Rewiring Aotearoa's new campaign, get behind it and share your stories www.rewiring.nz/this-car-can #kikorangi

Opinion from Auckland University: Targeted fuel relief doesn’t reduce a single litre of consumption. Free public transport, however, delivers household relief, eases congestion, and conserves fuel for those with no alternatives.

I've had an EV for nearly a year. As petrol prices rise, I've decided to share what I've learned (and saved) in that time: newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/24/w...

Why do so many PhD students to this day get taught to "find the gap in the literature"? It has nothing to do with understanding what questions *need* answering.

The Salvation Army lady was quite clear on RNZ. Beneficiaries also work, volunteer, take their kids to school, go to doctors appointments/grocery store and are going to be the worst hit by this crisis. She also said kids don’t choose where to be born.

I've been on the nutrition beat for 25 years. Over that time, I have been increasingly persuaded that most nutrition science is junk, and we know almost nothing. Except these 3 things. (gift link, at least I hope so) wapo.st/4bYDRgB

The Covid response "hard and fast" version of this what that Luxon and Willis mob are doing: Day 1) Cycle! Fuel free. Public transport, WFH, if you must drive lower your speed from 100 to 80, most cars use 30% more fuel at 100 than 80 Cycle. Bus. WFH. Slow down. Every choice saves fuel 2/2

Every day is a good day for sharing one of the most useful papers about research data ever written. PLEASE get your people to understand and follow this advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ways the govt could quickly help New Zealanders reduce fuel usage, but probably won’t 🤷, for reasons: ⚠️ Lower speed limits 🚌 Encourage PT (eg bring back half-priced fares) 🚲 Encourage active modes (eg pop-up bike paths) 🛤️ Move freight from road to rail (eg ramp up KiwiRail) 🏡 Support work-from-home

Could we just perhaps have a little enquiry about the rapid rise of antivax rhetoric and the impacts of vaccine hesitancy? As a treat?

Ata mārie #citycentre 🌅

RELEASE DAY 🥳 Add "Wet Paint" to your streaming collection. Buy it from Bandcamp. Play it on YouTube. Send this post to your mate who likes breakbeats & electronic music. Stream links: cartoonbeats.com/releases/cbr... #nzmusic #electronica #breakbeat #horror #cinema #synthwave

Emily Writes @emilywrites.co.nz and I are starting a new series called The Brighter Future, where writers and artists and poets and so on imagine what a better future might look like, if we actually did some of the needful that's right in front of us: www.emilywrites.co.nz/the-brighter...

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

Not sure what "entirely generated" means, exactly, but I feel we need new norms around this. Here's a blog I like about "etiquette", "consent", and what should be considered "rude" when sharing AI-generated content. Disclosures after the fact do not cut it, IMO. distantprovince.by/posts/its-ru...

New Zealand has more sunshine than Germany. But only 1 in 35 homes here has rooftop solar. Australia? 1 in 3. Why? I tried to find out - despite some strange secrecy www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Literally, at work this morning: Clinician: Patient should stop medication A, but must keep taking medication B. AI VR transcription of this: Patient should stop taking medication B. Seriously NEVER LET A DOCTOR USE AI FOR YOUR APPOINTMENTS. NEVER. UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Statisticians are in demand for their technical expertise, but our job involves wearing many hats - researcher, collaborator, translator, negotiator. We're hosting an event in July to support early-mid career statisticians build confidence in these key skills & more! Sign up for updates 👇

Roses are red Let's be realistic The key to nutrition Is biostatistic.

Some governments raise taxes to fund public health and education. Not Luxon. He is literally raising taxes to subsidise fossil fuels. He is putting a levy on our electricity bills to pay for his LNG import terminal.

I'm not saying this is the end of the world or anything, but we really don't need to abbreviate so many things.

Reminder: regime voter suppression means you need to enrol early. vote.nz/enrolling/en...

Screen use before sleep might be more relaxing for teens than no screen use. In particular, gaming and social media. Surprising? Maybe. Our new paper out today: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An important point: "Too many career decisions are based on CV length rather than quality, which maintains the pressure on researchers to publish as many papers as possible."

A big chunk of my time is spent harmonizing data sources so that they can be combined and compared. This is preventable. If you don't want to have to do this, make sure to spend time planning up front, so that you consistently name, code, and label variables across collections of the same items. 🙌

Of course this approach will out-compete careful, slow, rigorous, ethical clinical science.

At least as far as medicine goes, novice researchers unleashing machine learning algorithms on data they just happen to have lying around, hyping it all as ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and bewildering reviewer and editors has indeed led to more "impact", and this is a disaster that gen-AI will amplify.

Yippee ki yay! Headlines shout “growth is back!”. And pop the champagne corks! But, if growth is the answer (as many seem to believe it is), then remind me again what was the question? open.substack.com/pub/ganeshna...

Got this song stuck in my head for no reason

#3 - The focus on meat & butter is not consistent with evidence, which overwhelmingly points to sat fat raising LDL, and LDL being causal for heart disease. But they end up recommending 10% of calories from sat fat – new guideline, same as the old guideline.

#2 - Recommendations to reduce processed food, sugar, and refined carbs is totally fine, and also totally standard. It's too bad they miss the point on processing. Food isn't bad because it's processed. It's bad because manufacturers use processing to produce crap food.

In sum (!) I have 3 basic takeaways: #1 The focus on trials vs. observational evidence would be great if they actually followed it (see: artificial sweeteners). Observational evidence has been WAY over-interpreted, and is responsible for much conflicting advice (see: eggs).

The sole of my boot came off and I swallowed a bug.

It stole from beloved literature written by real humans to generate the list in the first place, it stole water and electricity and money in an age where those are often in short supply, and it's stealing our ability to have trust and confidence in the media at a time we need that more than ever

💡Our new research reveals the extensive labour of infant feeding for NZ mothers experiencing household food insecurity. Mothers showed remarkable determination & resilience - they stretched budgets, compromised their own diets & faced shame and stress when seeking support, affecting their wellbeing.

I don't use AI. I am old school and use my brain.

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

If you’re working on clinical prediction models, whether regression or machine learning methods then TRIPOD+AI is for you Better reporting → better science → safer, more trustworthy clinical AI. Read the full guidance here --> www.bmj.com/content/385/...

So much human potential has been squandered thanks to men like him being promoted and given power, instead of genuinely talented and insightful people.

One underrated advantage of Zoom webinars is that they enable you to learn something about statistics while eating ice cream.

Save the Children NZ have actually talked to children themselves about online safety - if the focus was genuinely on children’s safety we’d be elevating their voices and idea of solutions. www.savethechildren.org.nz/assets/Files...

if you need some help understanding or explaining why this is terrible, start here: newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/id-p...

This is terrible policy that likely forces all users to identify themselves to online services, and fails to recognise the reality of the world in which modern teenagers exist and communicate. It is a knee jerk policy response to a poorly understood issue defined by people who don't talk to kids

The fact that many of the cohorts used for nutritional epidemiology are large, and the studies tend to run for a long time, does not mean you can draw causal conclusions. I know this is boring! But it's a big reason we believe stupid stuff about food. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/w...

NEW PAPER The use of explainable AI in healthcare evaluated using the well known Explain, Predict and Describe taxonomy by Galit Shmueli link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This year explaining regression to the mean took forever but I’m sure next year will be better.

Fab lineup of free events and experiences for residents & visitors to enjoy, take part in across te pokapū tāone/city centre 😍🌆 this weekend from the Karanga-a-hape ridge to the shores of Te Waitematā. Music, dancing, looking, relaxing, sports, culture, plus a 🎄and a guy 🎅🏼#citycentre #loveablecity

A great time yesterday catching up with my former PhD supervisor, Jill 😀 from my early MSc days just starting in academic research, Jill taught me the importance of conducting robust studies & really understanding the 'why' - values which I've carried since & would like to pass on to future students

Have had a brilliant couple of days in Melbourne at an Adaptive Platform Trials workshop #ACTA25 & the exceptional Aus Trials Methodology Conference #AusTriM25. Best part was catching up with past PhD students, both succeeding in their careers 🙌😊

Public trust in science is damaged by false certainty in the face of uncertain evidence. The Lancet does the scientific community and the public no favours by presenting narrow perspectives as the scientific consensus. 🧵 3/4