Douglas
@finnatic.bsky.social
May be in Ankh-Morpork or Kirikiriroa, Aotearoa Middle Zealand, listening to music, reading a book, doing web or TEU work ... "Sweet dreams every once in a while" / "(Tara) Everything is turning out so dark." / “Cards for sorrow, cards for pain”
While the govt aggressively mandated public service cuts & redundancies to curb "wasteful spending," economic tracking indicates that actual government expenditure as a proportion of GDP barely dropped. Many departments laid off permanent staff only to rehire similarly expensive contractors later 😳
Srsly, I am begging for a gallery journalist to learn how the benefit system works so that when this happens at a presser "The Minister says Jobseeker does not have a sickness element and old sickness benefit falls under Supported Living" they can say, "No, it doesn't, that's a lie"
A Kentucky man has secured a Title VII exemption so he doesn’t have to use AI tools in the workplace. Secular humanism is protected alongside theistic religious beliefs. This is brilliant. fortune.com/2026/10/30/k...
As bosses push workers to use AI, a Kentucky man found a way to opt out: a federal law protecting religious beliefs | Fortune
University of Kentucky administrator David Durman is the first Humanist to be granted an AI use exemption under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
fortune.com
I'm far more interested in stuff like this than who was photographed with some gang members.
Warnings about serious risks in surgery outsourcing blanked out by Simeon Brown's office
The health minister has been warned of a large number of serious risks around outsourcing thousands of surgeries to private hospitals to cut public waitlists.
rnz.co.nz
Funding for science, innovation and technology has been badly missing from this year's election coverage despite being a big difference in where we'll end as a nation up in 10 or 20 years. This article does a great job of hitting key points. More coverage needed? newsroom.co.nz/2026/10/30/s...
Scientists probe sound of silence, as National goes awol
Most researchers think the country is headed in the wrong direction, with one saying the two major parties offer little hope for the sector
newsroom.co.nz
Here’s today’s post for paying subscribers to The Kākā. New report updates IRD work, finding richest 311 families paid effective tax rate of 8.1% from 2021 to 2024, vs effective rate paid by median-wealth adult of 17.4%; Mortgage debt now over $400b #nzpol thekaka.substack.com/p/early-bird...
Early Bird: Richest families pay tax rate of 8.1%
New report updates IRD work, finding richest 311 families paid effective tax rate of 8.1% from 2021 to 2024, vs effective rate paid by median-wealth adult of 17.4%; Mortgage debt now over $400b
thekaka.substack.com
If you want more Patrick Stewarts, then you publicly fund the arts and learning programs, so that working class kids can find their way into making a career in them.
thinking about Patrick Stewart and Tim Curry and Dolly Parton and Catherine O’Hara and how many of the tributes shared after they died translate to something like “their art made me feel like I wasn’t alone in the world” it is hard to think of a better way to spend a life than that
This shit has to stop!! I’m so tired of rich pricks abusing children and then getting protected by the NZ courts. Fuck this shit. Who’s going to fix this?!?!
I have a bit of time now. So my home was a no-screens home when there was really just one screen you could have. We had a TV—it was in my parents' bedroom, connected to the VCR. If I was sick I could watch re-runs there; we watched the Olympics in Olympics years. Sometimes a movie from the library
Max Gladstone@maxgladstone.bsky.social · 2d agoIt’s a long story and I don’t have time to tell it right, but there would never have been any Star Trek in my childhood home at all if the one night I convinced my parents to give it a try hadn’t been “Darmok”
Never a mourn a life this long, well lived, that brought such joy. Celebrate it. This calls for mariachis.
Star Trek: Q's Mariachi Serenade for Picard
Alt: Star Trek: Q's Mariachi Serenade for Picard
static.klipy.com
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2d agoLOS ANGELES (AP) — Stage giant Patrick Stewart, of ‘Star Trek’ and 'X-Men' fame, dies at 86. -
Fans across the world mourn the passing of a true and irreplaceable legend. As Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Patrick Stewart took the starship Enterprise to places it had never gone before.
Mōrena Kirikiriroa friends. NerdFest in the Pā at Waikato Uni from 3pm this afternoon. Should be a cool event with lots to check out. A certain chemistry academic might be playing the idiot in a "magic" show at 3.45, 4.45 and 5.45. It'll likely go off with a bang! 😏
New favourite internet abbreviation: AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
People move on, people get old, people die ... and yet we expect them to keep our Internet, devices, apps, and websites working. #Internet #LifeOnline
The People Holding Up the Internet: Who Maintains Open Source
Four billion phones ask one text file what time it is, kept by a UCLA lecturer in his spare time. We counted who maintains the code under your phone.
sheets.works
“The wheels are off the cart. We are in the midst of a chaotic, demented acceleration of the most violent and cruel aspects of this system which has evolved into what I am calling Psychopatriarchy.”
We are seeing the rise of psychopatriarchy everywhere | V (Formerly Eve Ensler)
Psychopatriarchy is jet fuel to racism, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism
theguardian.com
Friends in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, I'm taking a sabbatical from Sept. 2027 — June 2028, and my hope is to spend 2-6 weeks each in a good number of your cities. I would love your help with this.
I'm working for the next month on a Timaru Wikipedian at Large project, improving content around Timaru, Geraldine, and Peel Forest. If you'd like to help improve articles or donate your photos, sign up. If you're a newbie, message me and I'll walk you through the process.
Wikipeda:GLAM/Timaru - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
📙I wrote a new book! It’s called “Standout Designs for the Web” and I wrote it because too many websites look the same, and I want to show how to make them stand out. Pre-orders start 12 Nov. Read more here: stuffandnonsense.co....
exactly
It doesn’t matter if it works
Ultimately, whether LLMs "work" as a technology or not doesn't matter. The widespread adoption and deployment should be regarded firstly as a threat to the labor force.
henry.codes
Erin Kissane@kissane.myatproto.social · 4d agoMy hottest AI take is that the executive class is petrified of labor and saw that whatever else LLMs are/aren't, they're fine labor-smashers + that a ton of ordinary people find the artificial hyper-complexity and scamminess of modern life and work so unbearable that they'll throw a god-box at it.
Perfect front page from The Press today. Luxon laughing, main headline 'Pay Equity Bids Thwarted' and then an ad telling us to Party Vote Green 💚
It remains obscene to me that we sold basically the country's entire electricity generation infrastructure — built over decades by NZ taxpayers, for the benefit of the whole country — to investors for ~$5b and in the years since, they've extracted billions and invested far less. And we pay more.
Power companies’ spending on new renewables fell off a cliff
New figures bolster the claim spending on new renewable electricity projects by Meridian, Mercury and Genesis collapsed after they were listed
newsroom.co.nz
