@karenhao.bsky.social with the Te Hiku team, after a hopeful and heart-tugging and hilarious conversation on AI #criticalAI @ the Auckland Writers Festival. #awf26

Apple photos reminds me of my NJ Transit days, and this barefaced lie:

The naming came first, then the guidelines. Without naming digital colonialism as a structure, the ethics work gets absorbed into existing frameworks. What's the equivalent naming that still hasn't happened?

The central point 👇 thanks @iami.earth

Do we know who got this gig? Curator of an "End of the World Library" in a forest. Kicking myself for not applying! www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/a...

The NZ scholarship behind it is worth knowing: Tahu Kukutai on Māori data sovereignty (Te Mana Raraunga), temanararaunga.maori.nz and Karaitiana Taiuru who coined "digital colonialism" and wrote the first Indigenous #AIethics guidelines. www.taiuru.co.nz/research/

@karenhao.bsky.social's epilogue to Empire of AI, "How the Empire Falls," centers on Te Hiku Media: a Māori data sovereignty-driven model that revitalised te reo with 300 hrs of community-submited speech, and 2 GPUs. Hear her at @writersfestival.co.nz next Fri + Sat. #awf26 #criticalAI

Hard to attract literary big hitters to New Zealand — really? Tayari Jones, David Szalay, RF Kuang, Yann Martel, Louise Erdrich, Amitav Ghosh… plus Karen Hao and Patrick Radden Keefe in non-fiction. All at the Auckland Writers Festival next weekend #awf26 www.writersfestival.co.nz/news/

'the social scientist should not be afraid to learn a lesson from his naive medical colleague: of making certain simple moral judgments, accepting certain rough and ready definitions and getting on with the job"- John Bowlby in Sociological Review, 1947 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

The prior page: “my mummy is a unicorn… she makes magic every day” 🦄 🤖 #chatbots

Honestly, this cultural ignorance beggars belief. Thankfully, leading NYT journalists are addressing this.

Me: I can teach advanced courses across the social sciences, digital humanities, and public policy. New Zealand: Wanna be a parent coach at junior surf lifesaving? Me: I can’t swim freestyle. New Zealand: It’s all good. #ClasslessSociety

The cross-party committee has now concluded there is no good reason for the “demolition of the world’s leading #PayEquity scheme.”

If anyone in AI had actually been seriously involved in raising or even teaching a child they would know that you do not “train” humans so they “get smart”. You love them, and they develop. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Hi Auckland friends, I'll be in town and giving a couple of seminars this coming Thursday. Details below.

Just dug into this: they use within-country z-scores, which turns personality into relative rank. So cross-country variation can reflect (i) different pricing/returns, (ii) different SDs of the trait, AND (iii) different wage dispersion/inequality. "NZ differs" is not really interpretable.

A single image that captures NZ's dominant belief system and economic model #nzpol www.reddit.com/r/newzealand...

AI comes into a undergrad system that is already morphed into a hyper competitive, high-stakes signaling and certification game. We could start with admissions and scholarships: just let the people who actually, really want to learn go.

STS (science and technology studies) folks trying to navigate anti-vaxx m.youtube.com/watch?v=0nI1...

“How’s work?”

Just started Frontierlands - @hazelsheffield.bsky.social ‘s powerful, original account of people in forgotten parts of the UK preparing in quietly radical ways for climate catastrophe. It’s hopeful! uk: www.penguin.co.uk/books/456117... nz: www.penguin.co.nz/books/fronti...

@michaelscherer.bsky.social Hi Michael. Thanks for your article of RFK in the Jan Atlantic. One correction: whooping cough can still be symptomatic in vaccinated people, it is just less severe. In fact, sadly, in vaccinated infants it’s still about a 1 in 6 hospitalization rate.

“She spent 11 days in the psychiatric hospital, but it didn’t help. “ “Getting a diagnosis is not a panacea” Mind blowing insight here!! Will ‘Psychiatry’s Bible’ Add a Postpartum Psychosis Diagnosis? www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/h...

New Zealand: proudly ahead of Moldova on investment in research funding for brain health! Treble it and we'll be up there with the other post-communist transition economies!

Every conversation with the English about living anywhere other than England: youtu.be/xBkrrzuO4jQ?...

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

These intake assessments really need to be updated because what is this supposed to be an indicator of rn ffs

“Theory of mind sold separately” thedailytism.com/recreate-you...

In a statement received by his parents, Kit McGodden, four, says that he is going to need a little more evidence before he signs up for this “be good for Santa” agreement.

But remember: “Most (if not all!) deaths are to some extent suicides”. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

So grateful for this important piece, @markbregman.bsky.social 💯👏 Why the Humanities and the Arts Still Matter in an Innovation Economy open.substack.com/pub/markbreg...

I am VERY concerned about the idea of gender pay equity across occupations. It could tank #growth for years. 📉 ⚖️ 💵 My latest Apolitical Economic Analysis 👇 www.nzherald.co.nz/the-listener... #gender #work #payequity #fiscalpolicy

Yes, my complexity / computational folks @tepunahamatatini.bsky.social there is also a maths joke: “Calculus tells us that even as we approach infinity, we approach limits.” Standard economic models will hit their limits long before networks of people do.

My parody of the repeal of New Zealand’s pay equity legislation - Salary Sticks - is out in The Listener (print first). It was fun to write – but the point is serious. Much economic reasoning in policy today still: → masks its politics → mocks its challengers → is gendered *all the way down*

Complexity theory is not actually complex. Here, it’s just saying “we can’t undo your loss, but all is not lost”. Or, “that must have hit extra hard because of what happened to you before”. Surely that’s more intuitive than experimental causal models?

Finally, some comparative work on personality traits in economic outcomes. Culture + inequality matters: “socio-economic background affected social and emotional skills though the effect was smaller in New Zealand than in most other countries.” www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

Beautiful bioluminescence down the local beach 🌊

“When they elevate computing to the status of a college, with departments and a budget, they are declaring it a higher-order domain of knowledge and practice, akin to law or engineering.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

“the relaxification of college has stemmed, ultimately, from a centuries-old, studiously cultivated tradition of organizational disorganization “ www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

Sharing this as a gift article today. If you see this, please read it. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

FML. A Revived Focus on an Unproven Link Between Tylenol and Autism www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/h...

I laugh, therefore I am.. love this happy idea. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/WlZaan?fbcli...

Money alleviates poverty. Its not complicated. Annie Lowery: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

most American political scientists making political maps of America have never even seen this map

Excellent listen on developments in the health sciences in general. They need a p.s.: that what causes #autism _to be a major disability_ is a closed-minded socio-political environment www.nytimes.com/audio/app/20...

Very cool study, inductively showing important variations in *how* genetic and development factors interplay. I would love to see this for adhd too. www.princeton.edu/news/2025/07...

Also, as Jane Waldfogel said: it wasn't enough money. And also: treated and control groups both got a refundable child tax credit of up to $3,600, per child, over the study period. And also: a cash transfer is pain relief, not an inoculation against ongoing socio-economic disadvantage.

"...Among Those Diagnosed". So many psychology conclusions need to clearly add either this, or "...in Rats". www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Relatedly, Covid — the actual virus, not the pandemic experience- probably directly, increased symptoms of neurodiversity, and related mental health problems - www.forbes.com/sites/drnanc...