Excess mortality by region during the heat event of June (weeks 25-27) are now really essentially final (I added Berlin and Hamburg which were missing so far) Worst hit: Île-de-France, Saarland and Rheinland-Pfalz No excess: Schleswig-Holstein and Provence-Alpes Côte-Azur 1/

Nonsense. RBNZ estimated in May that the oil price shock would lead to higher unemployment for longer (yellow line) but today's data was worse than expected (again!) The trouble is the reckonomists believe their own recovery hype.

It's locals week at the Ōamaru penguin colony so we're spending the evening watching little blue penguins coming in to their nesting boxes ♥️🐧

This week on Counting Stuff, reflection on how the nature of certain grinding work may have changed, but we can't just "give it to the machines" because we've still got to ground things somehow #dataBS www.counting-stuff.com/new-data-ana...

New data analysis can be faster, but MUST be grounded in slowness

LLMs and "AI" are at the forefront of making things "faster", but fast does not equal correct despite what many say.

counting-stuff.com

Computer: say it. say the words. Me: can we not do this today? Computer: we do this every day. say it. Me: (*sigh) I would like to stay logged in on this device Computer: (*chuckling)

"The Electoral Commission today approved registration of Alliance Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, Free Palestine, New Zealand Loyal and Te Tai Tokerau Party under Part 4 of the Electoral Act 1993." elections.nz/media-and-ne... Crossposted with @openvibe.social

From what I've seen of FSU's communications to their members and supporters, they are tilting at windmills. They imagine an intention and operation that simply isn't real. Franks and Douglas Brown have publicly described aspects of the organisation, and what it does, that are totally fictional.

Sacha@sachadylan.bsky.social · 19h ago

'[FSU] chairperson Stephen Franks said its supporters had an opportunity to “vote against wokester rule” and suggested InternetNZ was charging more than it needed for “.nz” registrations while “siphoning off revenue to matey cause groups in Wellington”. (paywalled) #NzPol

Some days are weeks.

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

BOMBSHELL story by Olivia Carville @bloomberg.com Internal Report Shows TikTok Kept Safety Feature From Millions A confidential document says an algorithm adjustment was kept from many users “by design,” as part of an experiment to measure engagement NO PAYWALL www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

TikTok Withheld a Safety Feature From Millions. One Died by Suicide

A confidential document says an algorithm adjustment was kept from many users “by design,” as part of an experiment to measure engagement.

bloomberg.com

Today in RNZ needs more sub-editors (preferably before a defamation action):

RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · 19h ago

Solomon Islands-US shiprider deal raises 'serious concerns' over sovereignty

ACT: “It’s a graphic not a graph” Professor Thomas Lumley: “It’s clearly giving bar charts” www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic... #NZPol

ACT's 'visually misleading' post: Is it a graphic or a graph?

An ACT Party post about the gap between new medicines funded in Australia and New Zealand is "visually misleading," according to a statistics professor.

rnz.co.nz

Astonishing light on the ride home.

Hey #Kikorangi peeps: if you have family who live overseas who have been back to Aotearoa at any point in the last three years, they can enrol to vote. Get them to vote.nz. They just need a NZ passport or drivers license (they can be expired).

This fucking headline lmao

If your desire and ability to exercise state power is predicated on the state exercising racism, then yes - you are the baddies.

Mitchell And Webb: Are We The Baddies Sketch

ALT: Mitchell And Webb: Are We The Baddies Sketch

static.klipy.com

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

Nicola Willis and Mark Mitchell suggested this morning that firing Winston Peters would bring down the Government. www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361...

This may be in poor taste, but it was the first thing that went through my head when I read this, and it was lunchtime so I had a few minutes

Cara Ellison@caraellison.bsky.social · 2d ago

We were watching that silly new Tom Hiddleston reenactment of the disaster of Pompeii and he was like ‘we have amazing new tech that allows us to track people through this disaster’ and I was oh no he’s going to say it’s an AI brain or something and then he said…. ‘Its a spreadsheet’ and I CHEERED

Only in Dunedin! 😂

Snow way! Daredevil skies down Baldwin St

Snow way! Daredevil skies down Baldwin St

odt.co.nz

Reporting success as failure because despite delivering research outputs beyond expectations it cost money

RNZ News Feeds@rnzrss.bsky.social · 2d ago

Cost blowout puts fees for foreign PhD students under review

Good lord I wish some of you could read on this text based social media website.

The Verge@theverge.com · 2d ago

Bluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."

Auckland sentinel hospitals to 26/7/26

Schools are out for all of slushday (I realise there is snow on the hills)

And then we got Dunedin problems when busses try to go on very hilly roads (Stuart street) in this snow. 🙃

I have seen students throwing slush balls

The library is not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

Briony Neilson@brionyneilson.bsky.social · 3d ago

They don't build library systems like this anymore: inside the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris in 1938, a librarian stands next to a pneumatic tube, holding a reader's call slip requesting access to printed materials (Jacques Boyer/Roger-Viollet) 🗃️

On Thursday, I'm giving the last of the 2026 Ihaka lectures on "Spotting the weird ones" (about anomaly detection using #rstats). It's an honour to speak at something named after Ross Ihaka. It will be live-streamed for those who can't be there. www.auckland.ac.nz/en/science/a...

While acknowledging ocean damping of temperature extremes is a thing, I think it is also important for local understanding of the global situation to note Seoul is about the same Latitude north (37.6) as Kirikiriroa/ Hamilton is south (-37.8).

Nick Young@nickofnz.bsky.social · 2d ago

South Korea has registered its highest temperature since records began more than a century ago. Authorities have warned people to immediately stop all outdoor activities in affected areas. This is what the #ClimateCrisis looks like.

Just saying, from a point of view of anti-authoritarian streaks in us as a people, there aren't many countries with an official National Monument for Conscientious Objectors. The UK for example, has a memorial stone.

A big old scoop: an Ombudsman investigation into a refused OIA request has helped shed light on just how much AI the Ministry of Education is using to create the new school curriculum www.emilywrites.co.nz/the-ministry...

The Ministry of Education is using so much AI it can't tell us how much AI it's using

The Ministry doesn't seem to want the public to know exactly how much AI it's using - or what it's using AI for.

emilywrites.co.nz

Not sure how much attention this will get, but it’s quite a big deal - Labour has pulled its support for the Govt’s controversial census ‘modernisation’ plans, meaning it no longer has the 75% majority it needs in Parliament: newsroom.co.nz/2026/08/03/g...

Govt’s census overhaul thrown into doubt after Labour pulls support

Opposition parties warn relying on government agency data instead of a full census risks undercounting Māori and minority groups.

newsroom.co.nz