Tamatha Paul in general debate talks about a homeless man dying on the streets of Wellington on Monday night in the freezing cold. This regime has a body count #nzqt
Max Soar
@maxsoar.bsky.social
interdisciplinary/undisciplined | STS, Political Economy, other stuff | Pākehā | he/him https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7509-7861
If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?
Anxiety
Reasoning (and crying) my way through fascist AI-induced anxiety.
olivia.science
e-flux has published an excerpt from Rebecca Comay's wonderful On Persistence, which has just been published by Seagull Books, and which I was honoured to write an afterword for. www.e-flux.com/notes/678352...
On Persistence - Notes - e-flux
Rebecca Comay on persisting, in philosophy, literature, politics, and illness.
e-flux.com
Funneling overseas PhDs to Australian universities instead. My eldest did her (funded) PhD and two years' post-doc there and by then had made her life in Straya and her subsequent career. Funding PhDs is an investment, not charity.
RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · 2d agoCost blowout puts fees for foreign PhD students under review
I have no confidence that the government understands the benefits of having overseas PhD students study here (and I'm not sure university administrators do either.) PhD students coming here from elsewhere is a net benefit for the country. If you want them to stay, fund more postdocs and teaching:
Cost blowout puts fees for foreign PhD students under review
A blow-out in the cost of treating foreign PhD students like locals has prompted a rethink of the long-standing policy and a cap on spending next year.
rnz.co.nz
Winston is a coward who cannot answer a logical question about two positions he holds which are contradictory. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361...
'Turn that thing off': Peters terminates interview after just 96 seconds
Winston Peters had told a Stuff journalist to “piss off” after they asked questions about other instances of violent rhetoric and behaviour toward MPs.
stuff.co.nz
Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.
NZ First playing to the reactionary COVID crowds and the presence of Nazis in the party are related. The fuzzy boundaries between those cohorts (and the potential ideological alliances) are finding mainstream political purchase. It's a very dangerous development.
The Press@thepress.co.nz · 3d agoA senior figure in New Zealand First’s youth wing has links to neo-Nazi groups and online accounts praising Adolf Hitler, an investigation by The Press has found.
So I hope someone is asking NZ First MPs how they feel about Nazis being in their party, whether they agree with those views, and whether they're Nazis themselves.
Good to see an article fact checking Peters' claims, and making explicit the far right nature of these sorts of policies. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361...
Analysis: Winston’s $45k baby bonus may not really be about babies
New Zealand First’s Kiwi Kids grant is an anti-immigration policy dressed up as a baby bonus, writes Jenna Lynch
stuff.co.nz
Just noting that the hypocrisy clock struck a few days ago when the Minister appointed people associated with the FSU to fill these positions. Apparently the FSU abandons its principles when developments are self-serving for their political benefit.
Kyle Matthews@kylermatthews.bsky.social · 2mo agoI look forward to the Free Speech Union's outrage at a government minister not re-appointing council members of a regulatory body because of their freely held (and evidential!) opinions: www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360... I'll start the free speech hypocrisy clock now?
Oldest trick in the book - privatization of profits, socialization of losses (while describing ‘socialism’ as the purest form of evil of course).
Both par for the course and absolutely disgusting. It should be a lasting shame on us as a country that Peters has for 40 years made a political career out of peddling this sort of crap to the bigots receptive to it.
Winston Peters launches tirade against Chinese-Kiwi Green MP
“This is called democracy, unlike what you're used to. So go back to where you come from, you loud mouth, and maybe you'll learn something,” Peters said.
stuff.co.nz
Folks is it normal for an appointee to the Medical Council to have right wing attack dogs on speed dial to unleash if a journalist asks a Government minister questions?
NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...
A Whole Bunch of People's Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online, and There's Some Wildly Private Stuff in There
A trove of documents generated by Anthropic's Claude were indexed by Google. They included medical records and student information.
futurism.com
At a recent archaeology conference I was shocked to see AI-generated reconstructions of Māori sites—these are racist tools trained on old northern -hemisphere assumptions. Maybe work with an artist, or learn to draw? theconversation.com/historical-i...
Historical images made with AI recycle colonial stereotypes and bias – new research
Generative AI is known to mirror sexist and racist stereotypes, but it also carries a colonial bias that is reinforcing outdated ideas about the past.
theconversation.com
The Greens are calling for a one year pause on new AI data centres - so New Zealanders get to have their say on how to protect our resources, environment and communities. Sign our petition today: action.greens.org.nz/pause_ai_dat...
The Ellen Melville Centre is hosting Ani O'Brien this coming Wednesday. I have emailed them to express my opposition at ellenmelvillecentre@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz You are free to do the same
but they already made a historically accurate version of the odyssey?
a decade long program to update and unify all the DHB's onto the same system was WEEKS away from delivery before this govt came to power and cancelled it. the whole thing just flushed. friend of mine worked in a hospital admin team, and when she found out about this she started planning to leave NZ.
RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · 2w agoHospital IT problems the result of years of under-investment, experts say
Remember a year ago when we all joined Internet NZ to keep the FSU from succeeding in its takeover attempt? Well, they're trying again this year, and another TERF who runs a separate anti-trans hate group is also trying to get on the board. Let's keep them out again 💪
Chris Quinn, Foodstuffs exec is on the board of the NZ Initiative, just in case the level of “because they made it that way” isn’t fully clear to people.
Bespoke Swears@bespokeswears.bsky.social · 3w agoThe fucking audacity of our supermarkets. Why are Kiwis struggling to buy food, huh?
“The effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic. Whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago.”
Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 3w agoWhile others make terrible short-sighted propagandistic defunding decisions, institutions moving in the opposite direction to the post-neoliberal death drive craze could quickly reach a position of regional and even global leadership just by not fucking things up.
Which is to say that there is a huge opportunity for any university with the vision and strategy to prioritise teaching and research in arts and humanities and to design new systems and new disciplinary structures.