I am dealing with a “thorny problem” right now, today. It is hard and scary because IT IS ALWAYS HARD AND SCARY. But it is also where you do your best work. It is where stories go from “meh” to “WOW”. When I fix it - because that is the job - I will be that much closer to something worth reading.

The NZ Drug Foundation has a major new report pressing the case for a replacement of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, which turns 50 this month. Thing is, its recommendations – for a complete realignment to health, not criminalisation and punishment, are ... drugfoundation.org.nz/topics/polic...

glad to be born at a time when i got to see what life was like before the internet and will be dead before AI completely destroys humanity

Something I have argued for a while is that the internet will become completely unusable/untrustworthy by being polluted with untruth, forcing us back on the evidence of our senses in the world, the way it used to be

It's 2025 and our economic model is still reliant on maintaining a decent bufferstock of unemployed people. This model was *designed* to ensure that employers have the upper hand (and labour could be uberised). Govt distract us from this reality by bashing beneficiaries and abdicating responsibility

I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".

I occasionally check in on TikTok. Recently I've noticed a large amount of political content being GenAI. And not obvious GenAI, the stuff you can only notice if you've worked in and track latest video gen models. None of the people commenting or interacting with a post notice they are fake.

has autocorrect got worse over time?

Child: if you could speak any language you don’t know now, which would you choose? Me: maybe Chinese Child: I’d choose cat language

Am betting “celebrate” will be very loosely applied

- you clean up that banksy? - sure did, your honour, leaving a perfect, permanent outline, imbuing the work with real fuckin gravitas while making its point better than the artist did himself just like you asked

The load-bearing myth at the heart of UK politics is that the politicians and media are tolerant and decent and working people are knuckle-dragging bigots, but it's actually completely the other way around.

"Informed". They were all informed at different times. Didn't any of them need to give *permission*? FBI base in NZ: Judith Collins knew 78 days before PM, Luxon briefed 6 days before FBI director arrived www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/...

New Zealand salaries are dreadful. I do the same job, remote to other countries, I get paid more. It's not just a currency difference. My overseas colleagues pay less for food , housing, heating. Nearly everything is more expensive in nz, while nz jobs pay less That money is going somewhere.

Most (good) solutions are proposed not by newcomers, but by people who understand an issue deeply. There are exceptions, of course, but generally, if a solution seems "obvious", it's because you don't understand the problem as well as you think. 🧵

Sometimes I see people like 20 tweets deep into an argument with Grok. Like, what are you doing brother? You are trying to win an argument with a vending machine.

NZ has now paid 120% of the full cost of 2 next generation, hybrid ferries for *checks notes* nothing at all. Those ferries were on track for 2025 & 2026 delivery. Extra points: our only rail enabled ferry is being retired on Monday & maintenance costs have doubled Should be sackable #nzpol

Thinking about the millions of QAnon followers who spun elaborate papedophile conspiracies from emails about pizza. All now strangely silent as a blackmail op so brazen it would be cut from a Verhoeven movie takes place between the American president and the world's most famous child sex trafficker.

Multiple times this year I’ve had coffee with fellow immigrants who grew up in corrupt third world countries and the shared sentiment has been that Americans don’t understand how bad things are going to get.

the trick is to weaponise procrastination: to use the avoiding the big thing energy to get lots of other little things that need doing, done

This is one of the best ideas I've heard in ages.

the trouble with democracy is you get people who represent the polis and many of us are stupid and insane

Fonterra have literally said that they have no social responsibility to New Zealand, so imho NZ has no responsibility to give them another cent. Here’s a list of Fonterra brands to boycott. * Anchor * Fresh & Fruity * Kapiti * Mainland * Mammoth * Perfect Italiano Fuck em. #nzpol

You have to admit that is a pretty weird reaction to an attempt on a head of state.…

Nestled up against the steps of City Hall in LA is a large placard with missing posters for the recently disappeared in the city.

This is huge news out of PSNA, reported here by Mick Hall. VERY interested to see if establishment outlets dare to pick it up. Subscribe to Mick immediately! mickhall.substack.com/p/new-zealan...

There have been a slew of recent indicators telling us that there is real pain in the labour market right now. I have a look at what the latest data is telling us at: craigrenney.substack.com/p/the-labour...

If a corporation can be a legal entity then why not a collective of birds?

There will be no midterm elections.

first glimmer of anything like leadership from Hipkins in a long while

The current nz government is objectively unpopular - if memory serves they’re one of if not the least popular first-term government since polling began - and the fact that polls have a Hipkins-led coalition either behind or a bare whisker ahead of them is the most absurdly damning indictment

“how people should protest the right way” is a parlor game played by people whose experience of protest is watching the news on tv

the inevitable Elon/Trump breakup is underway and wow there's not enough popcorn in the world for the spectacle of two very online drugfucked delusional narcissists trolling each other to the death. this will be epochal, the history of our online times being made x.com/elonmusk/sta...

but I'm being brainwashed by a different algorithm than you

every time I see this Palantir whackjob I think it is Taika Waititi and then I wonder how long until we get a savage satirical film

day of tech purgatory complete! factory reset and set-up bricked phone, and upgraded linux. already feels mammoth, goddamn getting old is gonna suck where tech is concerned

Never forget: NZ Govts for 50 years have bought into an economic management model that relies on keeping a bufferstock of kiwis unemployed & desperate. Jobs are kept scarce, so that kiwis sell their labour at poverty-wage prices. If unemployment is too low, Govt's henchmen at RBNZ crash the economy.

Quick look at the week's big earnings release before I catch-up on employment data. Here's change in total wages (gross earnings) adjusted for inflation. We are supposed to believe that things are about to turn for the better. Does it look like that plummeting line is about to spike up? [🧵 1/n]

"Globally, from January 1, 2003, to December 12, 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 954 cases of human infection with the avian influenza A(H5N1) virus. Of these cases, 464 were fatal, resulting in a case fatality rate (CFR) of 49%. The deaths were reported from 24 countries."

YIKES @soundcloud.dev no thank you

Just in case you weren't already outraged by enough today .... Our NZ banks make, on average, $100M net profit, PER WEEK! we don't have a cost of living crisis in AoNZ, we have a cost of corporate greed problem.

👋 I am one of many folks who just got screwed by National and Act scrapping all existing Pay Equity claims in under a day under urgency without any public ability to consult or comment www.together.org.nz/fbt_for_pay_...

over on twitter my shadowban (or just general site dysfunction?) for a while now at the point where I am unable to reliably like, retweet, bookmark, often even load comments to a tweet

Seems this Doris Lessing quote hadn't been turned into a handy image yet, so here ya go

was offilne for a week, striking how I did not miss any of this