Mike Dickison

Good on you mate!

YouTube video by thejuicemedia Honest Government Ad | Visit New Zealand!

The Government of New Zealand has made a new tourism ad and it's surprsingly honest and informative!

Current progress so far:

It's #NautilusNight!⁣ The common name "paper nautilus" for the genus Argonauta comes from the Greek ναυτίλος nautílos, meaning "sailor". People once believed these octopuses used two of their arms as sails, as seen in this #SciArt from "Zoography" (1807) www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/54312693 🧪

Join me online in few minutes if you want to help with this.

lede = introductory section in journalism

bury the lede = hiding the most relevant pieces of a story within other distracting information

Allegedly, it’s spelled ‘lede’ to avoid confusion with ‘lead,’ which was the strip of metal that would separate lines of type.

The only photo of Frances Browne, circa 1879

Frontispiece from the 1906 edition of Granny's Wonderful Chair, illustration by Dora Curtis.

Here's how you can help make a book of 19th century fairy tales available for everyone to read for free.
Frances Brownes was a 19th century Irish poet ("the blind poetess of Donegal"), whose best-known work is Granny's Wonderful Chair, an 1857 fairytale collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances...

If you're on the OU campus, join @thneed.bsky.social in the library's seminar room 2 at 12:30, or me online at whereby.com/wikimeet at 11:30, for a quick Wikisource lesson so you can help with transcribing. We might be able to get the whole book done in time to share with the festival attendees.

Category:Granny's Wonderful Chair, and its Tales of Fairy Times (1857 1st ed.) - Wikimedia Commons

Why do this, when with a bit of sleuthing you can find multiple scanned editions online? Wikisource produces a nicely-formatted EPUB, which works with an eReader or screen reader—good if you're vision is impaired. And the out-of-copyright book and images can be freely shared and remixed.

Granny's Wonderful Chair (1857) frontispiece by Kenny Meadows.

Granny's Wonderful Chair (1857) illustration by Kenny Meadows; frightened children, malevolent woman, cat, huge raven—hitting all the buttons here.

But @thneed.bsky.social and I thought it would be great if there was a transcribed, proofread version of the book's first edition available too. So I've set up a Wikisource crowdsourced editing project; anyone can help out. en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:G...

Excerpt from programme: "A fascinating workshop with Professor Thomas McLean on how to find and use historical letters for research and writing inspiration." and "Learn how to update Wikipedia with local knowledge."

There's now an annual Frances Browne literary festival in Ballybofey-Stranorlar, and Tom McLean, Professor of English at Otago, is over there at the moment to give a talk and run a workshop on writing a Wikipedia article about Granny's Wonderful Chair. www.francesbrowneliteraryfestival.com

The only photo of Frances Browne, circa 1879

Frontispiece from the 1906 edition of Granny's Wonderful Chair, illustration by Dora Curtis.

Here's how you can help make a book of 19th century fairy tales available for everyone to read for free.
Frances Brownes was a 19th century Irish poet ("the blind poetess of Donegal"), whose best-known work is Granny's Wonderful Chair, an 1857 fairytale collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances...

In an old ad for board game Scattergories in Spain a player was shown flouncing out while anothet said “OK, we’ll accept ‘octopus’ as a pet”.
“Aceptamos pulpo” has now entered the language in the meaning of “that’s a bit of a stretch but let’s go with it just for the sake of argument”.

Graph of public pension costs as % of GDP for OECD countries in 2021 (latest data). NZ is lower quartile at around 5.1%. OECD average is 7.8%. Plenty of Euro countries are around 10% or above.

Looks like a good time in the news cycle to tackle three big myths 🧵
❌ NZ pension costs are an unsustainable burden ❌
Seriously, no, for lots of reasons.
1. Our current Govt spending on pensions is low compared to most other advanced economies. And... [1/n]

The remarkable rise of eBird – the world’s biggest citizen science project In 2002, an online database was set up allowing birdwatchers to record their species observations. It is now a vast resource, shaping scientific research.

The remarkable rise of eBird – the world’s biggest citizen science project
theconversation.com/the-remarkab...

We'd love to have a huge turn out for Nic's talk. Please help spread the word. There are downloadable pdf adverts in the link below. They can be emailed or printed. If you work in a public space (e.g. Library) you could help by printing and posting one of the flyers. Ngā mihi nui!

This is one of the lesser known (but tragic) consequences of Gen AI. It’s not just about theft of IP, which is usually mentioned, it’s about damage to the information infrastructure of underfunded archives, libraries and museums etc. with long term consequences for them and for researchers.

MilkMan business cards with canonical spelling.

It seems I cannot spell MilkMan’s intercap branding right, so here’s the correct version.

Huge sausage roll laden with flaky pastry shot using the Peter Jackson trademark forced perspective that made Gandalf look huge. But it is huge. With a little dish of tomato sauce which Ben apologised for.

Bonus, they seem to be hosting a Barista Battle 16 Oct 5:30 (although Mill Man is tiny and they can only fit about six people inside, so let’s hope it’s a sunny evening).

I’ve already sung the praises of the Milk Man cheese scones, but they’ve just started doing amazing sausage rolls, $6.50 with a bit of spice, and handmade relish on a good day. I have sometimes had sausage rolls that are wider than they were long, and this is very much the opposite.

Thank you for your service!

Former warder's house for Lyttelton gaol, and the gaol doesn't even have its own Wikipedia article, despite its formative role in NZ history—Mackenzie! Parihaka! Honestly what have the history enthusiasts of Christchurch be DOING for the last 25 years? OK I'll calm down now.

Sled dog statue outside the library, reminding everyone this was where so many Antarctic expeditions left from.

We'll also be going on a photo walk after lunch to take some shots of Lyttelton's remaining heritage buildings, most of which sadly don't have any freely-usable images. If you have a nice camera and are looking for something socially-worthy to do with it, join us.

Lyttelton in 1967 taken by amateur photographer Wilford Peloquin (who calls it Littleton in all his photos)

Ōtautahi folks: on Saturday 10:00–1:00 we have a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in the Lyttelton Library, looking at the architecture and history of the port. If you're heading over for the market, why not pop in and join us, and learn how to edit Wikipedia? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

One hundred and eighty five billion dollars. That's the estimated bill to repair our terrible water infrastructure and experts think that estimate is too low. Why is it going to cost so much? Mainly because angry people who didn't want to pay rates were the only ones who voted in local elections. They elected other angry people who didn't want to raise rates and those people kept costs down via the foolproof method of "letting the pipes rot in the ground". Just a few years ago, 8,000 people in and around Havelock North got poisoned when sheep poo seeped into some poorly maintained water infrastructure. Four people died! Wellington's streets are now equal parts sewage and concrete. For a while there people in Otago were drinking lead.

Vote! Vote in your local election! Post your vote by 5pm today! It matters. Hayden explains this more hilariously than I can: thespinoff.co.nz/politics/06-...

A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech

Delighted that Cory is having a moment with "Enshittification," because it's an accurate word for what's happening in tech and he's the right person to describe it.

(Gift link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/b...

Title slide: Hidden giants: The strange world of Rafflesia Pieter Pelser School of Biological Sciences 6 October 2025

These are the giant pandas of the plant world, surviving in the 8% of remaining Philippine rain forest. The largest Philippine species was seen once in 1885, then not again for a century. No doubt other undescribed Rafflesia are still hiding out. parasiticplants.siu.edu/RaffPhil/Raf...

Slide showing the fruit packed with tiny seeds, and ants possibly collecting them. "21 years of unravelling the mysteries of Rafflesia: • Taxonomy & distribution • Phylogeny & biogeography • Conservation genetics • Host-specificity • Species distribution modeling • Reproductive biology"

The leathery fruits just sit on the forest floor, full of tiny tiny seeds, which might be dispersed by ants—at least they seem to have a food body (elaiosome) to encourage the ants to collect them. But nobody knows for sure. Nor how the seedlings infect the host vine, or how long the plant lives.

Cast of Rafflesia speciosa flower

Cast of decaying Rafflesia speciosa flower and bud

Anyway, these are weird plants. Parasites of particular species of the widespread vine Tetrastigma, they don't have roots, stems, or leaves. Huge flowers (they brought models) just pop out of the vine, usually at ground level. Otherwise they're hidden in the tissue, up to 8 plants per vine.

Tree of Phillipine Rafflesia species showing origin over 40 mya.

Sequence of colonisation of the Philippines by Rafflesia species from Panay to Luzon to Mindanao

All the species are rare, localised, and most on just one island. They seem to have arrived from Borneo about 40 million years ago, and slowly colonised the archipelago. They're picky about their hosts and growing conditions and don't disperse well. doi.org/10.1016/j.ym...

Barcelona and Pelser posing beside a Rafflesia flower on the forest floor bigger than their heads.

Just heard a great talk from Pieter Pelser and Julie Barcelona about Rafflesia, the world's biggest flower. They've been researching them in the Philippines for 21 years, and species numbers have gone from 2 to about 14. They smell, "like a dead rat", to attract pollinating flies.

Samuel Butler's "Erewhon", an early NZ SF novel, is proofread of the month on Wikisource. They already had it, but they need to get a scan-backed version. You can help out here: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:E...