Zelensky on Venezuela: “About Venezuela? How should I respond to that? Well, what can I say? If… If it is possible to act with dictators like this, it means the United States knows what to do next. Thank you” Omg I love it.

Relevant, and cannot stop thinking about it

“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?”

Just putting this here because it's nice www.1news.co.nz/2026/01/04/d...

Eek. There‘s been quite the spike in the wastewater surveillance. And anecdata also suggests an increase in Covid cases in the Wellington region. My neighbours have just all had it, and one of the leads in my daughter’s ballet show had to pull out because she got sick.

Stay safe out there. There are indications we may be entering another wave. We have resources on our website about staying safe but also what to do if you do test positive: covidaction.nz/en/resources

Here’s the original cartoon circa 1905

This is just part of the deal of working at the senior level of government, you don't get to fully turn the phone off and have a proper decompress over the summer, because stuff like this can and will happen

Having literally worked as a ministerial press secretary over the holiday shutdown before: there is no excuse for this, whoever's on duty has all the emergency/personal phone numbers they need to get the right people online to issue a prompt response to an international incident of this enormity

Here are the final daily warming stripes for all years 1940 - 2025. Onward we go. 2026 should be "interesting."

For anyone seeking to contact me, I've moved to 2027.

A bit of serendipity this morning - didn’t feel safe going out in the car so went to the canal instead and saw this. My comedy moment for the year 🦢🤪 [Vertical video so needs a click] #sillyswan #iphone15pro

Mamdani gets it: the task of ecosocialists is to show that we can build a fairer, greener world faster than centrists.

Let alone for a couple to be figuring out at a time when they're still learning how their own life together as a married couple will work. I hope they get some peace and space together to do so. The lens of a global public audience is not good for anybody, or for any relationship.

I find a lot of the parasocial chat about Mamdani & Duwaji a little not-for-me but one thing that strikes me most is that they're really just newlyweds navigating this extraordinary experience together. It's got to be such a stressful, absurd situation even for old married couples to go through...

Day one of a new administration that was voted by the people of New York. Already there is a foreign state interfering and trying to stir up hate. People see through this stuff. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

In the car today with my son, age 20!, & he punched me on the shoulder & shouted ‘yellow car no return’, a game we hadn’t played in years Got thinking about all the other stuff we used to notice & exclaim when they kids were younger Reminded me of this. Don't stop noticing x #poetry #poemoftheday

Now everyone is (rightly) all aerated about the nudity AI shit on X, can we please do something to stop the Pervert Glasses that will soon be in wide circulation?

For the most part I try to make what other folks are doing not my business. Twitter was enabling some pretty horrifying shit for a long time, but putting a "take this child actress's dress off" button on there is a level of "what the fuck are you doing on this site" that is hard to grapple with.

"We will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try." Boy it would be nice to see more of this energy in politics broadly.

day one in mamdani’s new york

I have been trying to get this shot for days.

Heck yes!!

You can find him on Instagram at the handle akamineyukio. His menswear blog, unfortunately, has been lost to time.

I've been following Yukio Akamine online for 20 years. During this time, the world has seen Myspace and Facebook get overtaken by blogging platforms such as WordPress and Tumblr, which in turn got overtaken by social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. 🧵

So, the data belonging to between 106,000 and 126,000 users has been compromised? Around the entire population of Dunedin? That sounds ... kinda bad?

Ok sounds like Manage My Health weren't fully compromised, are trying to figure out who they need to contact, and are working with the Privacy Commissioner. Though they have no details about what data was stolen. 6% - 7% of users is over 100k people. www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU26...

“many angry posts should have been naps or little packets of crackers” is deep wisdom and you don’t need to reproduce to embrace it!

Happy New Year 2026. Rain is considered to be a good omen across many cultures, and there is plenty of it in New Zealand today. May it portend better times - more peace ☮️, justice ⚖️, equity, and sustainability 🌳 for our challenged world.

The Manage My Health security breach is going to go down as one of the worst privacy breaches in NZ history. There are failures at so many levels, starting with lack of decent comms. The directors and executives of this company need to front up, fix this mess, and then resign.

Danish Govt to lower acceptable nitrate levels in drinking water, following rec from expert panel. They have similar issues to NZ - intensive agribusiness putting nitrates into groundwater, increasing colorectal cancer risks. projects.au.dk/marches/news...

Open up this picture fully. Then look at the surface of Mars. Then look up to the top right. Spot Mars' moon Phobos high in the sky. Then notice the bright spot beside Phobos. That's Earth.

When my father refloored the verandah a few months ago, he left one plank out long with no explanation. We didn't ask, it's his verandah, after all. Harmless. We just found out why. #dragon #lizard Today:

My big night out: I realised I could leave the house party behind – and everything else that made me feel small

Here, at time of writing (first minutes of 2026) is what I understand to be the case about the Manage My Health data breach. I am writing this out as a what I know and why (and don't know) as of now to help anyone trying to explain this to others. This is a data breach with stolen patient data.

Who thought their New Years Eve would be reading the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 www.privacy.org.nz/privacy-prin...

No better close for the year than thunderstorms and hard rain, to wash all clean and bright for the morning.

I've since deleted the sample set off of my computer and sent an email to the Privacy Commissioner. It's not entirely clear if there is any mechanism for notifying those affected. ManageMyHealth should be doing it under the Privacy Act 2020 but don't appear to have done so?

One particularly jaw-dropping attachment in the sample set is a Molemap patient record containing two photos: The naked top and underwear-covered bottom of a map All of these attachments have varying information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, NHI numbers, email addresses and more

Kazu, the group/individual behind the ManageMyHealth breach, has posted some samples of the data for verification and they all appear to be legitimate. Among other things, there are test results (ie; Labtests), referral letters, patient health summaries, hospital ED summaries and other letters

Please enjoy this pīwakawaka in my peach tree, flamboyantly giving 2025 the flick 🪭🍑

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." - Desmond Tutu

WSJ breaks significant news reporting that Mar-a-Lago’s spa *for years* regularly sent young staffers to Epstein’s home purportedly to give him massages, contorts its scoop to find a more flattering angle for Trump, and still gets an icy blast of a comment from Leavitt. www.wsj.com/us-news/trum...

Just caught up with someone face to face for two hours who right before I left casually mentioned they’d had a monster bout of Influenza A last week & were still feeling unwell. If you are not absolutely sure you’re not contagious with flu, Covid or anything else maybe just leave the catch ups, eh.

There's something pretty special about seeing a tūī feeding in a harakeke you planted five years ago. More of this for 2026.

They’ve just dropped an in-app notification

Ngā mihi nui to our treasured Kaumātua Professor Tom Roa (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato, Ngāti Apakura), who has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit 🧵

Change your password immediately. I did.

I pity him having to put up with this moron while managing the defence of his country.

Parmesan shortbreads are the perfect accompaniment to any festive fizz you may be uncorking to celebrate the New Year. They’re #RecipeOfTheDay now in case you want a get a head start on them, but they’re neither difficult nor time-consuming to make. www.nigella.com/recipes/parm...