back here at the same URL but a different DID. Tell your friends to re-follow! Tell the AI lists I still say robo-slurs against linear algebra!

Reposting because someone might know someone who knows someone, but genuinely, personally, I don't know *any* female engineers in this age bracket. There were zero female lecturers in my uni engineering dept., and I had one female manager once who was maybe 5 years older than me.

The youngest #kakapo alive: Awarua-A3, 17 days old today. Despite appearances, she’s doing well. She won’t be leaving the nest until mid-June. It’s a long breeding season! #kakapo2026 #conservation #birds.

Exactly one year ago today:

Ouch.

And in the end, it might have been someone in a private jet? Here's heights of planes in the area at the right time: 1 Gulfstream G550, N/A, 45k ft 2 Cessna, SNA - CSW, 41k ft 3 BAe 125-800B, N/A, 39k ft 4 Airbus A320, PVR - TIJ, 37975 ft 5 Airbus A321-271NX, SJD - TIJ, 36050 ft

Further thoughts on who will be the furthest from Artemis II when it's furthest from Earth: I'm looking at two likely flights on the Tijuana - Cabo San Lucas route along Baja California.

Meanwhile, here is the tomato relish I have also made this morning, from the last of the season's crop down here in both a different time zone and season :D

I think the people furthest away will be a close tie between a) folks on the ISS and b) those on planes flying along Baja California in the late afternoon on Monday the 6th. (Reasoning follows: 🧵)

It's a George III tribute act for the 250th anniversary of independence, innit?

Cycled to work on my road bike today, instead of the workhorse (possibly a pit pony) folder. Took about 20% off my travel time each way, with the same legs / self doing the pushing - I forget how much advantage there is in reduced rolling resistance. Plus it's probably 5kg lighter...

"One of the first things I noticed when I started driving less and walking or cycling more is how, at the end of a day, I often have an inexplicable sense of excitement, as if something remarkable has happened..." www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Trying out a replacement cycling jacket. Features: - Light enough that I'll carry it with me - Hood goes over helmet - Breathable-ish - Waterproof-ish - Loose enough to move in, long enough sleeves - Cost $65 (Squint: model's own) The price is important and might be a false economy, but... 🧵

From looking at the website I must have driven past the WiseWool manufacturing site in Te Poi, Waikato many times while it's been there, but I didn't realise it until I'd seen this article. I wonder how this is going in reality, not just in marketing? www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

At work today, a supplier tried to argue something fitted our requirements using a Google AI summary on the topic. To be fair there wasn't anything actively wrong in the summary - but it was mostly generalities and 'for most applications' kind of stuff; answer-shaped but not really an answer.

Check out this incredibly talented magpie. For about ten minutes, it channelled a seagull, a ruru🦉, a dog, an electronic car key, a car alarm, a human voice, the Android alert tone😂📱and more – most of which you can hear in this clip. Quardle, ardle, oodle, wardle and furthermore, doodle. Amazing!🤩

I'm noticing more people out on bikes. Some of them look as if they haven't biked in a while and are a bit uncertain about how to do it on city streets. Can drivers of motor vehicles please be patient and kind while bikers regain skills and confidence. And can Cabinet Ministers please say this too.

The ABC is good at producing graphically detailed ways to worry. (About how tech companies' involvement with the US military makes data centres and all the undersea data cables around the Arabian Peninsula into quite vulnerable targets.) www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

Very much enjoying the kākāpō nest cam at the moment. There's two chicks! And lots of feeding happening! www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/kak...

Wait what theconversation.com/the-worlds-2...

We did what now? I'm struggling to find any coverage of this in New Zealand news, though you'd think it would come up...

There's times I'm glad I live on a relatively unpopulated island in the South Pacific. NZ *has* gambling issues, but at least no-one's claiming the bets are news in themselves.

"If you don't get good is it still worthwhile" is a lesson I learned directly from running; I'm much worse at it than most people guess. I'd watch estimations fall, but smile anyway because the value was clear *to me*. And if art doesn't feel this way for you, you might not be arting.

Big gas users in NZ include industrial process heat, for things like spray-drying milk powder. Is the new tax (sorry, 'levy') just a way to make ordinary household electricity users subsidise big dairy exporters? www.rewiring.nz/news/rewirin...

Hmm. I'm remembering history lessons I had last century, about media in WWII, and one of the things we learned about then was ways to lie with pictures - selective cropping and framing, old demolition as new bombing and such, not to mention radio propaganda.

I'm On Board with supporting trains. (May well go to this, and this household has two journeys planned using Te Huia in the next couple of weeks. Trains! So much better than traffic jams!)

Plans you don't share with anyone aren't plans; they're just fantasies. There's nothing wrong with fantasies, unless you're running a company and think other people should be following your plans.

Leaders should absolutely show up, but disaster response isn’t a photo op or should be trivialised. Watching our Prime Minister hand out boxes of KFC to impacted communities was peak cringe IMO. We need serious, systems-level action and that 6b resilience fund like yesterday.

Five concerts you've seen with women lead singers L7 Acid King Savages Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns Cheshire Grimm (Plus all the ones where the band I was *in* had a woman lead singer.)

Okay, one thing: I had been wondering what that gate-like thing was, across the SH26 going into Paeroa, and it turns out it's a flood gate, and that it *works*. (With no further info I'm going to assume someone Dutch was involved.) www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Because the amount of rain that used to be 'ordinary summer rainstorm' in NZ causes floods and disruption in the UK, while the new 'tropical cyclone' volumes are ordinary elsewhere, like Darwin NT. We need to acknowledge and deal with it, not pretend it hasn't already happened.

Oh, I get it now! It's the 250th anniversary of US independence, so yer man's doing a tribute act to George III!

Been doing a thing at the new Waikato Regional Theatre, innit. Tonight I was one of the however many hundred people it was in the opening event. It's been a brilliant thing to be involved in, with all sorts of creativity on show.

Aaaagh I had been seeing ongoing rumblings about Tel Aviv fans being banned from a match last year, but I didn't realise there was AI in the mix of bad decisions. Police claim not to use it, repeat this lie several times, then admit they lied: arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/d...

Whoa-oh-oh Artist: monkeon https://b3ta.com/board/11424622 From the 'Music and Food II' challenge https://b3ta.com/challenge/musicandfood2/popular/ #MusicAndFoodII

Interesting detail on how rooftop solar is helping handle the current Aussie heatwave - also identifying the limits, like evening baseload and winter, but still. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Having a look into which government orgs and figures are still regularly posting on X in New Zealand. I'm sending inquiries to ask why, pretty much. 🧵

Sorry, but triumphant claims about autonomous vehicle safety are wildly exaggerated. It's an open question whether today’s self-driving cars are any safer than those driven by humans. And if reducing crashes is the goal, that isn’t even the right question. My deep dive, in Bloomberg 🧵

I am asking #NewZealand to please check their garden shed, outbuilding or sheds for for a missing Prime Minister, last seen.. uh .. somewhere Please contact authorities if found, do not spook him, dont worry he isnt a danger unless you are an economy #nzpol

"Temptation bundling" and "tandem goal pursuit." Okay, some names for things I knew about, but names are useful.

"The aesthetics of knowledge without any actual tendency towards truth." Aaargh, yes.

I wonder if the current Pope is more likely than his predecessors to know who Slipknot are?

Happy New New Zealand Year, folks. Not sure what 2026 will bring but we keep looking forward, eh?

My entry for this year's Trees At The Meteor was basically a heap of bamboo, string and paper. I'm rather enjoying the process of stripping it back down to nothing much.

Exactly. Not only is education not the problem in this context but no amount of changing syllabi or exams can ever please AI bullies anyway. Bullies don't abuse to improve their victims but to harm & extract from them. Giving them your lunch money directly without a beating is still being bullied.

Tiny festive fail: this envelope made it all the way from the UK to New Zealand, but arrived with no card in it 😕

Quote post with a robot that's not Star Wars or Transformers youtu.be/c2JChnwv2Ws

In the context of games here, but things I push for all the time in engineering design: 1) you have to accommodate how non-expert users will use the thing, not just engineers or testers who've been inside the concepts for ages already timharford.com/2025/12/caut...

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.