying its head in the sand," Appelbe said.

The panel's report quoted 2023 University of Copenhagen research, which found lowering nitrate contamination would save 2.2 billion Kroner ($580m NZD) by preventing approximately 127 cases of bowel cancer per year linked to the current nitrate levels.

Appelbe said the government was more concerned with protecting dairy industry profits than human health and he called for reductions in the size of the dairy herd, an end to ongoing dairy expansions and limits to the use of nitrate fertiliser.

Rural communities were disproportionately affected and faced considerable costs installing filters to make their water drinkable, he said.

"We need, as a country, to have a grown-up conversation about nitrate contamination in drinking water - the evidence is pretty overwhelming on what's causing it and there's a growing body of evidence that links risks to human health."

Appelbe said the current limit of 11.3mg/L is based on World Health Organisation guidance from the 1960s to avoid Blue Baby Syndrome, an acute illness that could affect babies.

A 2025 GNS Science research paper estimated there could be more than 21,200 people drinking water above the legal limit of 11.3 mg/L and 101,000 people drinking water above half that (5.65mg/L) across rural New Zealand.

The authors found Waikato, Canterbury and Southland were disproportionately affected by elevated levels of nitrate

Public health specialists had long advocated to lower the nitrate limit, primarily based on international research linking low levels of nitrate (5mg/L) with pre-term birth and colorectal cancer (0.87mg/L).

New research from Australia's Edith Cowan University and the Danish Cancer Research Institute found a link to early-onset dementia as low as 1.2mg/L with nitrates from processed meat and drinking water posing a higher risk, while nitrates from vegetables were associated with a lower risk.

Canterbury's dairy herd has increased by about 1000 percent since 1990 to well over a million cows.

Between 1990 and 2022, Southland's dairy herd increased by 1668 percent from 38,000 to 668,000 cows.

Beneficiary numbers have soared to a 12-year high, under a government that promised a reduction.

They were the highest both by volume and percentage of the working-age population since at least the 2013 welfare reforms.

Social development minister Louise Upston said in 2024 - less than three months after taking office - that the government was taking action to "curb the surge in welfare dependency" that ocurred under the former Labour government.

But the most recent Ministry of Social Development data revealed that was yet to take hold.

As of December last year, 427,236 people - about the population of Christchurch - were receiving a main benefit.

That was 13.2 percent of the working-age population, the highest recorded since at least 2013, when reforms replaced multiple benefits with three main benefits: Jobseeker, Sole Parent Support and Supported Living Payment.

More than half of beneficiaries - 223,512 people, or 6.9 percent of the working age population - were on the Jobseeker benefit. That was also a record.

Soon after taking power the government set a target of 50,000 fewer people on the Jobseeker benefit by 2030.

So far, there had been an 18 percent jump: from 190,000 in December 2023 to 223,500 in December last year.

The 18 to 24-year-old age group on the Jobseeker benefit had grown the most in that period, rising 32 percent.

Minister blames former Labour government

Upston said the numbers were a result of the coalition inheriting "difficult economic conditions and a tough labour market" from the former Labour government.

"Unemployment has been rising since 2021 and is always one of the last things to improve after a recession," she said.

The Green Party is welcoming news that the government has backtracked on plans to reinstate live animal exports.

Animal Welfare Minister Andrew Hoggard told 1 News he could not get Cabinet agreement on overturning the ban, which formed part of coalition agreements with both ACT and NZ First.

"From the outset, there was overwhelming outrage from veterinary experts who expressed there was no way to maintain animal welfare standards and herd cattle onto ships where they spend weeks at sea wallowing in their own waste. It's fundamentally cruel and there's no way to uphold the barest animal standards while exporting at sea," Abel said.

"They couldn't get it across the line because New Zealanders didn't want to see animals suffering in that way."

A 57,000-strong petition calling for the ban to stay in place was presented to parliament in 2024.

At the time, Hoggard said he wanted the ban overturned by 2025.

Two weeks ago we moved to a new VPS, less powerful than the previous server but we have to pay now so it is what it is.

We also recently implemented Anubis, which should have cut the amount of processing power wasted on AI scraper bots.

I'm interested in knowing how people have found it.

Is it feeling sluggish or similar to the last server?

Images are now in object storage instead of on the hard drive, do you notice a difference in loading speed?

Is anyone still having trouble with Anubis and getting stuck on the success screen or have those issues all been resolved?

Any other feedback on the new setup?

Last thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

Sewing machines, 3D printers and a taniwha slide sit among the hundreds of thousands of books inside the freshly refurbished five-storey library.

The original library opened in 1991 – when it was also given the name Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, which translates to ‘the window to the wider world’.

It has been closed since March 2019 after a seismic assessment found it was a threat to life if a serious earthquake occurred. It has now had a $217.6 million makeover. While much of the shell of the original award-winning library remains, many of its concrete walls have been removed, bringing in more natural light.

The library will reopen on Saturday, 14 March.

Skygazers will have the opportunity to see six planets on Saturday, weather permitting, according to NASA.

Mercury, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter will be visible to the naked eye, whereas Uranus and Neptune will require binoculars or a telescope. Viewers do not have to worry about wearing protective eyewear, as they would to watch a solar eclipse.

The event is visible anywhere on Earth, with the best views at twilight. Early birds should try to glimpse the planetary parade before sunrise, and for night owls, the best visibility will be right after sunset, Haviland said.

On Tuesday, a total lunar eclipse would be visible for those in Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands and the Americas.

The moon would appear red, which was why it's referred to as a 'blood moon'. The event marked the last total lunar eclipse visible from North America until December 2028.

The health minister says a doctor using an artificial intelligence scribe tool is able to see, on average, one additional patient per shift.

Simeon Brown has announced every emergency department in the country now has access to the tool, which records consultations and generates draft clinical notes, referral letters and follow-up summaries.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) vice-president Dr Sylvia Boys said she was concerned about how secure the artificial intelligence scribe tool was.

It could also misunderstand what was said, Boys added, especially when it came to an examination.

"You have to verbalise what you're finding at the time, and that difference between patient speak with the patient in front of you and the medical diagnosis, AI can sometimes misinterpret what is going on."

It also could not differentiate between patients when a clinician was dealing with multiple, Boys said.

"Within the ED environment, we also have multiple interruptions, and they have to step out of the room, be talked to about other patients, and so separating out what is going on with one patient and what is going on with another - with an IT system that is listening to both - can be troublesome as well."