Patrick

Very keen to read this

You know you're on a flight to NZ when there is a fellow passenger wearing gumboots.

100%. It's gonna be ugly.

Amen. And very polarised and splintered.

Four vinyl albums on a table. Romance - Fontaines D.C., Lust for Life - Iggy Pop, Mirage - Glass Beams, Songs of a Lost World - The Cure.

Agenda for today...

Three vinyl records: Violator by Depeche Mode, Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails and Rat Wars by Health.

Cracking start to end weekend.

Happy End of Financial Year to those who celebrate.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship explodes, debris streaks through Florida skies “Unfortunately, this happened last time too, so we’ve got some practice now,” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said on the live stream.

"During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly" lol www.smh.com.au/world/north-...

Something pretty exciting I've been working on - a dashboard to track and explore NZ political ads on Meta and Google - categorised by party, government level and electorate. #nzpol theprogressreport.co.nz/ad-tracker/

Real men don’t barricade women and children. Real men don’t threaten and intimidate. Real men don’t preach hate. Real men DO show respect, compassion & love. Real men are comfortable enough in who they are to celebrate the diversity of others. Brian Tamaki you are just a boy.

QUICK! Cheap $25 tickets over the next 25 hours for our Melbourne Comedy Festival — A Rational Fear election show: www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows...

Today from Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny:

snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-...

Exclusive: Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

it's not hyperbolic to say we're witnessing a coup.

Egg prices are soaring again. Here’s why and what to expect Bird flu has killed millions of hens in recent weeks, shrinking the supply of eggs and hiking up prices at grocery stores.

The price of eggs in the US is spiking, mostly due to #H5N1 bird flu. Solving the problem requires urgent, important communications from the CDC & FDA* and rapid development of research by the NIH**

* Currently paused by Executive Order
** Grant reviews now all canceled
www.kcur.org/news/2025-01...

loooooool

Behind the scenes, the company was also quietly dismantling a system to prevent the spread of misinformation. When the company announced on Jan. 7 that it would end its fact-checking partnerships, the company also instructed teams responsible for ranking content in the company’s apps to stop penalizing misinformation, according to sources and an internal document obtained by Platformer. The result is that the sort of viral hoaxes that ran roughshod over the platform during the 2016 US presidential election — “Pope Francis endorses Trump,” Pizzagate, and all the rest — are now just as eligible for free amplification on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads as true stories.

NEW: Meta has quietly dismantled the system that prevented misinformation from spreading in the United States. Machine-learning classifiers that once identified viral hoaxes and limited their reach have now been switched off, Platformer has learned www.platformer.news/meta-ends-mi...

U.S. TikTokers flock to Xiaohongshu, baffling and bonding with Chinese users Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.

Americans are joining the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu AKA RedNote en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.

New from @kinlinglo.bsky.social and @violazhou.bsky.social
restofworld.org/2025/tiktok-...

Soaring air fares between Melbourne and Sydney see travellers take 11-hour train Exclusive: Seats on Sydney-Melbourne train service regularly sold out over holiday period, as one-way flights to Tullamarine average almost $500

Amazing how much demand there already is. Even without touching the track, upgrading the rolling stock and adding more services would be wildly popular. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

If you subscribe to Microsoft 365 Personal, the 40% price increase is a con to upsell you AI. Your old plan and price is still there called "Classic" - but only if you try to cancel.

Microsoft should be ashamed if not prosecuted.

Not sure I ever finished them, but damn they were all so good

So fucking bleak

Various artworks at the Yayoi Kusama exhibition.

Highly recommend the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the NGV - just book tickets in advance as it's wildly popular.

so tired I legitimately think I may have an iron deficiency

The first is which platforms will be subject to the law. Albanese has said that TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and X will be covered. But it’s not clear when another platform might meet the criteria and be required to jettison its under-16 user base. Miraculously (for Google), YouTube was granted an exemption to the bill as a service that is “health and education related.” And while YouTube surely does more than its share of educating, its primary use is for entertainment. And YouTube’s embrace of short-form video through Shorts effectively makes it a one-to-one competitor with TikTok, Snap, and Instagram. In one stroke of his pen, Albanese may have just granted YouTube permanent dominance in short-form video to a generation of Australians.

Australia's ban on social media for teens under 16 is, among other things, an enormous gift to YouTube www.platformer.news/australia-so...

Coalition frontbencher says voters conned into backing independents Opposition communications spokesman Paul Fletcher, facing a battle against an independent at the next election, says teals had duped traditional Coalition supporters.

Strong Tim Wilson vibes here www.smh.com.au/politics/fed... #auspol

The Progress Report The Progress Report.

I've uploaded the astonishing new Talbot Mills poll to The Progress Report, so you can see it compared to previous polls and calculate *who* would get into Parliament on these numbers. theprogressreport.co.nz #nzpol

Just saw - fair enough!

Wouldn't be a bad idea to nudge the boss into setting up an account (ideally verified with the party domain name).

Minor update - have changed the username of the account to @theprogressreport.co.nz

To anyone interested in #nzpol - would love you to give my little side project @theprogressreport.bsky.social a follow! Will probably try and do some cool stuff with the account given how easy to use the BlueSky API is.