Whoops. Clearly slacking. Sorry.

I've heard of a Minister Without Portfolio but what do we call a portfolio without an MP to own (or own up to) it? www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/parliamen...

'It is difficult to get a person to understand something, when their salary depends on them not understanding it.' Was thinking of getting this as a tattoo. But then realised that what I actually wanted was to tattoo it on to a couple of well-chosen people.

OMFG Team Takahe we are moving up the rankings! Keep up the good #BOTY work! I know we're big round fat bois, but we can do this, step up up and up!

Your occasional reminder that I have a mailing list and you can sign up to get my reckons in your Inbox  buttondown.com/excursionset/

In Twitter/X v BlueSky - same content posted to both... Twitter/X - 3 likes, 1 repost BlueSky - 43 likes, 13 reskeets

In physics, we like to talk about standing on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes the giants are in the room with us, and sometimes they even come from round here. A great week for local legend Roy Kerr, who got to see his eponymous solution tested and confirmed 60 years on...

In physics, we like to talk about standing on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes the giants are in the room with us, and sometimes they even come from round here. A great week for local legend Roy Kerr, who got to see his eponymous solution tested and confirmed 60 years on...

Trump Spends Entire U.K. Trip Trying To Figure Out Where He Knows Prince Andrew From

Trying to decide. Also, The New Yorker magazine is just a little bit metal with its style guide... #IYKYK

New Zealand has the chance to do the funniest thing.

Could do with some of this here.

Could do with some of this here.

I always thought of a fridge with a TV attached was for "Netflix and Chill" But apparently it's just for ads.

At one point in my life I had TWO H1-B visas -- one to be a post-doc, and one for a side-gig at a startup that mainly did work for the Federal Government. (Three letter agency -- but Social Security Administration. Long story)

I've spent 11 years in US universities, and 15 years in UK universities. This is utter tosh, and I can't imagine how my UK students feel when their own minister slag them off like this.

Found my grandad's Rolleicord a couple weeks back, it just jumped back to life instantly, everything working as it should. This image is one of my favorites from that first roll, I've tried editing it but keep going back and forth before settling back on the original. 🎞️:Ilford HP5+

The entirety of Roy Kerr's paper solving the Einstein equations for a spinning black hole in case anyone wondered what it looks like. In terms of impact per line this paper has to be one of the all-time top 10.

There's always a "kiwi connection" to any news story when you look hard enough, but when it's about a spinning black hole you don't need to dig for it... www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3608...

Wondering what the 2040 version would look like? (Picked this up in Arty Bees the other day)

Blog: my picks for the top six non-Rocket Lab things New Zealand is doing in (aero)space right now... excursionset.com/blog/2025/09...

My University has decided to close the #Statistics department along with several others. The public comment form opened up today: apc.unl.edu/fall-2025-bu... Please feel free to explain how problematic it is to close a department teaching #datascience #rstats #python in this day and age.

A gift from my wife. Who clearly knows how to shop for me...

If New Zealand wants a space ecosystem it needs to nurture new space enterprises. I've surveyed the state of play and put together my list of our six most promising saplings... excursionset.com/blog/2025/09...

Folks, a shoutout to Lazys, who do an absolute bang-up job of toasted cheese sandwiches in Mt Albert. Made my afternoon. Get your laughing gear around one of them, as they say... www.instagram.com/lazys.mtalbe...

Not so much a birb but a borb. In fact just an ORB.

Not so much a birb but a borb. In fact just an ORB.

Folks, a shoutout to Lazys, who do an absolute bang-up job of toasted cheese sandwiches in Mt Albert. Made my afternoon. Get your laughing gear around one of them, as they say... www.instagram.com/lazys.mtalbe...

Welcome to @thewaroncars.bsky.social, Comrade Toro.

Winter is coming.l

Bothered that someone might think that an "Inch Nail" is a thing of which you can have nine.

A reminder that Councillor Mike Lee fought hard to stop all improvements downtown as he does to this day everywhere. Fortunately he is also ineffective and was unable to stop these upgrades. He is stuck in last century and stuck in the role. Help him move on: Vote for a positive future

learning styles: a seductive but utterly useless idea - Fuggetaboutit, they don't exist www.brainpizza.com/p/learning-s... #learningstyles #learning #memory #cognition #psychscisky #brainpizza #neuroskyence

I'll with mine with two sugars and some non-fat confirmation bias, please. (I actually do drink four cups a day, btw.)

Dad was always amused that the cemetery in Rarotonga where he set up his quack practice after things got too hot in New Zealand became known as "the Brych Yard" and that detail is in here...

Dad also had a story that he somehow got access to hospital pathology records and contacted people who'd come up with benign results and told they'd taken another look and found cancer -- and then charged them through the nose for his "cure".

Great @thespinoff.bsky.social piece on cancer quack and fraud Milan Brych - my Dad was a GP and hated the man with a passion, I think because of at least one of his patients were swindled by Brych. He would like this piece :-) thespinoff.co.nz/society/10-0...

Great @thespinoff.bsky.social piece on cancer quack and fraud Milan Brych - my Dad was a GP and hated the man with a passion, I think because of at least one of his patients were swindled by Brych. He would like this piece :-) thespinoff.co.nz/society/10-0...

Remmers -- home of bad plastic surgery since forever.

I'm not a huge fantasy reader but anyone who has ever been near grad school is going to spot things they know in this... Loved it.

This is cool. businessdesk.co.nz/article/tech...

I'm not a huge fantasy reader but anyone who has ever been near grad school is going to spot things they know in this... Loved it.

How long till Tesla sales pitch 'any colour as long as it's white'?

12. We don't know how propitious are the circumstances #newzealandvalues

“My core frustration with veteran incumbents like Lee and Fletcher is they have been at the absolute centre for Auckland for 30 years. Every election they pop out to say it’s broken ... if it is, they’re the ones who have done it.” Or at least have proven themselves to be unable fix it.

Another devastating and horribly short-sighted cut for research funding in Aotearoa.

"There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits." Guess who? Einstein? Feynman? Hawking? Nope, all wrong. It's Karl Marx, apparently.

"UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost" www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/m...

My final story from the epic/tragic/comic Zuru nappy trial. Feat: Reflections on the startup exit stories we tell ourselves, competition issues raised for for supermarkets and suppliers, and a hand-scrawled note where the Taylor family are schooled about FAANGT. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole on the Maxwell-Lodge effect when I should have been writing a talk -- a changing current in a solenoid inside a loop of wire induces an EMF in the loop even though the magnetic field outside the solenoid is nominally vanishing. link.springer.com/article/10.1...