Avron 🇳🇿

Goddamn. What a sobering and poignant piece of conceptual art. What an amazing artist.

YouTube video by icklenellierose YouTube Tricked Me Into Using AI, and It Sucked

🎉 NEW AND IMPROVED VERSION NOW LIVE 🎉

YouTube tricked me into using generative AI ✨twice✨, so I made a video on my personal channel to complain about it

Enjoy! youtu.be/8kW8wb94TMI?...

2025 Local Candidates - The Progress Report Searchable and filterable database of 2025 NZ local government candidates from every council. Built to improve accessibility and transparency.

Local elections in NZ are a democratic mess. 78 councils, no central info, run by private companies.

I’ve compiled every 2025 local govt candidate (including their affiliation) into one searchable tool - because someone had to. #nzpol theprogressreport.co.nz/local-candid...

Calendar view of book reading, all Star Trek. Six finished through the month. 10 days with no reading which is a bit disappointing.

First middle and last books read through the month, along with daily pages read showing significant inconsistency. only physical books.

Another month of my reading, exclusively (rereading)Trek books this time. More days without reading than last month (got significantly distracted with Clanfolk video game on YouTube).
both images from app.storygraph.com

20 board game covers arranged in a grid, numbers in the bottom left indicate play count. mostly "1"s but the most played is "42"

Board games played during July 2025 using the boardgamearena.com website. No play count overlap with the prior image (although some games do appear on both).
A lot of Chakra (as per normal).

22 board game covers arranged on a grid, each with numbers in the bottom left, indicating play count for the month

Board games played in person during the month of July, recorded count was among the highest it's been in three years. (And most of those other months included online play, which requires less time.)
Recorded at boardgamegeek.com with bgg4android, and image taken from the app at bgstatsapp.com

A 4-panel doodled black and white comic. In the first panel, a triangle character is talking to a circle character who's wearing a face mask. The triangle smiles, points at the circle, and says "It's smart you still wear a mask". In the second panel, the background is all black and the text is white. There's a close up of the triangle's face, who looks worried with bags under their eyes. Text above them reads "When I had Covid, I couldn't taste food for nine months. It hurt to breathe. My lungs haven't been the same..." In the third panel, it's back to a white background and inked doodles. The circle holds up a mask to the triangle and says "I'm sorry. I have masks you can use?" The triangle looks at the circle with a neutral expression and open mouth. In the final panel, the triangle runs away with a happy expression and says "No, I'm fine!" The circle turns to face us with a blank expression, with the spare mask still in hand but lowered to the ground. Made by doodlesbycharlie_.

i’m fine

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers.

The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

Ex-farm worker here.

We need to talk about this whole "But a living wage for farm workers would spike the cost of food!" thing.

Not true AT ALL.

Y'all don't understand how fast experienced farm workers are.

The average tomato picker pulls 650lbs per hour.

At $20/hr, that's $0.03/lb for labor.

Once again, fighting bigotry with "what an odd thing to say" is so much more effective than getting mad.

It did the same to mine!

Superman Isn’t Trying to Be Political. We Just Have Real-Life Supervillains Now.

What a headline.

Do we still need stories about an aspirational immigrant who's so devoted to his adopted country that he regularly puts himself in danger to help even those who fear and distrust him, and who's primary antagonist is an egotistical tech billionaire?

Yes, fucking obviously. You numpties.

Because they’re being continually reinfected with COVID. It’s not rocket science. This would be more obvious if not for the overwhelming denial in society—as well as minimizing propaganda and potentially, cognitive damage from infections, which may make it more difficult to accurately assess risk.

This 83-year-old priest has just been arrested for holding a sign which read:

“I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

According to Starmer’s new law, this puts her in the same category as an ISIS or Al-Qaeda terrorist, with a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

'Don't worry, it's a lagging indicator' sing the chorus of ghouls. Oh, oh, oh, look! The line just might be flattening out a bit; praise be, the Rockstar economy is round the next bend.

Injured Greens candidate charged, slams 'draconian' law Police said Hannah Thomas was arrested for not complying with a direction and was charged with resisting arrest.

This is what the IPCA / National's changes to protest law mean: protestors being beaten and losing eyes.

(because an arrestable offence for refusing to obey police allows "reasonable force" to make the arrest, which police interpret however the fuck they want) www.1news.co.nz/2025/06/30/i...

Wrong T-shirt son? You’re nicked The act which came into force this week could make terrorists of us all

In 2001, as the Terrorism Act 2000 came into force, I warned that it could be used to ban non-violent protest groups and imprison those who support them. Government spokespeople and cheerleaders told me I was talking rubbish.
And here we are.
#PalestineAction
www.monbiot.com/2001/02/22/w...

When I met Ryan Coogler several years ago, we were standing in a group of people chatting, when a woman with visible hearing aids walked up, and he casually began to sign the whole conversation so she could participate. She mouthed “thank you”. He nodded and just kept doing his thing.

Youth MPs told to remove criticisms of government from speeches Changes had been made to at least one speech.

In a past life under the John Key government, I worked on Youth Parliament. In no way were the youth MPs instructed to refrain from criticising the government; that's literally what they're there to do (if they want to).

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

20 images of board game covers with numbers in the lower left. Nearly two a day for Chakra

Board games played during June 2025 using the boardgamearena.com website.
A lot of Chakra.

11 board game covers, all with a "1" in the lower left corner.

Board games played during June 2025 and recorded at boardgamegeek.com
One impromptu at boardgamearena.com the rest in person.
Image from bgstats app bgstatsapp.com

Wrap-up of reading during June. 7 Books, 1286 pages. Everything was Print, everything was fiction. Daily comparison of pages read, all but five days had some reading.

Calendar view of reading for the month of June. No reading most Thursdays but at least something all but one other day. One book finished after putting it on pause months earlier. All but one other started and finished in the month.

I did re-read more Trek books. A lot longer to read them than was normal nearly 25 years ago. (Now I have internet beside me.)
Also finished a book I started the previous time I was feeding cats for friends, while feeding cats for friends. And read a mystery out of curiosity. app.storygraph.com

"digital asbestos" is fantastic framing.

Off-duty officer accessed police database 1700 times believing it would make them a ‘good cop’ The officer said they thought checking the database for their own information would make them a “good cop”. Only one of those checks was considered “probably work-related”.

An off-duty police officer accessed #NZpolice database 1700 times from March 2023 to October 2024. Only one access was probably "work-related”. Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) urged a criminal investigation.

Cops? Not bad enough to worry about. 🙄
#NZpol
www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3607...

A new statistic reveals the startling privilege of white kids admitted to Harvard Ivy League admissions are far from a meritocracy.

"Nearly half of white students admitted to Harvard between 2009 and 2014 were legacy students or Dean’s Interest List—a list of applicants whose relatives have donated to Harvard, the existence of which only became public knowledge in 2018"

and 75% of them would not have been admitted otherwise

William Gaines (and Al Feldstein) literally yelled "FUCK YOU!" into the phone Charles Murphy, hung up on his ass, and ran this as-is.

The Comics Code Authority had no stated rules regarding this content, but tried to block it anyway, which is all you need to know about how the CCA was implemented.

Remember a month or two ago when I said I wanted people to stop publicly expressing plans to commit crimes in my notifications and some idiots accused me of capitulating in advance? No i was talking about this kind of stupid mouthing off.

Tabletop game map with cute little minis, including a wizard, knight and an orc barbarian, as well as an adorable red dragon with its wings up going rarrh! Text reads: Free RPG Day 2025 - 86 games, 58 creators, free this weekend!

Free RPG Weekend 2025 Bundle is a collection of 80+ #TTRPGs (including supps, #soloRPG, adventures, etc) from dozens of creators on @itch.io‬ and they're all 100% free or Pay What you Want ⭐ itch.io/b/3091/free-...

#FreeRPG #FreeRPGday #KiwiRPG

Not fleeing: New report shows more wealthy residents in Mass., 2 years into 'millionaire's tax' Despite previous concerns, Massachusetts' "millionaire's tax" hasn't seemed to deter high-earners from continuing to live here, according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies.

MA put in a millionaires tax 2 years ago, and the GOP said we'd miss revenue targets & millionaires would flee. MA collected TWICE the projected revenues, and the number of millionaires went UP 40%

www.wbur.org/news/2025/04...