Has Helen been at the cider? They're all still in print in various formats. Also, I bet she wasn't that sanguine about "Unseen Academicals" seeing as it was an incredibly warm and positive portrayal of trans people.

Classicist here to inform you all that this is ancient Greek for summoning a cat

Anthony Head (1954 – 2026) R.I.P

As I think anyone who has spent any substantial time in a large international city will no doubt point out, no city in New Zealand is truly cosmopolitan by the standards of London or New York, and skew specific demographics that don't interact much.

One of these snakes is missing a huge trick here! Just kick the chair and when a furious and rudely awokenTrump looks to see who did it, you could point at the weakest member of the pack and you’ll have whittled your competition down.

Famously Adam and the Ants didn’t require roadies, as each band member could carry up to 10 times their own body weight #totp

Great to see NZ actor Mike Edward with a fairly major role in this new movie www.imdb.com/title/tt3543...

This is a deep cut for medievalists and musical theatre nerds

Is it just me or is this giving cover of an Anne McCaffrey novel published in the 1990s by Del Rey?

I get that this is hyperbole, but for context people have been talking about, and indeed publishing on stochastic far right terrorism since the mid-2010s. The police and intelligence agencies of most developed countries have highlighted the risk model as a concern and monitor those vectors.

What Kate Roger thinks about the mechanics of Hollywood, is not, contrary to certain opinion, of great value or worth the time I spent reading this before I realised it was just someone interviewing Kate Roger.

Y'all insisting on calling Hipkins "Chippy" is probably not attracting swing voters. Just sayin'

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must make images. Or possibly religions. Or both.

Something something Seven Rules of Trust, Jimmy - you know, that book you didn't write...

Good morning Wülferhampton have a fantastic Friday you fabulous freckled fungus faced freaks

#MedievalBluesky If you're a medievalist who likes 12th century Grail narratives, Carolingian ivory plaques, the Utrecht Psalter, Crucifixion imagery, Bernard of Clairvaux, and batshit craziness, hit this classicist/late antiquity nerd up, cos I'm out of my depth.

Look, I think she was an excellent PM during her first term, dealing with Covid. I was less impressed with her second term - losing control of the narrative and poorly framed legislation that went nowhere but come on. This is all getting a bit culty now. www.rnz.co.nz/life/screens...

It suffices to say that would be BAD

Peter Thiel is heading to his spiritual homeland of Argentina, following in the historical footsteps of thousands of other deeply problematic men with the exact same haircut.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think translations should be reviewed by people who aren't familiar with the text in its original language.

Mrinalini Mukherjee: Unbound Forms - Women Sculptors of India and Bangladesh The Hepworth Wakefield 23 May – 1 November 2026 hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/mri...

Does anyone have a link to the actual NZ budget 2026 document, not this "at a glance" bullshit?

Am I missing something? This is an update, not an election year budget. I don't understand the media sometimes.

The Fool, The Hanged Man, and The Magician, are not a triangle. It's a square. Everyone forgets about The Hermit.

Because the racist cooker right-wing pseudo-libertarians who vote for him homeschool because they don't want their kids interacting with other points of view, or indeed, sane people.

Apparently Seymour doesn't understand what triaging is for and why that should probably be left to the judgment of someone capable of ethical thought and dignity.

Very this. Yes, there is great political wisdom in letting your competition dig their own grave with unpopular and stupid policy, but when people are suffering, if you want them to vote you, you'd better damned make sure they know you've noticed and hold out some fucking hope.

If publications are serious about art, they should probably hire someone who knows about it to do the reviewing. Barely any of the works or artists are named, it's mostly "this is what the curator told me," and some relatability twaddle.

Given our economy mainly evolved from colonial land speculation and primary resource extraction, while it may be painful, this is what decolonisation looks like.

That's an appalling thing to say. The Finance Minister is clearly a horse-faced duck.

Jo Cribb, the former head of the Ministry for Women, says the ministries most at risk in the public sector restructure are those that exist precisely because mainstream agencies failed to deliver for the people they represent.

The NZF definition of gender bill is absolute bullshit. Even if you leave aside that it's clearly an attack on trans and non-binary people, it runs contradictory to established science at the most technical level, indigenous understandings, NZBORA, UNUDHR, and introduces mass legal inconsistencies.

Here's a thought. Irrespective of whether you love or hate Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, unless you can read the original Homeric Greek with nothing more than LSJ for help, you should probably keep your worthless opinions to yourself.

One nice surprise I had getting back to NZ from Italy was that I had a poem published in Landfall

Very sad to hear the news that musical comedian Jools Topp of The Topp Twins has died. RIP Dame Jools. www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Maybe instead of the public servants losing their jobs, the more salient narrative is the dumpster fire that will happen when you let AI do their work.

Is it just me or does Willis look increasingly like she's struggling to hide the fact that she got bitten by a zombie from the rest of her survivor group? thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-...

I'm putting money on the children being estranged having not much to do with the epidemic.

As someone who regularly travels by InterCity, someone is projecting waaaaay too much for the sake of a moralising op ed.