deb te kawa nō aotearoa

Too many laws passing without 'proper scrutiny', Geoffrey Palmer says Sir Geoffrey Palmer says the government is increasingly pushing through legislation under urgency and skipping consultation.

Too many laws passing without 'proper scrutiny', Geoffrey Palmer says

💜

NZDF confirms medals for 85 Cook Islands WWII veterans after decades of denial For more than eight decades, the service of over 80 Cook Islanders who served during World War II went untold and unrecognised.

NZDF confirms medals for 85 Cook Islands WWII veterans after decades of denial

Timeline shows Minister knew of McSkimming complaint three weeks earlier than he has said The police minister was alerted to an IPCA complaint about Jevon McSkimming on October 14. He’s publicly stated he wasn’t told until November 6

Dates now on the record: Police Minister Mark Mitchell was told of a McSkimming complaint on Oct 14 - three weeks before the date he’s given publicly as when he first heard of concerns.

Democracy is about voice and representation on multiple levels. Reducing it to representing our preferences (expressed occasionally by a single yes/no) diminishes our power as citizens, it doesn’t increase it.

Reminder: those diversity and inclusion clauses were also intended to ensure that no appointment outcome was predetermined and that recruitment processes are genuinely competitive.

The research suggests it can create pressure to proceed with an appointment despite reservations, and leave the final decision questionable because there is no genuine choice. Fascinating. Important for Aotearoa because the amendments to the Public Service lean on merit, and remove diversity.

As I write about merit-based appointments today, I am noticing
how vulnerable a process is to individual candidate issues when a panel has minimal options.

A shortlist of only a few candidates raises genuine questions about whether all suitable candidates were considered and whether the process adequately identified the best person for the role.

An observation on merit-based appointments: A wider field of qualified candidates provides more reference points for comparison and makes it easier to test selection criteria.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Soldiers’ tales from 30 years of war - NBR | Business news & analysis | Independent, ad-free reporting Read premium business news, economic analysis, and market reporting from New Zealand’s most trusted business newsroom. Subscribe to support independent journalism.

Read Nevil Gibson's review of 'Garrison World', in the NBR – 'a career best for Victoria University Professor Emerita Charlotte Macdonald'.

Full review: www.nbr.co.nz/book-review/so...

💜 Magic. Appreciative.

Our first AI/LLM election awaits us. Wonder what it will bring. Open to recommendations on who to follow so I can adequately judge the quality of the AI/LLM party policies on offer.

Sound of the AI bubble going pop pop. On a related note, hard to know whether our policy advisory system is on top of this: what with budgets assuming in productivity savings, and those charged with overseeing those assumptions, knee deep in the technology.

Today's block words *FIFA* *soccer* *worldcup* Easy. Carry on.

And if that is truly all they do - produce content - then the case for their salaries, their privileges, and authority is difficult to sustain. In fact, I know some nztiktokers who would do that job really well.

Also, to frame this as a labour market question, cause only the staffer loses, is to say it is alright for MPs to be content producers rather than representatives who exercise judgement on our behalf.

Successful medical drone delivery could offer faster healthcare access for remote communities A drone successfully delivered medical supplies to Bay of Plenty's Matakana Island during a simulated emergency as part of a healthcare trial.

Successful medical drone delivery could offer faster healthcare access for remote communities

No, I am not being a dick. What we are risking is performative democracy. The appearance of debate, not the substantive work of wrestling with competing interests and difficult trade-offs. You cannot outsource those to rhetorical flourish machines.

And .... I thought the purpose of parliamentary deliberation was to exercise judgment on behalf of one's electorate, who knew it was to delegate cognitive labour to an LLM. Yet, here we are.

I expect some work within the party (and other political parties) on the place of AI in their work. Given that LLMs cannot, by definition, analyse documents I would take a cautionary approach.

Commerce Commission chair declares electricity sector a ‘market failure’ amid budget scrutiny The chair of the Commerce Commission has delivered a stark assessment of the nation’s electricity sector, declaring that it suffers from a "market fa...

businessdesk.co.nz/article/econ...

willie jack from rez dogs looking disturbed

Pantone: this year’s color is Cloud Dancer white

Natives:

@Ilyndseybelle this is what 50 bucks means to a small business. $50 is nothing to a billion dollar company. start shopping small @meownikaa whoever just placed a $50+ order in my shop, thank you so much that literally just paid for half of my groceries tomorrow

Shopping small is meaningful!

Figure 1: The important dimensions of CAILs across research and education; clockwise from 12 o’clock: Con- ceptual Clarity is the idea that terms should refer. Critical Thinking is deep engagement with the relationships between statements about the world. Decoloniality is the process of de-centring and addressing dominant harmful views and practices. Respecting Expertise is the epistemic compact between professionals and society. Slow Science is a disposition towards preferring psychologically, techno-socially, and epistemically healthy practices. The lines between dimensions represent how they are interwoven both directly and indirectly.

New preprint! @marentierra.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I have been working on what CAIL means to showcase & propagate the idea of thinking very differently to tech industry norms on "artificial intelligence"

Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

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Noting, of course, Mulgan's call out in 2012 that officials had vacated the space. Ends x

I am going to offer a hypothesis that narrow partisan agendas are derailing delivery because they lack evidence and the knowledge of what implementation actually takes.

I don't know about you, but I would rather we took our heads out of the sand, and rather than moaning about who advises the government, what advice is provided, when and how, we should start to ask what sort of pluralistic advice system we want.

Governments have increasingly demanded contestability and partisan input for several decades, often sidelining traditional public service advice in favour of external consultants, ministerial advisers, and partisan sources.