Starting season five of #ZNation and it’s great having zombie messiah Murphy back. Season four had its moments, but the season felt like it had to change gears midway through and it never recovered

#DeadpoolVsWolverine should work as a film. It has all the elements of a story, yet it never quite comes together, mostly because there is so much fan service

"How 'prolonged' was Dawkins's investigation? He tells us his chats with Claude took place over 'nearly two days.' Impressive. My friends who wrote doctoral dissertations about consciousness will no doubt be jealous of his remarkable efficiency."

i dont disagree with this materially, but i also believe that Labour MUST be pushed to at least try and WIN by whatever amounts to a movement here also, i think we often risk conflating banter and critique on social media with actions in the real world - many of us do much more than just post

Slightly increase a band. They Might Well Be Giants

In some respects (a lot like Iain Banks) I'm kind of glad he isn't around today, because some of his friends have turned out to be terrible people.

Amazing how Allen key technology has developed. My current Allen key (left) and an original 80s Allen key, the size of a brick!

Audiences at magic shows HATE this one VERY weird trick.

Where were all you people lamenting the closing of Verona when Revel disappeared? Now there was a cafe worth celebrating!

Every three years people ask "Is Labour going to campaign on being transformational?" and every three years we are told "Wait for the campaign period, because you will be surprised..." only for Labour to be milquetoast about change yet again

Off to Hangzhou at the end of this week for a workshop. I’m going to be casting some shade on two philosophical papers that claim to have elicited what ordinary language users think conspiracy theories are, with my conclusion being that philosophers – once again – make for bad social scientists

What makes #TheFacelessOnes a particularly weird story is that it has all the features of a “base under seige” story, yet it’s set at Gatwick Airport, a fully functional international airport…

Rewatched #TheMightyBoosh Live Show last night, and there were a lot more r*pe jokes in it than I remembered…

Do we have, aside from the vague assertion of someone who admitted using a homophobic slur, evidence that the slurrer was first slurred against? Otherwise lot of people are taking on trust the idea that this is a "both sides" moment...

If someone calls you a slur that doesn’t give you a free pass to use a slur against them.

I’ll just echo what Sarah and Eddie have said here: those of you going “But…” will be remembered.

I've seen other queer folks who have said something similar, and I want to speak up as a lesbian too. Nothing excuses using the f-word against a gay man. There should be consequences for doing so. And I'm really disappointed that some of you have used "But" in response to such.

I guess I should be grateful that my university doesn't just let us accept essays and assignments via hand submission, email, or WeChat, but also has no web-based learning management system at all

this worded it better than I could, all of this stinks to high heaven but it has been bothering me how many people seem way too eager to say that actually it was fine for her to use a slur.

seems bad (widely applicable)

The sourcing of the Sherman allegation are very obviously politically motivated. And if Burr accepted her apology at the time and didn't want to take it further I think it should have been left there. I also think it's *extremely* unacceptable to call a work colleague a faggot to their face.

Can we just note that an across-the-board raise in the pensionable age is Yet Another Racist Policy #nzpol

Love that there are enough of them that there seems to genuinely be a genre of disinformation/antiracism researchers acting in good faith who write on substack and post with gen AI. Two of the biggest engines for the things you're a good faith opponent of & you just uncritically use them? Come on.

Turns out the people going on about data sovereignty and the risk of chucking everything on the servers of massive overseas companies were entirely onto something and our institutions probably should have listened to them. Who could have imagined? (quite a few people, in fact)

The second half of series 2 of #BlakesSeven starts to be the show I remember from my childhood.

Why must people start conferences at 9am? No one wants to discuss philosophy at 9am!

A thread of podcasts I have listened to as replacements for #KnowledgeFight

Being a proud "moderate Democrat" hustling for subscribers on Substack (AKA, a cowardly conservative trying to make money because Trump) must feel really lonely right now. No one, and I mean NO ONE, likes you at the moment.

I wrote a whole bloody book partially in response to this problem. Exercise should be for everybody, but schools devote way too much energy to kids who *already* enjoy competitive sports & not enough to those who might just like to move their bodies blissfully without worrying about personal bests.

The fact that our media increasingly publishes “I’m not political!” pieces about people who work for a right-wing astroturf groups sends a strong signal about who the media serves

Stuff giving Ani O'Brien a full article to explain how her hit on Maiki Sherman wasn't collusion and how she's not a political partisan? Really enjoy how the rest of the piece shows her exclusively working for right wingers. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

I remember kind of enjoying #TheMacraTerror novelisation but the actual episodes are a bit of a mess story-wise.

It’s very funny how this man spent years attacking mātauranga Māori for being taught in NZ schools, falsely claiming Māori spiritual belief was being promoted as science, and is now convinced the plagiarism machine is sentient with no evidence to back this up other than he fancies his AI girlfriend

speaking of webcomics I still think this Hark A Vagrant panel is like. the single funniest image of all time

This is starting to become a "throw everything we can into the shredder before we are thrown out" government.

🧵My take here is that the coalition government has decided to abolish the BSA because it has advice that the authority's assertion that the Broadcasting Act gives it jurisdiction over online broadcasting is well-founded and would prevail in a court. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

The book club I am in is currently reading Fredrick Backman's "My Friends" which is a) one of the worst things I have ever read and b) apparently has won awards despite being a dreadful book. I am very much of the opinion that I do not need to read past chapter six

1/ It appears Knowledge Fight, the quasi-anthropological podcast created to dissect InfoWars (and later, its copycats such as The Tucker Carlson Show) has decided to shut down operations. I have many thoughts about this. knowledgefight.com

As I was reflecting on the end of #KnowledgeFight this morning, and reading a very long summary of Jordan's video (which really seems to be the reason why the show had to end), and let me say that while I listened to almost every episode, I did not think the show was unproblematic. 1/2

You can't even do Star Wars anagrams these days because of ewok.

Alex Jones could do something very funny today and talk about #KnowledgeFight on the show for the first time...

I think getting mad at Verity Johnson for pointing out Labour are not giving people a reason to vote for them other than "Not National" which, as she highlights, will result in people not voting because "Not National" isn't enough, is a bit silly.

So, with #KnowledgeFight having ended, I'm in the mood for something similar that covers the alt-right influencer space in the US. Any suggestions?

This morning I reread a paper I refereed, and was pleased by how the authors had dealt with my (hopefully) constructive criticisms. This afternoon I reread a paper that I would have flatly rejected had I been a reviewer. Same journal.

"Quote from Count Dankula" — the Russian government

A basic problem with the X-Files is that on paper Scully should be the smart one, but in the show Mulder is right 100% of the time so she looks like a fucking moron

I find it incredibly telling when men like Dawkins are convinced that the LLMs are ‘intelligent’ because it ‘agrees’ with them or tells them how insightful or clever they are

Seymour also manages to get THIS in completely unchallenged just nasty apartheid shit intentionally marginalising Māori

ACT has released an overtly fascist 'immigration' policy, that includes creating NZ ICE, and this is how NZ media (RNZ no less!) is reporting it "tougher", a "shakeup" NZ media once again acting as facilitators for fascism. They could easily choose not to do this, if they wished

nigel can make his own gd plans 😡