Liz Beddoe

Happy International Working Women’s Day to all. Paid or unpaid we all work.

No Jack, tell us how you really feel

The sector with 17,000 more full-time jobs 3:33 pm on 5 February 2026 Susan Edmunds Susan Edmunds, Money Correspondent susan.edmunds@rnz.co.nz Image of cooks in a restaurant kitchen. Accommodation and food services saw the largest increase in jobs over the last year, up just over 25,000, with around 17,000 more full-time and 8000 more part-time roles. Photo: 123rf Unemployment has hit its highest level in a decade, but beneath the headline numbers some sectors are faring much better than others.

This week's lies, damn lies, and green shoots award goes to Brad Olsen (via Susan Edmunds). This is a particularly disgusting use of data - like so bad that the article should be removed. Let's have a look... [🧵 1/n]

They don't do Facism for Dummies because it's all for dummies

Call for papers !

We welcome abstracts that speak to the themes in this call- please circulate @lizbeddoe.bsky.social @carlenefirmin.bsky.social @cynokpokiri.bsky.social @jofinch.bsky.social

The fact the current Govt is full of racist, misogynist climate denying, abusive regressives who attack women they feel threatened by isn’t helping. It’s patriarchial misogny in action, amplified by Govt MPs, & other scared men stuck in adolescence in a society that doesn’t demand they grow up.

Man, Du Bois had some bangers, but for me, it doesn't get much better than his scathing indictment of the "Christianity" of the United States.

Certainly this was all true of the nation in his lifetime. But in my lifetime, his criticisms have never felt so true of the nation right now.

The Free Speech Union didn't exist when black ppl couldn't speak.
The Free Speech Union didn't exist when LGBTQ ppl couldn't speak.
The Free Speech Union didn't exist when disabled ppl couldn't speak.
The Free Speech Union existed when racist white ppl were asked to keep their racism to themselves.

To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave | Marie Le Conte It was hard for me to quit Elon Musk’s poisoned platform, but I urge others to do the same, especially in light of Grok’s imagery of women and children, says journalist Marie Le Conte

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We may be an ocean away, but there are many of us in Aotearoa quietly cheering on every one of you Americans who are standing up, speaking out & taking action today against your govt's latest acceleration towards full-on fascism & war. Solidarity & strength from the deep south of the planet. #nzpol

Dear Author, I am Honglin Bao (www.hbao.info), a data science PhD student in Knowledge Lab (https://knowledgelab.org/) at the University of Chicago, working on a study about “The Capabilities and Potential of AI for Automating Scientific Idealization: A Large-Scale Human-in-the-Loop Study” (under UChicago IRB25-1372). As AI plays an increasingly significant role in scientific discovery, this project aims to evaluate how far AI helps scientists extend their work in new directions – or if it is not useful in this regard. This is a research project – it has no commercial purpose. I will share the final draft, technical details, and aggregate results from scientists once the study is complete. We came across your preprint "Principles of music perception" and applied custom AI models on it in accordance with the terms of the preprint license, which generated five new extensions (i.e., ideas proposed by AI based on the same context as your paper). Our pilot study of 400 scientists (excluding you) indicates that around 60% found at least one of the proposed extensions thought-provoking and actionable. However, the remaining reported that AI only generates seemingly plausible but vague sentences. We solicit your help in evaluating whether you think AI is useful or not, since we believe you are the best judge of new ideas proposed from your own paper. No matter where you stand regarding AI and science: From principally believing that AI is prone to producing fake and morally problematic science to finding it useful, or something in between, we hope to receive evaluations that reflect a spectrum of views. The AI-proposed extensions are included in the survey link below. If you consent to review them and participate in the survey, we would appreciate it if you could do so within the next 14 days (it will take you < 10mins). If you do not consent, we will not use your research in this study. If you find these ideas valuable, you are welcome to purs…

Please remove my data from your study. I want nothing to do with this — and I would also point out that if you had done appropriate background work in the selection of articles you fed to the plagiarism machine, you would have found that the preprint of mine you used is way out of date and has been updated substantially since it was first posted. ——— Samuel Mehr School of Psychology, University of Auckland and Child Study Center, Yale University Be a citizen scientist at themusiclab.org!

somebody at UChicago is feeding preprints to LLMs without authors' consent, in a research study

they have the gall to suggest to authors they've opted-in that they volunteer to evaluate the LLMs' suggestions regarding their own work.

lol, lmao even. here is the invite and my reply

a man says go get him in front of a police car Alt: a man says go get him in front of a police car

I am asking #NewZealand to please check their garden shed, outbuilding or sheds for for a missing Prime Minister, last seen.. uh .. somewhere

Please contact authorities if found, do not spook him, dont worry he isnt a danger unless you are an economy

#nzpol

Two sleepy cats, one tabby, one torty.

Oh to be a cat and blissfully unaware of the state of things.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AHL5daqvw/

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AHL5daqvw/

Don't copy paste an Imperial response like other world "leaders" who are abandoning their independent foreign policy to cuddle up to Trump. Have some moral courage Luxon!

Having literally worked as a ministerial press secretary over the holiday shutdown before: there is no excuse for this, whoever's on duty has all the emergency/personal phone numbers they need to get the right people online to issue a prompt response to an international incident of this enormity

a) I'm really not sure these rates are accurate.

b) The reason NZ's rate is so high is so we can as all get on planes and fly over where we are our country used to be. Marvel at the Act of God which moved us off the coast of Perth.

Partner noticed that passenger airbag is inflated.

Yep we were wondering if it was speed or a brakes failure. Hope nobody was in the way.

Very close to us too. How the heck did they manage to get it there?

More AI bullshit. Fake books and weird mash-ups, the trademarks of AI.

#4 sounds like a lovely book but I didn't write it. Have had whānau up and down the country send me clippings lol
Whoever put together this list that has been circulated to regional papers, didn't fact check.

From Bondi, we must learn Jewish and Palestinian safety and liberation are intertwined Antisemitic violence is wrong in the way all forms of racist violence are wrong.

“From Bondi, we must learn Jewish and Palestinian safety and liberation are intertwined” #nzpol

thespinoff.co.nz/society/22-1...

Zero surprises that the brainless transphobic health minister in NZ ignored all expert advice and evidence and banned puberty blockers for trans youth. Literal blood on his hands.

www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-...

On The Fence About Dying with Dignity: Social Worker Responses to Assisted Dying in Aotearoa New Zealand The End of Life Choice Act 2019 marked the legalisation of assisted dying (AD) for the terminally ill under certain circumstances in Aotearoa New Zealand (henceforth referred to as Aotearoa). This ...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Interpersonal violence in NZ is a public health crisis, not just a social one – new research New Zealanders who have experienced interpersonal violence are more likely to end up in hospital for both injury and illness.

theconversation.com/interpersona...

Is this a 1980s Apartheid moment for our universities? Academic Ritesh Shah wonders if universities staying neutral on human rights abuses in Gaza achieves the opposite of their desired preservation of academic independence.

newsroom.co.nz/2025/08/31/i...

YouTube video by Virginia Braun Dr Braun(love) - or: how I learned to stop worrying and love GenAI (yeah nah)

Here's a talk I gave as a keynote for the BPS @qmip.bsky.social conference (July 2025) - the result of @vicclarke.bsky.social & I recognising we needed to "dive in" & grapple with the beast that is GenAI & qualitative/(reflexive) thematic analysis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zFQ...

Mass protests against Donald Trump, line of protestors hold sign that says “Scotland against Trump”

Mass protests against an international criminal and Epstein associated rapist travelling to Scotland.

The title of the paper set on the colours of the trans flag: "Anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-gender: The transphobic turn of the “freedom movement” during COVID-19" by Max Soar, Sophie Beaumont & Alex Ker, set o

Winston Peters' transphobia is back in the news, so here's our recently published (open access) research on recent moral panics about gender in Aotearoa.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Revealed: Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over an ‘education and Palestine’ issue of a prestigious journal. Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom

www.theguardian.com/education/20...