Seven working days left this year. In the wrong hemisphere to be going to the beach but goodness knows I need some time out of the office. Maybe a couple of weeks off will help me find some mojo again

Not directed at anyone in particular but if you look like a Sontaran in a navy suit, then a cutaway collar with a Windsor knot is not your friend.

Imagine taking the call from the Vatican to set this gig up. No-one is going to believe the call is genuine

Ticket prices in the UK are an absolute ripoff Foo fighters next year, £320 for 200 level seats at the back of the arena and it's basically sold out Same tour in Sweden, £120 front of stage and loads of tickets available. It's cheaper to fly to Sweden for the show than go to Liverpool

Despite growing up in NZ and learning about Te Tiriti in school (at least what was taught of it) it wasn't until I came across indigenous activists in what is now Canada/US that I really started to 'get it'

The whole thing where the US govt just stops paying its bill is just mad. But this? This is both weird and concerning at the same time www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

After 10 minutes of being annoyed that MrsG had set their work alarm to go off on a Sunday it dawned on me that it was, in fact, a Monday. This did not improve my mood

YouTube is doing their part to get my screen time down. Their ad policy had made the service all but unusable. The number and frequency of ads, and how many are unskippable is ridiculous. *I'm not buying your shitty products, leave me alone*

I'm considering putting a case of something nice away. With so many of the complete bastards of this world in the late 70s/early 80s there's going to a few celebrations coming up in the next decade

A shame Canada didn't get their fairytale ending (game of two halves, rugby is the winner at the end of the day etc) but the English team really is something else.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This is shit, but the temptation in this situation would be overwhelming. "You want evidence? Watch this!"

Hey Man, Nice Shot is trending on Spotify. How random...

I got to thinking about how some people don't have an internal monologue, or can't visualise mental images and now I'm wondering if some people don't have to consciously decide social cues on the fly. Is that a thing?

"American exceptionalism is a term that's been used for quite a while to describe the aspects about the United States that are unique, but unique in a way that's favourable," he says. I don't think that's generally the way non-Ameraicans use that term

I'm not normally one for football but when a League Two team takes Man U down in a 12 round penalty shoot out, you've got to think those Grimsby Town boys are having their biggest night ever tonight

A three day weekend with the sun out has me wondering why can't this be the norm. With a two day weekend work is already hanging over you by Saturday evening. Three days however, that's almost bearable It's long enough to stop thinking about work and to actually feel like you've unplugged

If anyone wants to know how well the UKs new internet access laws are working, I can only access Reddit through the app, it's completely blocked otherwise without a VPN. Nation lottery only works over 5G not domestic WiFi. Unless I VPN with an exit point in the UK (how the hell does that work?)

Taking advantage of a long weekend with no rain to give the hockey kit a wash. Not sure what it was but something in that bag was RIPE

Love Radio 3, love that the Proms are all just on there for free, love the halftime chat that has the same structure as halftime chat in sport but where they are never, ever going to actually go “well, he’s not a *great* Finnish conductor, is he?”

This fucking country.

Ah...happier times I don't suppose someone can smuggle a couple of bottles past Winston for the PM? www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLDv...

I guess that's me stuck here for the foreseeable then? She's not a big lap cat and I can't bring myself to move her

Damn... UK cycling womens team went from 400 days of lost training to ONE after studying how menstrual cycles affected susceptibility to injury www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

Some of the technical CVs I see are just word salad. They're not AI just such a muddle of action verbs it's all but impossible to know what people *actually do*

This isn't just failing to read the room, it's not even opening the door and taking a look inside.

Really struggling with work. On the face of it, it's the natural culmination of years of work and experience, the money is good and the company is expected to grow. But I've just lost all interest in it. I'm just tired of it and not sure where to go from here Anyone else been there?

For the #photography peeps out there, there is some serious kit up for auction here after JJ Lighting went into liquidation Way out of my league but these auctions can throw up some absolute bargains www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auctio...

I do hope that in my lifetime I get to see Australia become a republic, because I think NZ would follow And that would force it, as a country, to have a serious think about what it wants to be in the world. Just a post-colonial agricultural outpost, or something more?

The InternetNZ AGM is an interesting study in how small numbers of motivated people can make a difference in small but consequential ways (for good or bad) In a country of 5m, a few thousand influence NZs place on the internet, equality of access and how the world sees NZ It all adds up

My equivalent of 'this meeting could have been an email' is 'this software could have been a procedure' I spent a good half an hour trying to talk someone out of writing software to prevent a problem that can be fixed by an end user saving a calibration file before starting a test (as instructed)

I was trying to explain this to kiddos. The internet used to be...free. You weren't bombarded with ads, cookies, apps and push notifications at every turn. There wasn't always someone trying to monetise you

If you have to airdrop emergency supplies in to Gaza, Israel is not your ally. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Not once in this article did anyone ask *why* the construction sector took a nosedive in 2023 Lots of talk about pre-2023 and that things might get better. But reasons? Nope, not a peep www.rnz.co.nz/news/chinese...

My Te Reo isn't very good. Good enough to understand the posts from AoNZ that are smattered with it though. My favourite word has to be manaaki. English doesn't have anything that quite matches it. It's not that it can't describe the concept, just not as succinctly. Not in a single word.

This is bullshit Freezing tax thresholds + high inflation = regressive tax policy www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I'd like to thank the travel industry for being so exploitative that the even discussing family holiday plans fires off a fight-or-flight response (no pun intended) The whole process is just waiting to find out who's going to fuck you over first.

Fuck sake. Just came across what I'm pretty sure is the Chch video being posted here (the comments tipped me off). Modified to try and evade blocking tools. Reported and blocked along with every account that liked it but weird that at least half were Brazilian What's wrong with that place?

It would be great if the Kikorangi feed didn't pick up on the 'nz' in URLs. Despite my best efforts I'm still being flooded with US-centric articles from NZ websites.

Just had the most random flashback. Who out there remembers NZ School Journals? We used to have s store room with a box for copies of every journal. I can't remember what was in them now, but we looked forward to the new ones coming in

I'm seeing a weird BSky issue where a post I replied to comes up as a 'Blocked post' but all replies from the poster are visible. As is their profile. I didn't think I said anything too contentious. Feels like a bug?

Mr16 has another round of exams this week. The last ones were... not great. But we've been patient and encouraging and something has clicked in the last few weeks. I think he's starting to believe in himself as much as we do.

Today's life hack: If you buy tonic water in 500mL bottles, you can make G&Ts in pint glasses.

Retired Working Dogs is amazing and I'll be knocking on their door when I'm back in NZ. If you are looking for a dog, give these ones a chance

I told you we’d be back

It's very annoying to go looking for a book, to find that it's not on the shelf where it should be. And then not on the shelf where it might be. And then not even in the bookcase where it really shouldn't be, but might have ended up anyway. So now I'm missing a book, and I'm quite puzzled by it

Just when I was about to give up on the internet completely, this happens! Absolute gold

I found there's a 'Change my nation' button on the BBC news site. I keep pressing it, but so far I'm not seeing anything different

To the butter fans out there. You're absolutely not imagining it, butter prices have gone from USD 3200 to 7900 in 5 years That's 20% inflation on average!