Opal - Toitū Te Tiriti 🍉

Toni Morrison was her mentor and it shows.

Picture accompanying a post from Linked in by Charmaine Simpson https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blackhistorystudies_bell-hooks-understood-a-pattern-that-repeats-activity-7403886502771888128-CJiy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAFk0BcBSukv5EZ8IStyE-ugz6Io2JLp0iQ "bell hooks understood a pattern that repeats across generations. When a woman thinks critically, people often label her difficult before they ever engage with her ideas. The label is a shortcut. A way to dismiss her without confronting what she is actually saying. Critical thinking is powerful because it interrupts comfort. It asks why things are the way they are. It exposes contradictions that many would rather leave unspoken. So instead of addressing her insight, the world questions her tone. It reframes her clarity as attitude. It turns her precision into a flaw. But women who think critically are not difficult. They are necessary. They hold up mirrors that others avoid. They name truths that would otherwise stay buried. To think for yourself is not an invitation for conflict. It is an act of presence. It is choosing awareness over silence. And every time a woman refuses to apologize for her mind, she shifts the world a little closer to honesty. From Her Archives "

“Women who think critically are always labeled difficult because it saves the world from admitting they’re right” — bell hooks

Repost of Charmaine Simpson, on LinkendIN: www.linkedin.com/posts/blackh...

The post is for Webworm members, but I want to sneak this point from behind the wall (sorry David) because I think a lot of adults don't understand what social media is to today's young people.

A social media ban aims to separate kids from their communities.

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif.

This is what banning under-16s from social media looks like for EVERYONE

The only surefire way to stop oligarchs buying up the things we love is to drop those things the moment oligarchs buy them & that requires changing habits and massive self-discipline.
It means going to alternatives that might not be quite as good or convenient.
It’s really hard. But there it is.

The Paul Dano thing is just one hiccup alright. It's not like Tarantino owns a home in Israel, forces his personal fetish onto his casts, knew about the Weinstein stuff, and uses the n word a bunch. He can have one bad opinion.

This is a great read about the Dano Tarantino fiasco.

Much more beautifully articulated than my own fairly immature reaction which was just eww gross incel cuck incredibly insecure about his own masculinity.

danielbdaylewis 2/2 and thrown in the dirt • 251 Liked by ramirez14170 and others danielbdaylewis Paul Dano is one of the best and most talented actors of his generation.

Daniel Day Lewis came out of Instagram retirement to show support for Paul Dano. King shit.

When the most toxic finance minister in a generation isn’t toxic enough for the most toxic finance minister ever.

♥️ “ICE looked at that school, saw a community standing up for families, and decided it wasn’t worth it.”

ACC's financial squeeze: The human toll People like father Jacob Hamlin and his family have wound up in hardship as the agency pushes more people off long-term claims to get costs under control.

Shocking mismanagement by ACC. The cost of unrehabilitated people still falls to the state, but ACC gets to wipe it off their books. They never actually try to rehabilitate, all their money is spent on denying claims in the first place, or pushing people off.

#nzpol

Once again, this is literally all happening in NZ right now too but because our media are mostly incapable of actual analysis and because NZ is The Most Special Place Where Nothing Can Go Wrong, we're mostly just kind of ignoring it #nzpol

Some goats who grew up during the heyday of Slipknot, Linkin Park and Korn, and had always wanted to form their own band within the nu metal subgenre, but now, having finally been brave enough to commit and go for it, are trying to brave it out and conceal their concern that they might have left it too late to fit in with prevailing musical trends.

THREAD.

A collection of photographs of excellent goats I have met during walks in the British countryside.

You will find the captions to each photo in the alt text.

Sadly, Trump saying that word would always going to open up the floodgates. When Trump won, FT quoted a banker saying he felt "liberated" to say "pussy and retard." When Trump said the word, Jack Posobiec said "Trump just officially gave us the word retard back."
www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

HOPE WALZ: “What world are we f*cking living in? I draw the line at Gus. You people are f*cking disgraceful.”

She says MAGA loyalists are now driving by their home and yelling “R*tard!” at her family and her special needs brother after Trump called GovTimWalz the R word.

Thank you so much Ray Shipley. Ep 156 of Better of Read is up and I had a blast making it. Things seem heavy and hopeless sometimes here but there are so many people in Aotearoa working so hard on amazing projects. THANK YOU everyone.
better-read.com/2025/12/08/e...

Suspended IU prof returns to class — with university observers Jessica Adams was formally sanctioned by IU at the end of its investigation, which started with an "intellectual diversity" complaint from a student.

Since she’s resumed teaching her class, Diversity, Human Rights, and Social Justice, Adams said the university has put observers in all her classes. “That’s been very upsetting, very humiliating,” she said.

@jessicacalarco.com

They're efficient if nothing else.
Hitting numbers like that in the UK required Brexit, and that took years.

They are such petty people.

Woman Hailed as Hero for Smashing Man's Meta Smart Glasses on Subway A New York subway rider has accused a woman of breaking his Meta smart glasses. She was later hailed as a hero.

Really love how this guy posted this on TikTok thinking the woman who broke his Meta glasses would come off as the villain, as opposed to him, the guy recording her without her consent for social media content via a surveillance device made by one of the worst companies on earth

Design executive behind 'Liquid Glass' is leaving Apple Alan Dye, who was part of the redesign of Apple's software interface called Liquid Glass, is taking his talents to Meta.

it's pretty funny that this guy's first assignment at Facebook will be the campaign to reassure techbros that they're totally not gonna get smacked down by a young lady on the subway for wearing Meta Raybans. Ironic fate for the OG glasshole

www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/l...

Stewart Lee: AI has worked out how to blackmail its human enemies. So why is it still so useless at shopping? If a leading scientist is right, we have five years until we’re being sextorted by smart kettles and facing the ‘ultimate risk’ to our existence – and yet AI can't recognise an album format. It almost...

NZ mentioned. Can anybody help Stewart out?

Every legal story now is either

Ancient Circuit Judge Delivers Crystal Clear 100 Page Rebuke To Trumpist Overreach

or

In Unsigned Shadow Docket Decision, 6-3 Majority Declares Trump Can Hunt People For Sport

ICYMI - Halle Berry is all out of f*cks

"Gavin Newsom, has vetoed our menopause bill, not one, but two years in a row, But that’s OK, because he’s not going to be governor forever, and the way he has overlooked women… by devaluing us, he probably should not be our next president either."

You probably can if you just use a text stripper first. They're just free little online tools that will delete all formatting.

There are similar tools that will the extract text from any image. I use use those to add alt-text to text heavy images here.

Takes seconds.

University of Auckland opens new Pacific space honouring Fa’anānā Efeso Collins An intimate ceremony filled with singing, tears and laughter marked the opening of a new Pacific student space at the University of Auckland's general library dedicated to Fa'anānā Efeso Collins.

University of Auckland opens new Pacific space honouring Fa’anānā Efeso Collins

Trying to make Fetch happen while there are a record number of unhoused people and people go to the Emergency Department for treatment because they can't afford GP visits.

My Spotify reading age is “old enough to know Spotify screws artists and supports anti-immigrant policies”.

Start your New Year with a better app.

‘Ugly’ Wellington flats will be demolished. Here’s the architectural vision of what could have been Wellington architects have put forward plans for restoring and reusing the block of flats.

I really do think we should tear down a lot of the leaky old villas in Wellington, but I feel really sad about the Gordon Wilson flats. I think they could have been made lovely again, as these architects have shown.

Park Hill estate in Sheffield almost got torn down, and now it is an icon.