We've decided which tunnel is New Zealand's best
And it might not be the one you expect!
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend: your portal into the best reads from The Spinoff and beyond; a dispatch from the tunnels of the content mines and into the bright future of the highway beyond. Forgive me for having tunnel metaphors on my mind; after the announcement that the government is looking in to creating a “mega tunnel” underneath Wellington, we’ve been talking about tunnels at the Spinoff all week. Hypothetical tunnels aside, Gabi Lardies decided to rank all of the road tunnels in the country – more on that below!
Aotearoa’s road tunnels, ranked and reviewed
Gabi Lardies, who can now add “tunnel ranker” to her CV, did not expect to have strong feelings about the excavations when she was assigned to write about them. “The best thing about it was finding out there's these beautiful, old, hand-dug tunnels shattered in Taranaki along the forgotten world highway. Most of them are gothic archways picked into stone mountains – they look so beautiful. It will be my next road trip!” she says. She also appreciates how a tunnel can turn a road trip into an interactive activity: holding your breath, turning on your lights, beeping – all activities that are both more fun and more acceptable within its dark walls. “I really think we should appreciate our tunnels more – who digs a hole that big? It’s impressive!” she says. At the very least, admiring some tunnels has inspired her to finally do some garden landscaping – read the whole story to see if it will have a similar effect on you. 🕳️
Don’t stop with a tunnel: other glorious and ambitious ideas for transport in Wellington
Right now, we need your support more than ever
The Spinoff recently estimated that the number of full-time journalists in New Zealand may have halved since 2018 Census data was published. As the media landscape continues to change, numbers may decrease again. The Spinoff is not immune to the drastic advertising slowdown impacting the sector. That’s why we’re immensely grateful to our audience for their support. To those who already support us, thank you. If you don’t and are able, we’d be very grateful if you’d consider becoming a Spinoff member or donating today.
– Duncan Greive, founder
David Seymour has solved the problem of children getting sick at school
After an announcement this week from David Seymour about when children should go to school even if they’re sick, Emily Writes explains to parents why the Act leader knows more about their kid than them. “You might think that creating your child, birthing them or being at their birth, loving them, feeding them, comforting them, bathing them, cleaning them, clothing them, knowing the difference between a cry that means “I’m wet” and a cry that means “I’m hurt”, helping them walk, talk, grow and thrive over a minimum of five years means you’re pretty well-placed to determine whether or not your child should leave the house – but you’d be wrong,” she writes. Read the whole piece here.
Confessions of an unlikely petrolhead
Natalie Wilson, director of Checkered Flag (which you can watch below) thinks of herself as an “unlikely petrolhead”. She wrote a piece to celebrate its release that is somehow both funny and moving. Here’s an extract. “On occasion I get called a petrolhead but I feel deeply unqualified for this title. Maybe it’s semantics, but it seems that knowing how petrol works should be a requirement for starters. My mechanical knowledge is rudimentary at a stretch and it takes me 2.5 days at Pick-A-Part to do what F1 pit crews nail in 1.8 seconds. Car Enthusiast? That seems like it’s for people who are enthusiastic about modern auto technology and my 22-year-old Toyota Corolla covered in lichen cackles at the suggestion.”
Weekend watch: The Pukekohe Park Raceway’s final months
The unexpected history of Flagstaff Hill(s?)
In a corner of central Wellington, accessible on a pedestrian path, there’s a flagpole. Historical newspapers allege that the flagpole was part of a defence system used by early European colonists to warn against potential attacks from Māori. Max Rashbrooke, who walks past the flagpole regularly on his way to work, was intrigued: was this part of New Zealand’s colonial mythology of unprovoked attacks from Ngāti Toa, who had in fact been pushed from their land? “Something, though, troubled me about these newspaper accounts of Flagstaff Hill: they didn’t cite any primary sources. Just to be on the safe side, I started searching Papers Past, the online newspaper archive, and consulting books at the Wellington City Library. These sources hinted at a high degree of confusion as to where “Flagstaff Hill” actually was. A trip to the council archives then cleared everything up: it’s the wrong hill.” Read the rest of the piece, about confused councillors, underused public space and historical anomalies, here.
Child myopia is on the rise. Why?
I’ve been explaining to my colleagues for the last few weeks that if I am ever looking in their direction with vacant eyes I am NOT trying to read their emails, but instead to focus on something more than 60 centimetres from my face. This urgent desire to focus my eyes in the distance has been catalysed by researching this story about the increasing risks kids face to their eye health. Spending a lot of time inside is strongly correlated with becoming short-sighted, and if you start becoming short sighted earlier then your vision is likely to deteriorate as you grow up, leading to further issues down the track. To report the story, I spent a morning in a vision clinic at a school in Auckland and talked to several optometrists; the story lays out the issue but also has practical advice for people of all ages who want to take care of their eyes.
Everything else
Is there any point in having a perfume that smells like … uh… Eden Park?
How effective are the newly in development TB vaccines?
Ranking every Raglan Roast cafe in Wellington.
“My parents pressured me to have kids. Now they’re born, they don’t help out at all. Help Me Hera!”
We’re asking the wrong questions about treaty settlements, Tina Ngata argues.
The natural world is getting quieter. Here’s why that matters —and how Wellington is bucking the trend.
Welcoming some weird and wonderful new deep-sea species to the surface <3
Some fun TV reviews for your weekend entertainment: Pip Adam goes deep on the controversy and excellence of Netflix’s Ripley and Anna Rawhiti-Connell explains why Fallout’s video game origin shouldn’t put you off.
Also: here’s what else is new on streaming platforms this week.
Growing up punk and feminist in Indonesia – and what’s happened as the country has become more authoritarian.
A beautiful review of new book (and love letter to Wellington and food) when i open the shop.
This week’s edition of
is an ode to the glories of vegetable markets.Some very funny stories about books in this week’s Spinoff Books Confessional.
“You have to understand/the dog has a mitochondrial problem” - from The Friday Poem.
