It will never not be lost on me that the tech weirdos whose brains got scrambled on Lord of the Rings missed the central narrative of the book which is that friendship and good simple food is what makes life worth living.

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" Cicero, Orator, 120

Folks, wishing everyone a restful & restorative Labour weekend, wherein we give thanks to Sam Parnell & the Labour movement & unions for the 8 hr day:

Yellow-legged hornets have been found Glenfield and two other spots in Auckland. We don't want these here! They're twice the size of our other introduced wasps, kill and eat honeybees and lots of native species, and have a nasty sting. www.mpi.govt.nz/news/media-r...

when you want to sleep but you have Work Thoughts

I am so old that I just searched for "reading sunglasses" and was a) happy that they do exist and b) mortified that the "customers also buy" list included Depends and hearing aid batteries.

Props to all the teachers, nurses, doctors, firies etc striking today. They deserve better. Props especially to my teacher sister in law who is taking care of my kids while she's on strike so that I can work.

This remains the funniest way to hear about an internet outage, though.

Perfect encapsulation of a T Kingfisher novel. They’re terrific. In the old sense of being terrifying. Buy them, read them, give them to your friends.

A kuaka (bar-tailed godwit) parading in front of this morning’s sunrise reflected on the water at Omaha this morning. 🪶🇳🇿

My brother’s photography skills are elite ❤️

#cats and #vampires

One of the greatest things about being an adult in this day and age is that even at 50 years old the internet is still teaching me about the existence of animals that I've never heard of before.

It’s always a relief to start a new contract and find that the clients are sane, sensible, real people. Phew.

Reflection cat is judging you. #proofOfCat

Moist owlettes. 🪶

Thread, up and down.

For decades, “Underwater Basket-weaving” was the Boomer stand-in for any college major they thought was worthless, which always bugged me because… A. Redundant!Most techniques involve submerging the basket at some point! B. Have you seen what baskets cost? Maybe more of us should’ve majored in it!

Higgledy piggledy Timothée Chalamet Has a name meriting Endless design Much like his forerunner Benedict Cumberbatch: Hexasyllabically, Easy to rhyme

Today's ##realartmatters, to counter the tide of slop. And this is breathtaking

My dad told me about Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper to encourage me to do maths and sciences at school. Now, nearly 30 years into my IT career, I am so glad he did.

Portland Protestors Baiting ICE Agents With Donuts on Fishing Poles, Calling it ICE Fishing...

(Bracing myself for cancellation). Canned spaghetti on homemade pizza. With pineapple. I use the excuse that my kids like it but actually they don’t.

See that small, moving splotch? That's 3I/ATLAS, a comet that formed in a different star system, photographed from Mars orbit by the ESA Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter. A comet from a DIFFERENT SOLAR SYSTEM photographed by a ROBOT ORBITING MARS last Friday

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

Cats by Shou Xin

And now the singer is doing a beautiful rendition of Phil Collins’s another day in paradise about homelessness and the irony might actually kill me. Especially as I’m sitting on this lovely balcony with my gin and my sunset.

Honestly they were asking him to pledge rate cuts, totally unrealistic, and that response is very him.

On the upside, I get to use my travel insurance for the very first time. On the downside, a civilised 3pm flight has become a decidedly uncivilised 3am flight.

So when you play Pkoémon Go on a tropical island, the background changes …

Don't get mad: I'm going to port something work-related from LinkedIn over here. 1. Would you design your website, app or documentation differently if you knew the person using it would be feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by life? Or do you think those users are 'edge cases'?

Yeats, as often, has this: For how can you compete, Being honour bred, with one Who were it proved he lies Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors' eyes

Last days of voting for Bird of the Year 2025 NZ I campaign manager for Tauhou and just asking for one of your five votes for this wee garden bird.

It's pretty wild to me that investigators have uncovered that anti-trans campaigns are largely funded by the fossil fuel industry, and that the presumed motivations are pretty directly to redirect the public conversation away from climate change... and that this isn't bigger news.

Well don't I feel stupid

I am voting for all the roundest birds this year in #boty. Here's my top five: 5. Tomtit / miromiro. Pretty round. 4. Kākāpō. Large round. 3. Black Robin / Karurae. Small round. 2. Tauhou / Silvereye. Green round. 1. Takahē. Largest round and my favourite bird/sheep.

If part time workers really are taking “too much” sick leave, could that possibly because they are disproportionately mothers and using up all their leave caring for other people?

He’s never been to a home built aircraft fly-in. Or a model sailboat regatta. Or, like, a grandfather’s shed.

Top #Equinox fact: Today is the day that the Sun rises due East and sets due West. At the December solstice the sun rises in the South East. At the June solstice it rises in the North East. As the days pass between the two, the sunrise position slowly changes passing due East each equinox.👇🤩 🔭🧪

It’s my brother’s birthday today. He’s 50. But how can my little baby brother be 50??! That means I must be even older! How is this possible?!

Oh, now, this is good 😂👏👍 Well done the British public ... and Network Rail! #Railway200 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Hey #BOTY #Kikorangi, just a reminder from Peppy that I have a LOT of native bird enamel pins and sticker designs...while I may not have EVERY bird, I do give a portion of profits to Trees That Count every month. Snag some goodies, support a local artist, and celebrate birds! pepperraccoon.com

I know we all enjoyed his video about male friendships, but I think this one about reading might be even better.

The asymmetry is that one side describes it as the Paradox of Tolerance, and twists itself inside out trying to define a precise formula for what an open society cannot be open to, while the other side is just "we're sending the free speech police to drag you off to the gulags loser"

Evolution (abridged)

We could be 5 to 10 years from toothpaste that can regrow tooth enamel. The scales are beginning to tip in favor of Mars once sustaining life. We’ll potentially know for sure by 2040. The blue macaw is up to 160 individuals from an all-time low of 7, and confirmed to be breeding in the wild.