Category: Uncategorized


  • If we are serious about the economy, building a better future, we need to own up, acknowledge and address division. Division is economically and socially corrosive. The battles include young vs old, homeowner vs those aspiring, haves vs have-nots, landlord vs renter, rural vs urban, Māori vs non-Māori, respect/disrespect for the law and business owners…


  • America is a naval empire. It, like the old British empire, rests on being able to keep the shipping lines open and on using naval power (and air power) to hurt nations while those nations can’t fight back. In the 19th century the Brits would park ironclads off the coast and just pound cities, and…


  • In New Zealand it’s the TPU (all their astro-turf-one-person-PR-pimping sock puppets)…


  • Getting to town planning and Ballardian milieus this quickly is unusual. Crypto for example, despite being 4 years older (the Satoshi Moment was 2008) seems to have been stuck in a late Settler/Lovecraftian phase for the last few years. It is struggling to switch gears to town planning and Ballardian banality. https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/a-map-for-ai-town-planners-2024-29


  • In forming the new Government, the National Party forged alliances with smaller, more extreme parties intent on amplifying their power, entering dangerous territory.  With its immoderate attacks on the media, te reo, women and the environment, New Zealand First plays upon ethnic, gender and rural-urban polarities to increase its influence far beyond its 6 percent…


  • As a result of the recent ITV dramatisation, the UK Post Office Scandal is finally front page news in our country. But this monstrous tale of corporate arrogance and cruelty has actually been going on for years. ‘I Did Nothing Wrong’ is from our new album ‘Unbroken’, which will be released on Jan 26th, but…


  • NASA’s team has finally managed to pry off the last two stuck fasteners on the container that holds some incredibly valuable stuff: materials the agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sampled from asteroid Bennu, over 100 million miles away. The samples, tucked inside a special landing capsule, were dropped off in the Utah desert in September. The treasure was quickly delivered to a special…


  • Low power longevity FTW… thou this whiffs on unintended consequences HARD. Chinese company Betavolt has announced an atomic energy battery for consumers with a touted 50-year lifespan. The Betavolt BV100 will be the first product to launch using the firm’s new atomic battery technology, constructed using a nickel-63 isotope and diamond semiconductor material. Betavolt says its nuclear battery will…


  • I use Chat GPT daily as a software engineer and love it… but this gets a HARD FUCK NO. Up until January 10, OpenAI’s “usage policies” page included a ban on “activity that has high risk of physical harm, including,” specifically, “weapons development” and “military and warfare.” That plainly worded prohibition against military applications would seemingly rule…


  • The Cult of Mac

    Apple’s most valuable intangible asset isn’t its patents or copyrights – it’s an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple’s shareholders.