Splakey

It’s an Onion bit at this stage: “area man carries water for global elites who barely notice him.”

The “growth” ghouls never learn.

Yesterday:

Westpac’s chief economist for New Zealand, Kelly Eckhold, said the move was “great news” for our exporters when “conditions are probably the best they've been in a very long time”

“Any reduction in tariffs is welcome news,” McClay said

Today: 😬
#nzpol

Wolves fan here, still learning how to exist on the end of a trade deal where we get to empty our bench for a legit “guy”.
The list of things to be happy about in minny is short these days, so thanks Bulls (and genuine condolences to your fans)

No matter what happens with the economy in the interim, NZ will likely be voting in the shadow of another election in which cities will be occupied, ballots seized & any opposition criminalized

It starts with the politicians in power picking the electorate

You, citizen, are not a “dropkick” #nzpol

A photo looking out at the harbour at dawn from the bridge at Waitangi, with the tino rangatiratanga flag flying

Toitū Te Tiriti

Adam Shatz · Another Country: Visions of America Is America a dream or a nightmare, a democratic paradise or a bastion of white supremacy and religious intolerance? Is...

“The United States looks more and more like the sick man of the Americas, a country of spectacular disparities in wealth, crippling political dysfunction and pervasive violence.”

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Gawd our press is exhausting in its endless grant of “silver linings” to this government’s failures.

www.thepost.co.nz/business/360...

The Mythology Of Conscious AI | NOEMA Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.

Worth reading Anil Seth’s essay in its entirety, but this point especially:

“As Immanuel Kant argued long ago in his lectures on ethics, treating conscious-seeming things as if they lack consciousness is a psychologically unhealthy place to be.”

www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...

Indeed, I believe it was pointed out at the time that the result was less about “confidence” than an example of survivor bias

Yeah, that Venn diagram is a perfect circle.

A ruling and a sermon:

Matthew 19:14: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

John 11:35 is famously the shortest Bible verse: “Jesus wept.”

'Suicide rightism' and the penguin Is it based or soy to kill yourself?

great blog maxread.substack.com/p/suicide-ri...

'The old order is not coming back,' Carney says in provocative speech at Davos | CBC News Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a frank assessment of how he views the world in a provocative speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, where he said the longstanding U.S.-led, rules-based intern...

Bracing and clear eyed assessment from Carney, who understands you can’t beg your way off the menu.

Please pay attention, AoNZ, as we head into this next election.

Luxon’s neoliberal nonsense and Winston’s appeasement will be our ruin.

#nzpol

www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Other “tiny” countries should take this threat a lot more seriously.

Proving (literally) that ChatGPT isn't conscious There is nothing it is like to be a Large Language Model

The question of whether LLMs are conscious is now settled. @erikhoel.blogsky.venki.dev’s approach is agnostic about which theory of consciousness is right. Empirically, LLMs are equivalent to a lookup table, which is manifestly not conscious. But a future A.I. system that learns on the fly might be.

Damien Grant’s misogynistic pile on op-ed coming to Stuff in 3,2,1 …

She’s in her lane: reserve banking
Winston’s in his: tosser

Nothing to see here. Perhaps the media should stop feeding this troll …

#nzpol

From March 2025.
Just gonna leave Luxon’s “I trust Donald Trump” here to remind you how f&$@‘d we all are.
#nzpol

Words don’t matter much in answering that question. Unless you are actively resisting (Gleick, public intellectual speaking out) or starving it of your skills and capital (me, Dr emigrated to NZ) America (govt) counts you (citizen) as okay with all this.

You don't have to swallow frogs Klein and Coates show that if you don't know what your core beliefs are, you're going to get played.

degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/you-don-t-...

The year politics became brainrot You don’t bring a persuasive argument to a gunfight.

"For Kirk and for much of society today, words are not expressions with referents, but rather, performative speech acts with specific functions — in his case, owning the libs."

holy moly, what a blog www.theverge.com/policy/84960...

2025: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience Enlightening the brain

Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike.

The 10th of these, would you believe?

This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more

Enjoy!

medium.com/the-spike/20...

Out here and reading, truly appreciate of your dive into constructor theory to start my day. In addition to the many great thinkers on this you’ve included, I would add Nick Lane, Karl Friston and Donald Hoffman.
Looking forward to checking out your other episodes.

And a Merry Christmas to you, you woke, gender confused, Marxist, Jeezuss hating feminazi! (Did I miss anything?)🙃🤓🎄

Arguing with friends and family around a large pole; ahhh, the spirit of Festivus!

You Are Not a Parrot And a chatbot is not a human. And a linguist named Emily M. Bender is very worried what will happen when we forget this.

Reading this exceptional piece from 2023 that goes hard on the distinction between words and meanings. This is *exceptional*.

nymag.com/intelligence...

Perhaps start by not deporting, demonizing, incarcerating and systematically disenfranchising huge swaths of the talent pool.

It’s a uniquely malevolent vampire that demands your bank details as it drains your life away. Don’t let it in.

Just leave.

Mapping the genetic landscape across 14 psychiatric disorders - Nature Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

Nature research paper: Mapping the genetic landscape across 14 psychiatric disorders

go.nature.com/3MoazOr

Action station, Louisa and Tory in in front of parli

Tory hongi Marama

Tory speaking at parliament

Marama, Julie Anne, Tamatha and Celia

Proud to stand with Louisa Wall, Marama Davidson, Rawiri Waititi and Green MPs as we delivered a 30k strong petition calling on the PM to bring his ministers into line. Whether it’s Seymour calling academics “deranged,” or Peters taking cheap shots at anyone who disagrees with him, it’s not ok.