Nick Thompson

Single blossom on a plum tree in early spring (southern hemisphere)

Garden right now.

The blossom of a delicious plum hanging over the fence from the next-door neighbour's property. They don't eat them, so I do.

And they respond with the same calm and measured rationality if anyone so much as questions their right to do as they please with their chosen implement of destruction

Green praying mantis sitting on the red leaf of a blueberry bush during winter. Auckland, New Zealand.

A green praying mantis is cleaning one of its limbs with its mouth while hanging upside down from the red leaf of a blueberry bush in winter, Auckland, New Zealand.

A praying mantis, which has not yet figured out the art of camouflage, crawling over the winter-red leaves of my blueberry bushes. NB. its piratical black eye. #nzgardening

Moon framed by two kites

Crowds on Puketāpapa celebrating Matariki

Mother helping kid to fly kite, Puketāpapa, Auckland

Kites flying on Puketāpapa over view towards of South Auckland

Manu aute (Kite) Day for Matariki on Puketāpapa, Auckland

Last of the summer pomegranates, burst by the midwinter rain. #nzgardens

I wish there were more “spam” like this.

Ahead of the expected proscription of Palestine Action - the first time a protest group has been legally redefined as terrorist - I went through the Hansard of the 2000 Act they're being banned under. Turns out MPs were assured the law wouldn't be applied this way. Thread 🧵🔽

Seems appropriate to end with the statement issued by the first Ploughshares action in 1980, when eight activists entered a General Electric factory and damaged nosecones destined for nuclear ICBMs. They got sentences of up to 10 years each.

But not on charges of 'terrorism'.

Direct action has a long history in Britain - from the DAC, the Committee for 100 & the Spies for Peace, to the Greenham Common Women - and that's only the peace campaigns. That's the history Palestine Action is part of - and it will continue no matter what the courts eventually decide.

GitHub - paezha/University-AI-Panel Contribute to paezha/University-AI-Panel development by creating an account on GitHub.

"The idea of using AI to somehow personalize learning is less a plan to provide excellent learning opportunities, and more a gimmick to put a little lipstick on the underfunded massification of higher education"

Excellent analysis of bland techno-optimism in universities

github.com/paezha/Unive...

Pale yellow and crimson roses on a kitchen table. Midwinter in the southern hemisphere.

I marked Matariki by giving the roses their winter pruning. These are the stragglers I rescued from the devastation. #Matariki #midwinter

Jucunda Juventus post molestam senectutem

#gaudeamusigitur

It doesn’t match the iconography of the blood libel, of which plenty exists from the 15th and 16th centuries as a comparison. The blood libel didn’t involve accusations of eating children, even though it did involve accusations of bloodletting and murder.

This kind of attitude was ubiquitous in NZ Charismatic churches in the 1980s. It would be interesting to know if it’s making a come back here as well - or never went away!

Passer-by reflected in a puddle of water strewn with a few leaves left over from autumn. Photo shot on the University of Auckland campus.

Insofar as Auckland has seasons, this is winter in Auckland #Kikorangi #winter

As moral justification it carries about the same force as “I was just obeying orders.”

They really are the whiniest bunch.

And it’s actually diagnostically relevant, if we want to understand their political project: A movement of people who feel victimized by a society they believe owes them constant adulation and deference, whose self-pity inevitably turns to authoritarian cruelty.

Universitäten “dürfen” forschen, so lange sie “synchron mit der Regierung” und den Zielen der Regierung arbeiten. Gleichschaltung.

Best papal commentary so far from a friend of a friend: "A Chicago pope implies the existence of an MLA pope and an APA pope, no?"

I converted to Catholicism a few months ago after listening to a podcast about Chesterton. Here's why I think the Vatican chose the wrong pope.

I wonder what Luther would have thought of an Augustinian pope called Leo.

NZ limited car use to 6 days a week. You got to choose your “carless day” and got a coloured sticker identifying the day on which the car shouldn’t be on the road. This childhood experience impressed on me that people rarely need to drive.

Aucklanders’ relationship with their cars exhibits the same measured rationality as Americans’ relationship with their guns

Now *this* is what AI is good for! This is an expert system developed by applying machine learning to a specialist, selected dataset, is designed for a specific, technical purpose, refined by human experts. And does not require the wholesale theft of creators' copyright intellectual property.

Trump as shrieking pontiff. A ChatGPT-generated image based on Francis Bacon's Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953).

My* homage to Francis Bacon's Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)

*ChatGPT's.

Enjoy the conference. Toitū is such a good museum.

I have to tell you, as a Dunediner, that you took that photo at the cold end of the city. It chills me just to look at it. You need to get up into the shelter of the hills and valleys at the north end of the city.

Thank you. I really admire your writing.

"...Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers and that those who fall along the way are losers. Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush." - Francis I, Meditations and Prayers for the Via Crucis 2025.

Yes, I doubt that they will choose someone who's not actually at the conclave.