Maybe we need more people elected who know what it's like to do battle to get your bare minimum "entitlements" at WINZ than we do people who are well practiced at protecting their wealth through loopholes and technicalities.

This is what makes rorting the system, and especially the double whammy of politicians who have cut accomodation allowances for people so far below an MPs salary, so offensive. I will never forget what it was like to be on a WINZ accomodation allowance. How dehumanising WINZ can be. Never, ever.

Making sure anyone who's elected has the tools to do their job - including the cost of having to spend half your time in another city - is not unreasonable. The system should enable a level of parity between MPs, because god forbid we forget housing is a human right. BUT-

We want people who have never earned an MPs salary before to be MPs. That's critical to having lived experience of what it's like to be an average New Zealander. But that also means they might not own property, have savings, or maybe they have debt to pay off like many average New Zealanders do.

Only having politicians with personal or family wealth is objectively bad for democracy. Allowances to make sure people elected from all walks of life, no matter where you live, can be effective at their jobs isn't the issue. People with existing personal or family wealth taking the piss is.

Who wants to go see Rise Against and Dropkick Murphys in november? My usual RA concert buddy is not going and I dislike going to shows on my own.

Solidarity is where it’s at. ✊🏽🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Behold, a woman!

Nothing to see just the Prime Minister & Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand threatening NZ journalists within 24 hrs of each other. We are $1 shop America

Another reminder: if there exists *any* class of people who don't have due process rights, then *nobody* actually has due process rights because the government can always just say you're in that class.

I feel like, when cis people recognise what gender affirmation and euphoria feels like /for them/, that does more for solidarity with trans people than anything else. This isn't an us and them struggle, it's all of us.

A inevitable fact of life is that if you wrap your bigotry and repression in "but we're going to do it in a kind and compassionate way" you're probably gfoing to get told to go fuck yourself more than if you just go high octane bigotry and repression.

Anyway here’s the passage of Judith Butler that the Guardian censored years ago

In the bleakest, most harmful Government's remaining term in office, it becomes even more important to celebrate the wins. Congrats to community, iwi and hapū who have been fighting this madness for years 👏👏👏

one of the major clues that social housing tenants haven't in fact won the lotto is that they need social housing

Wearing a mask on public transport means feeling smug about not sneezing on fellow commuters while also feeling disgusted about all the snot now inside the mask.

Sorry, National MPs, history will judge you by the vote you cast, not the sad face you made while doing it

People are mad that its hard to get in touch with govt departments and things take forever to get things done so we're going to slash the workforce. What the fuck are you even saying?

Time to stop electing people who don't believe in government to run it, lol. This isn't about efficiency even at the current point. The idea that the public sector can handle any further cuts is insane. It's time for National's mates to pay taxes instead.

We're speed-running the worst of libertarian arsery again, just like in the 1980s. This government has obliterated all our infrastructure.

Turns out that if you make thousands of workers redundant, remove worker protections, fail to rein in food/power/housing costs, and generally reduce income and quality of life for everyone who didn't donate to your party... that has flow-on effects! 🙃

One of the worst things about our press gallery is almost without exception - and please, point me to any that don't do this so I can give credit! - they accept completely uncritically the framing that "cuts = savings". Which *extremely obviously* are concepts which are not 1:1 equivalents.

If none of our leftwing parties campaign on *substantially increasing* the size of the public service, with a narrative of delivering basic shit like "will someone pick up your call in under forty-five minutes AND actually answer your question", it is frankly gross political misconduct at this point

... and probably every single one of those agencies was *objectively, measurably* understaffed BEFORE the first round of unhinged undirected blunt force cuts this government made to the public service

I don't think a lot of people know that in the NZ public service, it is usually *objectively known* how many staff they need to deliver the basic services they provide. They have the data on how many people answering phones, managing cases, processing claims are needed to meet demand...

“When ordinary people finally manage to get their concerns before a judge, the government can simply change the rules midstream to ensure the case never reaches a conclusion.” — Mike Smith on the government’s intention to override the Supreme Court.

Environment Court very sensibly overturning the commissioner's decision that helicopters are a "normal" part of residential activity. Which everyone involved (apart from the applicant and the commissioner, I guess) thought was ridiculous.

Ok but I would watch this

things ramones want: ✅ be your boyfriend ✅ be sedated ✅ sniff some glue things ramones don’t want: ❌ be buried in a pet samatary ❌ grow up ❌ walk around with you thanks for coming to my ted talk

"I have entire desk drawers of USB cables. Shoeboxes under the bed. I wouldn't be surprised if the shoes themselves came with a USB cable. I really can't look at a shoebox without having a panic attack about what I am going to do with all these cables."

Questions I have from this article: - why doesn't Pak n Save offer redundancy packages? - why can't checkout operators sit down?? - how come someone has been working there for that long and is still kept on/near minimum wage? As Tara says, this is bullshit. It's also clearly systemic bullshit.

Ever since the whole FBI office in Wellington malarkey things have been weird and uncomfortable. The rare minerals stuff. The complete lack of opposition to the genocide. This partnership is deeply troubling. This should be a bigger election issue.

Migration is our collective human history. People have always moved. Whether it’s from rural to urban, country to neighboring country, or straight up continents, this is what we do. Social stability is not at risk because people moved it’s at risk because you are a hater.

Mark Ashton, central character in the film 'Pride', worked at the Red Wedge office in 1986/7 where his radical energy kept us all on our toes. I'll be performing at a celebration of his life and activism at The Vauxhall Tavern in south London on Thursday May 21st. link.outsavvy.com/80f7cb6p

why are they so bad at mmp it's been over 30 years

I remember going to the launch of the KO accessibility policy in 2019 (iirc). We had high hopes that the large KO building programme would lead to universal design and adaptable design being more normalised in NZ. Even thought that the 15% target might increase eventually. This govt are bastards.

Here’s a poem called ‘Life of a Naturalist’.

<all together now>

Need a Ninja Turtles sequel where they have to save New York from a rogue sourdough starter

you can't split the vote in mmp you can't split the vote in mmp YOU CAN'T SPLIT THE VOTE IN MMP october is too far away oh wait jfc it's not until NOVEMBER

Watercare has replaced their outages form with a chatbot which never works 🙃🫠 looking forward to waiting on hold all night to tell them my water is fucked

Here’s how the economy actually works.

... Govt spending does not depend on taxation. In fact, taxation depends on Govt spending ffs. The cash that Govt has spent into the economy but not taxed back yet is called the 'Govt Debt'. Govt swaps some of their cash debt for Bond debt when they sell bonds. The ghouls call this borrowing! [4/n]

Would you like to travel by rail from Auckland - Hamilton - Tauranga? A May 2 run sold out without promotion. Sign the petition for more. our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/go...

If the problem is universal superannuation might be paid to billionaires, why is your answer means testing instead of taxing the shit out of billionaires

Fucking *this.* It "gets things wrong" because it doesn't understand anything. It's a system to make collages out of data using probability as a guide, and that means if it results in a correct answer it's because you got lucky. Even if it's right 99% of the time, you'll never know *which* 99%.

A human did do this. They used an automation system with admin privileges and trusted it would somehow magically account for all contingencies. The person who used the automation is the person responsible. There is no other entity.

The reason you'll never be able to stop LLMs from "hallucinating" is because they don't hallucinate. They output pattern-matched responses, things that appear similar to answers based on a database. It can't know what's in that answer because it doesn't know anything.