As someone who spends my days packed with productive activities dictated by a series of endlessly nested spreadsheets, this recovery process is at once maddening & meditative. I can't pivot to typical secondary stuff I do when I'm wounded or burnt out. It's the slowest I've lived in a long while.

really, deeply losing my shit right now

Oo, new jab just dropped in NZ!

Literally, at work this morning: Clinician: Patient should stop medication A, but must keep taking medication B. AI VR transcription of this: Patient should stop taking medication B. Seriously NEVER LET A DOCTOR USE AI FOR YOUR APPOINTMENTS. NEVER. UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Since my injury back in November (on top of an existing injury), one of the only exercises I could consistently do was squats - sometimes without weight, sometimes as squat presses. Y'all, now that I am properly in recovery, lemme tell ya: I will NEVER doubt the power and efficacy of squats again.

If I've learned one thing on the internet, it's that whenever you post something you are doing with your kids or your kittens, SOMEONE will be judging you and thinking it is awful and abusive (I'm no exception, I disapprove of the activities in well over 50% of all posts involving kids or kittens😂)

Publishing friends: Looks like Amazon has cancelled affiliate links to all erotica - plus they’re redefining LGBTQ fiction as erotica just for existing (regardless of heat level) Devastating for review sites and authors

We need to kill this cursed project with fire, immediately

I don't know how I went a whole decade being completely unaware of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared before it landed on Dropoout this week, but it is so much in my dadaist freak art lane that I wish I could go back in time to experience each episode as it originally hit the internet.

Is there anything more Silicon Valley than needing to click a ‘Show more…’ button just to reveal the word ‘fired’

Me: takes a week of medical leave Also Me: starts working 20hrs into my leave I know this seems like a recipe for burnout. For me it's the opposite. I need to stay a LITTLE connected to any kind of work. It helps me prioritze my time off better and it's a vaccine against burning out when I return.

Definitely keep calling me during the work day and not leaving messages or sending a text or emailing me, that's for sure the best way to communicate important information to me.

How much cortisol can I get my body to produce in a single day? I prefer to leave this question as a hypothetical, but sometimes it becomes a bit too real.

"We shouldn't use em-dashes, AI uses them." This is an example of LLMs highlighting an aspect of professional writing most people were previously only dimly aware of (& didn't know the keyboard shortcut for). If you just had your em-dash awakening it doesn't mean you get to write the style guide.

help I cannot stop buying wigs, having my own long hair just isn't enough to satiate me anymore

This NZ government has done tons of dumb and truly malicious things, but I'm not sure anything has been as much of a completely obvious and straight-up irrecoverable failure as this.

They raided the jailed children to steal their letters. The problem, in federal officials' minds, wasn't confining children in prison-camp conditions; it was that the children could tell the public about it.

HELLO I WAS A QUEER TEEN IN THE 1990s AND THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST SOCIAL TRANSITION NOW ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST "LETTING" US BE (at the time, for me) GAY OR LESBIAN THEN. They all rest on the belief that it's inherently better to be straight (then)/cis (now) and that's BS.

I logged on to essentially post this exact rant.

Typical Wellington: pure apocalypse overnight, had to haul the heaters out in the middle of summer, now a total stunner of a breezy afternoon.

Holding a flimsy umbrella against the weather to protect pork barrel funding for foreign sporting organizations while the country drowns and is flattened by wind and being sycophantically praised for it by your own team really should be a symbol of this govt's priorities but let's see how it's read.

Some people out there feel really strongly that Timothée Chalamet is a good actor, huh?

"how much important stuff could we have had instead, for the same money" is the correct frame for evaluating university spending public universities' mission is for research and teaching — not spending money on those, while diverting it to tools of dubious utility, should be shocking

We made Indian cuisine THREE TIMES in the past six days, and they were all better than any takeout version I ever had: Tandoori Chicken, Malai Kofta, & Butter Paneer. And the leftovers are GONE. Indian food is so irresistible, y'all.

All of you youngin's would be super proud of me, I saved a phone number as a new contact in my phone for the first time since 2019. (I usually have a big ol' list of numbers with no names and I have to look up every number I call every time I call it.)

This all sucks because this has been a place where artists can consistently get paid and I absolutely do not like to see that end, but I will say that corporate media companies can destroy themselves if they want, and we can live without them.

I'm coming out with a provocative deeply personal opinion in 2026: I want the cool art on the FRONT of a t-shirt, not the back. I want to look down and appreciate the design. I want people to watch me as I'm walking toward them.

breaking new frontiers when it comes to headline writing at The Spinoff

NZers (specifically Auckland): What are the options for a 16YO who is adamant they are running away from home? I don't know this world at all. Youth shelters? Can they offer a same-day intake? I'm Googling my butt off, but if you have firsthand knowledge please reply or DM me.

Played my first practice guitar set while wearing a large lace front wig. Now I more fully understand why drag queens are always talking about sweating. Like, even as a person who can sweat through my clothes in one hour of sitting on the couch in warm room, this was a whole new level of sweat.

Imagine having the absolute, unquestionable branding dominance and authority in a field like Gallup and simply... stopping. They are the Kleenex of presidential polling.

Literally the first thing I learned about NZ when I started following NZers on Twitter was that Ani O'Brien was awful. Nine years later, that is truer than ever. She is a vile being.

You can tell AI hype is true because the people hyping it are the exact same people who said we'd have a Mars colony by 2026, hyperloops in every city, Google Glass would change the world, and that monkey NFTs were going to be the new global currency.

@mistaketheory.bsky.social NEW MUNA www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISlZ...

And Australia gets free power in the off peak it has so much solar, wind and batteries AUSTRALIA

Right now Rikers Island, the physically largest jail in the entire United States, is holding under 7,000 people. ICE's warehouse plans include detention camps which will hold between 8,500-10,000 people in buildings not designed for human habitation.

Welly Friends: Morning Glory Nails is an amazing nail artist who just moved down from Hawkes Bay and is trying to re-establish her business in Lower Hutt. Spread the word or pay her a visit! You can book with her directly on her site. www.whatsthestorymorningglory.net/nailart

Good thing I never put in the time it would've taken to launch a Discord server as one of my Patreon benefits 🤷‍♀️ (Discord launches Gov't ID and/or facial verification to all users next month. I don't trust them with my data & I don't want to incentivize others to do so.) discord.com/press-releas...

Every single word and link in this article is more horrifying than the last. The mask is fully off. We're not just getting dogwhistles from conservative thought-leaders about the subjugation of women at this point - it's the actual message.

The Heritage Foundation has released a 250-year roadmap to “save America.” The document is a how-to guide for subjugating girls & young women: a detailed plan to push them out of college, funnel them into early marriage and motherhood, and then trap them there. jessica.substack.com/p/theyre-com...

I've had a few encounters with the monkey's paw lately: offered EXACTLY what I want BUT with conditions that would make me miserable. Part of me screams, "Accept the darn conditions!" Then another part of me says, "The reason you are reasonably happy and well-adjusted is you say NO to this stuff."

It feels incredible to reach out to someone and say, "Hey, you are so good at your job and I need to spend money doing the thing you are good at doing, can we work together?"

The only day I get even slightly patriotic (call me a patriot & I will twat you) is #WaitangiDay Happy us day fellow Kiwis, bloody love Waitangi Day (although feels weird not being at a Ngāi Tahu official celebration). Toitū Te Tiriti

Wellington Pride being taken to court by anti trans folks trying the old British Terf Island playbook, as with all the anti trans activism, only demonstrated how little their horrible smudge of folks exists and how much bigger the trans positive community in NZ is

New GOP voter suppression bill would not only potentially disenfranchise everyone who has taken a married name, but also all international voters - since it requires IN PERSON re-registration.

We pickled some watermelon rind. Y'all, I will NEVER let a watermelon rind be thrown away EVER again!

If you aspire to be mediocre, LLM AI can help you get there. For most, that means delivering far less than what you're capable of, stunting any real growth, and trapping yourself in the mediocrity. There's a better way. It's called "learning."

On the list of shit I definitely do not want to learn how to fix (but still have to), either my router or my ISP is blocking access to my own website... that I use and working on 24/7. So that's fun.

The supposed inevitability of any technology is mostly an illusion.