Dave

Te Papa will begin charging an entry fee for international visitors from September.

Entry to the museum will remain free for New Zealanders.

The entry fee will be $35 and will apply from 17 September to international visitors aged 16 years and older.

With nearly 600,000 international visitors in the 2023/2024 financial year, Te Papa is expected to earn an additional $5-$10 million per year from the move.

Johnston said visitors would self-identify their nationality.

"You'll walk into Te Papa and we'll say, 'Kia ora, how are you? Where have you come from today?' And if you say, 'Oh, I've come from Johnsonville', then we'll say, 'Great, head up the stairs, head into the museum, have a wonderful visit'.

"And if you say, 'Oh, I'm from France' or 'I'm from Germany', we'll say, 'Awesome, head up the stairs, you'll see the ticket desk right there, that's where you can buy your ticket'."

The skipper of a Coastguard boat who rescued two divers after they became separated from their boat in waters near Kāpiti, north of Wellington, says the scenario is the stuff of nautical nightmares.

The divers were dragged south in swift currents, but managed to swim to a nearby island and even had provisions to light a fire, alerting the Westpac Rescue Helicopter to their location.

Coastguard skipper Mark Davidson told Checkpoint police were alerted by the diver's partners - who were waiting on the diver's boat - that they had lost contact with the men about 5pm on Sunday.

Five people have been rescued after their boat capsized in the Manukau Harbour.

The Coastguard said the incident happened near Puketutu Island about 8.20am on Saturday.

The Police Eagle helicopter, Coastguard units from Titirangi and Papakura and Auckland Airport's hovercraft helped to get the boaties out of the sea.

As Alexandra residents wake to another cold morning, a silent figure slips into the mist. They leave no trace - except for another bottle of flavoured milk dumped at a local petrol station.

Members of the small South Island community have noticed a strange recurring phenomenon. Every few days, flavoured milk is left on top of a particular pump at the self-service RD Petroleum station. The strange happenings have been going on for months, leaving locals more baffled by the day.

The identity of the mysterious milk enthusiast remains unknown, as does their motive.

Sometimes they leave behind a sole bottle, while other instances have seen as many as six bottles appear at once. The person seems to have been non-partisan in their choice of flavours, leaving behind evidence of their indulgence in chocolate, banana, strawberry and coffee.

Inside Wellington Hospital is a team brewing kombucha so its gelatinous by-product can be used as a stand in for human flesh and skin.

Two and a half years ago they heard people in Canterbury were using scoby to practise suturing skills, Macdonald said.

So she went down the road to KB Kombucha on Taranaki Street.

"I think he thought I was mad, but he gave me a starter with some scoby in it, which I took back to the hospital on the bus and we started from there."

Now anaesthetists, emergency department clinicians, medical school trainees, and nurses use scoby grown in the hospital to practice not just stitches but cricothyroidotomy (an incision to create a emergency airway), intravenous cannulation, and lumbar puncture (or spinal taps).

Fire and Emergency has evacuated four properties as a large fire burns near Lake Pukaki in Canterbury.

Fire and Emergency says they were called to the scene after a farmer's burn-off got out of control shortly before 3pm on Monday.

Two of the homes were vacant, while the other two were evacuated as a precaution.

The blaze has been burning in the area where State Highway 80 and State Highway 8 intersect.

See previous post for context.

If you'd like to see the full canvas, go to https://canvas.fediverse.events

Hi all!

Canvas is an event that is like reddit's r/place, where users can paint one pixel at a time and we all work together to make some art. You can see more at last year's conclusion post.

You use your Lemmy account to log in, where it messages you a code to confirm it's you (no password required). This year they have a one account per person rule, so we will need all hands on deck!

We have a template for the design we have put together, you can jump straight to Canvas with the template enabled by clicking this link: https://canvas.fediverse.events/#x=162&y=328&zoom=4&tu=https%3A%2F%2Flemmy.nz%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F497358ad-b655-4ae1-9e42-ea70c303a63e.png&tw=112&tx=100&ty=300&ts=ONE_TO_ONE

The event starts today (Friday) at 4pm, and runs for 72 hours.

If you use Matrix (or are willing to use Matrix) join the chatroom by following the instructions here.

We can also use this post for coordination, or if anyone is having trouble getting logged in or other issues.

Edit: Updated link

An Auckland food bank is asking for help to fill the cupboards after it was emptied by thieves who cut a hole in the wall to gain access to the building.

"The aim [of the food bank] is to help people in the community who are experiencing severe financial hardship ... we rely on donations from food from generous people and organisations and then to find that some scumbags have come along and robbed us, it seems to be pretty diabolical to me."

The thieves got inside by lifting some cladding from the back wall and then ripping a hole in the wall where the heat pump unit had been installed, he said.

Furlong said most of what was taken was frozen meat, biscuits and confectionary.

"If they had come to us and said they needed food, we would have given them food anyway.

I have a server that is also plugged into my TV. It's running Ubuntu server, but then I installed the DE when I started trying to use it with the TV as well.

For the TV I'm using Kodi synced with Jellyfin. Unfortunately it's not very stable. Most of the time it's fine, but with specific files Kodi will crash, often bringing down the whole system. I expect this is at least partly because the DE was an afterthought and it's not running a full DE.

I'm looking at doing a full refresh of the server, and am wondering if there is a distro that is particularly good for this use case. I also want to be able to play games on occasion with xbox controllers.

TL;DR: Can you suggest a distro to run on a PC connected to a TV, used mainly to run Kodi and as a server via docker containers, but also for games via wine/proton with controller support?

Last weeks 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?