The NYC street tree data is great. Here are two pictures drawn with it. First, a clustering of tree species based on their profile similarity across neighborhoods. And then its dual, NYC neighborhoods clustered by similarity of their street tree profiles. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

I would LOVE to see Ōtautahi walk its Garden City talk and create a Street Tree Map. What a wonderful volunteer/school/community project. www.openculture.com/2019/10/the-...

What's awesome about building open source is that you don't have to worry about sales prospects. For example, using your favourite animal stacking poo cubes as the logo for a data preparation tool, is a totally valid option. #databs

I know it's not Māori Language Week now, but you'd hope @thepress.co.nz would still spellcheck Aotearoa correctly.

News flash, Rakiura isn't part of Te Wai Pounamu either, so to keep Paul Madgwick happy the correct te reo name of this country is (deep breath) Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu me Rakiura me Rēkohu (which is still shorter than The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu, and don’t forget the Chathams which aren’t Aotearoa either so Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu me Rēkohu should satisfy everyone.

This is of course a stupid waste. BUT it’s being framed as “poor desperate landlords”. If Auckland landlords are so desperate for tenants, perhaps they should LOWER the RENT or SELL to people who want to actually live there. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Manaaki Whenua have appointed Siobhan Leachman as their Wikimedian in Residence! Supporting staff to share their expertise, @siobhanleachman.bsky.social will be assisting the group with contributing content from their nationally significant collections to openly accessible Wikimedia platforms.

I agree with Simon Bridges 😳. The PayWave surcharge reforms are poorly thought out. Previously I could avoid them by manually entering my card & deets. Now fees are lumped in regardless. The banks aren’t required to LOWER their fees, they’re just obscured now. It’s small business hurting. Dumb move.

The #LIANZA20205 quiz from @christchurchlib.bsky.social cracked me up: ten extremely improbable-sounding subgenres (Cli-fi! Uplit!), four of which are not YET "official" ones. These are the four, all up-and-coming.

The #LIANZA2025 presentation by @narwhallibrarian.bsky.social on the state of <flails hands> was both hilarious and sobering. Despite initial appearances, disinformation is not fixed, money to do so is drying up, and @darktimesacademy.bsky.social is fundraising with mugs.

Countering misinformation & disinformation. Mandy Henk, Dark Times Academy. Update 2025: Things are not great and the problem is worsening. #LIANZA2025 #misinformation #disinformation

From Wikisource to public library - pipeline from scans to lendable books. Mike Dickison, Wikipedian @adzebill.bsky.social #LIANZA2025 #Wikisource

I got a Wikipedian shout-out jn Melissa Clark-Reynolds’s #LIANZA2025 keynote, but despite that agreed with almost none of it.

I’m giving a #LIANZA2025 talk this afternoon about Wikisource, but only get ten minutes, so have been handing out this little zine/evangelical tract.

🌸 30 Days to Go! One month until the Great Southern Bioblitz 2025 kicks off! It’s the perfect time to invite your friends, family, or community group to join you. 📅 24–27 October 2025 — save the date and charge those camera batteries! #GSB2025 #NatureLovers #CitizenScience buff.ly/AqpdMst

If I were playing #LIANZA2025 bingo, it would include "visionary PowerPoint diagram of arrows going in a circle".

A fascinating talk yesterday at #LIANZA2025 by Amy Watling on Turnbull's oral history collections, 95% restricted—"my voice is on this little cassette, and there it will stay"—and how one can nevertheless organise remote access in a virtual reading room.

This is a great read. Love the last question. #nzpol Four departing mayors tell us what they really think thespinoff.co.nz/politics/23-...

Follow Josh for good #LIANZA2025 content.

Just had the pleasure of meeting Ghostcat in action on St Asaph St near Manchester St corner. Love these slices of pre-quake Ōtautahi! Dog House and Cat’s Pyjamas were my go-to for late night hot chips after one too many, back in the day. Good times. #kikorangi www.ghostcat.co.nz/about

Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, y'know, kinda boring. So Science did a study. ChatGPT failed. Why? It got stuff wrong. "Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed." www.science.org/content/blog...

I am calling for a moratorium on new tote bags. We all have more than enough tote bags already. Stop giving me tote bags at conferences. I do not want or need any more tote bags.

Want to be able to start micro-editing on Wikipedia in a few minutes – and know why you could be very glad you did? Then my new post @plos.org is just what you need! absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/09/21/w... #Wikipedia

Celebrities and venture capitalists throw millions at a company claiming it can breed fake dodos, which seems especially cruel given the dodo’s living relative., the Samoan tooth-billed pigeon or manumea, is on the brink of extinction for lack of money. news.mongabay.com/2025/09/fund...

“We are not working on building an AI agent. We are working to protect Signal from the invasion of AI agents that threaten privacy and that are being implemented in irresponsible ways”

Possibly the most chaotic #museum collection I've ever seen: a drawer containing literally thousands of pinned #flies, at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at @sydney.edu.au. True fact: this drawer contains more museum objects than the entire UK National Gallery.

For the LIANZA conference next week I only have ten minutes to talk about @wikisource.bsky.social so I make a little zine—or perhaps a wikitract—to hand out.

This how you preserve avian biodiversity, not by some pretend de-extinction.

This week in our critical thinking tutorials, we do a fun little exercise. We randomly divide everyone into two big groups and get them to construct arguments for contrary conclusions, then swap worksheets and evaluate the other group's argument.

Listen to the defensive NFT/crypto vibes from this huckster. Thousands of dodos in 5–7 years? No journalist will actually check (how are those mammoths going, Ben?), and it doesn’t matter to Colossal as long as “numbers [investors] go up”

Colossal Biosciences has announced that they have created a colony of rock dove primordial germ cells, which can turn into sperm & eggs. Their aim is to genetically modify the genome of a Nicobar pigeon, the closest living relative of the extinct dodo. www.theguardian.com/science/2025... 1/11

Sternum (breastbone) morphology supports long-distance flight capabilities in Lithornis, an early member of the paleognath (ostrich, emu, etc.) lineage: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Congratulations to @tyrannosaura.bsky.social! 🪶🧪

This excellent thread includes sobering information on just how dangerous it can be to publicly attend a protest in the USA.

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

Excellent @stephenharrison.com piece about Wikipedia, breaking news, and the right wing outrage machine that's kicked into high gear around articles about Charlie Kirk and the killing of Iryna Zarutska. slate.com/technology/2...

This year I have the pleasure of watching stick insect hatch from their tiny eggs! These are native species Acanthoxyla inermis according to @morganemerien.bsky.social very cute! #NZLabLife #Insects en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acantho...

A reminder that if you have Opinions about dashes, justification, spacing after full stops, and other typographic minutiae, there are reliable references a click away. Butterick's Practical Typography is a clear explainer—though it does use American style like unspaced em dashes.

Prepping for the LIANZA conference next week in Wellington: giving a lightning talk about Wikisource and joining the local Wikimedia meetup. Happy to catch up with Wellington people in my free time—do message me.

Behold a lovely stamp sheet by Chris Ware ... ... where each stamp shows a moment in the day of a postwoman apparently it's the first time anyone has tried to tell a story with a stamp sheet item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

Please give me an unironic list of things that have gotten better over the last ten years because I’m spiraling. I’ll start: you can buy an enormous TV from Costco for like $100 bucks now.

This is a helpful explainer about the groyper stuff.

A nice explainer from @wmau.bsky.social about Wikipedia’s annual fundraising drive. Because the site runs no ads, it’s completely dependent on donations. wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Why_do_...

Enjoying this excellent four-episode podcast “WHO BROKE THE INTERNET?” by @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy: the backstory to all the current enshittification. mgln.ai/e/12/cbc.mc....

I've written another new Adrian Chills story (short horror stories inspired by the Guardian columns of Adrian Chiles). This one is called 'Spoons'. bsky.app/profile/adri...

My talented wife @jeaniefinlay.com has turned my 'Adrian Chills' stories (short horror stories inspired by the Guardian columns of Adrian Chiles) into actual columns!

Local candidates: it's not much help telling us you're married with 3 kids and have run your own business. I need to know where you stand on issues: fluoridation, cycleways, water, homelessness, climate change mitigation, housing density, libraries, and which issues you care about most.

Finally, all the history facts I absorbed from repeated listens to Sondheim’s ASSASSINS might prove useful. Perhaps they’ll even pop up in a themed Stuff quiz.

“Political violence is never acceptable” is also said to stop us remembering how slavery was abolished, why most nations are no longer a monarchy or a colony, how we got a 40hr work week, and how suffragettes got women the vote

Man, NZJE needs a marketing/comms team. Each one of the papers in the current issue could support press releases, interviews, news, features, and a magazine article. Such cool science.