Recommending that visitors have their passports on them at all times...I couldn't with good conscience recommend that my students attend AGU. What a sad, terrible situation

I'd like to see the Herald ask questions about backers more often. #NzPol archive.ph/NlRGM

At COP30, delegates adopted a new mechanism to coordinate a just global energy transition — but language on critical minerals was dropped after China and Russia objected. Minerals like lithium, cobalt & nickel are key to renewables, yet their extraction carries major environmental & social costs.

Fanny Osborne's stunning watercolours including the only colour depiction of the extinct Adams mistletoe... a Great Barrier Island special edition. www.rnz.co.nz/life/culture...

When your country's collective ability to bullshit on the internet is extensive enough to shape AI slop.

“When it came to COVID, we completely blew out what the value of a life was, completely, I’ve never seen such a high value on life.” - Brooke Van Velden, Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety. #nzpol

A bit stormy on this morning’s commute

Dictators around the world are celebrating today. Trump just pardoned Henry Cuellar, the first member of Congress ever charged with acting as a foreign agent for a dictatorship, caught dead to rights working for Azerbaijan. www.politico.com/live-updates...

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Dissonance on the timeline this morning as NZ government clings grimly to the past

Analysis: Meeting the Paris target without offshore purchasing would require the emissions equivalent of five GFCs – something the Govt will not undertake.

A family member has just had the caterers cancel for their wedding in six weeks time😬 This is a long shot, but can anyone on here recommend affordable caterers that could be on site in the Katikati area in mid-January?

An excerpt from my book HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT (2020) summing up the current situation:

Quality effort at Ōtepoti Dunedin Santa Parade today F.A.B Virgil

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Graphic representation of my modest 115 observations on @inaturalist.bsky.social so far this year

Fossil fuel companies were given confidential drafts of legislation during their (successful) two-year campaign to weaken oil and gas regulation and overturn the offshore exploration ban - new reporting from me via the OIA www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

“One of the most powerful forms of climate communication is just telling people that a majority of other people think climate change is happening, human-caused, a serious problem and a priority for action,” said Prof Anthony Leiserowitz at Yale University in the US.

It's weird, it's like if you give teachers the additional support they've been crying out for for years, achievement gets lifted. Amazing, who could have predicted that.

"The 12-week acceleration trial involved approximately 1,500 Year 7 and 8 students who were a year or more behind. Students received targeted, small-group tutoring up to four times a week across three models: in-person, hybrid and online." insidegovernment.co.nz/maths-catch-...

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

How the oil and gas industry helped rewrite New Zealand’s drilling rules

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🚨 SCOOP: Toyota and Aston Martin secretly lobbied a Conservative cabinet minister to weaken Britain’s climate policy. We only know this because Democracy for Sale won a two-year legal fight to force the government to hand over the documents. democracyforsale.substack.com/p/victory-we...

What RFK Jr. doesn’t want you to know is that in 2019, his anti-vax nonsense caused a measles outbreak in Samoa that infected 5700 and killed 83 people, most of them children.

Full text of letter leaked to Guardian saying at least 29 nations won't agree a deal without a road map for a phase-out of fossil fuels "true leadership is .. not lowering expectations to accommodate the most reluctant" #cop30 www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.

Time to move past the neverending trial stage. Yes, basic income reduces homelessness.

Stuff NZ has a headline that it's "not always predictable" that a man will murder his family AND an article about a murderer with decades of partner stalking & sex crime history that police weren't concerned by before he murdered, AND one about *yet another* cop covering up other cop sex crimes

Nice pink form of Thelymitra ixioides (spotted sun orchid) near Mallacoota, East Gippsland, VIC. Have seen one or two pink forms at this location in past years but haven't seen them every spring. #Orchids #OzPlants #InTheField

A reminder that seven years ago almost to the day, the CIA determined that Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the killing of @washingtonpost.com journalist Jamal Khashoggi. I hired and worked with Jamal for a year. www.washingtonpost.com/world/nation...

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Red tussock (Chionochloa rubra) is flowering in the garden now. One floret in this spikelet is open, presenting two fluffy stigmas, one on each side of the spikelet, and three dangling stamens. #bloomscrolling 🇳🇿🌱

“A foreign counterintelligence agent was pulled off a case involving China to walk around D.C., making D.W.I. arrests...” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Ministers are accused of trying to get their hands back on the wheel with amendments to the Fast-track Approvals Act

The only craft docked at Tiangong space station has been damaged and “does not meet the release conditions for a safe manned return.”

Bloody Hell. Carbon price crashes under NZ$40/tonne.

As dozens of frog species have declined across Central America, scientists have witnessed a remarkable chain of events: With fewer tadpoles to eat mosquito larvae, rates of mosquito-borne malaria in the region have climbed, resulting in a fivefold increase in cases. https://wapo.st/4paBuuT

Why continue to pretend that Tr*mp ever had any intention of actually fixing inflation?

I’ll be sharing more images as I work through them – so if scenes of life in Edwardian Britain interest you, then keep an eye out! Also, feel free to follow my Facebook page for more information about this series - www.facebook.com/historygeeknz Church in the Wood, Hollington, Hastings.

Something special to share. I’ve been up to my old tricks again – scanning, restoring, and researching a collection of over 600 Edwardian-era glass slides that were found in an attic. I've connected them to Birmingham schoolmaster and amateur photographer Charles Francis Hayward.

Real reason this govt wants to spend 100 billion on roads finally becomes clear: they’re creating fresh assets for future National govts to sell so they can go on claiming to be “grown up” and “mature” about “economic reality”

It really seems like this administration is trying to eliminate the field of public health. MPHs and DrPHs will no longer be considered "professional degrees" by the DOE and, therefore, will face limits to accessing federal student loans. aspph.org/department-o...

One ~182km x ~211km solar thermal plant could provide all of America’s electricity, including a fully-electrified land transport sector. 100% clean power from just 0.39% of U.S land. That’s why renewables are constantly under attack from the fossil fuel industry and their paid mouthpieces.

Latest from the McSkimming files

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Big cloud energy

Shameful

Nearly half of NZ top 50 companies increased their climate pollution. Biggest increase from the biggest polluter - Fonterra businessdesk.co.nz/article/poli...

Only 1/2hr after sunset, while taking a timelapse, this was happening in front of my camera (timelapse processing later). This was about 1/4 of the #Aurora happening off the South Otago coast. #Nikon #NZ #AuroraAustralis Nikon Z7ii 20mmS ISO f/1.8 1.3 seconds