Rob

The number one least liked tea ☕️ Empty

YOU'RE WEEKLY REMINDER OF WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT UNDER THE LAST GOV. ( a few of thousands of examples) 1. Wallaby eradication — $2.7 million to kill 18 wallabies. $153,000 per wallaby and 26,000 labour hours. Cheaper to fly them home business class. 2. Virtual job expos — $835,000. 126 people attended. $6,626 per Zoom attendee. 3. Global health recruitment campaign — $514,000. Result: 3 interviews. $171,000 per interview. 4. Let's Get Wellington Moving — $35m on consultants. Just $250k on actual construction. You read that right. 5. Auckland Light Rail — $229 million. Six years. Not one metre of track. Burning $1.2m/week on consultants at peak. 6. Three Waters — ~$1.2 billion torched on a policy nobody wanted, scrapped before delivering a single pipe. Included $14,500 to write a job description for a CEO who never existed. 7. iReX ferries — $500m+ sunk. Ballooned from $551m to a projected $3 billion+ before cancellation. (NZ First also had fingerprints on the original deal — worth being upfront about.) 8. RAT tests — $531 million sitting in warehouses. Storage at $100,000/day. Approved over a year late. 9. Mongrel Mob meth rehab — $2.75 million. $239k catering. $157k marae hire. $100k hiring a van. 10. Shorter shower campaign — $2.8 million. Printed in 7 languages. To tell you to take shorter showers. 11. Auckland Harbour cycle/walking bridge — $51 million on planning before scrapped. No bridge. 12. Lake Onslow pumped hydro — ~$100 million on feasibility studies. Not a shovel in the ground. 13. Workforce Development Councils — $65 million/year for bodies critics said delivered little tangible value. Disestablished. 14. RNZ/TVNZ merger — $20 million. Abandoned by Labour themselves. 15. Ethnic women in politics research — $842,000. A university grant could've done it for a fraction. 16. "Ulu Cavu Wig Tour" — $73,000 in taxpayer funding for the Arts Minister's husband's tour. 17. Abandoned China immigration office — ~$3 million in rent on an office closed for over a year. 18. Promoting Australian citizenship to Kiwis already in Australia — $10,000. Funding the brain drain with our money. …and we could keep going. We should never FORGET Labour. Just a small fraction of their wasteful ways. @NZNationalParty @actparty

Want to know what it sounded like during the launch of Flight 12 of Starship today? Check out this video and the shaking of the windows. This was during my livestream with @esherifftv (Ellie in Space) at a ouse about 5 miles from the launch site. Definitely have the volume up! Truly a powerful rocket ... the most powerful ever!

DJI's new FC200 four-drone formation: max payload of 600 kg. Unitree's new transformer mecha: 500 kg weight. This is what happens when they work together😏

@TaxpayersUnion Yes, I have faith they won’t be the cheapest or the fastest, but they’ll manage to do a poor job.

Do you have faith in your council?

for your enjoyment

It has been reported that police have recently visited Renee-Rose Schwenke about a so-called 'offensive' social media post she posted. Not threatening, not inciting violence, just that it allegedly offended someone. If this report is true, this is '1984 thought-police' level overreach. It should seriously frighten every New Zealander who believes in freedom of speech. This is not about whether this particular post was offensive or not. There will always be personal responsibility and consequences for people voicing their opinions that are viewed by some as tasteless or gormless or offensive - but those consequences should not be by way of a police visit. No one has the right to not be offended, nor do they have the right to be protected from having hurt feelings. In fact it is precisely the right to be able to offend which is the foundation of freedom of speech in our country. This has happened overseas with more regularity where social media posts, opinions, views, expressions, and even jokes are now deemed offensive by some authoritarian power and have been met with threats from police, arrests, or even convictions in court. We never thought we would see this happen here and it has a chilling effect on where we are going as a country. As Oliver Wendall Homles Jr said, freedom of speech also comes with responsibility of speech - you cannot falsely yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre without there rightly being a consequence. We already have laws around 'responsibility of speech' ranging from defamation to incitement of violence, and that is important - but people's freedom to have their own free opinion is something which should be aggressively defended. We don't all have to agree with each other's opinions, but we should all fight for each other's right to have them. This is the essential foundation of our free democracy. If we start to accept this kind of overreach by police to curtail individual freedom of speech, our democracy will fall into the type of totalitarian oblivion that will destroy our country.

Tesla shareholders funded the robotaxi vision through the hard part. The missed timelines, ridicule, drawdowns, and the “FSD is impossible” years. So if Tesla ever gets folded into SpaceX, the question isn’t “would that be cool?” It’s: who gets paid for the robotaxi value? Bradford breaks it down here.👇

when online shopping goes WAY too far

Starlink satelite as seen from another Starlink satellite.

HOY EN UN NUEVO CAPÍTULO DE: “¿PORQUÉ LOS HOMBRES VIVEN MENOS QUE LAS MUJERES?” 2 hombres cumpliendo el sueño de los otros 4,000,000,000 de hombres que habitamos el mundo

@BrianRoemmele Good for you dude, guess it’s similar feeling of owning your own business versus working for the man.

@RobMayOfficial Rob, I hear ya. It is exclusive. They want 15 days exclusive. Any post that has 1 million views I personally under my name can’t share. There is more to it.

FYI: A very large social media platform contacted me and at least 5 others I know,with an offer for a large monthly guaranteed payment for exclusive posting on their platform. They will offer a minimum number of visitors based on current performance. I am going—no place.

@NZNationalParty India is great, but it’s not New Zealand. Please consider risks to our culture before making this agreement.

There’s been a lot of misinformation about immigration under the new Free Trade Agreement with India. Much of what’s being said is spin rather than substance. Here’s the facts. This FTA does not open the floodgates on immigration. It allows around 1,700 temporary three‑year work visas per year - less than 3% of all work visas. And they can’t be renewed. Total numbers are capped so there can’t be more than 5,000 at any one time. The temporary work visa is targeted at skills New Zealand already needs - like doctors, nurses, teachers, ICT and engineers. These are roles that help keep hospitals staffed, classrooms open, and businesses productive. Claims about family migration are simply wrong. The FTA does not grant automatic rights for family members to enter, work or study in New Zealand. There is no back‑door pathway. The FTA is about lifting incomes for Kiwis, not importing labour from India. It means we can sell more of what we are good at to 1.4 billion people. It’s about bringing money into local communities, and helping Kiwis get ahead.

@SawyerMerritt lol

If you use any version of FSD (Supervised) V14, what is the most common reason you disengage (even if it’s rare)?

@julia_bergeron By the looks of it we’re spending as much on camera gear as we are on the launch it self.🤣

Behind the scenes of remote camera setup for tomorrow's Falcon Heavy launch of the ViaSat-3 F3 mission. It's been awhile and there will be a lot of lenses ready to catch the moment. nsf.live/spacecoast for live views of Cape happenings

@chrisluxonmp I'd back the India FTA for export wins in forestry and meat, but fix it: Remove the visa part. Drop $20b investment target make it voluntary & reciprocal. Add dairy quotas Reviews every 3yrs to protect housing, wages & sovereignty. x.com/i/grok/share/3…

Three years since the first flight of Starship, the next generation is here. New ship. New booster. New engines. New pad and new test site. SpaceX engineers are working to solve one of the most difficult engineering challenges in history: developing a fully, rapidly reusable rocket

@ParkerRowNZ @TaxpayersUnion Money is not a zero-sum game, just because someone has more doesn’t mean we have less. 'Tax the rich' sounds good, but it’s just another tax. It doesn’t matter how much money the government gets if they don’t know what they’re doing, it will just be wasted

@TaxpayersUnion What’s your suggestion - don’t tax them, and just let the rest of us get taxed? Time to up the quality of your posts - what’s the next issue of waste that you are going to rut out?

What's the dumbest economic idea you've ever heard? I'll go first: tax the rich.