I dunno, I prefer my mega leaks to be worked on and verified months before publication by professionals who follow up leads and discount the ephemeral.

When you have the worlds' largest airforce, every problem looks like a bombing target.

This appears to show the budget for ICE is larger than the national defence spending of any country bar the US, Russia and China.

Farewell Judith. I think I caused you to accidentially resign as a minister that one time when your boss thought I had emails that I didn't. And your stubborness on Twitter when I called you out for you citing fake news was pretty funny.

Really liking the new GoT spinoff. Bold move setting it in the present day though.

Art of the Heel Turn.

Imagine becoming custodian of a century of accumulated cultural and political capital, possibly the worlds’ largest such hoard, and blowing it all on Greenland.

Pub Quiz question, 2050s: Which former central banker is best-known for saying "Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

I preferred Trump’s earlier work. Sure, it was unhinged and thuggish, but it was largely targeted at domestic enemies and somewhat entertaining for a distant listener. This second “Deranged Statesman” concept album may be getting global notice, but mostly for being a depressing accelerationist mess.

Just holding my breath and hoping Trump doesn't turn his galaxy brain to the strategic Baltic port of Danzig/Gdansk.

The Board of Peace, pictured.

Nice frigid arctic wilderness you have there. Be a real shame if someone just happened to invade.

Is this guy for real? www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/wellingto...

Happy End of Annual Legislative Closedown Period of Public Service OIA Processing Eve, for those who celebrate.

Fairly disturbing to see, worldwide, fears over immigration being whipped up that seem to have ethnostates as their endgame. This is a pretty dark timeline.

To the moon! www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/all-eb-ga...

The USA has form in encouraging protesters in the Middle East and promising to help them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ir...

Cyberchav 2077.

New Zealand Cricket’s seemingly endless renaissance is a true delights: A decade at, or near, the top of the game despite retirements and huge competitive deficits in population and capital.

The most successful regime changes (Japan and Germany) required years of total world war, decades of occupation, a generational international development effort, and the prioritising of building genuine grassroots democracy. I don’t think the US has any of this in mind for Venezuela.

I often get approached by fraud victims who want to expose a costly con. My well-worn pep talk goes a bit like this: “I can help expose what happened, maybe nudge authorities to take a proper look, but in all likelihood your money is gone.” www.nzherald.co.nz/business/per...

Advice to those cold-calling me trying to pitch a story: Losing a legal case you’d convinced yourself you would win is not evidence of widespread corruption in the judiciary and the legislature.

How’s that FIFA Peace Prize working out now, Gianni Infantino?

My most indulgent purchase of 2025 was backing the Alien Evolved kickstarter. First test-run session saw my USMC disposamarines get shanked in the first round, one getting face hugged, and the other seeing his foot dissolved from acid splash when a colleague blasted a xeno who threatened similar.

Another water outage out West, on a road that's been down to one lane for six months after the last pipe broke and triggered a landslide that also took out a power box. Councils need funding for instracture more than they need a rates cap.

Shameless self-promotion alert! I'm going to thread my 2025 in journalism, which was a difficult year (20% of my newsroom got restructured out the door), but given I was nudged to increase my story count it appears I wrote quite a lot. 1/X

The greatest contribution of the C21 to psychiatry is the replacement of Rorschach blots with the Epstein Files.

Musk will one day bend and let Trump design a Donald-class production car for Tesla. And that will be that.

My kid is 14. He uses discord to talk to friends when playing Minecraft and dnd. He has no interest in FB or instagram or TikTok, but a social media hard-cap of age 16 would limit his social life unnecessarily with no benefit. Ffs, direct policy at platforms not users. Or ban boomers as well.

A reminder that Die Hard, widely considered the greatest Christmas movie, is a heartwarming story about a cop who accidentally shot a child recovers and grows and learns to shoot again.

I’ve kept tabs on a troubled Ōpōtiki mussel farm, and despite $52m in government support the losses only continue to grow. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

Jake Paul should next fight a hologram of Muhammad Ali.

Latest from me in a long intermittent series: A fairly audacious piece of charity financial engineering. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/wai...

At a wonderful family bach, and this Dijon mustard in the fridge clearly has seen some great times over the 23 YEARS! it’s spent here beyond its best-before date.

This, with Steve Kerr and LeBron talking about how difficult it is stop Steven Adams doing his very effective thing, is pretty eye-opening from a sports analytics standpoint. streamable.com/uxsncm

Times New Roman is an imported font, developed for London newspaper The Times in 1931. You know what American-designed font cooked up in 1994 would be perfect for this regime? Comic Sans.

As promised, this story has now come out from behind the paywall. Cheapskates, fill your boots. www.nzherald.co.nz/business/com...

TPMs plan to engineer an overhang by tanking their party vote is coming together precisely as intended.

I'm so old I remember following the Black Caps when our batters had test averages in the 30s and Vettori was pretty much the best scorer on offer. #GoldenYears

Generative AI is a dead end. Try building reasoning instead of paint-by-numbers iterative slop-making.

I get the eye-rolling over the Ikea opening: But there's a pile of better-part-of-a-decade projects getting born (CRL, NZICC, Ikea) that seems a sign that finally Auckland might be getting there. And I need some cheap shelves/desk chairs.

The creeping terror of an upcoming dental appointment, matched only the constant horror of endless iced-water sipping to suppress a toothache.

As a newspaper reporter, any time your work gets picked up by the cartoonist is a sign you're on the money. Straight to the pool room.

We need to issue Alien Weaponry diplomatic passports and assign them to Nordic states ASAP.

The best advertisement for immigration is, terrifyingly, the Manhattan Project.

As the Avatar marketing budget starts to render everything blue, a reminder that in 2013 Steven Joyce signed a deal allowing James Cameron to make unlimited Avatar sequels underwritten with a 25% govt subsidy. One big win for Joyce was the inclusion of NZ tourism ads on DVD releases.

The history of nuclear weapons development during the Cold War is fascinating/horrifying. They were loaded onto: depth-charges to deep-fry submarines; anti-air missiles for atmospheric blasts to shoot down planes; and even issued man-portable versions lobbed by recoilless rifle a km or two.

Allegedly I have 10k followers on The Site Formerly Known as Twitter, and only 1.7k here. Here’s an A/B test with identical content. Despite 1/6th the ostensible audience, here it generates four times the engagement (and no trolls).

The most wholesome story of the true New Zealand is immigrant bakers - mostly refugees - dominating pie awards and becoming beloved regional icons.