Training sail yesterday and there were two additional mates on the crew so I stepped back to watch them train… and had a very relaxing day… (also I know the t-shirt is tight, but wow… post-long-COVID CFS no regular physical exercise for three years has taken its toll)

Wednesday’s office… demographic measurements of taurepo Rhabdothamnus solandri (not in shot of course… canopy downed and thickets overwhelmed the old tagged plants). Veg plots for the win…

Today, 144 years ago, 1600 Crown troops invaded a pacifist settlement that was the centre of resistance against British colonialism. The leaders were arrested, the settlement sacked, the people violated. For many in Aotearoa, November 5th is Parihaka Day, or Te Rā o te Pāhua: The Day of Plunder.

Hilarious. Sad thing is, entirely true…

A little bust of sunshine on your feeds this morning… kōwhai going off on Maungakiekie

🎉 Honoring the 2025 Edgar T. Wherry Award Recipient, James Brock (University of Auckland)! Presented by the BSA Pteridological Section, this award recognizes exceptional student research in pteridology. Learn more: botany.org/home/awards/... #BSA2025AwardsBlitz #IamaBotanist #BSASectionAwards

It drives me fully up a wall when every year they add another year to the tally. “Long COVID lasts at least a year. Some cases are stretching two years. Three years on, some say they’re still sick.” Of fucking course we are. Does any of this seem like it spontaneously clears up?

Round and round. My @smh @theage cartoon.

Anyone else have days when an otherwise common word suddenly looks like it’s spelled entirely incorrectly? Today my entirely normal brain is struggling with the word leaf… (Yes I am a plant scientist)

Make it Write? We’ve been here before. The Make it Count maths action plan took $30 million from a Māori education initiative and handed it to commercial publishers Erica had undisclosed relationships with. Is she using dodgy data as a pretext for funnelling cash to private providers, again?

Anti-fash sandwich songs… time to take down the wealthy with anything we have I guess?

Please, someone, explain to me how the trope of National being good with the economy persists? They’re vandals, smashing the country up to feed to the wealthy/greedy. $671m wasted…!!

A new semester, a new pen drive… my biannual ritual of buying yet another device to take my slides to my lectures. Sadly pen drives just seem to run away at the end of every semester - ne’er to be seen again…

Science on the go! This is the temporary remote office of the Managing Editor of the New Zealand Journal of Ecology @newzealandecology.bsky.social … somewhere near gate 157, Terminal B, LAX Also: I’m on my way home 🇳🇿 ❤️

Private helicopters are buzzing around Auckland and nesting on Waiheke Island. My Stuff #cartoon today #NZpol #TheRich #Helicopters

At the University of Northern Colorado for the IAVS @iavs5.bsky.social excellent annual conference… and the acronym for our hosts on their double doors reads UNC UNC, or to botanical surveyors from New Zealand UNCunc… Uncinia (I know it’s now Carex) uncinata: bastard grass. Glorious.

So I won an award! My presentation on fern dispersal and zoochory was awarded the Edgar T Wherry prize for best presentation on fern science at the Botany 2025 conference. Awesome. Not least as I think many folk are still a little cautious about the ideas of zoochory… chuffed.

Frankfurt airport is chaos this morning (as ever), but I’ve made it to my gate (yay) in time for the computers to fail (boo) and my flight is now delayed (boo). Building on my getting stuck in traffic on way to Birmingham airport earlier. Frazzled. Especially on top of farewells to (elderly) parents

Reviewing an edit of a scientific article and wrote a comment referring to a semi-colon as a semi-colin. Now slightly saddened that this is not, in fact, the name of this punctuation mark.

A fun aspect of #longCovid is the inability to travel with cannabis-derived medication (I use CBD to manage symptoms). When I leave NZ (as I did last week) I have to deal w/ a resurgence of chronic fatigue and brain fog. Hopefully one day we’ll escape conservative moral panic over these medications!

Sadness wells like a shelf without Jaffas…

People really need to understand that Seymour is not alone. His strategy to steal New Zealand's wealth is supported by a huge network of think tanks that is shared around the world so they can better fleece countries down to their bones for their morbidly wealthy owners.

If NZ’s richest can climb above $100b during a so-called “tough year”, then maybe the problem isn’t the economy it’s who the economy is working for? Growth for the few. Cuts for the many. That’s not progress. That’s inequality. TPM backs a wealth tax fairness isn’t radical, it’s necessary. #NZPol

Venn diagram

Stop conflating being transgender with being sick thespinoff.co.nz/society/13-0...

We are not 5 years away from colonizing the galaxy! However, we are very close to having AI that can flawlessly replicate tech CEO bullshit, freeing all of society's resources that are currently being channeled towards extremely expensive human-powered word salad

Billionaires should not be celebrated. They shouldn’t exist and they should be treated like the psychopathic greed-fuelled pariahs they are until the last ones unimaginable wealth is ripped from their gnarled claws.

Spread this research far and wide… AI is incapable (currently) of effectively summarising knowledge. So why is our govt using it to summarise bill submissions?

This: “reclaim the wealth” works as it doesn’t infer the wealthy are inherently virtuous and we’re begging them to contribute more, rather reframing on the fact that the wealthy exist as a result of a flawed taxation system permitting a tiny minority to accrue massive wealth at the cost of society

And in other news: I made pasta for the first time this evening. Simple and lush. Hmm… this may become an annoying habit…

This is something I’ve been working on for a few years now: doi.org/10.1111/brv.... A review on fern dispersal - how much does wind contribute, and when do animals effectively vector spore to new / isolated locations… #fern #dipersal #landscapeecology #biogeography

I know there’s a lot to comment on / provide feedback on at the moment… if you’ve the bandwidth, please ask Pharmac to continue to provide vaccines that are safe for those with #longCOVID. I’ve been dealing with long COVID for three years now. I’m unable to take the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.

Public service announcement - if you’re a camper of nice DOC-managed places in summertime and you didn’t already know - GET ONLINE! 😂 The booking countdown is running…

Note just “taxes” with the omission of the phrase “wealth taxes”. And terms like “drive up debt”, when nz has such low debt. This feeds TPU propaganda. MSM can’t help but alarm the middle class. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360... #nzpol

The girl-math budget that will cut deep, especially for women Andrea Vance May 11, 2025 You gotta read this article #NZPol

Exactly #nzpol

No comment…

That's why regardless of the wonky GDP stats, we will be in a recession for a good while yet - year-on-year job losses, lower real wages, under-employment, and increases in benefit dependency are far better measures of our economic health. And, they're all still very shit. [Ends]

School lunch 'savings': $100m Hyundai iRex break-fee: $550m Landlord tax deductions: $2.9bn Fast-tracked contracts for donors: Priceless #NZPol

A strange thing happened… after years ambling in the bush contemplating tree ferns, @nzgeo.bsky.social decided that my meanderings were worth an article! And brought on the epic @kategevans.bsky.social to write it: www.nzgeo.com/stories/in-a... Enjoy this ferny delight…

When will enough be enough? 🤨 #nzpol #fucktheoligarchy #TaxTheRich #TaxWorkLess #TaxWealthMore #StopTheGreed #Resist

🚨 Cool new ecology paper 🚨 If you’ve ever wondered why tree ferns retain skirts of dead fronds: it’s to protect them from frost! (So please ask gardeners to stop trimming them off!)… Thanks to the team: @andrebellve.bsky.social and Bruce Burns nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

So much is awful rn, so here’s something beautiful… Ladies and Gentlemen: the broadleaf-podocarp forest of the Waitākere… with bonus mangemange (Lygodium articulatum) as who doesn’t want more climbing ferns in their life…

Check out my latest article: Does the New Zealand rail network actually serve New Zealanders? I looked into data on how many kiwis might be able to travel by train… if we ran more than a handful of them each week. www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-n... via @LinkedIn

Saw the epic @sarahmillican.bsky.social tonight at the Aotea centre. Laughed so hard. Awesome show! Thanks so much Sarah ❤️

Puberty blockers are the business of: Young trans people Their caregivers Their Dr Fullstop.

🔥🔥🔥 Radical libertarian ideologies are generating extreme inequality and ripping the social fabric of NZ, writes Anne Salmond. Don’t we want to be a place where talent wants to live? #nzpol

Very Important and Urgent Things that Everyone Living in Aotearoa New Zealand Needs to Pay Attention to ASAP: a Big Ol’ Thread #nzpol 🧵🪡

Not really had the energy to post much on this since I joined: 2024 was a bit intense…However, a week on a secluded Northland beach seems to be doing the trick. Here’s to eco- and shit-posting in 2025…