We have a bird of the year, and by chance it’s the one that committed bloodthirsty mayhem outside our window that time. Obviously you want to read of this in comics form. taracomics.substack.com/p/karearea-8...

A friend writes: I saw someone's post somewhere that talked about how their nine-year-old and all his friends have started using "That's AI" instead of "I don't believe you." Mom: "We're having dinosaur meat for dinner tonight." Kid: "That's AI."

Just quietly, Bryn Hammond is the most interesting writer I’ve come across in the last several years.

4. We pay again and again for a failure to raise taxes. It’s a false economy, for which we suffer in multiple ways. Fair Taxation Saves Us Money.

Voting for these three is aiding and abetting war crimes. #nzpol

This government are fucking cowards and I hope they get run out of office next year if they don't collapse under the weight of their own incompetence before then www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Well I finished ALIEN EARTH S1, having found its first four eps sensationally good — smart, economical, visually riveting — and… meh. It’s just a streaming show. Tell a story, when we could hint at dark possibilities and spin our wheels til next season?

New Zealand prevaricates on whether to recognise Palestine as a state, or not. My Stuff #cartoon today #NZpol #Palestine #Gaza

Here's my theory on the rapture: It already happened but went unnoticed because pretty much everyone who was swept up was impoverished, hungry, unhoused, and/or a refugee.

“Why are you banging your head against the wall?” asked Frog. “I hope that if I bang my head against the wall, it will help me to think of a story,” said Toad.

Mt Ruapehu is 200km away from my lens 🤯 I finally photographed the view I’d waited for forever to see. Paraparaumu Beach and Mount Ruapehu in the same frame - clear as day! Read my blog on how I got the shot 📸 bradleysgcreative.com/blog/rarest-sight-in-wellington

Hello it is 12:44 AM and I just read Susanna Clark's PIRANESI in one fell swoop while sitting on the bathroom floor, because I did not wish to pause reading long enough to sit somewhere sensible. My body regrets this choice tremendously but my soul does not.

Can barely bring myself to look at the local body voting papers, but hell yes I voted for Bird of the Year. #teamtakahe www.birdoftheyear.org.nz

Charlie Kirk actively promoted the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that motivated the Christchurch shooter. NZ media are doing audiences a profound and dangerous disservice by publishing or syndicating content that does not reflect what Charlie Kirk actually believed and did, and where it led.

Is this satire?? Gold prospecting permit being considered next to Zealandia ecosanctuary www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/wellingto... #nzpol

I post a piece of good news every day (climate, civil rights, disease eradication, science, sanitation, conservation) because, to keep our activism & resistance going, we need reminders that, when we try hard, we do succeed. They *want* doomerism; Despair is how we lose. #ShareGoodNewsToo

@kellylink.bsky.social this is me shamelessly lobbying you to give the Le Guin prize to North Continent Ribbon. There are other astonishing books on the shortlist. But I never expected to read another Ursula Le Guin story suite, and I think I just did.

I’ve just finished North Continent Ribbon, and while Rakesfall is extraordinary and deserves the enduring readership it’s going to get, I want to see Ribbon win the Le Guin prize. I can’t think of another book that gave me such strong “this is like a Le Guin story suite” vibes.

Reminder: So far, globally, we've done exactly nothing about carbon pollution. That is what the data says -- exactly nothing. We're right on (slightly above) the trend in atmospheric concentration extrapolated from 25 years ago.

My university just received an ad for a new AI called Samaritan. I need to know whether it was named by someone who'd never heard of Person of Interest... or by someone with a keener sense of irony than of prudence.

This is for EVERYONE. No one in NZ can send international parcels to the US right now. There may be other providers who will, but there is no guarantee they will get through US customs. The US has been denying a lot. This is also a HUGE hit to NZ Post. USPS is one of their biggest customers.

So profits from exorbitantly over-priced Anchor and Mainland cheese, milk and butter sales will now be going to France? Can we send them the nitrate run-off from all the dairy conversions that are poisoning our rivers as well? www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

2. The sheer number of white people asking permission and validation to write characters of color (only one of them specifying the actual ethnicity) was exhausting. No one is going to keep you from writing whatever you want but please stop asking people of color to ease your guilt/anxiety about it.

Fascinated to discover, having developed a probably-not-fatal-but-it-could-be condition, that Aotearoa-NZ's health system has reached "Oh you want to see a GP this WEEK? LOL, try the 9 hour wait desperately over-stretched emergency room". Anyways, great to see we're still cutting public spending.

Here's the thing, we already were amongst the lowest levels of funding for research in the developed world. And these cuts & reprioritisations make this even worse. You can't determine immediate economic implications from a lot, if not most, research. So, these decisions misunderstand science.

I was not ready for this also, now want bagel

new bonus episode out now and it's unlocked for everyone because it's my birthday. but you better listen today cos tomorrow this shit is paywalled. www.patreon.com/posts/superm...

“It’s a bit of an obscenity that I’m asked so much to speak on this subject because I happen to be Jewish and because I happened, as an infant, to have survived the Holocaust…Why aren’t we listening to the Palestinians?”

Here's Chlöe Swarbrick's speech, that led the Speaker to throw her out of the House. Clearly makes the case for New Zealand to recognise the genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza and the West Bank, and for it to recognise the state of Palestine. youtu.be/yc6oLAzbqoQ

Barely an hour ago, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif warned us all: “If this madness doesn’t end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.” Israel just killed him.

Toad gets it.

My least popular (and most correct) view is that cars should be automatically limited to the local speed limit. Put the pedal to the floor and you still can't go over 25mph in a residential area. (15 in Manhattan btw)

A lot of my clients recently have been some combination of confused, defensive, and “but it’s such a big number!!!” when I tell them it’s actively harmful to claim only 50,000-60,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza, so let’s talk about that.

I leave Auckland alone for a decade and you guys let this happen? www.rnz.co.nz/life/books/m...

"Water demand has increased 600% in 100 years. Lawn, the number one irrigated crop in America. Lake Mead, the country’s biggest reservoir, is on a trajectory to reach Deadpool, which is when the water no longer goes through the turbines, by the end of this decade" accidentalgods.life/rewilding-ou...

Conservative Christian co-worker just met the phrase "pregnant people" for the first time, and this is me thanking their no doubt well intentioned god that none of our queer colleagues were in the room while I talked them off the ledge.

New Zealand’s government in one headline: screwing over the future to do something that won’t help the present. Never mind a Plan B, they don’t have a Plan A. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

At what point does NZ realize it don't matter if we bite our tongues & hush our mouths & suck up real good to Trump. He's gonna Trump us anyway. We should call bullshit on Gaza, illegal detentions, offshore prisons etc. Why piss away any small-power cred we have when he does this stuff? #nzpol

So let me get this straight. We invite the FBI boss to Wellington to open an office. He then says he'll use it to spy on our top export buyer, China, who is then as pissed as. Then Trump HIKES our tariff to 15% from 10%, making us less competitive vs Australia's beef/wine exports to US - still 10%.🤷‍♂️

Finished reading this yesterday and it’s the rare true original fantasy novel. I love a book that plays intelligently with genre tropes, but this one’s carved out of virgin rock.

What the actual fuck. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

"I'm sorry, honey. We've run out of candy." Charles Addams, 1952, The New Yorker. One of his greatest cartoons. Which really is saying something.

Tomorrow (Wednesday the 30th) Summer of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Martha Wells in conversation with Kate Elliott July 30 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm Register at this link: www.clarionwest.org/event/summer...

Reviewers including No Pun Included and Shut Up & Sit Down are boycotting Codenames publisher CGE for releasing a new Harry Potter-themed game while ignoring JK Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric: boardgamewire.com/index.php/20...

Add Fonterra telling farmers they deserve endlessly increasing milk prices and Federated Farmers obstructing climate action but demanding constant relief for climate disasters, I honestly don't know why farmers put up with their advocates constantly painting them as entitled and ignorant brats

The former Attorney General of Israel, Michael Benyair is now calling Israel's actions in Gaza genocide. "To eternal shame. Jews, who suffered a genocide 80 years ago, are committing genocide in Gaza. Shame, rage, and sorrow"

Few if any experts know more about the deliberate use of starvation as a war crime than Alex de Waal. If he says it's happening, it's so.