Photo: AFP / supplied/ NZ Police / RNZ
2024 set a high bar to beat when it came to things being generally weird, but 2025 comfortably rose to the occasion.
That was perhaps a certainty set in motion late last year, when Americans took a look around and decided four more years of chaos was just what the world needed.
Things were no less unpredictable at home either, with no shortage of strange news filed by RNZ's own reporters in the past 12 months.
January
It didn't take long for the first 'I cannot believe this is an actual headline' news time to appear, with 'Kiwi Water Park owner feels "victimised" by iPhone weather app' appearing before midday on 1 January.
A few days later Meta scrambled to delete AI characters it put on Instagram after it emerged "proud black queer Momma" Liv was actually the creation of a dozen people, most of them white men and none of them Black. Another, presenting himself as a "warm grandpa", eventually admitted he was nothing more than "a heart of algorithms and profit-driven design". And before it had a chance to cry tears in rain, Brian too joined Roy Batty in silicon heaven.
Photo: Screenshot / Meta
Then we had a report of a fun new thing to do in the capital - go on a "tour of sites of murder, execution, suffering". Should probably mention the tour focused on historical events, not the present day.
Later in the month RNZ met a woman whose "bread and butter" was removing cockroaches from people's ears, and a mayor so fed up with his own council he removed a view-blocking abandoned double trailer unit himself.
A man in Invercargill was arrested after choosing to rob perhaps the worst possible victims - a group of elite cyclists.
You'd think selling a house once inhabited by a globally adored singer like Adele would be easy, right? Not if she once suggested the place was haunted, apparently.
In Napier, a woman was embarrassed to tell her visitors to find her house on 'Pornwall Road' after someone changed the C to a P. "It's blatant unnecessary exposure to crude words," a local shop owner said.
And rounding out an eventful first month of 2025 was a report that concluded the New Zealand economy would be significantly smaller if we didn't drink so much beer.
February
"I'd ask if she could change her name for starters," ris
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