Look at these beautiful kākābeak flowers!

See that Rolex clock and gold bar? It looks like those Swiss gifts paid off. Trump cut tariffs on Swiss goods — like luxury watches — from 39% to 15%. While Trump’s tariffs increase prices for Americans, billionaire CEOs and foreign companies sucking up to Trump get relief.

Yes you’re right. I’ve seen people rank job candidates solely by the IF of the journals they’ve published in. I sometimes wonder if there’s a role for retired academics like me who have nothing to lose now.

That punishes the academics though. Only publishing in open access journals might help a bit, but the ranking system is stacked towards companies like Elsevier. It just seems…impossible?

I keep trying to think of ways we could break the system, but they've got us running around like trained rats pressing the buttons that keep the whole system going. Perhaps we could avoid citing the most egregious journals except where absolutely unavoidable.

Research should not be hidden behind for-profit paywalls. Universities should not have to pay $30 million for work we’ve done for free.

Watching people donate to this has been bringing me joy all month. There’s a lot of good people out there

Any opportunity to cause harm to our society, they’ll take it! We will never level up as a unified nation as long as these pus oozing parasites are anywhere near the halls of power. Vote them all out AotearoaNZ 🙄 #OneTermGovernment #nzpol

The irony that he'd be talking about "public trust" when he told the nation that "jihadi brides" were leaving from NZ when, in fact, they did not. It took the Green Party, through OIAs, to find the truth. As a result, many of us faced harassment, and years on, we're still waiting for an apology.

Looks like I’m not reviewing for Elsevier for a while. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

The Wellington CCO director breaking into his neighbour’s house in a cat burglar suit and masturbating over her things. The predatory groomer and rapist Tim Jago operating as party president of ACT for years, crowing on a podcast with Seymour about ‘victimhood’.

Today is a big day as the Precision Breeding Act comes into force 🌱 @kamounlab.bsky.social: “This is a milestone for UK science and innovation. We now have the regulatory framework to translate discovery into impact — improving crops, strengthening food security, and benefiting society” 🌿

Lovely (paywalled) reviews of CRICK in New Scientist [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26835692-000-surprising-new-biography-of-francis-crick-unravels-the-story-of-dna/] & the Times [https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/crick-professor-matthew-cobb-review-9bc6dv6hf]. 1/2

Thanks for the encouragement; I'll give it a while longer. At least I can pop inside for some toast and internet from time to time.

#nzpol This is the country we live in now. Seymour has reduced this country to his own personal Atlas-induced, money-grubbing, corporate-bitch, libertarian, ideological wank stain www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

It’s on! Nelson NZ not dark yet.

Looking forward to Trump’s staunch defence of the importance of the distinction between Church and State in his reply to the Catholic bishops.

Right. Hitler's DNA. Brace yourselves for a deluge of misinformation and bad science. I'm in Australia, so do get in touch if you want some expert debunking.

Super massive 210° panorama of the south east Otago coast from Chrystalls Beach as the #Aurora australis was waining a bit (yeah this wasn't even the insane bit). Cooks Rock is an old volcanic vent & impressive rock. #Nikon #NZ #Panorama

Good. Thank you. More of this sort of thing please.

The extent to which people fail to understand the way taxonomy underpins so much environmental science is really mind-boggling

WATCH: @raskin.house.gov explains the deal that would allow eight GOP senators lucrative lawsuits over phone record subpoenas: "It's certainly the most corrupt provision authorizing financial self-dealing and plunder of the public passed by Congress in this century."

I have an early morning, so that’s it for me. Incredible amount of movement this evening! We didn’t quite hit the aurora high of last night, but no night staring at the sky is wasted. 📍Central MN

& to prove how BONKERS last night's monster Aurora was, remember this was during a period of calming down, here's my Adobe Lightroom colour settings - I haven't increased or saturated any of the colours. Just basic brightness & contrast. #BehindTheScenes #Aurora #Lightroom #NZ

Here we go again, kids! 📍Central MN

I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2003. It *enrages* me that we could prevent others from experiencing life-altering autoimmune disease, but instead, Republicans in the Senate voted to confirm an anti-vaccine failson as HHS Secretary.

Aurora tonight? Still cloudy and lightly raining here (Nelson) but forecast to clear about sunset.

Pulte is the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who's lately been accessing the mortgage files of Trump's enemies so Trump can target them.

New “prominent New Zealander” alert. #nzpol.

Frankly, more tax money should be flowing in our direction to keep these NATIONAL institutions going. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

The Dog That Didn’t Bark would be a great title for a book and a movie about all this, sooner rather than later. #Epstein.

hey here's an idea to fix the environment: Mass transit networks are more energy efficient. Encourage their use by offering a tax break to adults who decide not to get a car

OMG SPEECHLESS #Aurora has erupted & gone coronal (directly up). Now the entire southern sky

#NZpol ACT says: “BILL PASSED: Medicines approved in two trusted countries like the UK or the US will be fast-tracked for approval here.” But: the US medical approval system currently cannot be trusted as it has been taken over by pseudo-scientists, grifters, & unqualified "yes people" ⬇️ 1/n

Unreal at the moment. #aurora

Strong Geomagnetic Storm Predicted. Check the Space Weather dashboard for more information.

bACk oN tRacK

Just call it what it is: corruption. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Finally got around to dropping some $ into Siouxsie Wiles "suing the bastards" fund, it's going well, but I think still less than half what she needs. We have till the end of the month, here's the link

Whole fucking thing makes me sick to my stomach. An abject fucking liar, a man who lies as easily as he fucking breathes, threatening an organisation which strives for truthfulness. And plastic patriots like the Mail and Farage urging him on. Jackels.

Too much of this sort of thing lately. Spiders, hornets, millipedes, clams.

I think you’re correct. In this, and probably only this, I am more English than kiwi. It’s the beetroot not the egg.

Insect decline signals a deep ecological imbalance #pollinators #pollinatordecline #insectdecline #ecosystemservices Integrating insect-mediated services into national accounting systems ... is critical to preventing irreversible ecological collapse. india.mongabay.com/2025/11/inse...

That argument was thin anyway. "Why should I bother doing good things when other people are doing bad things?"

🎉 Congrats to Dr Jessie Prebble of the Bioeconomy Science Institute on receiving a Mana Tūāpapa Fellowship from Royal Society Te Apārangi! Her research will explore how plants support climate-resilient peat bogs. #BioeconomyScience #RoyalSocietyNZ #ClimateResilience 🔗 bit.ly/49bepnm/

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

A mature conversation? Ok then. I sincerely think that politicians who have sold public assets without getting everyone's approval should be jailed for theft, and people who bought it should be done for receiving stolen property.

It’s important to achieve bipartisanship with Republicans so they can arrest Barack Obama for something they read on the Epoch Times’ Facebook page written by a Chinese cult member in 2019.

iNaturalist's AI identification system is often surprisingly accurate, but yesterday its best IDs for this animal were (1) yellow-eyed penguin, (2) cattle, (3) dog, (4) horse. Biology, medicine, and agriculture would unravel without accurate taxonomy.