This was such a fun story to research. I’m always interested in disasters, and solar storms are unique in that they’re proportional to our tech reliance. So many crazy moments in the last 150 years, like when a storm detonated sea mines or allowed telegraph comms while the machines were unplugged

Spot of good news. Fed Farms and envt groups both back PCE's longtime suggestion to take all the envt data collected via consent monitoring etc and put it one, public place. Looks like that might finally be happening as part of RMA/science reforms newsroom.co.nz/2025/06/10/g...

A bit of legislative necromancy pushed through - impressively - in less than a year. By including these first few projects in the legislation, Bish and Jones said they’d get a bit of extra protection from scrutiny: a feature, not a bug newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/18/z...

As fast-track is set to pass today, let's remember what happened last week in the House. There was a heated debate about private benefits and allegations of cronyism. A controversial overruling - when it came - very delicately avoided this question newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/13/u...

Every year, the Crown pays to treat pre-2017 acid mine drainage at Stockton coal mine. Every year, the Crown also collects a royalty on all coal mined in NZ. It costs the Crown more to treat this one mine than it collects from all coal operations. newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/02/a... (Free tomorrow)

A look at 84 official advice documents from govt’s first year shows the majority had time or data constraints. MOJ was a total wash, 6/6 having both constraints. Last govt wasn’t perfect either, but this marks a change - especially wrt timeframes newsroom.co.nz/2024/11/27/o...