hazel

you know what? Wellington. it's tiny and easy to navigate, there's heaps of seating, it is technically international, and while you may arrive shaken, where else do you get spontaneous applause on landing? or just be randomly sitting next to a Minister of the Crown? good times, take the cheese

I'm personally quite happy to be moving into the new Kenepuru, but the names are objectively dumb

very funny to me that North Wellington does not include Wellington City's northernmost suburbs, Tawa and Jville

5 - and, actually, in a summary it's the analysis and interpretation that really matters to readers; a summary is absolutely fucken worthless if it isn't appropriate, factual, and sufficiently precise. And the word machine can't assess any of those things; a human has to do it.

4 - I can't speak for everyone but I write professionally and I am bloody good at it. The time and effort involved in me writing a summary of a longer piece isn't determined by my typing speed or even my ability to parse information but my ability to interpret and analyse it appropriately.

3 - and write accordingly. And I really resent the idea that I can or should be saving time somehow by adding to my mental load; I don't think that it's really true, and even if it was I don't think it's fair.

2 - by which I mean, starting with a block of text that I need to thoughtfully and carefully edit until it fits my brief is harder for me than starting with a blank page. It's significantly more thought to try to retrospectively structure existing text than to think about those things at the start>

been thinking about why I'm so personally big mad about AI in the work context and have realised that I can describe it thusly: AI can pump out a bunch of text that looks okay at first blush, but that text doesn't reduce my workload at all and actually adds to my thought burden.

it looks so good! plus, great glasses

oh, agreed

(and if there was a service elsewhere, staff have a statutory right to attend and, imo, a social/moral right to attend, even if that means closing a workplace like the Nat Library)

yeah, it feels like a really context-dependent thing; I can see how it would be both appropriate and really valued in some situations.

I have mixed feelings about bringing someone's remains into a workplace BUT it was very obviously something that a lot of his colleagues felt very strongly about for it to happen in the first place, and the other option would be... closing the National Library so everyone could go to the funeral

bastardry

(though I would never discount the ability of police to fuck around and find out)

prosecutors are not, generally, going to take risks with cases they don't think meet reasonable evidential standards - besides their own reputations, they have a million other things they could be doing

sitting in the dentist chair mid-filling and what comes on the radio but TWO TRAILER GIRLS GO ROUND THE OUTSIDE. hilarious, no notes.

yeah, fair enough. boo for misinformation though!

or, as an alternative, "I have no idea what this provision is trying to do and you should probably fix that" is also very useful.

but if you are going to make detailed commentary on specific policy or drafting, then, yeah, ideally you understand what it's trying to do, whether the drafting actually achieves that, and what your position on that intent is.

I fully accept and appreciate the role of "this sucks and you suck, may your ancestors rot in the 6th level of hell: black mould edition" submissions; genuinely I think they're really helpful for the vibes.

in that vein, I agree with you that it's helpful when people are very clear-eyed about what a proposal actually does, and that they engage with that proposal rather than something else.

And I don't want to really involve myself in the question of whether or how people should engage with draft legislation except to say that I personally think it's helpful to have a clear understanding of what your line in the sand is, and why your line is where it is.

I think about where my personal line in the sand would be a lot, and where I've landed is something like "is this a thing a reasonable government could do?" not is this something a reasonable government *would* do, that's too limiting, but *could*. shades of the employment relations act etc.

the funniest thing is that, of course, this guy has clearly never spent any time even vaguely adjacent to left-wing debate, because it is almost nothing but arguments and schisms all the way down

we get sovcits in New Zealand too, and the funniest ones are the people who have clearly got all their info off the (American) internet and thus are making arguments that are based on US law. you're declaring your sovereignty against the wrong jurisdiction, mate!

this is why legislative drafting is so interesting: on the one hand, you're aiming for clarity and precision, while on the other hand you're always writing into an unknown future full of things you can't foresee. so there's got to be space in the words for some flexibility - how much? it depends.

if I drastically changed sizes and suddenly a whole bunch of fashion that had been closed to me for a decade or two was suddenly accessible: I can see it. I'm not saying it's the responsible choice but I can see it.

nooooooooo betrayed by pastry

Hey, we have a room going at the moment: www.trademe.co.nz/a/property/f... Tawa might be a bit far out but the house is very accessible.