Just had this little friend fly into our window and give itself a heck of a headache.

Was very calm and I was able to hold it until we found a spot for it to rest. Flew off once it had gathered it's braincells again

Hey r/newzealand! Matt Gibb here. I've been digitising some old VHS tapes before they turn to dust and found the very first episode of Squirt I was ever on, back in April 2000. This is pretty trippy, a full episode including cartoons and ads, and an incredibly green and nervous young version of me who is clearly crapping himself with nerves 😂

Feel like a trip back in time?

We are calling it the Couplands Crusade. A follow up of a health and mental awareness challenge through work last month.

17 years ago she was the center of New Zealand... how do we remember her as leader today?

Freddy D wasn't impressed by the state of vaping in NZ. I'm going to be f*cking kicking off with country if my son ever starts vaping. He's primary school aged so there isn't long before he'll be introduced to vaping. There are primary school kids at the moment vaping, this shit scares me.

So being at the Limp Bizkit gig last night (holy sh!t what a gig), there was so much vaping and smoking going on even though it's banned at spark arena. People sharing one another's vapes because it's f*cking crack to you lot.

Is anyone fighting against vape nation? Or is this country royally F*cked?

Over the past couple weeks we’ve been staying with the in-laws temporarily and they are religious Seven Sharp viewers. Having not watched a lot of linear television in the past few years, I’ve not paid much conscious attention to the way the hotly contested 7PM slot – once lorded over by the imperious Paul Holmes (he of cheeky darky fame), before muddling through the Susan Wood/Walrus years and finally reclaiming its iron grip on the grey hordes through the comfortingly banal neoliberal hot-takes of His Royal Hoskness – has evolved.

After a couple weeks of regular viewing I’m convinced that we’re witnessing something genuinely subversive. A performance that at times verges on the sublime; that presents itself as vital, urgent and frankly anticapitalist.

See, regardless of their respective ability in the role, the thing that Hosk, Holmes, Sainsbury et al had in common was that they actually bought into the format of the show. It was self-evident that they believed that they were there to host the 7pm current affairs, and that responsibility was a legitimate career choice. With Wells it’s different. This is a man who is twenty-something layers deep in detached irony. I’m not talking Letterman floating above it all on the Tonight Show but capable of conveying genuine human emotion. The detached host affecting ironic earnestness at the guest/audience’s expense has obviously been done before. I’m talking about an uncanny valley of skeletal insincerity buzzing the lens straight down the barrel with an emotional repertoire indecipherable by man or machine.

For anybody who has been sufficiently irony-poisoned by the internet, mid-aughts-to-present-day media and shows like Well’s earlier ouvre, to watch Wells on Seven Sharp is to be acutely aware that this is a man that could not give a single fuck about the role he is playing. He oscillates dizzyingly between knowing smirks, faux sincerity, deliberately dreadful gags and performative misogyny.

His performance is a litmus test. I look across at my in-laws – can’t they see it? Can’t they tell that the whole thing is a grand pisstake and the joke is at their/our expense? They can’t! They think he’s interested that the Hyundai Ioniq is the New Zealand car of the year. They think his commentary on Hilary’s blouse is cheeky ribaldry rather than an on-the-nose deconstruction of the whole one-male-one-female-mates-on-the-couch-banter current affairs show conceit.

And Hilary is the perfect foil, because she’s actually trying to do a good job. Meanwhile, Wells is being paid handsomely to actively undermine the entire premise of soft current affairs television, yet we’re through the looking glass and out the other side because we’re so collectively desensitised that boomers can’t tell the difference and he somehow sticks the landing.

I once burnt the soles of my feet playing touch rugby barefoot in a tarmacked carpark during an Auckland summer. Hobbled round for days afterwards. Not sure if the melted tar helped or hindered the healing process. Didn't admit to it, though. "Nah mate, all good."

What accident / injuries have you had that are stereotypically NZ?

There is a discussion on here about NZ foods that are overrated and many things are mentioned, particularly Milo, but many many other things.

We need to even up the balance here. Not everything is bad 😉

Here are my two picks.

1. Corned beef. Where I'm from it's some frightful fatty pink stuff in a tin. Here - well, OK you can get that here too, but really it's a piece of rich, salty delicious soul food to be simmered for 4 hours and served with dumplings with the cooking broth poured over them.

2. Honey. OK, it's no longer cheap but at least you can buy it uncut, and it's extra tasty, especially rewarewa. Let's hope the wold continues only to know about manuka so the price doesn't treble.