The only useful heuristic I can identify from this is that the Green Party took some photos of candidates against some greenery with a 50mm lens and nice depth of field, the Conservative Party took some photos of candidates being backed into a bush with a phone camera

The path I see for this is that AI will likely reduce in availability to the general public, but the technology will still be used in enterprise and crime, and the damage it is doing to the public information ecosystem will increase as AI scrapers and hackers make it more difficult to host anything

The whole web is built on a primary grace: that the people visiting you are trustworthy. It costs a little something for me to serve my webpage to everyone who goes there. When the number of scrapers outnumbers the number of humans by an order of magnitude, this grace is fragile.

More evidence that Big Tech is locking us into a new generation of fossil fuel infrastructure and destabilizing our climate: the 5 largest hyperscalers have announced 16GW of power deals this year, and only 3GW have been for clean power.

As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy

“I’ll send you my take because I think it’s correct”

The clean car discount was making New Zealand’s vehicle fleet cleaner, cheaper to run, and helping us to be more resilient in an unstable world. Its cancellation was a massive own goal by the Luxon Government and is now seriously costing New Zealand.

I'll be speaking on a panel about Open Government, with the Chief Ombudsman and others at Forum on Democratic Resilience and Transparency this Monday 23 March at Parliament. Free tickets might still be available: events.humanitix.com/democratic-r...

Went to the opening of Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, the Wellington central library. So good. Excited to read some books and use some sewing machines and microfilm over the coming months and years. The cafe was great and ran very smoothly for a first day at capacity. Also the baby joined a brass band

Emissions from Australia's biggest data centre operator are *definitely* growing. Airtrunk is the worst but everyone's on the way up. This isn't projections and possibilities, anymore. www.crikey.com.au/2026/03/04/a...

@mattbevan.bsky.social hi, we have been really enjoying Black Swans. Except for 24:53 into this where there is a horrible high pitched noise in the TV clip youtu.be/qr7oj5_o5x8?...

This library book tells an extra story

Photography by baby

Just made a Spotify account for the baby so we can play her baby stuff. It’s a special supervised kids account, included her date of birth in 2025, specified that she should not be able to access explicit music. Guess how many of the 10 albums on the landing page have tracks with explicit language

The tragic loss of lives in NZ flooding events this week are climate change deaths. Media and govt are avoiding the topic. Leaders and commentators must acknowledge the emerging reality of ordinary summer rainstorms carrying volumes of water akin to tropical cyclones of previous decades.

Let's talk about generative AI, contaminated information, and rhubarb. Once upon a time, Europe was at war. Food was scarce, and the government of the quote-unquote United Kingdom looked for alternatives. 1/

It’s an amazing, lively, sunny day in Cuba St. Christmas in the Quarters in Glover Park, Palestine market on Left Bank, and the street closed off between Ghuznee and Vivian with a delightful craft market on Swan Lane. So good

BusinessDesk has a fantastic (and rare) for a data journalist in New Zealand. The Herald and BusinessDesk are separate publications, but whoever is in this role will work with me on projects like Budget day visualisations 1/2 careers.nzme.co.nz/jobs/6697721...

Finding simple recipes online is so dire now. Search results are full of websites that are unusable because they’re so full of ads, and the content often looks AI generated. I can see why it’s appealing to use an AI agent directly for things like this even knowing that it’s what poisoned the well

I saw a Blunt umbrella in a bin on Molesworth St, as a measure of wind strength in Wellington today

I feel like the impact of AI on the information ecosystem is kind of like when you drink too much of a particular liquor, have a horrible time throwing up all night, and then for the rest of your life you can no longer drink it without being viscerally reminded of vomit

The NZCCL is looking for people to join our exec committee at our AGM in November. While we're particularly looking for people with policy or legal experience, we're interested in anyone who is keen and willing to learn. Contact [email protected] to get started.

There are too many road-centred children’s toys and decorations and not enough playmats with decent pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure

Nothing reminds me of time’s ceaseless march onwards like looking at the best-before dates in my spice drawer

🟦🟩🟦🟦‼️

Even if you've never filed a freedom of information request, this is why you should care about the government's planned changes to FOI laws.

If you joined InternetNZ to help stop the takeover by rhe FSU and Hobson's Pledge, you've done some great work tonight Consider bringing that energy to other civil society organisations, groups like Voices for Freedom are also trying to take advantage of low participation to push their agenda

Only just realised the whole of Bluesky was the Internet NZ AGM back channel

Six or seven tsunamis on their way I see

toxic beef wellington more like nzpol bluesky amirite

I spent a lot more of my summer than I would have liked as a patient in this ward, first in the antenatal pod then an extended stay in the postnatal pod www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa... I can back up what staff are saying as a patient - you really can’t just squish these together

Here in an unrelated thread, I'll quietly mention you can make a tax-deductible donation to FYI.org.nz at opencollective.com/fyi thanks to Gift Collective. But only if it's no burden! Production server costs are already covered, but I cover a few other costs personally including development.

The baby can now make music requests but it’s always for ABBA? She’s a big fan I guess

I had seen A Guide To Rocks in the window and was looking forward to checking out a children’s geology reference book. Disappointed to find out it’s about feelings, not rocks. I’m sure it’s great, I just like rocks thespinoff.co.nz/books/02-07-...

The baby is now approximately the height of a small Blåhåj

Now consider that most New Zealand government and business email is also hosted by Microsoft.

Analysis: Z Energy has sold its electricity retail arm and its customers to Meridian, in a $70m deal that will further consolidate the market dominance of the big gentailers. Flick Electric is expected to be shut down.

This is awfully unfair, and should be easily fixed in a member's bill. Plenty of MPs have no bill in the ballot (this is wild to me - those MPs have nothing they'd like to improve in the law?)

This, the TPB, the current government really is running the risk here of removing the expectation the public absolutely should have - and could fairly have had up until 2025 - that if they make a submission *it will be read*. Corrosive to democracy to undermine that expectation.

We’re now in the spreadsheets and collating how-to-vote cards stage of election watching

whan antony green says you've lost before 8:30 without working computers

Haven’t heard enough people use the word “drubbing” this evening. Love the word “drubbing” and there aren’t many opportunities better than this Australian election for it

Watching the Australian election with a plate of feijoas (courtesy @br3nda.bsky.social)

Picked up a copy of this this morning, reading it while the baby sleeps. Wild to be taken back to the uncertainty and rapid changes of early 2020. Maybe the baby will pick this up off the bookshelf in ten or fifteen years to find out more about this historical event

Does anyone know the weekend sports editor at RNZ who sends push notifications to the “breaking news” topic whenever they start a live blog about a scheduled sports event? I wish to have words with them

How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia? Before you open this thread, take a guess. Settle on a number and then compare it to what you'll learn in this thread. 🧵

In just over two weeks I’ll be launching my book on the Covid response. This was my most challenging book project by far, and even then I’ve just scratched the surface. If you are in Wellington on April 29 come along to hear me talk about it with Susie Ferguson.

Connected communities are resilient communities, and resilient communities are the best shot we have against the bad times (climate disasters, autocracy, etc). Therefore responding to texts, hanging out with people, having a chat with your neighbour, hosting a party… it is praxis

One of my favourite things is that when the baby reaches up, her arms only just reach above ber head. Hehehe. What an unbalanced little creature