These policies seem good. Fundamentally there is something broken about the incentives for commercial landlords that sees them willing to let tenancies sit empty.

Greens announce reforms to lower commercial rents, fill empty shops

The Green Party is pledging to restore city centre vibrancy by ensuring market rent reviews for small businesses can lower rents, and letting councils run rental auctions for spaces that have been emp...

rnz.co.nz

LibriVox is a public-domain volunteer-read audiobook site, and to my delight has a multi-volume Insomnia Collection of very boring texts including A Textbook of Assaying for the Use of Those Connected with Mines; Chapter 6. librivox.org/insomnia-col...

Imagine the outrage if we had a left-leaning government and the dollar sat as low as it is now. NZ$ should be around 93 to 96c Australian. But it is now sitting just above 80c. Has been around 83c but dropped further recently. Where is the analysis and reporting on this?

It's probably better framing to think off these guys as 19th century robber barons than some scions of New Tech. They're running the same boring playbook and we don't even get railroads out of it.

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 2d ago

OpenAI and Microsoft admitted LLMs are predatory tech built on “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft document said AI has created a “doom loop” that is killing “the entire web.” www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...

"Close to 300 critically endangered kākāriki karaka/orange-fronted parakeets have been counted at the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary in Nelson, up almost 100 on last year’s survey."

Endangered parakeet numbers soar at sanctuary

Close to 300 critically endangered kākāriki karaka/orange-fronted parakeets have been counted at the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary in Nelson, up almost 100 on last year’s survey.

thepress.co.nz

An AI book list with three categories: 1) smart books that explain and critique the AI industry 2) VERY flawed but ~illustrative~ books on AI 3) books that provide deeper political/social context, including some fiction (lmk what you'd add to the list) www.theguardian.com/books/2026/s...

#SciComm #NZ Some people might like to check the weekly ‘Month of Learning’ online talks coming up. – Four 10-minutes talks over a lunchtime www.scanz.co.nz/events

Events — SCANZ - Science Communicators Association of New Zealand

Join us for networking, professional development and science storytelling events around Aotearoa New Zealand!

scanz.co.nz

I really need journalists to learn that every time OpenAI or Anthropic or xAI says that their model has broken containment and could destroy humanity that it’s a marketing pitch by companies running out of cash with high overheads and no profitable business model wanting more investment.

Happy second iRex ferry arrival week! This is the week the second rail enabled bigger ferry would have arrived in Aotearoa, six months after the first. We currently will not receive any new ferries until 2029, and at present have one ferry working and will go 4 years without a rail enabled ferry.

rip annie dillard

At my office job where management has been insisting on using AI for everything, we had a "fun" team exercise where we asked Copilot what animal we were based on our daily interactions with it, and it told every single person in a team of ten people that we were most like a border collie lol.

If journalists said things like “support for Labour is probably between 28 and 34% and for National somewhere between 27 and 33%” it would be more accurate, but they wouldn’t get to write long articles about tiny changes in poll results and a possible hung parliament.

Newsroom NZ@newsroom.co.nz · 4d ago

Infrastructure sector warns of the danger if there are delays forming a government, or a hung Parliament forcing the country back to the ballot box. Jonathan Milne and Marc Daalder report.

WITNESS THE GLORY OF NEW ZEALAND MENTIONED

If anyone in Ōtautahi wants to help with the Books of Mana project, we’ll be working on lvl 2 of Tūranga all Sunday: let me know if you’d like to join in. A good way to learn some Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand@wikimediaaotearoa.bsky.social · 5d ago

In 2024 a book was published identifying the 180 most significant Māori-authored works of non-fiction. Books of Mana is a valuable resource for covering Māori authors on Wikipedia, so for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, editors in Ōtepoti Dunedin will be improving coverage of authors with articles.

BRANZ is an internationally well-respected research institute that’s *independent* of any government department—folding it into MBIE for vague cost-cutting reasons is stupid. www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

Decades of building industry research at risk

The future of our world-respected building research association is looking shaky with a government move to cut the dedicated levy that funds it.

rnz.co.nz

For crying out loud ... the whole point about having an expert independent building research agency is that they have EXPERTISE and are INDEPENDENT. Taking away their funding and folding them into a governmentl ministry is the polar opposite of this.

The cognitive dissonance with people who dutifully recycle and drive an EV and support Palestine and buy free-range eggs but then talk to a text-extrusion programme all day is quite something.

Sam Harper@sharper.bsky.social · 6d ago

I thought I was anti AI before, but I'm reading a preview copy of the upcoming book Hyperscale by @parismarx.com and "anti" isn't a strong enough word. The social, political and environmental cost of generative AI is staggering.

- Restoring the Bay Express (Wellington–Napier) and the Southerner (Chch–Dunedin–Invercargill) - Chch and Dunedin suburban rail on existing corridors (Chch to Rolleston, Rangiora, Lyttelton; Port Chalmers–Dunedin–Mosgiel) - Affordable economy class on TranzAlpine, Coastal Pacific, Northern Explorer

The following public transport projects for NZ should be completely uncontroversial: - light rail in Auckland and Wellington - completing the electrification of the North Island Main Trunk and sparking the East Coast Main Trunk - Extending Te Huia to Tauranga and the Capital Connection to Whanganui

André Brett@drdrehistorian.bsky.social · 7d ago

There *should* be light rail under construction from the railway station to Island Bay and Miramar but nooooo instead the worst people, obsessed with “four lanes to the planes”, are impeding the capital from becoming what it ought to be

This is such a great tool for strategic voting. I discovered the Green MP contesting Christchurch Central wants two ticks, but she’ll be getting in on the list anyway—so anyone voting for her will just split the left vote and maybe hand this Labour seat to the Nats.

The Progress Report@theprogressreport.co.nz · last wk.

I've updated the ACT Party list in The Progress Report, so you can see who will get into Parliament via my MMP Calculator: theprogressreport.co.nz/mmp-calculat... #nzpol

Getty makes a ton of money out of selling public domain footage. Which is crazy. But that’s Getty. The footage is usually available free elsewhere but it’s hard to find. Great video that helps you understand where and how to find it. youtu.be/2dzqQItDmdg?...

I Killed A Business Model

YouTube video by Elroddd

youtu.be

A LOT of people de-Googled this week and none one of them miss it. Not one of them regret it. For my part, I was already de-Googled but I remembered to sell a small amount of their stock that I had. Use this guide: psychopete1.substack.com/p/the-infini...

De-Google Your Life

And starve the machine while you're at it.

psychopete1.substack.com

One of my favourite songs of the summer just gone: an outrageously good remix of Life During Wartime www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZb_...

Loveface - This Ain't No Disco

YouTube video by Loveface Music

youtube.com

Like seriously, what's the overlap between putting tape over your laptop camera so you're not spied on and feeding your family photos into an algorithm to order a pillow?

Genuine question, how did the boomers go from posting "I do NOT give Facebook permission to use my likeness or videos" to just dumping their photos and personal information into ChatGPT

Our eels go through the same amazing process, and we actually have no idea where exactly they spawn, despite “near Tonga” being repeated incessantly in the literature. rsnz.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

How Speculation Became Accepted Truth: Evidence that Aotearoa New Zealand Freshwater Eels Do Not Seem to Spawn “Near Tonga” or “East of Samoa”

For several decades, the assumption that Aotearoa New Zealand freshwater eels spawn near Tonga (for longfin, Anguilla dieffenbachii) or east of Samoa (for shortfin, A. australis) has been widely repe...

rsnz.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD@greenleejw.bsky.social · last wk.

I love summer, and I hate the change of seasons. But eels change in excellent ways, so let's talk about that, instead! That's right, friends...it's Big Eel Life Cycle Thread time! Before we start, let's remember that I'm a historian, not a scientist. But I'll do my best. 1/11 🗃️🧪

Thread 😀

The Capybaron@thecapybaron.bsky.social · 3w ago

There once was a gunman who dealt In blood in the land of the Celts From Stockholm he flew, But alas, never knew, The importance of wearing seatbelts

Lone Progressive Dissenters have the highest batting average of being correct in history, yet that does nothing to change the widespread conviction that today’s Lone Progressive Dissenters must be crazy wackos.

Inequality Media@inequalitymedia.bsky.social · last wk.

Trump's massive surveillance state and attacks on our civil liberties wouldn't have been possible without the PATRIOT Act. Watch this prescient warning from Russ Feingold, the only Senator to vote against its passage after 9/11.

I think it was Tom Stoppard who said that every time he read "J Alfred Prufock" he felt "as the diabetic must feel when the insulin goes in." I think he meant "as the addict must feel when the heroin goes in" but you take his point: and he's right. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Not the mayor making anti-library statements this time, thankfully, just one of the Usual Suspects. CCC has annual spending of approx. 1500 million, and it spends only about 70 million of that on its libraries,which have a 95% satisfaction rate and blow past all their KPIs

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

Close libraries for a day or kill animals - Christchurch councillor says over Orana Park financial woes