Exams have been cancelled & Otago University has ordered everyone home (if you can do it). This is heartbreaking these are historic trees!

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 […]

New from @empirepoduk THE END OF THE BRITISH MANDATE, 1948: The Creation of Israel & the Destruction of Palestine linktr.ee/empirepoduk

Wainuiomata bus services have been cancelled due to the high winds. All traffic has been stopped & the Wainui Hill road is closed #BusDriverEd

New Zealand broke with Europe, the Pacific Islands and Australia in a key vote on a new price on climate pollution from international shipping over the weekend. newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/22/n...

Looks interesting!

Nelson's Victory crew included a Brazilian and a Russian, 2 Indians, 2 Swiss, 2 Portuguese, 3 Danes and 3 Norwegian sailors. There were 3 Germans, 4 Italians, 6 Swedes, 7 Dutchmen, 9 West Indians and an African, as well as 21 Americans, 63 Irish, 64 Scots, 441 English.... oh, and 3 French men, too.

Today on Friends with fascists we meet Noem who's been busy bombing civilians in international waters #nzpol

"We now have the dubious nod of likely becoming the first country in the world to weaken our climate related disclosures regime, just two years into its adoption and without strong evidence that this is necessary or will strengthen our capital markets." #nzpol

Te Pati Maori burn a paper in front of Parliement steps. Brownlee is livid. When David Seymour drove a Land Rover up Parliament steps then lied that he wasn't warned not to, until footage emerged, Brownlee said "Let the public decide what they think of it, not me" #nzpol

I wrote this up for RNZ www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

I am delighted and honoured to say that my second novel RAKESFALL has won the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! vajra.me/2025/10/21/r...

Paywall now lifted: The first application for an offshore oil and gas exploration permit since the repeal of the ban in August has been lodged, by an Australian firm that was set up less than two months ago and that doesn't have a functioning email address. newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/21/f...

Fortunately we have real polling this morning 😁 newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/22/g...

The ads placed by the Public Service Commission are astonishingly inappropriate and undermine confidence in the political neutrality of public service leadership. #nzpol

#kakapo breeding starts with the feeding. For the last month we've been putting out food on Whenua Hou to get the adults into breeding condition. We need the males fat enough to boom and the females heavy enough to produce eggs (although not too hefty or their chicks will all be males). #parrots

This is beautiful.

Wellington weather update: our weather station blew away overnight

"They know they can’t deliver all of these projects, but they want to pretend they still can. It seems that whatever the question, this government’s answer is 'More RoNS'. But more RoNs will bankrupt the nation." In today's post, Matt Lowrie gets real on the costs of Roads of National Significance.

Today Wellington is most certainly beatable with conditions expected to worsen this afternoon. Please stay out of parks and reserves, minimise travel and report any damage into WCC via FixIt App or 04 499 4444.

Comment of the day (so far): "I would rather have a smaller road on my way to a high-class hospital." 🎯

Tautoko. #nzpol "I would rather have a smaller road on my way to a high-class hospital." 🎯

Thats $62,000,000,000 Or $12,400 for every one of the team of 5 million We 'saved' $100m on not feeding children #nzpol

Wut? Please tell me this will stop them getting stuck.

A billion dollars more than either the original Dunedin Hospital plan or a resilient Cook Strait crossing. And then there's Mill Road, which offers an even worse business case at similar (at least) cost.

I wrote a (short!) piece in a newsletter for work about the use of generative AI to process and analyse submissions, sent it out, and then checked Newsroom only to see a (very good!) piece from @samsachdeva.bsky.social piece on the topic with more up-to-date numbers and a chat with the Clerk. #NZPOL

Dismantling the Institutional Review Board (IRB), that oversees all human subjects research, is bad. Really bad.

This is, as are most things from this govt, ideological not practical. The jobs aren’t there. Telling people they must find nonexistent jobs is an ideological imperative not a practical solution. The govt is not interested in reality, only ideological fantasies. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

#NZpol Oh, hey. No fair. “Judith Collin’s Private Secretary instructed the PPTA to bring agenda items outside of pay/conditions […] subsequently the teachers named a few including AI marking, NCEA, and Palestine.” => but Collins says mentioning ‘Palestine’ showed they’re not focused on the issues.

I wish people would stop posting the vile Trump video. I did not need to see that. Just post a still, please.

🚨 NEWS: Colombian President Gustavo Petro accuses U.S. government officials of murder and violating Colombia’s sovereignty and says the Trump-ordered strike of a boat in the Caribbean killed a fisherman named Alejandro Carranza.

250,000 people took part in the NO KINGS march in Chicago, with more than 7m marching in 2,700 locations US-wide, according to organisers @indivisible.org, as Americans increasingly resist Trump's authoritarianism.

So let me get this straight In preparation for this new attack on the unions #JudithCollins asked for the unions to bring them some concerns that sat outside of pay and conditions Then turned around and claimed that one of their responses (Palestine) was “their top priority”, not pay?? #nzpol

More hypocrisy from Minister Upston! Nothing about benefit sanctions helps unemployed people find jobs if jobs don't exist or too many are competing. When 200 apply for 1 job, that's 199 who miss out. #NZpol www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa... Data misses people too thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin...

The dude is so young he won our Jr category as well as over all winner of the @winterstellar.bsky.social photography comp 2 years ago. Also one helluva nice guy, congratulations Tom

Irrespective of the politics (which I'm happy to leave to others more expert in that field🙂), the economics of this letter is just plain irresponsible misinformation. The homilies ... "we can't afford it", "debt is bad" abound😡. But, we are not stupid ... ganeshnana.substack.com/p/spending-b...

Unity and compassion are not only possible, but invaluable.

#NOKINGS New York City, NY

Final figures in for Māori wards "referendum"😠. A resounding margin of nearly 74,300 (over 7%, 53.7% v 46.3%) in favour❤️. But, of course, lots more to do. Toitū Te Tiriti. Take care all, keep well, be safe, stay strong. Kia kaha.

Jiminy cricket that's a wicked big crowd

It’s going to take ages to pay all these people

Boston

No Kings-Chicago, IL

A thing you definitely do when the people you are bombing are drug smuggling enemy combatants

Well this is just sickening.

#nzpol We need to replace more than 3 decades of manufactured debt hysteria, with sound, robust, prudent *economics* as our basis for fiscal management. Spending, borrowing, taxing - it's called fiscal policy open.substack.com/pub/ganeshna...

Congrats to The Conversation

Do not interact. Do not contribute. This is not Twitter. We do not get baited here, we block here. You hated Twitter, so stop trying to recreate it. Block here are nuclear. Take advantage and subscribe to this list blocking all government accounts in one go. bsky.app/profile/eva....

📢 In Otago, local catchment group initiatives are building momentum from the ground up. Farmers are reimagining how they manage gullies and wet areas that were once seen as a nuisance