Paul Thistoll

Pink Chardonnay has been approved as the 8th permissible grape variety in Champagne, joining:

- Chardonnay
- Pinot Noir
- Meunier
- Pinot Blanc
- Pinot Gris
- Petit Meslier
- Arbane

The Comité Champagne has a slow burner approach to innovation :-)

The economy is not going to recover in time to give Luxon an election boost.
This means Winston, Luxon, and Seymour will try to stir up culture wars to distract us.
Don't get sucked in - just hammer home the lousy economic performance, the incredibly high cost of living, and the general despair.

Think this is right. The NZCA's comments practically give doctors the certainty they need to keep prescribing medicine to their trans patients in accordance with their professional judgement. Excellent!

My view that the NZCA decision gets there in an odd way isn't an issue on that front at all.

If you’d like to read the full judgment, it’s available here: www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases...

I don't know how to say this without using somewhat ableist language, but I will try.

Stephen Franks is utterly unhinged, man. Utterly unhinged.

Unfortunately, I am not legally at liberty to say what has prompted my outburst. But rest assured, the day will come when all will be revealed.

There is a body of research that suggests business confidence surveys are highly correlated with the ease of hiring. Thus, in times of high unemployment, business confidence is higher because hiring is easier.

Unemployment rate is higher. Bread price is up 60%. Climate crisis continues unabated. Healthcare a mess. But yeah hating anything Māori is celebrated. It’s so great for life 🙄🙄

Shane Jones claims ‘whole story’ behind Labour MP’s resignation not being told Former minister Peeni Henare has said he is leaving politics after 12 years.

This isn't journalism—it's just reporting scurrilous gossip/innuendo from Shane Jones—who has a motive to cause a fracture in how the public perceive the Labour Party.

Please, can we have confirmed facts first?

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/...

This bit is quite telling. And if the police won't do it, then the IPCA need the power to do it for them.

Congratulations on your thesis Sarah!!!! And big hugs on the other things.

A human writer uses a dash to set off a relatively abrupt jump in thought. But the machines are constantly calculating the most predictable next thing to say, plodding around the same area. So the machine dash looks like it's gesturing toward something new, only to always land on something obvious.

I think he’s showing us who he is through his posts!

Matthew Horncastle's posts on X surely have to be some sort of 'bit'—performance art, per chance?

I would love to spend time rebutting his more business strategy-type assertions, but alas, I have a life.

His post on DEI was wild!

Exactly, Andrew.

I think it’s very cool! I love that movie!

On NRT: Climate Change: Fossil government - norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/02/clim...

I am very happy about the new pathways to ADHD diagnosis.

It's a serious, debilitating condition, and the effect sizes of ADHD meds are the biggest effect sizes of any psychotropic medicine.

If the other conditions had similarly effective treatments, mental healthcare would look very different.

No way to prevent this from happening, says media organisation who keeps approving this happening.

Wow

But Jen if I don't restate the same point five times in one paragraph how will people know I'm a Good Writer

Who is Bryce Edwards if not the Matthew Horncastle of the centre left

One of the most exhausting things about the effect genai slop is having on writing is the idea that longer writing is obviously better or more considered or stronger in its argument or its communication. No it’s slop

LMAO!

Modern slavery legislation has been a missing piece of our human rights legislation for some time.
Kudos to Camilla Belich and Greg Fleming for co-sponsoring this bill.

One of the problems with reporting on hate speech is amplifying messages.

So I will just say Tamaki just said something pretty damn objectionable about people of a particular national origin.

Wouldn't make the high bar the court established in Wall v Fairfax though.

To be fair to him, asking someone to summarise the Enlightenment is absurd.
It's like the Monty Python "All England Summarise Proust Competition" sketch.
Can't be done.
Like making a one-to-one map of the empire, as Eco pointed out.
Okay, enough post-modernity for one afternoon now, back to Mozart

BRB, sending Shane Jones a copy of Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation (1981)".

Someone in the Press Gallery should ask Shane Jones to "Summarise the enlightenment in less than 300 words.". See exactly what he says.

I bet he won't mention the blind spots about colonialism, women's rights, universal suffrage, or slavery!

YouTube video by Peter Chen 2.0 Yuja Wang: Philip Glass Piano Etude No. 6 [HD]

I was taken in by that fake Donald Trump post saying Philip Glass was boring.

Here is Yuja playing an anything-but-boring Glass etude.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWMQ...

Yes, precisely. Good comment.