From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more easily that Aotearoa is fully on board with. While enthusiasm for tunnels has been demonstrated most recently and notably by New Zealand’s transport minister Simeon Brown, it’s a passion that has a long history in this country. By our count there are 28 tunnels you can drive through in New Zealand, and we have ranked the ..read more

Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still suspended in the cool morning. Summer’s bounty of berries may have disappeared from the stalls, but there are still a few taut glossy plums, sugar baby watermelons stacked like bowling balls, troughs of dusky late season tomatoes and aubergines the size of newborns dark and glistening like a puddl ..read more

A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as well as all the dogs who do fly maybe what they’re dreaming of when they lie on carpet or grass limbs spread ready to at any moment levitate like that figure in Florine Stettheimer’s painting of a birthday picnic for Marcel Duchamp a suited man who lies face -down in yellow lawn with the flat determination of one about to lift off ..read more

The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The Māori health framework Te Pae Mahutonga terms this Te Mana Whakahaere: autonomy. As The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA) explains, this principle encompasses “people’s autonomy over their own bodies, represented by healthcare prov ..read more

Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, you can redesign them, and repurpose them to meet the needs of today, not the culture of 60 years ago,” Sadik-Khan said. Barcelona has found a way to reimagine its streets: superblocks. The city’s director of urban ecology, Salvad ..read more

Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still find myself at Splash Planet on the Fantasy Express, free-bleeding past the Master Blaster, Sky Castle Screamer, and Pirate Fortress? If I could tell you that, then I could also articulate the particular kind of self-loathing I experienced while, standing in the Newtown Vinnie’s changing room, I shoved some old receipts in my underpants. I ..read more

The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are sanctions There are around 20,000 more New Zealanders receiving jobseeker support than this time last year, an 11.6% increase. Overall, main benefit recipients rose by 24,834, or 7.2%, in the year to March. The figures are included in the Ministry of Social Development (MSD)’s latest quarterly benefit fa ..read more

Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best?  I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, in the name of serious journalism, I hit the streets and visited every Raglan Roast branch in the city in one day, to figure out exactly which Raglan Roast should be crowned the best Raglan Roast. Because this is an important piece of scientific research, the controlled variable will be an Oat Flat White. Not just b ..read more

Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously. The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation.  The Students for Fair Rent group will formally announce the strike at an event later today, encouraging students in university halls of residence not to pay weekly accommodation fees beginning May 1. The group was launched in August last year after the university revealed it was planning an 8% rent ..read more

Madeleine Ballard reviews the debut novel from romesh dissanayake. when I open the shop, the debut novel by Naarm-based Aotearoa writer romesh dissanayake (Sri Lankan, Koryo Saram), is a narrative of grief. Devendra loses his mother, opens a noodle shop on The Terrace, grieves, and emerges changed. But just as grief is not a linear process, when I open the shop is no linear narrative. The novel is presented in three parts, all of which jump between past and present tense. In Part I, we learn that Devendra’s mother died “five, maybe six months” ago and that he was her primary caregiver towards ..read more