The bargain price of $138 million per km. Or one postdoc per metre.

samuel mehr@mehr.nz · 6d ago

one road, not even long enough to run a marathon on, for the low low price of 42 times the entire 2027 budget for scientific research in new zealand #nzpol

Here's the opening, but read the whole thing...

Absolutely not.

RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · last wk.

New EFTPOS terminals remove the need for cards or phones

Journo: Mr Prime Minister you still think New Zealand can achieve net zero by 2050? PM: Yes, maybe even a few years earlier J: Yet you are doing nothing to reduce NZ's emissions? PM: No, we expect a science-based solution to emerge soon J: So you're funding NZ scientists to do this? PM: Oh, God no

Really? Cook? 🙄 www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Every ad now

If they sign one of the RoNS which might actually happen, Warkworth to Te Hana, as a Public Private Partnership, the annual payments for that could be over $300m per year, for 25 years+ So yeahhhhh enough money for the Marsden fund for 100 years on one road...

My favorite Sam Neil fact will always be that he designed a future Australian flag that replaces the union jack with the aboriginal flag for Event Horizon and insisted the film use it.

State funeral

Actor Sam Neill has died

Sam Neill has died in hospital, his family said in a statement on Monday.

stuff.co.nz

I have couple of questions: What constitutes "better"? Whose definition? Who's doing the watching? Is everyone being watched, including the tech executives, or are they just doing the watching? techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/x...

Xprize founder says 'humans behave better when they’re being watched' | TechCrunch

Peter Diamandis is the latest tech executive to argue that global surveillance will make the world a better place, following Larry Ellison's comments in 2024.

techcrunch.com

This is good policy, and a very strong contrast with how the government chose to allocate new transport spending in the Budget. I hope they have a good plan for selling it, eg ...

henry cooke@henrycooke.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: Labour's first policy of 2026 is a public transport fare cap: - $20 for AKL, Wellington, Chch, - $10 for everywhere else www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361...

By far the biggest problem with delegating judgement to machines is the people who own the machines can tune them towards outcomes they prefer but those who don't own anything can't. It's not the technology. It's a transfer of decision making power from rational accountable systems to capital.

Paris air pollution is down 50% after its radical bike-friendly transformation Cars have been banned from more than 100 streets. Tens of thousands of parking spots have been eliminated. Hundreds of miles of bike lanes have been added. And air pollution is plummeting

Time to court the women's vote, once we define what one actually is. I chat more about this over at my Substack: open.substack.com/pub/yeehawth...

“Vote for us and we’ll do something we know is really popular and that we could do now” says the party that’s passed more things under urgency, against expert advice, and against public submissions in the last three years than anyone else

Hayley@writagal.bsky.social · 3mo ago

“No victim should have to sit in a courtroom and hear that individual who robbed them of their dignity deserves a discount at sentencing.” If that’s true, why wait until National is back in power to pass this? It’s pretty foul imo that this is a re-election ploy and not a given to pass - now. #nzpol

This is beautiful on so many levels. It names clearly and directly one of the insidious tactics that tech uses to evade effective regulation. It exemplifies a way in which humanistic scholarship provides critically important insight. >> link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Waiting for AGI - AI & SOCIETY

AI & SOCIETY -

link.springer.com

They stole over 3 TB of data from Canvas but 2 TB is just required syllabus language copied from a university website.

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)

Interesting thread on “AI”. I don’t agree 100% but I do think the current model doesn’t scale economically & maybe technically, which means what we’ll have in the future will be very different. Likely just small embedded fragments of “AI”, not a huge world changing systems.

Nash@radiodeadair.com · 3mo ago

Everyone keeps saying "AI isn't going away" and no, "AI" as you've come to know it is in fact going to go away. It's unprofitable and the user experience to date has been subsidized. It will never scale, and it's not getting any cheaper. And localized fragments of that tech aren't the same.

The human circulatory system, before and after proper cable management.

Laughing out loud at this. They say hard times make for good art.

Pete from Fuzzy Ghost@fuzzyg.host · 4mo ago

this is an absolute ✨ cultural moment ✨

Why Pākeha are so resistant to embracing Tikanga is a real mystery to me. Even right now, on the cusp of yet another catastrophic climate event, Marae across the motu are ready with open arms to CARE for our communities…ALL of us, not just Maori. The knowledge is rich, the integrity is priceless.

TheSarapocalypse@sarainchch.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I spent today at Ōnuku Marae on Te Pataka o Rakaihautū Banks Peninsula at a nature symposium. Ōnuku have a 200 year vision to restore the Harbour and today we heard about the extensive mahi in mapping and understanding the seabed and partnering to farm kelp for harvest and restore biodiversity. 🐟🐬🪼🐚

Spoiler alert: nothing trickled down.

This is surprisingly reassuring!

Brandon Sheffield@brandon.insertcredit.com · 4mo ago

People wanna say you're washed up by middle age, but the YOUNGEST person on this moon mission is 47.

"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding."

Minas Karamanis@minaskar.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Hey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

This table brings out points in a bit more detail. Hope this helps NZ'ers understand where they sit in relation to what the UK, and Australia have been informed by their leaders around what the coming weeks, and months will bring. He waka eke noa, but those already vulnerable will be hit hardest.

"We are going for all humanity." "Artemis crew is go for launch. Full send." Publicly funded science to explore our universe and our own precious world is a beautiful thing.

Using AI would defeat the entire purpose and pleasure of writing. I have no more interest in using AI to write than I have interest in letting another person run a marathon for me. The arrival isn't the point, nor the beauty of it.

Laura Keating@lorekeating.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I keep seeing "all authors use AI, the real issue is they're being forced to be sneaky about it" headlines. Full stop No. This is a lie peddled for normalization. It's schoolyard-level pressure tactics "C'mon, all the cool kids are already doing it. We won't tell. It's fine. We're on your side."