If you are in your 40s and were a computer nerd as a kid you will know why this lapel pin is got as part of as Kickstarter reward is so cool. If you're none if thier things... Look at the pretty baubles!

Opposition plz keep proposing amendments to make official language various dialects of English. There are about 800 of them. If the government gets sloppy we could be blessed with the right to conduct all offical business in Middle English.

Want a set of recommended reading for 2025 award consideration (or, yknow, just catching up on great stuff) from our @nerdsofafeather.bsky.social crew? Part 1 of our annual recommendation series (covering fiction categories) is up now! (see if you can pick out mine, heh).

Not to say "we told you so"... but we did, indeed, tell you so: www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2025/10/21/r... www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2025/10/29/m... It's clearly time for urgent and robust discussions about value, access, climate, well-being, transport choice & more. We are extremely here for it.

Easy win for Labour to wholesale endorse the Infrastructure Commission's blueprint & invite the govt to (continue to) act against good faith expert advice.

The AI bubble RAM crisis is caused for non-existent problems by non-existent money for a non-existent infrastructure to meet non-existent demand to make non-existent business and will utterly destroy real business based on real demand and real infrastructure built with real money for real problems.

If you're in a position to vote on this, do the South Pacific a solid and vote for Brisbane. The last time Worldcon was scheduled down here it was 2020 in Wellington and it didn't happen in person. Will have been 18 years by 2028 since we got an accessible in-person con. Put the World in Worldcon.

2 early errors, surely that fab Japanese pair has won this now.

do you know what would help!!!!!!!! living in a society that lets people experiment with their gender without treating it like the most important thing in the world!!!!!!! letting people get it right or wrong without politicising their decisions!!!!!!! just being chilled about gender!!!!!! aaahhhhhh

Decision to postpone local elections reversed “in the light of recent legal advice”. What’s going on? The government will certainly have had legal advice all along. We may never know the details since legal advice is generally confidential /1

Someone firmly asserted to me that I should follow backing ttrpg kickstarters or purchasing ttrpgs by actually reading or even playing the games in question. Are they communists?

HELLO I WAS A QUEER TEEN IN THE 1990s AND THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST SOCIAL TRANSITION NOW ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST "LETTING" US BE (at the time, for me) GAY OR LESBIAN THEN. They all rest on the belief that it's inherently better to be straight (then)/cis (now) and that's BS.

It remains one of the weirdest 2010s pop culture things that Andy Samberg is married to Joanna Newsom.

Drop an album that was important to you when you were 19.

Holding a flimsy umbrella against the weather to protect pork barrel funding for foreign sporting organizations while the country drowns and is flattened by wind and being sycophantically praised for it by your own team really should be a symbol of this govt's priorities but let's see how it's read.

what makes something "vulnerable to AI" is not the capacity of machines but the credulity of management.

Update from Hutt City Council on Facebook - 11am 16/02/26

the denigration of the pursuit of knowledge has made this harder to grasp: humans err too BUT we have put in place (in unis, labs but also in everyday life) processes that allow us to show the work, check each other, correct each other and ourselves. LLMs by definition do not do any of that.

Just needs a large Frieren plushie.

GET 50% of the audiobook for The Mountain Crown until March 12! www.audiobooks.com/promotions/p...

Hope Wellington folks are staying dry and powered! Quite grateful to be in a wee valley facing pretty much due north today; it just feels gross and very windy rather than apocalyptic (not so comforting in a howling northerly, though it's ok in a typical Wellington Norwester).

Jason Molina was a genius, and it really is a tragedy he lost his fight with alcohol so damn young. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwIc...

Husband and I have been together long enough that we did the pragmatic thing: nice home cooked dinner & a good bottle of wine at home yesterday; fancy meal out *today* with easier bookings & no markups.

About 10 years ago, at least in NZ, there was a genuine chance for queer rights to cease being a left/right faultline. Key voting for same-sex marriage, a few out National MPs etc. The policy choices of the right the last 5/6 years have meant that the faultline v much remains. And that's on them.

Oh! The Hugo novella category is usually a tricky one but I'd be grateful if you considered my novella DESCENT, published in Clarkesworld. Its on the BSFA longlist and the Locus Recommended Reading List and you can read or listen to it for free here: clarkesworldmagazine.com/talabi_05_25/ Thanks!

So much of our present crisis is coddled, ignorant, and short sighted people tearing down the institutions that protect them because they don’t understand that bad things can happen.

We bought Article II of the United Nations Charter with the blood of a hundred million human beings, and less than a century later, it's being sold for nothing by people who don't even understand what they're doing.

And Wolf Parade is in turn the gateway drug for my one true addiction: millennial indie rock. Wolf Parade is the easily digestible ur-example of the genre, it only gets weirder and more all hype no substance from there.

Can a LetterBoxd review win a Pulitzer?

Guess it's that time of the year to wheel this out... 😏

Man certainly seems like we've got a fucken heap of water infrastructure problems in terms of drinking, waste and stormwater around the motu right now - let me count them - ah yes, that's Three Waters.

Third Olympics in a row with 2 Japanese men on the podium for singles figure skating. Impressive depth and consistency.

Another call for longlist entries for consideration for my not an award. Today: 2022! See my starter longlist in the picture and alt text; what else from 2022 in queer SFF novels/novellas would you give an A- or above? Let me know in replies.

Very good news. It shouldn't have taken legal action to get to this point but glad that the courts have come to the pretty obviously appropriate conclusion.

Hugo Noms have opened and I want to get in quick with this: there is a fabulous and vibrant contemporary SFF novella scene and the quality is *not* disproportionately located at tordotcom, which puts out brilliant work but does not have a monopoly on it. 5 titles for your consideration follow:

My son (34) is looking for a new roommate for his house in Aro Valley, Wgtn. House is tiny but great location and beautifully renovated, bedroom a decent sized double. Very reasonable rent. Son autistic, so very neurodivergent friendly! DM me if you or anyone you know interested. Avail Mar 9

Liberal Party of Australia can't quite make it a year with a woman in charge before they revert to type. Hard right and anti-women has worked SO well for them the last two elections, I'm sure it'll succeed this time round.

SPULL www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

Three of these five have been featured on Bar Cart Bookshelf (THE IRON BELOW REMEMBERS, NO SUCH THING AS DUTY, A COVENANT OF ICE) and all excellent. Here are a few more 2025 novellas I think are worth of recognition:

Some excellent novellas to keep in mind for Hugo Noms! I felt very lucky to have Tachyon publish AUDITION FOR THE FOX as a novella, and it makes me so glad to know there are plenty of other publishers putting out shorter, fantastic work by fantastic folks! <3

These are all excellent picks such as might enrich any Hugo ballot, but I would also add What A Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker from Stelliform, which was probably my favourite novella of 2025. Many options to choose from!

Hugo Noms have opened and I want to get in quick with this: there is a fabulous and vibrant contemporary SFF novella scene and the quality is *not* disproportionately located at tordotcom, which puts out brilliant work but does not have a monopoly on it. 5 titles for your consideration follow:

Collins has been done no favours here by Goldsmith. The shoddy process he followed will make it harder for her to credibly do her job. Which is in many ways unfair to her; unlike Goldsmith Collins played with a close to 100% straight bat on judicial appointments in her role as Attorney-General.

My favorite exchange on Twitter in the history of the site

3 of these 5 would be on my own personal list, which really isn't a bad hitrate for an award! (I'm simply not a Monster Hunter person but recognise its virtues, and I don't care for KCD II; I'd sub in Trails in the Sky: First Chapter for MH & Avowed for KCD. Yes, Obsidian gets two lol)

I think it quite likely that these results would be replicated in New Zealand.

New music from Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Almost unbearably moving. Queer elders quietly, defiantly, living in love.

RIP James Van Der Beek, whose greatest role was, of course, himself. Not for him the cheeky cameo: on Don't Trust The B---- In Apartment 23" the man turned self-ridicule into a full-time occupation, and did so magnificently.