One of the greats, RIP

Every Trait Disqualifying ICE Agent From Previous Jobs Ideal For Current One https://theonion.com/every-trait-disqualifying-ice-agent-from-previous-jobs-ideal-for-current-one/

for real

the administration wants to frame this (bizarrely) as law enforcement. but if law enforcement conducted a raid for a suspect and killed 40 people, including an unknown number of unarmed civilians, it would be treated as a clear disaster like Waco.

I want Aotearoa to at a minimum suspend 5-eyes and all other military connections to the US. Australia Canada and the Uk should do so too.

We're going to need a bigger Hague.

Can’t wait to see who’ll get to lift the FIFA Peace Prize in 2026

Awesome list of a whole bunch of international books I haven’t heard of, but will need to track down, and thank you to Pip for including Kartik Popat as one of them

Acting in Home Alone 2 is obviously no barrier to political success

Your regular reminder that NZ's immigration system is cruel and irrational and as bad as anything you might have read about regarding less "enlightened" countries; the only difference being it is enacted through bureaucratic means rather than physical ones.

bari weiss saw this and decided that she had to hide it from the american public

Lost opportunity of combining the Ministries for the Environment, Transport and Housing and calling it METH

What a horrifying weekend of news. Too much.

I have my top local book listed in here (Of Weapons and Words by the Al-Rifaq collective). Since I haven’t read anything else from outside NZ published in 2025 (I’ve been very specifically reading for a new project), then it’s my top book of the year!

The term 'Summer Break' assumes way too much about the average New Zealander. The gapping cavernous hole that is the wealth gap in NZ, means only one group of people get a summer break in this broke ass fucking country. And it's not the people you think you're talking about.

Phenomenal stuff from the Windies

So excited to be featuring new poems by Helen Rickerby in the forthcoming December issue! The selection comes from her next book, 'My Bourgeois Apocalypse'' (Auckland University Press, 2026).

The school board pushbacks confirm my theory that the so-called liberal MPs’ job experience - often limited to working for the Party, and placed in Party-friendly companies - has left them uniquely ignorant of how much the rest of our society has moved on. It’s not 2005 anymore, and Brash still lost

Xmas is just around the corner... So I'm doing a book giveaway! Win a copy of my prize-winning story collection Home Theatre 🏠🎭 Simply reply below with a good book you read this year. Draw closes 5pm NZST Sunday 30 November. #pukapuka @thwupbooks.bsky.social

Eight New Zealand novelists on the music they write to

We’re at that point of the year when you can’t tell what day of the week it is anymore

Film, documentary maker Costa Botes dies after nearly a decade with cancer

Using the Sterling Arms XLCR as an illustrative example, I discuss the web of money and guns that the UAE operates to fuel the RSF's activities in Sudan, where it has been credibly accused of committing genocide. Until something is done about this, the killing will only continue.

This has been one of the silliest alpha test matches I’ve ever seen, but Australia will end up out alpha-ing England, as per usual

On leave today to decompress after a pretty gruelling marking season; let's do something inconsequential and fun. 1 like = 1 book from my bookshelves and 300 characters worth of comment on it. Until I get bored.

21) Brannavan Gnanalingam: The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat. I've known Bran for 20 years; I own pretty much all his novels because they're pretty much all great. This one is, amongst other things, a spiky exploration of the fact that terrible politics isn't limited to white people.

Dublin Literary Award nominated titles are out! Kia ora to the writers from Aotearoa New Zealand on this list: 📗1985 by Dominic Hoey 📕Delirious by Damien Wilkins 📘Kataraina by Becky Manawatu and - our pick - 📙The Mires by Tina Makereti. dublinliteraryaward.ie/features/new... #Booksky #ReadNZ ^DR

PATHA's statement has been published: patha.nz/news

“During the late months of 2024, it was becoming readily clear to some of us that Gaza existed on two incommensurable planes: one which was transmitted in Arabic and the other in English.” An introduction to OF WEAPONS AND WORDS, and to the vital task of translating militant writings on Palestine.

I must confess I had no idea about cli-fi when I wrote Sodden Downstream in 2017, but I’ll take the shoutout! thespinoff.co.nz/books/15-11-...

Whitcoulls don't stock my book so it has been banned and I am a victim of censorship.

This place fucking rules

terrific virtual cafe reading for the weekend nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/11/14/p...

Tonight I was delighted to attend the launch of @jackremiel.bsky.social 's second collection of short fiction, The Emotion Dealer & Other Stories. I've already started snacking on these tasty bites! So pleasing and yet tantalizing! What next to find?

Launch tonight! If you're free in Wellington from about 6:00pm this evening come along and check out my new book. There's free drinks (quality not guaranteed) and @brannavan.bsky.social will be speaking (quality guaranteed) if you need enticing. www.unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-eve...

so joyce carol oates owned elon so hard he's been taking out ads on X saying he has in fact read a book and watched a movie and he's clearly spiraling and unable to recover from such a vicious own i say to my wife as she frantically pulls out of the driveway

In Memoriam: Cheney Haunted By People He Didn't Manage To Kill In Iraq War

RIP Peter Watkins, an underseen master (following the BBC’s half-witted panic over The War Game). He was a brilliant and provocative director

NZer in the news! Putting aside the terribleness of it all, it’s also objectively funny that a journo got sucked in by a Bill de Blasio impersonator for a Times article

I released The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat this time last year. I’m super proud of the book & genuinely think it has captured the zeitgeist. The circumstances of the book have become more and more relevant as the viciousness of this era reveals itself. Anyway, here’s a review that nailed it

Of all the housing charts not made by MMI, this one is my favourite. It shows how, despite rhetoric, housing shortages aren't a global phenomenon, but they do seem to be an Anglo-American one.

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only

while 'young republicans are literal nazis' is well known to folks here, the extent of it is surprisingly not that commonly known even in media and analyst circles, let alone normal people.

Huge thanks to @murdochstephens and @brannavan_g from Lawrence & Gibson for coming in to speak to us – so interesting to hear about the publishing process from a publishing collective's perspective. And this newspaper is now the coolest book that we own! 👑🐀🏡

Better Wellington everyone

Ultra long sentences and gloomy existentialism, two of my favourite things, ftw!!

It baffles me that centrist politicians over the last couple of years can’t figure out is that if you refuse to stand up against something so bleedingly obviously wrong, then your constituents won’t believe that you’d stand up for them

A quick note about money and comedy and power. www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/st...

Beyond Bites at the Capital Markets has bloody good kottu, fyi Pōneke