Gareth

Irony is dead.

I spent three years there doing that.

A layer of fog lies in the Waipara valley, waiting for the morning sun to burn it off. We are above all that nonsense. The sun is already boring into our eyes, busy resetting our body clocks

Foggy for some…

The Weekly Anthropocene, February 4 2026 Svalbard polar bears, India's emerging electrostate, Floreana giant tortoises, solar in Nigeria, ostriches in Arabia, UK offshore wind, Siamese crocodiles, clean heat, threecorner milkvetch, and more!

Need some good news? There are glimpses in the gloom…

open.substack.com/pub/sammatey...

The secret signals our organs send to repair tissues and slow ageing Your organs are constantly talking to each other in ways we’re only beginning to understand. Tapping into these communication networks is opening up radical new ways to boost health

Deer me! The answer to a longer, fitter life may lie in antlers.

"Chunyi Li noticed something odd that happened when deer regrew antlers each year. This coincided with healthier-looking animals that showed much faster healing of their wounds and less scarring."

www.newscientist.com/article/2513...

It's a great place. Friends of ours often had Christmas Day BBQs there, and when we're in Nelson we usually spend an afternoon there.

🧵Spotted at the beach in Aotearoa New Zealand

A sturdy man (60s?) is fast asleep on an All Blacks towel.
Hairy tum moving up and down with tremendous snores.
All is peaceful. All is well.
But what is this?!
Two giggling small humans (5 & 7?) approaching with a bucket of water?
Oh no!
SPLOOSH! (1)

Rabbit Island again?

I have the same approach to wind, especially as we have some huge old gums around. Widow makers, they call 'em the other side of the pond.

... the counter must have malfunctioned. Maybe water somewhere where it shouldn't be? We'll have to wait and see.

If I see any particularly muscular possums shaking fenceposts, I'll be sure to post a picture.

The rain measurement is by a "tipping bucket" flipping from side to side as it fills with drips from the collector. Each flip is 0.01 of an inch (it's US-made) of rain (IIRC).

To get last night's intense "rain" something must have either made those buckets flip back and forth like crazy, or ...

So I climbed up on the bike and checked the rain gauge. Nothing obviously wrong - but spider webs aplenty. Gave the whole thing a clean, checked the contacts in the station, resealed it.

Checked the wind last night. It was calm.

The mystery remains.

A Davis Instruments integrated weather station attached to a fence post commands a great view of the humpback ridge of The Deans hills

Here's the weather station in question - on a fencepost between truffiere and vineyard. Non-standard location, but pretty accurate when compared against others in the area. Probably under-records wind speeds.

No sign of damage.

this was done intentionally - multiple ministers including Willis & Seymour bragged about how many jobs they’d cut in the first 12 months of their government. the reserve bank literally said it wanted unemployment up to control inflation. as with so many other policies this term, it’s social murder

Everywhere's "damp", because we had a real 23 mm of rain yesterday. Need a day or two to dry out...

Zàijiàn, Zhōngguó: Leaving China China Chronicles: Day 10

The news from China is... encouraging.

open.substack.com/pub/sammatey...

Renewables over 50%, wholesale prices down – is the energy transition… succeeding? It wasn’t so long ago pundits claimed Australia’s grid couldn’t run on higher than 20% renewables. Now it’s 50%.

Renewables to the rescue.

"Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages."

theconversation.com/renewables-o...

Potoroos digging for ‘truffles’ keep their forests healthy – but for how long? Long-footed potoroos dig up and eat many truffle-like fungi, spreading spores and keeping vital fungi-forest relationships healthy.

My favourite Australians are having their diets restricted by climate warming...

theconversation.com/potoroos-dig...

Anyway my new startup is IndirectNuclearFusion and we just install solar panels and batteries, it was easier to get NZ government funding that way. Our reactor? It’s 150M km away, for safety reasons

Peak Oil Is Coming In early markets, hybrids always prevail because there’s not enough electric infrastructure. As it develops and people can charge their cars more easily, the share of EVs increases.

Important read for anyone interested in our electrical future

open.substack.com/pub/uncharte...

So what caused it? A possum's prodigious pissing? A magpie taking exception to the gauge? Investigations will ensue.

Today's rain gauge mystery: shortly after 3am, and again shortly before 9am, the rain gauge reports two big spikes of incredibly intense rain - 380mm per hour and 250mm ph - totalling 210 mm of rain since midnight. A biblical cloudburst, that would have washed away much of the farm.

Didn't happen.

Globules of rainwater on a white painted balustrade glisten in the morning sun. Their life will be short.

Watching paint dry

No offence taken. In some circles it might taken for a compliment. 😉

Original file is a RAW from a Canon 300D, processed fairly straightforwardly in Lightroom Classic. Not very high res by today's standards...

A lovely young Yunnan lady in very bright traditional costume smiles shyly back at a friend as she shops for vegetables in aa street market in a small town near the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan, 2007.

For random reasons, here's a shot from Yunnan in 2007.

#personalfavourite

Two interesting things I learn: the dead body of a grass grub beetle (Costelytra zealandica) is a very neat fit in the neck of a Davis Instruments rain gauge, and as the head of water clears with removal of said carcass, the peak rate of rainfall recorded is 640mm per hour. Wet wet wet.

The wet arse less so...

Watching the rain pissing down outside, while our weather station rain gauge shows only a trickle. This means I have to put on all the wet weather gear, take the farm bike out to the weather station pole, climb up and remove whatever bit of crap is blocking the funnel.

Such larks!

We’ve got one of those too, but I haven’t managed to catch her in the act. Round here they mainly sit on powerlines and eat lizards.