‘I vote with the hand that holds this knife. I vote for the fish, the bird, the ocean and a raised land shaped by explosion, erosion and willful life.’ Dinah Hawken reads from her poem ‘The Uprising’ after receiving the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry last night.

And here’s the crowdfunding link if you want to contribute or share www.pledgeme.co.nz/projects/852...

It was lovely to chat with @skepchick.org about my case and my crowdfunding campaign. It’s a looooong interview so maybe bookmark it for the weekend 😂

I'm sure it's totally coincidental that the AoNZ government's changes to the Marsden Fund have been followed by successful applications led by female investigators dropping from 55% to 33%, and successful applications led by Māori investigators dropping from 13% to 5%. 🫠 🧪

This is what protective security entails: www.protectivesecurity.govt.nz

It’s important to note that he was the person responsible for protective security during the time period many many people from the PM to me were receiving regular death and rape threats. The past is making more sense to me now.

Can we please call this what it is, r*pe of a child?

Zohran Mamdani's win is "an incredible proof of concept of how to fight fascism," says @naomiaklein.bsky.social. "Fascists want everybody to be the same. They celebrate conformity, uniformity, sameness, hierarchy. … The entire [Mamdani] campaign was a love letter to the diversity."

I literally want to cry. TOUCHING GRASS WINS ELECTIONS.

If you'd like 25 minutes of hope & unity, watch @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social giving his victory speech as Mayor-Elect of New York City🚕🍕🗽🇺🇸 It's wonderful to see a leader elected with such a positive view of the possibilities & responsibility of civic leadership. Very best wishes from Auckland NZ 🇳🇿

“What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It’s what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight.” —Mike Davis

"You can enjoy music written for animals such as 'Mina' by Edward Elgar for his beloved Cairns terrier. 'The Swan' from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, 'Scene by the Brook', from Beethoven's Pastoral and we haven’t forgotten farm animals either with 'Sheep May Safely Graze'" #NZPets

"Knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing." Freire calls this the 'banking system of education' This is what Stanford/Seymour are doing to our children

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variola... if I was in charge of the “enlightenment” global history our tamariki are taught, the global & varied practise of variolation against smallpox would be key. Peoples other than “the west” had vast medical knowledge the west stole & commodified.

Mint Sunday pottering in the house restyling surfaces, made a couple of wreaths ready for the approaching season, then did some collage, gift tags 🏷️ for Christmas. Bought nothing, made things instead.

Best costume was hands down a toddler in a dinosaur suit. No notes.

Fave house: a younger couple with no kids who I’d seen doing their set up yesterday afternoon, creepy but not too creepy for littlies. She answered the door, gorgeous Irish accent, asked lots of questions about costumes & insisted Miss 5 take lots of lollies.

Halloween 🎃 was so darn wholesome last night. Niece (5) was lollie basket holder - apart from the bit when we took her around the 5-6 houses on our block - and the kids were cute, polite, happy & enjoying their freedom. The troupe of local year 8 boys dressed as Peaky Blinders a fave.

The more women and girls engage in public life, the more likely they are to be subjected to online gender based violence. There are few safety nets for women and girls in leadership. #nzpol www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

children no longer being safe trick-or-treating on american streets because of the president is where we're at

Just caught up with the Anglican schism wng.org/sift/conserv... you might think a split in one of the worlds major religions might be bigger news

The really telling bit is the side by side of global history years 4-6. Ancient Greece: model for democracy. Ancient China: look at these weird “orientals”. Compare & contrast Elizabethan England & Victorian Britain: the “inevitable” growth of democracy & progress. This is Whig history.

The only bright side I can see in the social science curriculum is the wee year 3s getting to do ancient Egypt.

If any teachers would like to share their thoughts on the draft social sciences curriculum through my newsletter send me a DM.

Made our favourite coconut lemongrass dal www.cuisine.co.nz/recipe/cocon... tonight. Rice, grilled paneer, quick flatbread. The smell of onions cooked in ghee 😍😍😍

Have any other parties education spox said anything about the social science curriculum? NB please note my bio, this is a personal post only.

I'm reading the new Social Sciences curriculum content and I wasn't prepared for how sad I would feel. We spent thousands of hours working with the previous iteration and the NZ history content and all that enthusiasm and excitement was just killed for something so bad.

NZ Defence Force deploys liaison officer to Israel

TL DR the govt wants teachers to teach a history of WW2 that is to History what Lysenkoism is to Biology

Sorry this is still enraging me. The use of auntie & uncle for parents generation (or older) relatives or close family friends is so culturally common as to be the norm, not the outlier. Not only is it racist here, but it shows the horrible limited view of family these people promote.

no joke: this line of attack is racist. MANY people from MANY cultural backgrounds use “auntie” and “uncle” for older relatives and even close family friends. the NYP knows this. this is just bad faith racist bullshit parading as cultural ignorance.

Don't see the new Aotearoa NZ histories curriculum online yet. But Act are already crowing about having gutted it. community.scoop.co.nz/2025/10/new-...

When humans look at something we find beautiful our brains release dopamine, lifting mood & if we connect with what we're looking at oxytocin, giving us a sense of belonging. A tiny posy I made in a thimble, with real flowers I grew👇 If you like it it'll alter your brain biochemistry for the better:

I foolishly keep thinking Bluesky is just NZ Tw*tter from the before times & posting about things that are going to get into the fascist timeline.

Asparagus carbonara with homemade fettuccine & garlic anchovy crumb. 😍😍😍😍

Please please folks check your vaxx status & that of your kids. Measles is not “just a childhood illness”; before vaccinations it killed and disabled millions of people every year. Remember, your vaccine doesn’t just protect you, but those too young or too immunocompromised to be vaccinated.

here’s one reason to check your MMR status (and get a booster if you’re in doubt): my daughter still hasn’t been vaccinated, as she couldn’t while she was on active treatment. she’s off treatment now but we’re still waiting on her revaccination schedule - so she’s relying on herd immunity

BREAKING: economist discovers “second shift,” a concept coined by sociologists almost 50 years ago; gives it new, stupider, and less explicitly labor-oriented name

Parents! Carers! Anyone thinking of buying a child a "science kit" for Christmas. For the same / less cost, buy a copy of "Recipes for Wonder" and put together a box of household "ingredients" which will let them do actual science and be a much more personal gift alomshaha.com/portfolio/mr...

I'm of the age where we only got 1 dose of measles vaccine at school. Last outbreak we had I went and got much delayed booster. Do consider doing the same if you only had one shot as kid. www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

“Eight hours to work, Eight hours to play, Eight hours to sleep, Eight bob a day. A fair day’s work, For a fair day’s pay.” #nzpol

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

People urged to watch for exhausted birds and blown away nestlings in wild weather

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...

The elderly cat is in his “I eat all human food now” phase. Is this a thing? Our previous two cats did this as they got older too.

Questions, questions. Like: will the maths teachers use algebra, algorithms, and the Indo-Arabic numeral system (the origin of zero)? Or just pure “Western” maths? Also: literacy curriculum not very promising if you can neither spell nor spellcheck “whakataukī”🤷🏻‍♀️ www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/we-must-r...

I stand with the workers. Thinking of the bus driver killed at work late last night, the first responders who attended the crash, the healthcare workers whose care is essential for those injured & traumatised. I stand with the teachers, who change lives everyday by turning up for kids.

I’m working on a thing at the moment where we’re trying to genuinely account for the economic impact of colonisation for Māori. Last week I read Len Cook on what he describes as the “extreme rates of state custody of Māori children” as a primary cause of economic inequality 1/n

PSA (Public Service Association/ public service announcement) from Te Kauae Kaimahi NZ Council of Trade Unions.