Kia ora #SecretSantaAoNZ. I love anything handmade, arty, art-related, books, words, locally made… I’m a bit of a geek with far too many interests & curiosities, so you can hardly go wrong. I’m all for easy gifting - whatever is fun, & easy for you! Cheap & cheerful! Happy sleuthing!

'My mana reignited': Attendees leave world's largest indigenous education conference feeling inspired www.rnz.co.nz/internationa... 🖤🤍♥️

I attended the final day of #WIPCE2025 yesterday. What a privilege, an absolute honour to learn from the brilliant wisdom & care of our Indigenous leaders & educators from the world over. Big love to all the delegates who travelled far & wide. & everyone who helped with such a mammoth project 🫶🏽

This article is absolutely blowing my mind. This happens more than we care to admit: scientific findings don’t make its way into practical applications. Since the 80s in NZ and the US people have been taught to read “wrong”

I was a kaitūao at #WIPCE2025 today. The atmosphere was something else. I loved meeting so many delegates from all across nations the world over. It was also great to have the opportunity to listen to Eru Kapa-Kingi’s korero.

Whānau Data Sovereignty. I speak with Tangata Tiriti Rob Elshire about his journey over decades setting up sovereign computers and data storage facilities including his own data centre on his business premises. The recorded link www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0jm...

TOP has a new leader. That’s all well and good… I’m just bracing for another level of racism and misogyny. Pls NZ society and media - prove me wrong. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360... #NZPol

Great to see He Whakaputanga & Tino Rangatiratanga flags leading the Parade of Nations today. It’s part of the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education. It’s the biggest academic conference to ever be held in Aotearoa. All about connection, coalition-building and solidarity ✊🏽

I’m making a list of arguments to deploy at gatherings from now until election time (and forever). This is a banger: ”There is no point growing the pie if the wealthy keep eating all of it.” Thank you Sassy. www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/35... #NZPol #TaxWealth

Petition for men to stop enabling predatory behaviour in every sphere of life and start calling their mates out and for our justice system to stop being sympathetic to perpetrators and for media to stop writing articles just asking questions about women daring to raise their voice - in every sphere.

The men who refuse to accept this is a systemic problem and who believe there’s no such thing as society are always the first to whine and grievance troll about NZ schools being too female dominated and blame society for presenting men as toxic.

As I often talk about, there are too many confounding factors to narrow it down to a single explanation, but people will still try. There’s nothing NZ right wingers and talkback social theorists love more than a monocausal thought-terminating explanation for something that makes them uncomfortable.

AI is killing the college essay as more professors ditch robot-written papers for in-class exams. So now even fewer students are being taught to write well (an energy intensive task!). Students lose out, bc good writing = good thinking: a training of the brain towards structure, style & substance.

Please sign: our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/pr...

repost with an iconic fictional band

#nzpol #BackOnTrack

IT GOT BETTER 📍Central MN

I am on my way home to Toronto and the aurorae are absolutely phenomenal. If you are anywhere in the northern half of the continent, get outside and look up! Or better still, put your camera on a 10 second exposure and point it up.

Absolutely love this essay by Ross Benjamin, which counters the instrumentalist view of language as a transparent conduit of meaning. I think there's even an argument for AI-translation-as-violence, in that it simply vaporizes the vibrant socio-semiotic spaces between languages. #AcademicSky

Govt, Police - Academic research & evidence show a robust link between patriarchal systems, male-dominated networks & higher levels of corruption - Patriarchy fosters corruption by perpetuating power imbalances - creates environments where self-serving male networks operate with impunity #nzpol

It’s fitting… I just learned what ACAB stands for.

Helpful umbrella terms or too broad to mean anything? 'Neurodivergent' and 'neurodiverse' as labels. theconversation.com/what-autisti...

Because of my book and all I've published online about teaching writing I'm now hearing from some students who say that teachers are "making" them use AI on their writing assignments but they don't want to. What are the ethics? Don't want to undermine teachers, but how do I support student choice?

This is an inspiring story. How identities intersect such as being a migrant and trans… “I can say I’m thriving. But I actually crawled to get here.” Oof…that hit. Much love and support to our trans whānau ✊🏽

Signed up and ready to go 🎄 #SecretSantaAoNZ

Kia Ora Earthlings! This is an important article about a PHD student puling back the curtains on Aotearoa's #economy & weather or not "NZ can't afford it" is true or not. Alas It is behind a paywall. #nzpol #debt #deficit #education www.thepost.co.nz/business/360...

Oof, such a good read. Long live the humanities #highered

Remember: There is nothing natural or inevitable about extreme inequality; it’s the result of an economic system that values wealth and power over human dignity and justice. It doesn't have to be this way.

Finished my most recent article. open.substack.com/pub/kaimataa... #nzpol #socialism

Lorde gets snubbed by the Grammys. I wonder if it’s because she yelled Free fucking Palestine at her concert ⁉️ Oh well, see you in Feb, my good Lorde! www.stuff.co.nz/culture/3608...

Listening to the third grader and her friends writing, singing, revising, and singing again an original pop song and it's wonderful to hear them negotiate and try out different things and the thought that a tech bro wants to deploy some chatbot toy into their play is just so so sad and ridiculous.

1. This is a thread on freedom, and how easy it is to lose. Over the past 2,000 years in Europe, there have been few periods and places of freedom. For much of the time we lived under highly oppressive tyrannies of various kinds, whether small or grand, local or imperial, secular or religious.🧵

World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education is on soon. There’s a festival accompanying it throughout which is open for all. Opening 16 Nov, Sunday, Aotea Square. Get in! Learn lots. Love the people! wipce2025.com/teaoputahife...

1.This is not the only known example we know of ChatGPT cheering on a vulnerable young person to die by suicide, this time it is a recent Texas A&M grad 2. Every single university that has invited OpenAI into our midst should be asked to account for their choices. www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...

Bleak as hell

A new group for neurodiverse people has been formed in Palmerston North. First meeting is 1 February 2026. See below for details. 🇳🇿

Revenge is a dish best served as cold cuts. - Klingon Proverb

THE BANGLADESHI AUNTIE😍😍

Kayumanggi - DJ Medmessiah Morobeats feat. Fateeha, A, Tanikala & Palos Everybody get down with the brown ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽 youtu.be/BVht2vEX9Uk?... #SwoonSong

✊🏽 Gotta get down with the brown!

Zohran Mamdani ran on freezing the rent in NYC. Abigail Spanberger ran on supporting fired federal workers and lowering the cost of living in VA. Mikie Sherrill ran on lowering utility bills in NJ. Ensuring people can afford to live a decent life is the path forward.

Friends— here it is. Updated & expanded thanks to the space afforded to me in the @therumpus.net & the guidance of the brilliant @roxanegay.bsky.social’s edits. The win centers Muslims humanity — but what does that mean in a country that rejects that? therumpus.net/2025/11/05/z...

… a love letter to diversity

#nzpol Unemployment reached a 9 year of 5.3%. The labour market took another turn for the worse - unemployment growing, underemployment growing, fewer hours being worked, and wages are not keeping up with inflation. This data is another sign the economy is not working. A thread

Seeing as this has gone a bit viral, I wanna specifically call to all you Pākehā. Tell your kids about Parihaka, whether they ask questions about it, or just NZ history in general. The govt may be pushing back on teaching NZ history, specifically Māori narratives, but this is how we can subvert that

The lesson here is have good principles and stand on them. Stand for something that isn't power!

Yay!!!!! I couldn’t be happier for New York! All the very best, Zohran!