Russell Brown

We tend to forget how much WW2 was still part of the culture back then. And yes, Sunday drives – and stopping at roadside produce stalls on the way back. I carried that through to our family life: drive out to Muriwai, then fruit and veges on the way home.

This is (a) a clever idea, and (b) quite freaky

Reminder that juror fees have not been increased since 2004 (yes 21 years ago). The maximum payable is $127 for more than 3 hours and beyond 9 pm.

The usual daily rate is $62 for more than 3 hours but not beyond 6 pm.

Jury duty is obviously nowhere near as important as being on a board.

Dude. We're only supposed to discuss those things IN CODE.

That's great. And what a cool location!

And I think that's enough on this topic for a while, but I'm glad these thoughts have resonated with people, and maybe helped someone a bit. Have a good day.

"Perhaps the new normal is, if not yet here, now visible on the horizon. To anyone else who finds themselves shockingly trudging towards that horizon, the advice I would offer is the advice I got. There are good days and bad days. Also, you're doing well."

"The decades Fiona and I spent together remain part of the sum of my experiences, yet they are receding. The thought still shocks me.
No, you can't reflect your way out of it, but reflection has value. At any rate, I've never been good at not thinking.

"And then our brains note that the world is not as predicted and accordingly adjust the connections between neurons that form our idea of the world and ourselves. It feels like a blur because we're rewriting ourselves in light of a new reality and new expectations.

"It was a comforting belief, as if nothing had really changed, but in truth, everything had. To expect otherwise would be to invite what the neuropsychologists call a prediction error – yet that's what we do.

"Those expectations, which may span our entire sense of ourselves, are based on the sum of all our experiences, material and emotional. For a few weeks after Fiona died, it was possible to believe she was still there, reliably written into my brain, available for reference.

"In neuroscience, the theory of predictive coding, which developed as a way of explaining visual perception, holds that our experience of what the world sends at us is mostly a set of models about what we *expect* to experience.

"It's six months since Fiona died and the time is a blur, as if it all happened to someone else. In some sense, it did.

Because I'm a nerd, I've been fretting that I didn't quite get the wording right about what I think happens in our brains when we grieve. I've tweaked that part of the column, added a bit and edited it down to the following. I did say I'm a nerd ...

🧵My last column in the Listener has had quite a response, including letters from readers like the one below. I wondered at one point whether I should even be writing it, so the fact that it's struck a chord with people is great.

How lucky are we to have reached such a range of awesome feminists! The amazing Fiona, AND Metallica. 😇

‘Chaotic and indecisive’: key findings of report on UK’s Covid response under Tories Second pandemic report focuses on decision-making, organisation and messaging by senior politicians including Boris Johnson

I'll just note this inquiry has noted that with 20/20 hindsight the UK should have acted... pretty much exactly as New Zealand did.

Which a good portion of NZ's media and political class have spent 5 revisionist years trying to paint as an overreaction. Overwhelmingly, it wasn't.

My late partner Fiona left $5000 to Auckland's Women's Centre in her will – they were so grateful when I let them know. She was definitely not a Metallica fan, but she'd have liked this.

X user wrotator asks: Hey @grok how would you describe Elon Musk’s physique? How about his mind? And his relationship with his kids?

*laughs in historian* “… ranks among the 10 minds in history, rivalling polymaths like da Vinci or Newton…”

Reading @marcdaalder.bsky.social 's big analysis of the Boston Consulting Group electricity sector report, and I think this is the money quote. we are already driving gas out of the electricity sector, which will mean lower power prices.

"The negative has not been proven ergo…" An argument that would cause you to fail a first-year logic class.

Exactly.

It would very much appear not.

Covid Inquiry hit by yet another top-level resignation Inquiry boss quits only months into the job - the second executive director to resign this year

Everything ok at the Covid Inquiry?

I remain of the view that the key issue here is that the government could not use Transport funding to build a footbridge everyone wanted, ministers included, because the same government has deliberately made that impossible. It's a point Audrey Young completely misses.

Loomer has since deleted this reply and replaced it with several pretending she understood the joke, which somehow makes it all even more embarrassing.

As Matt notes, "even [Bishop's] suggestion that some of them could be 20 years away from getting started is an obviously a massive walkback". I do wonder if this is the start of them backing away from Simeon Brown's fantasies.

Minister admits RoNS reality is biting – and hard - Greater Auckland “Whatever the problem, build another road” has been a hallmark of policy from the current government. And we’ve long suggested that is simply not affordable or practical – including just

Matt @greaterauckland.bsky.social drills down on Chris Bishop's speech about how expensive all the mega-roads his government keeps promising will be. If they ever get built. www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2025/11/20/m...

"There are accidents that will happen. What I'm wanting to focus on is, how do I improve the overall economy and the situation that businesses and workers find themselves in?" - Van Velden. #PikeRiver