Thanks, fixed the link.

When you consider that the top 5 on that list take up 50% of the population. Auckland continues to grow, and at 30% of the population already, it has an crazy effect on the economic decisions in the country.

It is also growing geographically, eventually Auckland and Hamilton will merge somewhere around Huntly (#50).

50k people

Looking at this list some are dubious. e.g. Hibicus Coast (#9) has been swallowed up by Auckland (#1), I would have called it a part of Auckland, much like Manakau City, which isn’t on the list.

Lower Hutt (#6) and Upper Hutt (#18) are on the list but Petone is not, geographically they are part of the same long valley and can almost all be considered part of Wellington like Manakau City is part of Auckland.

But you also get places like Masterton (#28), feels city like, since it is the largest settlement in the region but really it is a big town, it takes up a huge area though. Mainly services the farming communities around it.

What kind of hellscape are guys running over there.

What would I have had to say for some nice vodka?

Some companies here have unlimited sick leave, but it is not common.

Some double the national minimum of 10. Others have 15 days.

But most just allow for the minimum.

Drag has a point, I bet gun control laws would follow quickly.

(said from the safety of New Zealand)

I knew that there wasn’t any nationally mandated PTO, but I assumed that most of you had some in your contracts individually or union…FFS America, what are you doing!!!

In NZ we get 4 weeks/year and 10 days sick leave. Most companies have allowance for a couple of mental health days also, some even pay those days.

There is also bereavement leave, of up to 3 days. Parental leave of 26 weeks, your employer has to keep your job open for you to return to after the 26 weeks.

Source

Side note: we are full, don’t come here. Actually we get left off maps, and we like it like that.

That is an interesting point, as you say infants cannot consent to implants. Which does raise ethical questions.

But you are, I think, still looking from a 2024 perspective, where none of the technologies are even remotely available.

If you can consider it from the 2424 perspective, the treatment is non-invasive, permanent, safe and effective. It has been the standard for 100 years. Star Trek medical tech is magical to us because it is simply a story, but consider if it were real, what argument could you make to withhold the treatment?

I would see this as similar to the anti-vax arguments; withholding vaccines from a child who then goes on to catch a life altering disease, is a form of abuse. The kid cannot make its own judgements or medical decisions, but it sure can catch polio.

That is a difficult question. I would err on the side of yes. With some caveats.

Not treating some serious genetic conditions when safe, effective and proven treatments are available. Could easily be construed as abuse.

When considering the Star Trek universe medical care is free and easily accessed. Treating these conditions would be the default.

Turning this the other way around, and looking at it from the point of view, that the technology is the standard. What argument could you make in favour of leaving the condition in place?

It doesn’t really seem like in either situation I described that the treatment-enhancement gap has been breached.

There is no PGD, we are considering Star Trek levels of scanning technology. Both situations resulted from natural fertilisation, there was no group of potentials to select from.

The goal of eugenics, is unambiguously, to breed for some ideal. This resulted in some pretty dark times in the recent past.

Realistically, a lot of medical technology today is the antithesis of the eugenic ideal. Allowing those, who in the past, would have died from various causes to live. We at a species are the stronger for it.

Here is my take, assuming:

• We have the ability to remove all birth anomalies
• It is safe and effective, i.e. not an experimental technique
• It is not controversial, i.e. curing sickle cell is just the done thing\
• Scanning tech is much better than today

Situation 1:
Woman learns she is pregnant, say week 6. Gets a routine scan on the embryo. She discovers it has a genetic disorder. That will cause it to not be able to breathe well, running and playing will not be an option for your baby, they will survive; sweet no brainer there; splice in the fix doc. Correction is spliced in the next week, monitoring for rest of normal pregnancy.

Situation 2:
Woman learns she is pregnant, say week 6. Gets a routine scan on the embryo. Doctor says, looks like there is a genetic defect, the audio nerve is not going to develop normally, your baby will hear badly at birth, and then over the next two years will go permanently deaf. Implants could fix this issue after birth, and living as a deaf person is not difficult. However we can ensure that the nerve develops normally and your baby will have perfectly normal hearing.

In situation 1, the obvious answer is to fix the issue, having life long breathing difficulties that could easily be avoided would be cruel.
In situation 2, in my opinion it would also be cruel to impose on a kid; hey we could have fixed your hearing in a safe and effective way, but we decided for you before you were born that you would be “special”.

I get where people are coming from, but they are looking at it with 2024 eyes, not 2424 eyes. Why would you impose on a kid, who has no say in the matter, a disability? Because that is the choice you are making, you are imposing a disability on a child that does not need to be there.

We currently give women folate, to protect against neural tube defects; along with a bunch of other interventions. We are already “interfering” with the “natural” progress of pregnancy and birth, we are only going to get better at it.

And also the conflating of eugenics and fixing birth defects is completely off base. These are only related by the fact that breeding is involved; they have nothing in common beyond that. In the same way that my kitchen knives would make great stabbing weapons, but cooking and stabbing only really have the tools in common.

Hey, sometimes we just get moved around.

Agreed, but at fewer than 10k people, it is not exactly a city.

Going a little further north, I spent a lot of my teenage years in Athenree… Current population 920… It has grown since I left.

If you mean people from my country… All of them.

New Zealand only has like 10 actual cities. It is not some great feat of memory to know them all.

Average gas price today in NZ: $2.53NZD/l = $5.59USD/Gal (2.53 * 3.78(l to Gal) / 1.71 (NZD to USD))

It can happen, but statistically adult man vs adult woman is not a fair fight.

I knew a guy at university; started going out with this smoking hot girl. She was a regional champ in jujitsu; it didn’t last long, turns out she was a violent piece of shit. Beat him up twice, he left after the second one. She had major anger management issues.

But you turn that story around a little, similar situation, girl has same anger management issues, but without the training etc, she is unlikely to be a threat to any adult guy.

There are so many pessimistic comments.

To those who are saying, something along the lines of, aliens wouldn’t come because they wouldn’t recognise us as intelligent.

That is a really stupid augment, even if they were significantly more intelligent than us, we still standout from all other minds on this planet.

We literally study everything, just for the sake of knowledge.

A high intelligence civilisation that has the ability to reach us, would also have to a high level of curiosity to archive that ability.

To answer question posed. There are two ways to look at this:

• if we assume that, at some point an alien civilisation will contact us, the next 10 years is as statistically likely as another ten year timeframe.
• from a background rate, of the actual likelihood of being contacted at all. I have to say, it is exceptionally unlikely. The travel distances/times, and the time a civilisation exists for, all count against contact especially physical contact.

I had children to legitimise my dad jokes.

Trump is an idiot. If he actually cared about US power, he wouldn’t give Xi this opportunity.

It doesn’t matter if it is bullshit or not, the fact that Xi can even make these comments, in a credible manner will hurt US trade relations and by extension, power.

I’m wondering what exactly people raising privacy concerns are worried about?

Even if I tell you my ASL, what can you do with that info?

I’m usually very privacy aware.

The big tech firms already have the information, it can also likely be brought on the dark web.

44/M/NZ BTW. Even if I tell you which small town I’m from, it doesn’t get you to my doorstep.