It’s getting to the business end of the first trimester, and students everywhere are desperately looking for a distraction from the threat of looming exams, trying to decode instructions for assessments, and watching on in horror as the lecturers we pay $10,000 a year for struggle to turn on their microphone for Zoom tutorials. Hopefully your distraction can be found here, in the (likely damp) pages of Nexus, but if not, the NBA playoffs are on!
Enemies of the people Woolworths New Zealand and Foodstuffs Ltd continue to pretend they aren’t raking in $1,000,000 of ‘excess profits’ every day. New data from Stats NZ show the price of food in April was the highest it’s been in a decade, and is the single biggest contributor to Aotearoa’s cost of living crisis. Countdown recently announced a so-called ‘price freeze’ on 500 items over winter, but a deep dive from The Spinoff revealed that there were hardly any ‘essential’ items on the list (including literally no fresh fruit), and in many cases Countdown will actually be making more money on certain items that tend to trend cheaper in the winter. Foodstuffs have also announced a 10% decrease across the board on food items, which Stuff calculates will save the average whānau a whopping 57 cents a week. A Consumer NZ petition calling for the Government to step in has reached almost 70,000 signatures in just one week.
The NFT market looks to be collapsing as the Wall Street Journal reports sales have dropped 92% since last September. Over the course of this year, popular crypto-currency Bitcoin’s value has dropped 43%, Etherium is down 42%, so-called ‘stable coins’ LUNA and TerraUSD have lost 99% of their value in mere days. If you’re unfamiliar with NFTs and the crypto world, maybe just Google it because I am literally incapable of understanding why someone would drop thousands of dollars on something that doesn’t exist in any meaningful way and looks like PS1 Hagrid. If you were one of the ones unlucky enough to drop $32,000 on a Snoop Dogg NFT last month, your digital .JPG will now fetch you just $210 on the crypto market. Stonks! Crypto and NFTs are the kind of things that sound nice and good in theory, but in practice are another perfect example of our collapsing late stage capitalist hell. Oh wait but look, this NFT is a cute ape in a hat!
The NZ Police Association union says that claims of systemic racism within their ranks are ‘lazy and unhelpful.’ Newstalk ZB reported that following Māori Party MP Rawiri Waititi’s comments that increased Government funding for police would lead to ‘more dead Māori on the streets,’ the Police Association replied saying that ‘Te Pāti Māori could and should do better.’ New Zealand police have shot and killed 13 Māori people since 1990, the latest happening only last month when Police shot and killed an allegedly unarmed man outside New Plymouth. Māori are disproportionately represented in our prison system, which the Police Association claim is due to ‘education, health, the economy or society.’ The NZ Police had previously commissioned Waikato University’s Te Puna Haumaru (Institute for Security and Crime Science) to research systemic bias within the policing system, but were mysteriously dropped in March after sending their first literature review to Police. In response to questions from Nexus as to why this happened, the Waikato University comms team told us that ‘in light of the complexity of the research questions, and in ensuring that there was a solid foundation for answering those questions, other research bodies have completed other parts of the ongoing research agenda.. The University continues to be involved in other work with NZ Police through the Evidence Based Policing Centre.’
The Nexus Team bullied alt-right bed wetters Counterspin Media off of Waikato University’s Hamilton campus last Monday. Counterspin Media, who are known for promoting the idea that the Christchurch terrorist attack was staged, threatening to string MPs ‘up from the nearest bloody lamppost,’ admitting to being white supremacists on their own stream, and promoting widely discredited Nazi propaganda, pulled up to our campus on Monday as part of their ‘Let’s Not Forget (To Buy Adult Diapers)’ nationwide tour. Parking outside the Nexus offices, they were heckled by security, students, lecturers (after asking a lecturer walking past for an interview, she replied with ‘no I can’t, I have a *job* to go to’), and Nexus staff were heard yelling ‘boo, you suck’ until they ran away like the sad little pissbabies they are. They only lasted about 20 minutes on campus, which is generally how long it takes them to change the sheets after they’ve pissed the bed.
And lastly, International students will be returning to campuses nationwide for the first time in two years. Aotearoa’s borders will be opening from 11:59pm on July 31st (the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to close in March 2020), and will see students from all over the world return to Waikato University’s campus, injecting some much needed (and missed) vibrancy and culture. Stuff reports that Waikato Uni will get around 150 of the Government’s allotted 5000 international students, a large drop from the 2500-ish that were enrolled here in 2020. International students contribute up to 25% of Waikato University’s overall revenue, so hopefully that’ll mean that over the next few years they’ll be able to finish whatever the fuck they’re building in the Gate 10 carpark.
