I'm a takahē fan.

People in comics & the British fantasy scene! If you were around in the 80s-90s & are willing to speak on or off the record about Gaiman, please DM me or reach out on email. I will put you in touch with someone working on a longform piece. They are wondering why no one, so far, is willing to talk.

🧵People often ask me if where I live in New Zealand is as great as my posts suggest and I always say that we've got all the usual problems (a few more lately with global shenanigans). BUT last night, I saw some things that perfectly sum up how awesome this place is. They're as follows: (1)

This is the most delightful thing I’ve ever read

Much as I love watching this government self-destruct, I wish they wouldn't take our ability to get food to supermarkets with them. "Business as usual!" Luxon says, as the Middle East war expands and the diesel supply chain dangles slackly in the breeze. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Not just Asia. Australia and NZ too. Friends of mine who were leaving for New Zealand are canceling since there are no guarantees of enough jet fuel to get back.

I'm always struck by the refusal of otherwise literate adults to distinguish between annoying and dangerous when it comes to bikes. Water is wet and cyclists are less dangerous than cars for pedestrians! Not debatable!

It is somewhere between deeply amusing and blackly terrifying that Iran's shocking hardline ceasefire conditions which have everyone spinning into a "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE" frenzy are just like, "fuck off and obey the law."

Party whose policies would have killed thousands courts antivax vote with attack on world-leading covid response. Just another Tuesday for the Luxon Nats. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

because I keep forgetting to mention it: LITERALLY ANYONE can nominate books for this prize! yes! that means you! you have until march 31st!

Current Wisdom. Newsday.com/matt

Fatphobia is capitalist propaganda, kiss my fabulous ass

I've seen lots of sand castles/art on Maui beaches, but this, yesterday, was the most impressive. An anglerfish built by two young kids. It's huge, beautiful, accurate and fun. Simply amazing. #beach #nature #hawaii #art #sandcastle #love #fish #marinelife #photography #nokings

$3.99?! That's less than $0.007 per page!

Post a photo from your camera roll no one else has ever seen

"The average New Zealander dissipates the energy equivalent of around 45 years of manual labour each year in oil alone. New Zealand’s economy is in essence run by 247 million imported energy slaves". newzealandenergy.substack.com/p/new-zealan...

Astonishingly, a New Zealand journalist has used the words “climate change” in connection with the damage caused by climate change. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Working with #kakapo, this is the best thing you'll ever see. When "candling" an egg you hold your breath, hoping to see this: beautiful embryo development in a fertile egg. This is Tiwhiri's second egg, about 8 days old. About half of eggs are infertile. #kakapo2026 #conservation #birds

You might not be too familiar with New Zealand. Maybe this overlay map will help you to make sense of the Kiwis. NZ cities replaced by global cities of the same latitude. Source: buff.ly/5qoXYT1

i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse

Inspired by @dylanhorrocks.bsky.social's 'Lonely Fun' zine - @taracomics.bsky.social has another RPG for you to enjoy taracomics.substack.com/p/the-myster...

Our most vulnerable young people are endangered by this Government's decision to restrict access to puberty blockers. Wellington Pride Festival condemns this latest attack on the rainbow community by NZ First. We urge the Ministry of Health to listen to actual medical experts instead.

This is fucking brilliant, and you should read it: lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream.

EEK!! A live hornet nest has just been found (and destroyed) in Auckland. This is a big species of stinging wasp. We really don't want these to establish. Please keep an extra careful eye out for unusual wasps, especially if you're in the Auckland area. You can post photos on iNaturalist NZ […]

Greed puts out the sun.

There are other books on the shortlist I love, but Rakesfall is the Holy Shit book of 2025.

A reprojected view of Jupiter centered near the border with the Northern Filamentary Region. This uses image data taken by NASA’s JunoCam during the Perijove 26 flyby in April 2020. I created a simulated terrain relief to provide a sense of vertical scale to the cloudtops. flic.kr/p/2jyhVD8

we're about to enter a greater depression than the 1930s & it's all because the biggest, most successful western companies on the planet felt it necessary to make the line go up their ad based revenue was already dwindling. their ludicrous gamble on LLMs is going to obliterate the global economy

Do I know any science teachers in Auckland who could help me film a video where I set methane bubbles on fire?

If your email begins "We're excited to announce..." and you're not inviting me to a wedding or the launch of a posthumous Ursula Le Guin novel, you have comms brain and I'm not reading further.

An exchange which reminded me of this sad but true cartoon.

"Concerns over an AI bubble bursting have grown lately, with analysts recently finding that it’s 17 times the size of the dotcom-era bubble and four times bigger than the 2008 financial crisis." futurism.com/artificial-i...

Hell yeah

“I’m not on bluesky, but I now present an inaccurate rendition of a thing one person may have said there once and therefore the progressive left is the real problem” — self-described centrist who finds being annoyed with the left more comfortable than acknowledging the rise of fascism on the right.

The Government of New Zealand has made a new tourism ad and it's surprsingly honest and informative!

Some quiet reading for Simeon Brown.

I will never understand people who claim to understand capitalism and profit, and also suggest that "the market" can deliver security or lower costs or whatever. "The market" will extract as much profit as it can. That's the explicit goal. It's an obligation for management.

So. Many. Times.

“trove of secret documents from Five Eyes meetings on potential war with China accidentally donated to a Hutt Valley Salvation Army store”… by golly, we’re as good at secrets as our US allies.

A beloved Wellington cafe is closing after Peter Jackson’s property company declined to renew its lease. The owners now apologise “of their own volition” for blaming Jackson. There is nothing to see here and we should all move along. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

the endless warm drizzle of spring—the ice of Antarctica, falling softly on the heads of the children of those responsible for melting it.

Wellingtonians - Are you interested? An hour of unlimited play on the machines at Ye Olde Pinball Shoppe before regular opening hours on a Sunday from 10-11 am. N95 or better masks to be worn at all times and there is an air purifier. $20/person and we need 25 people to make the event happen.

And also the people working on this are grifters with no working definition of "sentient" and no capacity for introspection or self-doubt. Do not accept their framing.

It would take around 1.1 million acres of solar panels to (clean) power the world. That's less than a quarter of the number of acres devoted globally to golf courses. You can see where this is going, right...?