Putting some feelers out, as I am facing the potential of losing my job for an aversion to engaging with generative AI. I am looking for work. I am in New Zealand. I am very good at: - Written communication - Picking up new software and... -- Writing help guides -- Developing e-learning -- […]

oh god new job is so much worse than old job about genai i made a big mistake fuck

[spiders] go out at night and look at invertebrates around your house for #cnc2026! It is a good time! You will certainly not regret learning exactly how many knobbled orbweavers are hanging out! Or how large they are! it's fine! (they're beautiful and I love them but oh dear that's quite a […]

Went out at midnight for my customary early City Nature Challenge observation! It snuck up on me this year, but I'm still hoping to beat my number of observations from last year. I think I ended last year with 211, so I'm setting the bar at 250. #cnc2026

The global City Nature Challenge starts at midnight on 23 April, which here in New Zealand is now less than four hours away. If you’re new to the City Nature Challenge, it’s four days of observing nature, in hundreds of cities around the world. That’s followed by two weeks of uploading photos […]

I am making a sign to put on our bug hotel at the community garden. I want to depict some bugs on it that we hope will benefit from it, and I'd like to focus on native bugs. I can just depict random bugs but I want to be ACCURATE. I'll be so embarrassed if someone is like "Ummmm actually hylaeus […]

The City Nature Challenge is fast approaching. That's four days in our cities to find as many species as we can and get as many people out observing nature. The four day observing period this year is 24–27 April (Friday–Monday), followed by two weeks of uploading and identifying. This will the […]

If you're in Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ, next Sunday, and are keen for a nature walk, well, you're in luck! As part of the city's annual Walking Festival, me and Noah Fenwick, two local iNaturalist fanatics and ecologists, will be leading a walk/explore around Waikākāriki Horseshoe Lake. It […]

Last day of this job today. Bittersweet for sure.

It's a weird time to be working at #LincolnUniversityNZ. We've bounced back from the earthquakes and covid lockdowns and there's been an optimistic buzz in the air. The earthquake damaged buildings are mostly replaced and in the last few years #LincolnUniversityNZ has had some of its highest […]

A small, determined pansy stretching up into the light from beneath a courgette. #bloomscrolling #florespondence

I promise my next post after this one will be about something nice instead of complaining all the time - but wow selling a car is a miserable experience! Over the course of the 2 week listing I had: - A person who asked to come view the car and never showed. - A person who bid but only has a […]

Mr whippy came to the office while I was in the middle of a production deployment that was going pear shaped, so I couldn't go get any. that'll teach me to schedule a change for a Friday afternoon :blobhaj_reachsad:

hi! why the fuck is this on a government website for the tertiary education commission! and no, it doesn't just take you to a page that says "don't."

gently and indirectly told off today (but told off nonetheless) for daring to express to a team trying to give me more work to do that I'm not accepting new work until next week when I find out what's happening to my job. I'm not starting something I'm going to have to hand over in the middle […]

I am at 599 observations on iNaturalist 🥺 I'm really glad to be part of this community. I wonder what my 600th observation will be!!

Happy #BandcampFriday to all who celebrate! Today, among other things, I picked up PIKIPIKI by Geneva AM https://genevaam.bandcamp.com/album/pikipiki-2

Waitangi Day activities have included - Sleep til 1 pm - Go to the art gallery to see the Kā Whakatauraki exhibition - Eat some good food - Remove Nazi stickers - Visit the ocean

[local antisemitism] There are antisemitic stickers that have been going up recently in the CBD. If you see one and are not comfortable removing it yourself or stickering over it with something else, you can message me the location and I'll see if I can take care of it. Removed one tonight […]

Applied for another job today. Feeling really positive about it! Still working with microsoft stuff but not a single mention of AI or Copilot in the whole job description! It's still not official if I'm being made redundant, but the whole process has been so poorly done, I'd like to get out […]

got some cool homophobia shouted at me from a car in the city today, cool cool cool.

oh uh I guess I might be made redundant soon? that's new for me! how exciting. tl;dr my work is specialised but my job title is generic. they're reducing the head count of my job title. I think they expect I will apply for one of the new roles. I expect this role to have mandatory generative […]

[kai (stew posting)] I roasted some tomatoes that I'm gonna put in a beef stew thing tonight. Every guide I read said "pull the skins from the tomatoes and discard them" (or put them in the compost or whatever). Unless the texture squicks you out, I think this advice is WRONG. These are […]

Hello all - it's that time again - tomorrow evening, Tue 13 Jan, at 20:00 NZDT, we'll be having our Jan Libre/FOSS meeting at https://meeting.iridescent.nz - anyone welcome to join us. It'll be held on our BigBlueButton instance (thanks to Prodigi.nz for sponsored hosting infrastructure!). We'll […]

What I typed into my start menu search: "Power Platform Op" What I wanted: The document I wrote, that lives on my computer, and that I open with some regularity, titled "Power Platform Operational Guidelines" What I got, for some reason: An internet search for "Power Platform Openings," as in […]

Behold, a feeding frenzy of Plum Sharks! Plum sharks AKA kererū, the NZ wood pigeon. Plums are in full fruit in Ōtautahi-Christchurch city, NZ, at the moment. I was on Valley Road today in Cashmere there were at least 11 kererū feasting in the plum trees up the […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

i thought I lost my car today because i took a photo of the elevator sign to remind me where my car was. the sign that tells you which floor the ELEVATOR is on. not what floor YOU'RE on. so I wandered several floors of a parking garage, both afraid it was stolen and certain it couldn't have […]

17 Dec 2025 @rikiwilchins.bsky.social -- New Zealand's new ban on pediatric blockers, announced last month by the govt and due to go into effect this week, has been stayed pending judicial review after a suit brought by Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare Aotearoa (PATHA). Go PATHs!

This one’s important e hoa mā - a few of our orgs are collaborating on this fund to ensure that no trans young person in Aotearoa misses out on lifesaving care. Alternative treatment pathways exist but are expensive and we need your help. givealittle.co.nz/cause/we-got...

Ōtautahi, we’re rallying Friday from 6pm in Hagley Park at the corner of Riccarton and Hagley. No one is in support of this ban - every major medical body has come out against it. Let’s show that the public don’t support it, either.

i am listening to my colleagues discuss using a Microsoft copilot agent to track and spread "adoption" of Microsoft copilot. i hate this. time to dig out my therapy homework worksheets

Thanks to @joncounts 's post yesterday that included a masked bee, I spent some extra time today looking at harakeke and found some! I've never noticed them before, but they're very cute. https://inaturalist.nz/observations/329808872

[generative "AI" , mh -] took the day off work today so I could go to therapy where I largely ranted about genAI the whole time. then this evening saw my first genAI slop advertisement on TV. bad!

I went on an adventure to the library today to look at J T Salmon's book "The Stick Insects of New Zealand." This is because I saw an observation on iNaturalist for Acanthoxyla Inermis, which has the common name "Unarmed Stick Insect." This stick insect has a perfectly normal number of limbs […]

In some good news, today PATHA has finally been able to release the 2025 Guidelines for Gender Affirming Care in Aotearoa New Zealand. You can read them here: patha.nz/resources-an...

anyway maybe I shouldn't be on the internet during my I-keep-bursting-into-tears-about-the-state-of-the-world-and-technology-etc break from work

[generative ai, nzpol, mental health] https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/ai-navigation-deliver-faster-access-support this is ... not good. For so many reasons. For one, why fund a theoretical navigator for a fragmented system instead of using the funds on improvements to the system itself? […]

Rainbow orgs have released a statement: “The banning of puberty blockers is an example of government overreach and political attacks on healthcare… it is an unprecedented and inherently discriminatory use of the Medicines Act to deny healthcare to a particular population on the basis of their sex”

Tonight, Ōtautahi DID gather. On incredibly short notice, we had 50+ trans people, whānau, parents, tamariki, doctors, allies turn out to recognise TDoR and to share their anger. This ban will not last. Thank you, Ōtautahi. I love you, trans people.

outage at work but only for like 15 minutes. thought maybe I could pack up and go home. I almost took today off to go look at birds, maybe I should have haha.

I wrote this poem early this year, after a rushed and absolutely inappropriate public consultation process on trans kids' right to access healthcare. Today is Trans Day of Remembrance. Yesterday, the government removed that right. Today, I'm releasing this poem.

[puberty blocker ban, nzpol] I've emailed my local MP and Labour's health spokesperson. I don't think it will actually do any good, but better than nothing I guess. god damn

Pleased to report after a weekend of computer touching, I have an Immich instance running on the little home server! Next step, figuring out how to make it accessible from outside the local network. but that'll be for another weekend.

I'm going to be in Auckland tomorrow for a show, Newmarket area. We're only staying one night, but our flight out Friday is in the afternoon so we can mosey around Friday morning. Is there anything in particular in the area folks would recommend seeing?

I was so pleased with myself taking apart my mouse, I thought I was going to be able to fix the broken scroll wheel. But it's a bit more complicated than a broken part - there's a bit that fits into the decoder that has worn smooth. But the maker of the mouse […] [Original post on cloudisland.nz]

There's a bioblitz for all of the southern hemisphere? That's great! Yes, it's the annual *Great Southern Bioblitz*, and it starts today and runs for 4 days. All iNaturalist observations made between 24–27 October in participating regions and countries automatically get added to the Great […]

hello friendly local computer touchers. Have y'all ever seen something like this before? Any theories on what could be happening here? It started happening a bit over a month ago. It shows up sometimes when booting or rebooting my computer, and sometimes […] [Original post on cloudisland.nz]

i need to do something in Docker and can't figure out the right things to look for to learn how. Can someone point me in the right direction? I have a CasaOS thing on a Ubuntu machine in my house. running in a Docker container. It thinks it has like 90 GB space. The hard drive is bigger than […]

A colleague invited me to a "women in tech" series they're doing at work. I politely said no, I'm not a woman. She said she knows, but thought I might be interested as "a member of another underrepresented group." ??? I appreciate the thought, but no. Whether or not it's meant that way, it […]

Got a rare bird alert for a sighting of a Spotless Crake. Uhhhhhh ... sure sounds like a *spotted* Crake to me! *ba-dum, tsh*