Fark

When you're cleaning our your cupboards and find that old sea otter you thought you'd lost years ago.

I did start “I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki” by Baek Se-hee shortly before leaving for Korea - I am unable to finish it now. I’m very sorry.

I didn’t get around to reading “Convenience Store Woman” or “Vanishing World” by Sayaka Murata until I was in London recent / both wonderful and I wish I’d read the first while in Japan.

To follow up, “The Vegetarian” was precise and beautiful but devastating. It is a book I feel glad to have read but would hesitate to recommend to most people I know. I read ‘Fifty Sounds’ by Polly Barton in Japan and would recommend to many.

I, for one, welcome the carnivorous death ball

Would it be weird to celebrate your birthday by inviting your friends to come on a historical walking tour of Wellington city? One you have painstakingly prepared and will deliver yourself?

She also has so much to say about how critical it is for effective democracy to govern this new era and new wealth - I listened to it and feel evangelised!

How AI Will Impact the Future of Work

Here Betsey Stevenson explains why the great challenge of AI is effective distribution of income gains. She proposes moving taxation away from labour and toward capital and consumption. We’ve always needed this critical thinking - but it has new urgency!

open.spotify.com/episode/22sB...

‘Locked up for 24 years’: joy and sorrow as Palestinian prisoners and detainees return home Nearly 2,000 prisoners and detainees – including about 1,700 people seized from Gaza and held without charge – set free from Israeli jails

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

My boss: so how's our fourth quarter looking?

Me, the sales manager at the company that makes inflatable frog suits: well, you're never going to believe this, but

Trump administration knocks out at least 15 oversight websites, saying IGs 'lied to the public' It's not a shutdown issue: the White House is withholding funds from the umbrella organization for the government's inspectors general.

In fact, fifteen websites of independent Inspectors-General in the USA have been taken down:

www.nextgov.com/digital-gove...

This is what the US Department of Agriculture website looks like. You could, I guess, complain to their oversight body - except that their Inspector General was dragged out of office earlier this year and the USDA OIG website is down.

www.usda.gov/about-usda/g...

I’m really struggling with where to turn to for good news coverage atm. Pretty much the only thing surviving my rage is The Guardian.
If you find any gems or good journalists to follow please let me know.

Not a lot of food mentioned in it. Other than french bread at breakfast. I’m not sure what whisky is on the cards. Though there is mention of the wicked General’s 100 pines… 🍍

September is the month for Northanger Abbey. A but ill timed as we should have had it in time for Halloween. But a treat on our recent cold and stormy nights. You can feel the narrator having fun and I love it! #JaneAustenBookClub

You’re think *you’re* depressed? Try being at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association right now with 5,000 political scientists presenting their work on the state of democracy, public opinion, and media.

They are also drinking heavily.

Added bonus: it's very funny

Judge orders Alligator Alcatraz shut down in 60 days, says no more new detainees A federal judge on Thursday barred the DeSantis and Trump administrations from bringing new detainees to Alligator Alcatraz and demanded the state close out operations at the immigration detention fac...

Judge Williams halted new detainees and ordered Alligator Alcatraz to close within 60 days, grounding her ruling in federal environmental laws & tribal sovereignty. By proving “irreparable harm” to the Everglades, she applied well-settled legal standards, making the injunction likely to stand.

www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/sites/defaul...

Blistering critique slams prison bosses Prisoners were being degraded as “collateral damage”, with Corrections not actioning the many recommendations it had received, Ombudsman says.

If you haven’t followed Peter Boshier’s YEARS of trying to sound the alarm about our prisons I suggest you read some of the Ombudman’s reports on how we actually run prisons in New Zealand. It will make you feel sick and it should.

www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...

RELAX HEART!

Oh. Something a little lighter perhaps - having just read the blurbs for both of these 😧 Perhaps Seoul will be my ‘terrifying and terrific’ phase of reading and then in Japan I’ll just be recovering.

Happily making my reading plans for South Korea! I will finally read ‘The Vegetarian’ and ‘I have a right to destroy myself’ - but not sure yet what to read in Kyushu.

I forgot to take any pictures of our ramen once done! But it was really great. Oh and we had apple strudel because … stewed apples.

My favourite thing about Emma was B just texting out of the blue this months with things like “she’s such a fuckin’ bitch though!”.
Which I never could get away with writing essays about Emma at uni. But it pretty much captures it.