Comment by EdwardDiego | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EdwardDiego | Hacker News Reader

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The Māori, natives of NZ/Aotearoa, have legends of wild men, the Maero [0], who were displaced by the Māori, and accordingly angered. Their version of Ireland's Tuatha Dé Danann, I guess.

It's always been fun to tease tourist hikers with stories of the Maero when you're in a remote backcountry hut hearing the godawful screams of brushtail possums.

Speculation is that the myth derived from one or more of the "lost tribes" [1], Māori who fled into harsh wildernesses in the face of invaders. Given we've so little knowledge of archaic Māori culture following the extinction of the moa [2], maybe there were "lost tribes" back then that the Maero is based on.

Amusingly, as a redhead under the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole, they have a myth of a white skinned and red haired people [3] who find direct sunlight lethal, which is pretty correct if you look at melanoma rates in NZ Europeans.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maero

[1]: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov10_09Rail-t1...

[2]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/moa

[3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patupaiarehe

Unless you live in Antarctica the ozone hole has little bearing on how much UV exposure you're getting. The stronger sun down in NZ and Aus is mostly due to Earth's elliptical orbit (closer to the sun during south hemisphere summer than north) and fewer pollutants in the air that absorb light, which is due to the fact that 90% of the world's population lives north of the equator.

Our climate scientists beg to differ :)

https://niwa.co.nz/our-services/online-services/uv-ozone

(Ozone "holes" form over Antarctica, but then migrate northwards)

Not saying it doesn't have an effect, just that it's vastly overstated and the real picture is more complex. As usual, the nature of things is difficult to convey in a tweet.

> Amusingly, as a redhead under the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole

I spent about 15 minutes under the south island sun without a hat today, and I'm kind of worried I'm sunburnt.

You probably are. Luckily, 15 minutes isn't too bad.

When I worked for a German company, we'd fly German colleagues out for important planning seasons (held over two - three weeks to justify the jet lag).

And we'd always warn those on their first trip about the NZ sun being considerably more fierce than any sun they were used to, yes, far more fierce than Lanzarote, Corsica, or "Blauhimmel Deutschland" (Blue sky Germany) aka the parts of Mallorca that sold Die Welt in local shops, and hotels that served white sausage and wheat beer on Sundays.

And invariably, they thought we were exaggerating, after all it was spring/autumn! They'd go spend a day at Sumner or New Brighton beaches, and then we got to watch their very red faces peel and gradually heal over the next fortnight. Our CEO managed to get sufficiently sunburnt on his first trip that his forehead blistered, which made it hard to maintain eye contact at times.

(He also managed to be on the New Brighton pier during the big Valentine's Day aftershock, which put a charge up him).

They always remembered to wear sunscreen and sun hats on their second trip ...

...conversely, it was lovely for me when I traveled to Germany in their summer, I could have a lunch outside for an hour, and not get burnt. My people are very much of the north.

>Our CEO managed to get sufficiently sunburnt on his first trip that his forehead blistered, which made it hard to maintain eye contact at times.

Now he knows how women feel: "Hey buddy, my eyes are down here!"

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