Sideswipe: April 07: Rule breaker at Grey Lynn Park

Foot in mouth disease in Japan

In February Tokyo Olympics organising committee president Yoshiro Mori resigned after he insinuated that women are unfit for leadership roles because they talk too much during meetings. Now another big wig is raising eyebrows with his solution for Japan's declining birth rate. Kofu city manager Kazuhiko Shimura recently gave a speech during a welcoming ceremony to new hires, where he said: "I'd like you to play around as much as you can. And not just play around in groups of men, or groups of women, that's easy. I want you to play around with the opposite sex. If you do that, then I think maybe the birth rate problem will go away a little bit." He then continued with: "I have a special request for the men. I know we're always told about gender equality and equal gender participation, but when it comes to playing around, I'd like it if the men made the effort to ask out the women." Japanese netizens had to say: "Yuck. Before any of that, give people shorter work hours, or easier daycare."

The new generation game

Chloe Swarbrick's epic comeback to a National MP's heckling
about her age by saying "OK, boomer" was a throwaway remark that went global. Now it has merch. OK Boomer the board game levels the playing field so every generation can compete … In the trivia game players answer generation-specific trivia — Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, Baby Boomer, and the Silent Generation - for the win. Variety reports that a comedy pilot called "OK Boomer" is also being made.

Paying through the nose for Clayton's coffee

"Any other decaf coffee drinkers out there tired of the 50c extra charge?" asks Rob of Ōtāhuhu. "Yes I know, decaf coffee is an oxymoron. Doesn't seem any reason for the price hike, especially at the big retailers whose turnover hardly justifies an extra charge. I thought that was outrageous until I saw another cafe has bumped it to 80c. Be a dollar next."

Feeling old?

The oldest living rose bush grows on the apse of the Hildesheim Cathedral
in Germany — documentation confirms its age at around 700 years. Allied bombers
destroyed the cathedral in 1945, but the rose's roots survived, and it flowered again among the ruins. The oldest known bottle of wine is the Speyer wine bottle, unearthed from the tomb of a Roman nobleman in 1867 and dated to 350AD. Though it remains sealed, it's presumed to contain liquid wine. The ethanol will be gone, but the remaining liquid has been preserved by olive oil and wax that the Romans used to protect it from the air. (Via Futility Closet)