The process of learning is contingent on making errors and following the false leads and figuring out how to separate good information from bad! It’s not optimizable in a tech sense because its “inefficiency” is not a defect, it’s an important aspect of how it works

This is where the whole 'summer Christmas' thing gets weird :D People tour around the neighbourhoods that go off with outside light displays, but it's not really dark til 9pm, and round here some adults are in bed by then, never mind kids.

Semantic fail: when I remove the sticker from an apple, it takes substantial conscious effort not to put it in the food waste bin. It's a piece of unrecycleable sticky plastic! I'm removing it because it's not food!

Matches what I've seen, even as a white British person myself. NZ has a whole heap of ethnic diversity, but seems to want to pretend it doesn't?

When us process-heads warn about the importance of following systems and giving due weight to the how alongside the what, we have things like this in mind …

My mum carefully cultivated tradescantia as a houseplant when I was young, back in the UK, so it still boggles me that this is a smothering pest plant here... But it's excellent news that they're finding things to get it under control.

I found this when I was getting the decorations out of the loft. Artist: Andy_R https://b3ta.com/board/11423193

Introduce yourself with five animals you've seen in the wild: Sunfish (fecking odd fish) Napoleon wrasse (fecking enormous fish) Hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin) Saltwater crocodile Kea

Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen - • Manic Street Preachers (when there were four of them) • L7 (many times) • Stevie Wonder (actual Stevie actual Wonder) • The Chills (we played support) • Focus (yes there was yodelling)

Happy World Linguistics Day from Hamilton, New Zealand!

BEING LECTURED ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT BY THE PEOPLE WHO ARE PREVENTING THERE BEING PROJECT MANAGEMENT.

What do we understand food to look like, and can AI produce images that fit in with this? Well, turns out there's more crossover than I thought, but mainly because of how some food images are made. www.vittlesmagazine.com/p/you-want-t...

This is a great op-ed on the immense value of complete and connected bike networks but author @connorsharp.bsky.social is too modest. He wasn't just there at the celebration he helped open the Westmere to Pt Chev cycleway

Students on very fast bicycles! Or actually a fully-faired trike, and probably setting an NZ human-powered speed record, at nearly 83 kph. Not a very high one, by world standards, but they're aiming for 100... www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

She runs an event management company. The story even mentions that it was her job skills that prompted her to jump in and help manage a difficult crowd situation. Her job is not 'mum'. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Someone somewhere is making a joke about the Overton window and given the cricket/politics content I'm suspecting it's Andy Zaltzman.

Another spooky story for Halloween: I'm likely to do a larger share of the housework even though I'm the main breadwinner, because of being a woman in a heterosexual couple! So I get paid less for the paid work I do, and also do more unpaid work! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

Here's my spooky story for Halloween: I'm less likely to get work as a manager, and also likely to get paid substantially less for it if I do! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Regularly getting told off for not doing things 'right', but it turns out that just means 'not operating on the same fundamental misunderstanding'.

This! Women doing engineering isn't new, and women don't have to be pioneers to do it. Exceptional, as in the exception that proves the rule? Yeah, nah, as they say.

Luxon himself handed me the Prime Minister's science prize last year. Let me say this in plain English: he's an idiot for running a govt who budgeted more for AI than for the Marsden fund. any journo reading this can quote me on it #nzpol

Knitting for democracy!

"It highlights the issue, though, that a bad idea communicated in a compelling way is still a bad idea." (In which a New Zealand mayoral candidate helps illustrate the difference between design and a thing that looks 'design-y'.) thespinoff.co.nz/politics/04-...

Aaaaah! This sort of thing gives me both delight that R&D resources are being made visible and shareable, and FOMO that I'm not getting to use any of them. Anyway, you wanna science-y machine in NZ? www.kitmap.govt.nz

Fresh from the department of 'surely we can do systems better than this?' because there's a lot of ways to do names. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

Three waters has become a financial disaster for some councils. I spoke to a five-term mayor who says it has wrecked his council and the current reforms appear to be failing www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/3607...

I've only ever read about these, but apparently some parts of North America put hi-vis flags by pedestrian crossings, which you're expected to carry as you walk to help cars not run you over. It boggles my mind that someone made these exist.

We need everyone back in the office because we want the serendipitous magic that only happens when you let humans get creative together and also we're replacing all of you with an AI machine that can only do things that it's seen done before

Of course ASME, the very old-school US engineers who regulate pressure vessels, use Roman numerals to name their codebook documents. How else can you guarantee it's not possible to sort them into numerical order by their numbers?

"I don't know why AI should make me anxious - I'm a Buddhist. But we don't have a monopoly on not knowing what's reality and what's an illusion."

Stop scrolling and post 2 characters who bring you joy and happiness

The HouseFresh article gets into some usefully specific numbers, first about Google pretending AI Overview provides facts when it doesn't, and then how they're reducing traffic to actual websites through this pretence. Honestly odd that they're trashing their value this way.

still thinking about the Montana knife maker who said you don't have to worry about tariffs if you buy american. and then three months later, he realized he imports swedish steel and german equipment. and even MiUSA equipment costs $100k more now because of tariffs

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

Something we can all get behind Aotearoa. Thanks to @julieannegenter.bsky.social #kikorangi

The headline looks like 'haha, maybe you'll care about climate change if it affects sport!' but the detailed reality of the report is quite disturbing. Through both heat and pollution, it's getting hard to live (including play) in some places. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07...

"Why can't we have more of the skilled people, and less of the racist machines second-guessing them in high-stress situations?" (Said by someone who works at the hospital, and regularly sees nurses struggling with a voice-activated radio system that Can't Handle Accents.)

Waikato River, 14.6m height at the Hamilton traffic bridge river level sensor: the boat ramp is closed, on account of basically every bit of path now being river access. www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/environment/...

Just not having project controls is not the same thing as 'lean'. That is all.

scientists consistently found that consumption of ice cream led to reduced risk for t2 diabetes and insulin resistance. They didn't want to believe this and buried the data in favor of yogurt when they published. Multiple scientists have tried to disprove the data since & it backfired every time.

I filled in a survey earlier, which asked if there was any TV or film that had inspired me to get into science. My answer was basically "hell no" - apart from that I wanted to know what science really did, when it wasn't relegated to Obvious Plot Device, Telegraphing Hubris and / or Baddies.

Terribly slow to realise this but: I suspect the reason many European countries went for 'No Tyrants' rather than 'No Kings' is because we're so used to 'king' meaning 'ineffectual decoration'. 'President' already seems a much more likely title for a tyrant?

Apparently it's Worldwide Knitting In Public Day, but I'm not feeling well enough to public, so here's the online version.

Hangonhangon yes, yes, this. The purpose is the thing to keep hold of. (Compiling supporting thoughts for an argument I wish I didn't think I need to have. Someone has used ChatGPT to 'make website text' when what they wanted is 'website that communicates what they do'.

Something I've been wrestling with in a work context; people readily recognise unskilled work in fields they're skilled in, but won't acknowledge the reverse - so, engineers easily spotting an un-manufacturable CAD model, while using ChatGPT to produce text that doesn't say what they mean.

Post a banger that's not in English. youtu.be/rdFK7A4c8CU?... (Still too pleased by this notion - have a more contemporary one, from a couple of aliens who landed in Angola.)

Post a banger that's not in English. youtu.be/XfReUof6Zkg?... (Some English words in the spoken intro here but clearly not in English overall.)

Still, one feature of getting rained on for the whole bike ride home is no 'what ifs' about whether I should have left it later etc. Nope, that was soggy either way.

If you need some chill vibes today: 1) Put the live stream of the stranded boat in Norway on 2) Play Brian Eno/Tom Regerson's "Finding Shore" in another tab. 3) Relaaaaax play.adressa.no/video/301823...

Meanwhile total buzzword-fest but good socks seem good? (The village is actually called Norsewood, somewhere vaguely near Dannevirke.) www.farmersweekly.co.nz/news/norsewe... #nzwool