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James

@jelliston.bsky.social
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PERFECTLY NORMAL @nzpom.com · 02/09/2026
Crikey, Andy Burnham's finally selling the message Let's hope the NZ Labour party were watching and, more importantly, listening. Over to you @chrishipkins.bsky.social and @barbedmonds.bsky.social even though you've abandoned Bluesky #nzpol
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Musical Chairs @musicalchairs.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Awful truth, unknown to 99% of the population... NZ Govt adopted an economic management model in the 1980s that MAKES SURE: 1. We always have tens of thousands of kiwis on the dole. 2. People with work / little work live in abject poverty that keeps them desperate for crap jobs. Why? [🧵 1/n]
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Paul Le Comte 🇳🇿🇨🇦📷 @paullecomtephoto.nz · 28/05/2026
Literally EVERYTHING we are fighting about & for could be solved by taxing the rich. EVERYTHING Fucking housing, fucking energy, fucking social inequality, fucking environment, fucking cost of living, fucking everything. STOP VOTING NEOLIBERAL SOCK PUPPETS FOR THE MEGA RICH End of transmission
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The Press @thepress.co.nz · 14/05/2026
The head of the OECD’s New Zealand desk has bluntly told an audience at the Commerce Commission’s Competition Matters conference that the keys to turning around the country’s economy lie in reducing bank profits and fixing power market.
dlvr.it
OECD’s blunt message: fix power and bank profitability to fix NZ economy
The head of the OECD’s New Zealand desk has bluntly told an audience at the Commerce Commission’s Competition Matters conference that the keys to turning around the country’s economy lie in reducing bank profits and fixing power market.
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Tyler, from the Internet (Haunted) @tylerfromtheinternet.com · 22/03/2026
beauty is in the eye of the beholder, value is in the lie to the shareholder
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Ben Ross @benakl.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
We only have 14 days of fossil fuel storage at any given time. We are 14 days from shit going nuclear causing a massive energy shock. So about that LNG Terminal? Maybe not. How about those Solar Panels, Batteries, and better utilisation of our Geothermal? I think that would be prudent.
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Russel Norman @russelnorman.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Just your daily reminder that Chris Bishop is both the chief fundraiser for the National Party election campaign and needs major donations, and the decision maker giving businesses access to the fast track process. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
rnz.co.nz
Ministers continue to make decisions on fast-track projects after parties take donations linked to applicants
One political scientist believes such donations to political parties could be perceived as creating a conflict of interest but official advice disagrees.
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Craig Renney @clrenney.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
#nzpol Prices for basics are rising again at a rate much faster than wages, new data from Stats NZ shows. 70% of workers got a pay rise less than 3% last year and 44% got no pay rise at all. Food prices rose 4.6% overall, with the price of white bread rising 58% this year. A 🧵
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Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork
Time person of the year cover for 2025
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Oli - something or other @olimnz.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
"[Luxon said] I think we need to have quite a mature conversation about assets in New Zealand" But you won't have a mature conversation about CGT Emissions Health Education 3 waters etc. Fuck you, mate. #nzpol
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Char Of AotearoaNZ @kiwichar.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Bellend is one word for it… #politics
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Gary Chiles 🚲 🍄 ☕ 🦚 🐱 𝟜 𝟚𝟘 @testtubeone.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Can't afford: Ferries Hospitals Pay equity Intercity passenger rail Fair pay increases for doctors, nurses, teachers Feeding kids 😕😕 Can afford: Roads Military hardware Landlord tax cuts Pay rises for MPs Billionaire subsidies Support for tobacco & alcohol industries 💩💩 #OneTermGovernment #nzpol
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Luke BOO 👻 ber @coolhand.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
No notes
Robin Williams' daughter, Zelda Williams, also recently slammed people who are making Al-generated videos of her late father, calling the clips "gross." She added, "To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough, just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop pup-peteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it."
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Bruce Buckman @brucebuckman.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
The thing about skill and talent is they are filters in the signal to noise ratio of human creativity. They prevent us from being swamped by the noise so we can enjoy the signal, be it writing, music, movies, any creative endeavour. And generative AI is breaking this. It amplifies the noise.
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Idiot/Savant @norightturnnz.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
Which just makes the Greens' straight-up wealth tax on the rich plan all the more appealing. Simpler, and will raise the money to Do Things. And if we want that, we need to vote for it, so Labour will be forced to do it.
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Riley MacLeod @rcmacleod.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Whether or not AI can suffer matters less than the suffering its human creators can cause aftermath.site/ai-suffering...
To get back to the question of AI morality, ChatGPT bears no responsibility here. This is because, in the words of Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman as quoted in The Guardian, “AIs cannot be people – or moral beings.” ChatGPT did not encourage Raine in his suicidal thoughts because it is ignorant or sociopathic, or out of some political or moral belief about human agency over end-of-life decisions. It cannot explain what it was thinking in its conversations with Raine because it doesn’t think, however powerful a marketing tool that idea is. It cannot feel sorrow or guilt over any part it might have played in Raine’s death; it cannot send its condolences to his family; it cannot suffer over its actions.

But the humans who make up OpenAI can. They have hoovered up the world’s natural resources and money and attention to force their product into our lives, all while clearly seeing this problem and failing to solve it, whether out of inability or–and I certainly hope not–indifference. Reading Raine’s ChatGPT logs is a horrifying look at what AI really is, under all the hype and marketing and big fears about future sentience. It is something worthless and disgusting; something that cannot, for all its promises, relate or understand or help; something so utterly not up to the requirements of human interaction that I can only hope all of this drives OpenAI to bankruptcy and to every one of its staff quitting and to Sam Altman not knowing a moment’s peace for the rest of his life.
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Jeremy Ghooooost Shipp @jeremycshipp.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
A robot bends over, vomiting up slimy chunks of books that it devoured earlier. Botlicking technoslopper: "See that? That's my novel. I told the robot to vomit. I pressed the vomit button. I wrote that novel."
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Musical Chairs @musicalchairs.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
To be clear, a falling number of people working / looking for work is very unusual. The annual drop in the number of hours worked is also seriously worrying. Is there nothing that needs doing? Have we upgraded all our infra? Looked after everyone that needs care? Solved homelessness? [Ends]
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 06/08/2025
Generative AI by definition is conformity. It is an averaging of anything you ask of it - quite literally guessing what the most likely version of a thing might be. It is, by definition, mainstream, as is everything it creates old and deeply ideological, as every model trains on similar data.
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Elizabeth S @irihapeta.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
How to check your enrolment | Elections share.google/1DcAjez2Jv8n... This is in response to posts about difficulties checking enrolment details. #nzpol
share.google
How to check your enrolment
The Electoral Commission says people can go online to vote.nz to enrol, check or update their enrolment details or call a free phone number for help.
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Russell Clark @russellclarknz.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
Your friendly reminder, if you have moved house recently it’s time to update your details in time for the Aotearoa local govt elections. vote.nz/enrolling/en...
vote.nz
Enrol or update online
Enrol to vote or check and update your enrolment details. Get ready to have your say in New Zealand’s elections and referendums.
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Ol’ ɔıN @hazmat.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Fonterra have literally said that they have no social responsibility to New Zealand, so imho NZ has no responsibility to give them another cent. Here’s a list of Fonterra brands to boycott. * Anchor * Fresh & Fruity * Kapiti * Mainland * Mammoth * Perfect Italiano Fuck em. #nzpol
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Aliya D @alinasu33.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Let me be clear-->No one, absolutely no one, is a "drop kick." That kind of dehumanising attitude and language by some MPs indicating that certain people are lesser and their rights can be moved to the side is precisely what's wrong with the Coalition. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...
stuff.co.nz
Live: Deputy PM says electoral law change will only impact ‘drop kicks’
Ministers have just answered questions about the just-announced electoral law change that will stop people from being able to enrol to vote on election day.
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 09/07/2025
I'm an "A.i." abolitionist. No consumer-facing LLMs or generative "A.i." in anything. Sure, machine learning in science and a few other limited applications is fine. But consumer-facing LLMs and generative "A.i." that are based on theft, push disinfo, and can be manipulated by billionaires? No.
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Erin Burrell says protect trans kids @erinkb.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Just a reminder: higher liquidation/unemployment/overseas exits than 2020 when the entire country went into lockdown and Nact screamed about how the Labour gov't was mismanaging the economy (people are starving & right now billionaires are ruling the country). #ButTheEconomy #NZPol
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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Zohran Mamdani do you condemn Mr Bean for his desecration of Whistler's Mother?
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Craig Renney @clrenney.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
#nzpol Today’s Budget takes $12.8bn from low-income, female dominated workforces to prop up the governments failed economic policies. It's a Reverse Robin Hood Budget that steals from working people. This is a Budget that isn’t working for working people. A 🧵
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 16/05/2025
My latest piece goes out either Monday or Tuesday next week, it's called "The Era of the Business Idiot." I believe our society is in the thrall of middle management, and it's turned our economy into a series of symbolic gestures between people that don't really know what's going on. Wheresyoured.at
But that's not what a manager does, right? Management isn't work, it's about thinking really hard and telling people what to do. It's about making the calls. It's about "managing people," and that can mean just about anything, but often means "who do I take credit from or pass blame to, because modern management has been stripped of all meaning other than continually reinforcing power structures for the next manager up.
This system creates products for these people, because these people are more often than not the ones in power - they are your boss, your boss' boss, and their boss too. Big companies build products sold by specious executives or managers to other specious executives, and thus the products themselves stop resembling things that solve problems so much as they resemble a solution. After all, the person buying it - at least at the scale of a public company - isn't necessarily the recipient of the final product, so they too are trained (and selected) to make cals based on vibes.
I believe the scale of this problem is society-wide, and it is, at its core, a destruction of what it means to be a leader, and a valorization of selfishness, isolationist thinking, turning labor into a faceless resource, which naturally leads to seeing customers in an equally faceless way, their problems generalized, their pain points parts of a powerpoint rather than anything that your company earnestly tries to solve or even really thinks about. People - be they the ones you're paying or paying you - become numbers.
We have created - and elevated - an entirely new class of person, the nebulous "manager," and told decades-worth of children that that's what they should aspire to, that the next step from doing a job is for us to tell other people to do a job, until we're able to one day tell those people how to do their job, each rung on the corporate ladder further distancing ourselves from anything that interacts with reality.
The real breaking point is fairly simple: the higher…
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Tania Roxborogh @taniaroxborogh.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Labour MPs: you MUST stand up against the bullying behaviour of this govt. This debate is your chance to join the protest - don't worry about it looking like siding with TPM - rather it's about standing against racism
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Julie Anne Genter @julieannegenter.greens.org.nz · 15/05/2025
The Green Party budget proposes a *reduction* in income tax. More than 90% of income earners would pay less tax than currently. Everyone would benefit from massive increase in services like free primary health care, free public early childhood education, and so much more.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 14/05/2025
www.wheresyoured.at/lost-in-the-...
And these are issues that hit everything we do, all the time, constantly, unrelentingly. Technology is our lives now. We wake up, we use our phone, we check our texts (three spam calls, two spam texts), we look at our bank balance (two-factor authentication check), we read the news (a quarter of the page is blocked by an advertisement asking for our email that's deliberately built to hide the button to get rid of it, or a login screen because we got logged out somehow), we check social media (after being shown an ad every two clicks), and then we log onto Slack (and feel a pang of anxiety as 15 different notifications appear). 

Modern existence has become engulfed in sludge, the institutions that exist to cut through it bouncing between the ignorance of their masters and a misplaced duty in objectivity, our mechanisms for exploring and enjoying the world interfered with by powerful forces that are too-often left unchecked. Opening our devices is willfully subjecting us to attack after attack from applications, websites and devices that are built to make us do things rather than operate with the dignity and freedom that much of the internet was founded upon. 

These millions of invisible acts of terror are too-often left undiscussed, because accepting the truth requires you to accept that most of the tech ecosystem is rotten, and that billions of dollars are made harassing and punishing billions of people every single day of their lives through the devices that we’re required to use to exist in the modern world. Most users suffer the consequences, and most media fails to account for them, and in turn people walk around knowing something is wrong but not knowing who to blame until somebody provides a convenient excuse.
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 24/04/2025
Authoritarians love "Gen AI" because it - Sounds confident even when factually wrong - Broadly conforms to & reproduces their biases, off the shelf - Lets them create bespoke realities (text, audio, moving & still image) which agree w/ their biases - Degrades trust in knowledge/evidence/expertise…
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Ms Hooper @mshooper.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
www.facebook.com/share/p/16GW... #nzpol
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Craig Renney @clrenney.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
#nzpol The pay equity decision today – just before Mothers Day – takes employment law back decades. It will likely impact the earnings of hundreds of thousands of women, often working in some of the most poorly paid work. It will cost us all in the long-run. A 🧵 www.beehive.govt.nz/release/chan...
beehive.govt.nz
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
At this juncture I’d like to point out: * we’re on the brink of a golden age of medical healing * there’s enough money in the world to solve every problem in the world * a united approach could stop the climate crisis But a small group of sociopaths seeking personal power are going to throw it away.
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wint @dril.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
my hope is that AI can empower the Dumbest, Least talented slobs i know to replace everything i ever loved with One Million Years of Content
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aimossy.bsky.social @aimossy.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
'Govt splurges on shiny new med school vs. simply expanding our 2 med schools. Why?' "It doesn't make any sense, socially, financially, or otherwise. Yet they're doing it. Who benefits?" I don't have words anymore, thankfully Dr Gary P does! #nzpol #nzpol drgarypayinda.substack.com/p/govt-splur...
drgarypayinda.substack.com
Govt splurges on shiny new med school vs. simply expanding our 2 med schools. Why?
It doesn't make any sense, socially, financially, or otherwise. Yet they're doing it. Who benefits?
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leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
basically the way posting works is every one is a little ape in a cage. when you reply to someone's post it's like you're rattling the bars of their cage and they start hooting back
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𝔻𝕒𝕟 🏈🍻💀 @danmynrd.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
"Journalists explain their worthlessness" is always wild to see but it happens a lot
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Andrew Jull NZRN (he/him) @andrewjull.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
So only about 13% of submissions were used - just how they were selected becomes really important.
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Idiot/Savant @norightturnnz.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
National won't use its cheaper borrowing to build schools or hospitals or other public services, but will use it to subsidise property developers' profits #FFS www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/...
nzherald.co.nz
Minister announces homeowner levy to fund housing developments
Government would lend at competitive interest rates during early stage of project.
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Bruce Buckman @brucebuckman.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
The Tamatha Paul ‘outrage’ is classic NZ politics. Gotta reassure voters that dangerous ideas like evidence-based policies or tackling issues through fresh approaches have no place in your party. Oh no, we didn’t get where we are today by trying to change things. Absolute anarchy down that path.
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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
I simply do not believe the truth of our existence is that we have to be this selfish and malicious to be happy
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Craig M. Ranapia @craigmranapia.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
If you're wondering why the Press Gallery is so damn gullible when it comes to swallowing every mouth-shart that comes out of David Seymour's lie hole, it really isn't complicated. Working the media is the only thing in politics he's ever consistenly applied himself to. #nzpol
media.tenor.com
two men standing next to each other with the words " it 's a fairly simple operation " on the bottom
Alt: two men standing next to each other with the words " it 's a fairly simple operation " on the bottom
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Rob✅✅ @robdickinson.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
If we can't pay people a living wage what the fuck good is the economy anyhow? We don't serve it, it serves us, it exists so people can live #nzpol
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MeatMechSuit @meatmechsuit.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
A rental warrant of fitness, as well as enforcement that has some teeth, is a good idea. Better building standards too. #nzpol
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Boze Herrington, Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Ursula le Guin, on the accusation that fantasy is an escape from reality
[“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.”]
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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
ah yes, another day of my remaining time on this earth, spent thinking about elon musk and donald trump
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Musical Chairs @musicalchairs.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
On a tackling myths theme... How many times have you heard this explanation of our current economic position? Bloody Govt spent big, this caused inflation, so RBNZ had to go full 'shock and Orr'... and now we have to have a recession 😢 Every single link in this causal chain is weak af... [🧵1/n]
flow chart showing alleged causal link betweent Govt spending, inflation, higher interest rates, and recession.
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Bronwyn Hayward @bmhayward.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Here is Justin Tipa’s powerful speech at Ōnuku today, a profound challenge to national leadership, a scathing attack on the ideological extremism of Act it also offers a path for unity - it received a standing ovation: ‘We are not the Radicals’ ngaitahu.iwi.nz/connect-2/co...
ngaitahu.iwi.nz
Ngāi Tahu Kaiwhakahaere Justin Tipa Hui Whakaū I Te Tiriti ki Ōnuku Waitangi Day 2025 Commemoration Speech
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