In a race to stand for nothing, we are increasingly heading for first place.

Shameful. HE may not be ready but my sense is that the vast majority of us here in NZ are. WE haven’t lost our spine, our compassion or our sense of global responsibility. Where’s theirs? #nzpol

Shameful www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

@thepost-nz.bsky.social editorial: Say no to less democracy “With democracy increasingly under threat worldwide, there is no tangible reason to make voting harder in New Zealand. But that is exactly what the Government has proposed.” #nzpol www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/36...

Former Observer big-hitters inc @carolecadwalla.bsky.social launch new title The Nerve with redundancy payouts After Observer sale: "We decided to launch a title that the journalists themselves would own, that would be truly independent" pressgazette.co.uk/news/former-...

We usually know who’s won the electorates and who’ll form the govt on election night because vote counters like myself are not, in fact, the slowest people on the planet. The offical result comes later because it involves a full, careful QA. Slagging off the process is simply political posturing.

'Even when women were mentioned, the report found they were more often victims than protagonists, with the women murdered by Jack the Ripper more likely to be taught in lessons than the female code breakers at Bletchley Park during the second world war 1/2

To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.

The outcome of today's debate at Auckland Council: the city will now move ahead with Plan Change 120, enabling more housing near town centres & transport links (and not in areas prone to flooding). Still to come: public consultation and hearings. But housing was, and will be, the winner on the day.

Auckland housing: Council clears the way for high rises around public transport hubs

Humans coming together to do good things.

Things are feeling bleak right now, so it's worth sharing how California, the world's 4th largest economy, is doubling down on offshore floating wind.

Tom Phillips and the mythologising of the ‘good Kiwi bloke’

While doing some research for work I found this incredible 1886 aerial view of Auckland in the Auckland Libraries Heritage collection! It's zoomable in high detail on the website — kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/coll...

We also have a partial solar eclipse this morning (about 69% peak where I live) but the skies did not cooperate and this was as much coverage as we got before the sun moved behind a cloud layer.

Woke Wayne takes on the grey masses

'It’s hard to notice absence, but once you do, you cannot unsee it. We studied a procession of male writers, kings and generals, with only an occasional female to give any sign that women had been there too.' 1/2

Painter: 'Yes, of course I've seen a Persian cat before' Cat owner: 'You're not going to give them a human face, are you?' Painter: 'Never!'

Harriet Tubman was born while John Adams was alive and died when Ronald Reagan was alive. Adams: 1735-1826 Tubman: 1822-1913 Reagan: 1911-2004 When Adams was born, Hydrogen had yet to be identified. When Ronald died, he could’ve been listening to Hoobastank.

No, no, no … WHERE IS THE KAKA?

Great dispassionate explainer on Auckland’s proposed plan changes. Very clear, strong recommend: youtu.be/5ELqvbX6ZEg?...

With history on its final legs at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage thinking of the long government involvement in public history going back to the Centennial Branch in 1937 and the War History Branch seen here at a conference to plan the 2NZEF official histories in July 1946. #MakingHistory

Just eight hours before Stats NZ revealed the economy had shrunk by an unexpected 0.9% in the second quarter of the year, while new polling reveals the public is more fed up than it has been at any point since the last election.

Grumpy Facebook rant ahoy. 🩷

Birdle 🇳🇿 17/09/2025 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Robert Redford, Oscar-winning actor and director, dies aged 89

i recommend stopping what you are doing and watching the single greatest Wealth Mindset thing i have ever seen

on the one hand, this sounds like it won't raise enough money for them to fund meaningful tax relief for the people struggling the most with the cost of living, but on the other it will be ruthlessly attacked and exploited by their political opponents

Need some help choosing which birds to vote for in the 20th Bird of the Year? Download our handy flowchart. Voting opens Monday! 👉https://f.mtr.cool/euvawqrgje #BOTY2025 #BirdoftheYear2025 #BirdoftheYear

Word of the Day is ‘snerdle’ (19th century): to stay warm and still beneath the covers for as long as humanly possible.

Happy anniversary of my one and only banger of a tweet.

Sunrise, Saturday, 13 September from the Otago Peninsula, Aotearoa / New Zealand. Ata mārie / Good Morning ☀️

One of the great mysteries of my life has just been solved.

OPINION: We seem to have lost confidence in the strength of our moral positions. Now we just agree we have different views on things like basic freedoms and values and let’s not consider who is right, Martin van Beynen writes.

September 4, 2010, is when Canterbury’s earthquake sequence started. A 7.1-magnitude quake struck 40km west of Christchurch, near Darfield. No one had any sense that more destructive quakes would follow, and that the impact on the city’s politics, economy and infrastructure would endure for years.

Analysis from the University of Auckland: US health secretary's cancellation of federal funding for mRNA vaccine research is a tragedy for science in the US but other countries can quickly respond to the next pandemic

Not all heroes wear capes, sometimes, like Jenny here, they just use puns and homophones.

Pritzker: "Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?"

Fascinating. NZ well past peak car. So why are we spending so much more on new roads?

I’m just saying that when it happens I’m jumping out of bed, running to my window, and tossing a coin to a boy to buy the biggest goose in town

Colours of a storm #Shetland

Fellow kiwis, if you travel to the US and manage to not get shot, thrown in a concentration camp, or trafficked to Uganda please enjoy your runny bum.

Sometimes, it's just nice to look at an old ship... maryrose.org

A tiny silly fun thing in the midst of all the chaos... We're on the hunt for a mate for Ned, a 1 in 40,000 left-spiralling snail. www.nzgeo.com/stories/lets...

Using Treasury's estimates of the daily cost of alert levels and the Oxford Stringency Index in other OECD countries I estimated how much it would have cost to implement other strategies over 2020-22. My conclusion: our response saved lives and was one of the most cost effective in the OECD.

Famine confirmed for first time in Gaza FAO, UNICEF, WFP & WHO reiterate call for immediate ceasefire & unhindered humanitarian access to curb deaths from hunger & malnutrition.

In honour of National Poetry Day, here’s a gem from James K Baxter, with one of the great opening lines in NZ literature. #poetry #NZ

Can’t wait to be told that my grandparents’ Depression-era generation, who repaired things until they fell apart, were just a bunch of wokes.

New moon just dropped. science.nasa.gov/blogs/webb/2...

'For now, we recommend that journalists stick to using these tools to generate short summaries....AI-generated long summaries should not be used for publication. In general, we recommend using humans to generate any summary longer than a couple hundred words, and to always verify the facts.'