i wonder if AOC’s early clashes with the democratic establishment PLUS the unhinged reaction to her from republicans have given her some of the “both sides hate her so she must be Independent” vibe that goes a long way with low propensity voters

Few people are aware of how much progress has been made against cancers. Leukemia is probably the most striking example. Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would soon die from it. Now, most children in rich countries survive. ourworldindata.org/childhood-le...

*movie trailer guy voice*

I see TVNZ internal emails about the 1News gangs story have come out, and honestly I don't understand the criticism. It essentially amounts to the Government saying it's unfair not to have their press release broadcast on the news.

This is earnest and not an April Fools: Manned space travel is a bit like $2 billion football stadiums -- a debatable use of money, but rich countries should have some hobbies and do cool stuff just because.

Boosting this as people should sign the petition! Further explanation in Graeme's thread, quoted below.

This is Molly. She was finally found a week after her human fell down a 180-foot waterfall while hiking together in New Zealand. Her human was badly injured and rescued by helicopter, but Molly was missing. A week later, Molly was found at the base of the waterfall and reunited with her human. 14/10

NEW A failed military police investigation? The Afghan war crimes inquiry continues to throw light on alleged crimes by UK special forces and their possible cover-up By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Have started a petition to the New Zealand Parliament asking that the Official Information Act be extended to Crown Prosecutors. Crown Prosecutors exercise immense public power and their exclusion from the OIA is a historical anomaly. Signatures welcome! petitions.parliament.nz/b6459024-f98...

For Sale. Mission Accomplished banner. Never used.

My job is planning public transport services, and every time a crisis generates free fares discourse, I think about the cost of free fares, and longingly think about what we could do if you gave us the same money and let us spend it on improving service quality

I know that this is objectively not the worst thing Trump has done, this has always felt like one of the worst things, because of how obvious it all is.

Turns out the Electoral Commission orange shade does not have a formal name, so I have proposed one on the Color Names website. Please provide thumbs (no log-in needed) to my suggestion: "Orange Guy Orange" colornames.org/color/ff9800

Stressing I fully support covid was far less damaging than 1918 flu, I am not comfortable with the numeric argument when not age adjusting- about 86% of covid deaths were age 70+ and 4% of the Maori population are 70+. The ongoing disparities of people the same age get missed if you don't match age.

“Someone decided to build a system that produces 1,000 targeting decisions an hour & call them high-quality. Someone decided to start this war. Several hundred people are sitting on Capitol Hill, refusing to stop it. Calling it an “AI problem” gives those decisions, & those people, a place to hide.”

I keep reading passages here that say normal things like "there's no reason to think we're really fucked", then I reread the sentence and realise there was no "no".

Billy the Kid Versus Dracula is set at a bar, which came out 30 years before From Dusk Till Dawn so please give credit where it’s due

I think it is important to give credit to RNZ for "looking out the window to see if it is raining" in this article. Because we should note when media are being responsible in reporting claims, not just getting angry on cases of bad reporting www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

@marcdaalder.bsky.social thought to let you know that this 2019 tweet got me started on a thing, and I just sent in a submission on the Armed Forces Discipline Legislation Amendment Bill asking Parliament to make clear commanding officers don't have suppression powers. x.com/marcdaalder/...

Damn. Credit to this poster, who has paid attention to all of the pieces. And indeed, as we were prepping the pilot, Mueller's FBI was going all in on counter-terror and Squad 5 (Narcotics) of the Baltimore field office was dumping casework. We had to report, write and film that in real time.

a billionaire must never make a decision because the billionaire can never be held accountable

When I saw the initial posts from National and it's MPs about Robbie Williams, I assumed it was about something like allowing Eden Park to have concerts or something. But it was just handing over money?

This bit is amazing thank you

It’s not ideal to have a federal judge have court security forcibly remove an AUSA. It does not happen on the regular, in fact.

New Zealand mentioned!

Nobody under the age of 31 has ever seen a presidential election ballot without Trump as the GOP nominee. A decade and counting in which the only people who became Republicans came into it knowing full well that's what it meant. No small part of why the second term is more extreme than the first.

Germany is ~exactly America, in terms of its distribution of voters, saved by mixed-member proportional representation, a Bundesrat, & an actual constitutional court. Orban is Trump, literally in the heart of 🇪🇺. Brexit was Trumpism saved from full authoritarianism by a parliamentary system. Etc.

My son alerted me to this actual bug fix from the recent release notes of the cat breeding game Mewgenics. It's very specific.

Alert levels are an unironically good, effective, prosocial, evidence-based tool for use in times of national crisis and it is good that this govt is using them (now let's see how well they use them)

I listened to Jacobens's Nuclear War: A Scenario, predecessor to this, as an audiobook last year. Think a House of Dynamite, but it keeps going after the fade to black. And you get more context about how crazy this all is.

Surely recent events show why there's no need for a government subsidy on the purchase of new EVs? For most drivers the purchase is clearly justified by the risks around oil prices.

There is *nothing* in this article that justifies a headline about Henare "walking away from the Labour Party". He's leaving *Parliament*. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Paralympic curling is fun as heck to watch - this is one of the best shots i've seen. No sweepers, just pure aim!

Please check your enrolment status BUT don't use autofill to do so, as that can cause the site to fail to find you. I will be endlessly barracking people about this closer to Writ Day.

In 2013 Aaron Swartz committed suicide for facing 35 years in prison for mass downloading scientific articles. 13 years later, Meta is almost getting away with an infraction orders of magnitude larger. The law didn't change. torrentfreak.com/uploading-pi...

I am just noting that NZ National confusion over Iran is deeper than just the serious Prime Minister’s leadership failure. I lost track of the number of parliamentary questions National filed to try and stop a Kurdish refugee & critic of the Iranian regime when Behrouz Boochani sought NZ asylum

I don't need to know names, but the question I have here is whether Stuff pleaded limitation. www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3609... With a 2018 conviction, the publication seems like it would be at least six years old. Maybe there was republication when the mastheads split or something?

All the people who where disappointed that they had been removed from the list (undercurrent: as a sop for Pres. Trump?) when it turns out the real scandal is that they were added in the first place.

This is rather different from the Belgrano.

This book is messing me up. Published in 1966, but originally recorded in the 1930s, its the diary/ analysis of a Jewish journalist under nazism that recorded her own and her friends’/neighbors’ nightmares as they began to slowly reflect the anxieties and images of life under fascism.

My kids secondary and primary schools in the East Midlands sent out emails about this. One sent an email saying it was a trend we had to be aware of, and the other sent one saying it's a viral hoax they want to warn us about.

When we talk about Baby Boomers not getting off the stage: In 1997, the US president was born in 1946. In 2007, the US president was born in 1946. In 2017, the US president was born in 1946. And next year in 2027? The US president will have been born in 1946.

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health

Chris Luxon says he misspoke yesterday saying “any action” was supported if it stopped Iran developing nukes. He says he should have said “action”.

I can explain this. I don’t think it’s a very big deal. So on election night news outlets need real-time data to power their graphics. There’s basically been three providers: the TV networks used to work with Edison Research ($$$) while everyone else used AP ($$)…

The best part of that story is that it ended up opening a new line of business and made the company money in the end:

I thought registrars of electors already did this? Have they stopped?