Douglas Horrell

Thanks for the reminder. I won't get near the giddy heights of last year's 568km but at least I'll break 250. A great excuse to go somewhere this afternoon!

Thank you! It's truly terrible. Those wide columns are too big for most chains. I often use the side of the trolley return at Bunnings as it's the only thing resembling a real stand.

The Government is currently negotiating an Enhanced Border Security Partnership with the US Department of Homeland Security that would grant US agencies, including ICE, automated, direct access to New Zealanders' biometric data and identity records.

So much this. Video (especially modern social media video) prevents reflection in any meaningful way with its constant firehose of content and jump cuts. It obligates its maker to be chained to hours of editing for mere seconds of content, and demands so very much attention for often slim rewards.

Finding here that DOC200s are really effective. Prefeeding, scuffing up outside the trap and using a flour blaze with cinnamon nearby all seem to generate interest. I've started changing baits too but peanut butter remains supreme. Some sites will be 10x better like near windfall fruit or trees.

Likewise Duncan Grieve's The Fold. Both podcasts centre on canny pundit reckons, but that's also their tragic flaw. Politics and the media landscape have never existed in a vacuum. Insider takes are inadequate at explaining the kind of paradigm collapse that's currently happening in both spheres.

There's a very functional updated version: www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/french-...

I just can't stop thinking about how there were plans for Linwood Ave to be a canal that connected the city to the estuary: blog.underoverarch.co.nz/2020/06/cana...

A reminder that hell always has deeper circles:

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow

I can't in all conscience like this.

Who should pay for public services? The left needs a better, more ambitious message when it comes to taxation, argues Jason Hickel.

We need a better, more ambitious message when it comes to taxation. The rich *do not* fund our public services. We do. My latest for New Internationalist.

newint.org/equality/202...

Envious!

So good.

Didn't they kick off with a marketing campaign where the public chooses which beer to launch? I'm hazy on the details now but I recall trying three beers and all were memorably awful.

Their brand shtick has always been trying to poke fun at real craft while emulating it in the hollowest way possible. Maybe (?) there are drinkers out there who that resonates with, but the demographic must be vanishingly small and people are just buying it on price now.

She's also only capable of ascending wooden staircases, which has led to a couple of hilarious moments let me tell you...

Cats are sometimes a problem. The rehoming groups assess whether dogs are cat trainable by how much interest they take. Luna apparently wasn't okay with cats but I've since watched her have one walk right up to her and not even get up. Prey drive decreases usually with time.

They usually shed a bit once a year, but not constantly like some dogs. The usual snags are racing injuries, needing a bit of training and reprogramming as they've never been pets, and bad teeth sometimes.

Generally, no. Of course I've met a handful of exceptions with higher energy, but generally it's one moderate walk a day and sleeping 99% of the rest of the time. Helps also that ex-racers are usually 4 or 5 by the time they need a home.

They truly are the most horizontal of dogs.

Luna says thanks to everyone who submitted on the Greyhound Racing Closure Bill.

ICE agent's cellphone captures fatal confrontation in Minneapolis Video captured by Jonathan Ross gives up-close perspective surrounding his fatal shooting of Renee Good.

RNZ choosing to syndicate CNN here, and specifically an article that platforms, and even promotes, Vance and other fascists' views that the shooting was justified, while introducing doubt as to the actual reality we've all seen, is an absolute failure of RNZ staff. Wtaf are you all doing over there

I know I bang on about this, but we need SERIOUS media reform, starting next year (hell, ideally starting now, but that ain't gonna happen).

The whole world is being constantly gaslit now. We need media and journalism that actually holds power to account and tells the truth.

#nzpol

Greyhound racing's whole business model relies on privatising profits and socialising the costs onto the public. Their social licence has expired.

A reminder that the bill on closing the NZ Greyhound Racing Industry closes today. Our industry takes an unacceptable toll on the welfare of the dogs and exploits volunteer labour to do most of the rehabilitation and rehoming. It needs to end. Please submit: www3.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/mak...

#nzpol

In the short term, yes. One of the benefits of electorate MPs is that it's harder to roll incumbents so they can hold space for their politics within their electorate for some time. Look at Nick Smith.

Yes, that definitely occurs. But the crucial difference is that when Labour stands aside in some seats, the Greens can actually grow the pie. Much less true for the opposite scenario.

Labour's ploy of competing with the Greens for party and electorate votes necessitates the Greens staying small. But what about a bigger Greens being a future asset, in that a larger left bloc makes for stability and less knife edge politics? I'm not sure party tactics are helping in this respect.