Last night, the New Zealand Government passed into law the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill. We've been opposing that law change, alongside Mike Smith, and many others for the last few months (in fact, 93% of public submissions opposed it). #nzpol #climate #ClimateLitigation

This is an American solution to a universal problem. As a hospital worker, I appreciate the work of security. But research clearly points to other root causes, all of which this govt fails to address. As with the push to hire more prison guards, this govt prioritizes force, not knowledge or care.

I don’t know if it’s intentional intellectual dishonesty, but the cases cited (Albania, Lesotho, Italy) do not in any way track with what TPM is doing. In those cases, it was the entrenched coalitions gaming the electoral maths to claim seats from independent, smaller parties … 🧵 #nzpol

The Spinoff@thespinoff.bsky.social · 5d ago

Te Pāti Māori will be in risky territory if it tries to engineer an overhang

Unless the Post editors are willing to spend 10x the ink on how the Coalition restricting voter access erodes the foundation of democracy itself, this is nothing more than racism in respectable clothing. #nzpol

Alas, the Penk Pity Party cannot end until Damien has sounded a final howl of white male fragility. Stuff will now return you to your regularly scheduled neoliberal stenographers. #nzpol

I’m seeing a lot of hot takes on how National’s emergency caucus will play out tomorrow. I’m here to reassure you that when the dust settles, Winston will still be in charge. #nzpol

Just gonna leave this here in case any actual journalists are keen to ask PM Bishop a follow up question. #nzpol

I’m curious, Damien, is it as painful as watching a woman die freezing under a bridge because of his policies? #nzpol

A new analysis in Science of more than 116,000 bird songs has revealed that the astonishing variety of passerine birdsong is built from just eight basic acoustic motifs, like trills, whistles, and harmonic notes. https://scim.ag/4ft2KBF

The global biogeography of passerine songs

Although bird songs are classic models for understanding the evolution of vocal communication, their global diversity has long made the development of a unifying framework challenging. By analyzing th...

scim.ag

Why Do We Tell Ourselves Scary Stories About AI? - nautil.us/why-do-we-te...

"The cause is the rentier capture of the assets that constitute the reference standard of living: housing, principally, but also education, healthcare, and the credentialled pathways to professional employment." Excellent essay. Sound familiar? #NZPOL

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is a brilliant essay, which, in my view, accurately describes the predicament of the post-Boomer generations, and the vast infrastructure of lies designed to disguise it. "Degeneracy is a symptom. The disease is rent." 🧵 henryfudgeofficial.substack.com/p/degeneracy...

Human prosperity depends on nature, but no global metric has captured this with precision. Enter the Nature Relationship Index. An Essay by Yadvinder Malhi

It doesn’t have to be us versus nature | Aeon Essays

Human prosperity depends on nature, but no global metric has captured this with precision. Enter the Nature Relationship Index

aeon.co

#nzpol ... yeah ... sigh ... and once more for those at the back ... pretty much what he⬇️ said ... and me➡️ ganeshnana.substack.com/p/the-fix

The fix

The Economic Governance Act 2027 – a total transplant for our broken economy

ganeshnana.substack.com

Patrick Reynolds for a greater Auckland@patrickreynolds.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Similar to your take @bernardchickey.bsky.social but for the UK (30/30): youtu.be/-MzOeonYfxY?...

Check out our recent review on how psychedelics don’t simply enhance cognitive flexibility by Raquel Kosted, @drjjdonegan.bsky.social, Josh Cisler, and Greg Fonzo. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/12

Psychedelics do not always enhance cognitive flexibility: The potential role of time-varying effects on reward learning processes

Although research on psychedelics (hallucinogenic serotonin 2 A or 5-HT2A agonists) has shown initial promise in ameliorating a range of psychiatric c…

sciencedirect.com

Absolutely. Mandating rather than actually supporting personal savings is about gutting the social safety net, twisting the notion of personal responsibility so that the state can abandon its responsibility to working people & shift capital irreversibly to the free-lunch rentier class. #nzpol

Robot Muldoom@robot-muldoom.bsky.social · 2mo ago

National's proposed KiwiSaver: 12% mandatory (6% employer, 6% employee). BusinessNZ's John Cask: 'no such thing as a free lunch… offset by other things, whether it's increased training, reduced training, or actual wages.' Translation: the employer 6% comes out of your wages anyway. #nzpol

“If we sell our minds too cheaply to our machine creations, we not only overestimate them – we underestimate ourselves.”

Anil Seth@anilseth.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Finally submitted my response - The Stuff Matters - to the 50(!) commentaries on my 2025 BBS paper 'Conscious AI and biological naturalism'. I'm sorry to all commentators that it took so long. Hopefully the whole caboodle will be published soon. Target paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A must read.

The Spinoff@thespinoff.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The human cost of governing by spreadsheet

“This is exactly the kind of pathogen that's going to test whether the global health security infrastructure is functioning,”

Science Magazine@science.org · 3mo ago

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in the early morning of 17 May, an indication of how serious the situation is. Our story below has been updated to include the latest information. ⬇️

There's a growing concern that AI tools used to help produce innovative drugs could also make it easier to create new threats go.nature.com/4fhtqXx

AI can design viruses, toxins and other bioweapons. How worried should we be?

Scientists are debating whether to limit biological AI software to ward off threats.

go.nature.com

Particles are nature’s smallest constituents, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamental. So what is the Universe made of?. An Essay by Felix Flicker

Why reality is more than the sum of its particles | Aeon Essays

Particles are nature’s smallest constituents, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamental. So what is the Universe made of?

aeon.co

Offered without comment

May is budget month so I’m warming up by practicing saying “stagflation”

LOL. National, please continue making your pro-war noises as loudly as possible over the next six months. #nzpol www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360...

Australia is preparing for war. Why isn’t New Zealand?

As Canberra pours billions into defence and braces for regional threats, Wellington is still clinging to outdated assumptions about security.

thepost.co.nz

Now that it has been out for a week, I thought I’d address a few strange takes regarding our recent mega-analysis on the effects of psychedelics on brain function (specifically, resting-state functional connectivity). 1/15 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An international mega-analysis of psychedelic drug effects on brain circuit function - Nature Medicine

Analysis of neuroimaging datasets across five major psychedelics revealed a shared brain signature and provides a comprehensive insight into how these drugs reorganize brain architecture.

nature.com

What conversations between Republicans looked like when Eisenhower was POTUS. (also, love that the incidental music is Franck’s Symphony in D minor)

Bartleby the Paralegal@sunraa.bsky.social · 5mo ago

already did...................long ago youtu.be/m-AXBbuDxRY?...

To be fair to Winnie, it’s hard to speak at all whilst boot licking. #nzpol

Again, there is no moral test that Luxon cannot fail. #nzpol

Willis has the look of someone figuring out what “regime change” actually means. Unfortunately for us, she has no clue how to handle any of this. Remember: #ETTD #nzpol

Luxon: “Keep working, keep the kids in school, doing all that stuff. Please don't think 'it's Covid 2.0, I'm making sourdough at home again'." Indeed. Covid 1.0 was a successful govt intervention to save lives This is a shit show(and good time for sourdough) #nzpol www.odt.co.nz/news/nationa...

'Problem is not going away': Govt urged to do more on diesel

The government should start prioritising diesel allocation now as the fuel situation is only getting worse, Westpac's chief economist says. It...

odt.co.nz

‘My ties to Habermas were multi-layered. He was a mentor and an antagonist; a figure who showed me early on how to practise “critique with an emancipatory intent” but from whom I eventually had to distance myself.’ Nancy Fraser, new on the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

Nancy Fraser | After Habermas

Jürgen Habermas may be variously described as the moral conscience of postwar Germany, the last great systematic...

lrb.co.uk