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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Idiot/Savant @norightturnnz.bsky.social · 8h

Today is a reminder that the next government will need to start its term with an Omnibus Repeal Bill, to revert all National's bullshit to the status quo ante pre 2023.

And if Labour won't commit to that, you should vote for parties who will.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 6h

Have been reading this history of 20 years of xenophobic gunboat diplomacy and massacre by psychopathic Portuguese as they kickstarted globalisation 500 years ago, and it’s maybe not the best prep for a trip to Portugal.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 1d

We do now!

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 1d

Yup, Grant is def Cooker-aligned.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 1d

Live tweeting the queue at Duck Island Ice Cream #Ōtautahi

Happy people waiting for ice cream on a lovely warm evening

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

Good on you mate!

Reposted by Mike Dickison

the Juice Media @thejuicemedia.com · 2d

The Government of New Zealand has made a new tourism ad and it's surprsingly honest and informative!

Honest Government Ad | Visit New Zealand!

YouTube video by thejuicemedia

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Idiot/Savant @norightturnnz.bsky.social · 2d

Current progress so far:

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 2d

It's #NautilusNight!⁣ The common name "paper nautilus" for the genus Argonauta comes from the Greek ναυτίλος nautílos, meaning "sailor". People once believed these octopuses used two of their arms as sails, as seen in this #SciArt from "Zoography" (1807) www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/54312693 🧪

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

Join me online in few minutes if you want to help with this.

Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

Here's how you can help make a book of 19th century fairy tales available for everyone to read for free.
Frances Brownes was a 19th century Irish poet ("the blind poetess of Donegal"), whose best-known work is Granny's Wonderful Chair, an 1857 fairytale collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances...

The only photo of Frances Browne, circa 1879

Frontispiece from the 1906 edition of Granny's Wonderful Chair, illustration by Dora Curtis.

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 2d

lede = introductory section in journalism

bury the lede = hiding the most relevant pieces of a story within other distracting information

Allegedly, it’s spelled ‘lede’ to avoid confusion with ‘lead,’ which was the strip of metal that would separate lines of type.

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

Here's how you can help make a book of 19th century fairy tales available for everyone to read for free.
Frances Brownes was a 19th century Irish poet ("the blind poetess of Donegal"), whose best-known work is Granny's Wonderful Chair, an 1857 fairytale collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances...

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

If you're on the OU campus, join @thneed.bsky.social in the library's seminar room 2 at 12:30, or me online at whereby.com/wikimeet at 11:30, for a quick Wikisource lesson so you can help with transcribing. We might be able to get the whole book done in time to share with the festival attendees.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

Why do this, when with a bit of sleuthing you can find multiple scanned editions online? Wikisource produces a nicely-formatted EPUB, which works with an eReader or screen reader—good if you're vision is impaired. And the out-of-copyright book and images can be freely shared and remixed.

Category:Granny's Wonderful Chair, and its Tales of Fairy Times (1857 1st ed.) - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

But @thneed.bsky.social and I thought it would be great if there was a transcribed, proofread version of the book's first edition available too. So I've set up a Wikisource crowdsourced editing project; anyone can help out. en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:G...

Granny's Wonderful Chair (1857) frontispiece by Kenny Meadows.

Granny's Wonderful Chair (1857) illustration by Kenny Meadows; frightened children, malevolent woman, cat, huge raven—hitting all the buttons here.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

There's now an annual Frances Browne literary festival in Ballybofey-Stranorlar, and Tom McLean, Professor of English at Otago, is over there at the moment to give a talk and run a workshop on writing a Wikipedia article about Granny's Wonderful Chair. www.francesbrowneliteraryfestival.com

Excerpt from programme: "A fascinating workshop with Professor Thomas McLean on how to find and use historical letters for research and writing inspiration." and "Learn how to update Wikipedia with local knowledge."

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 3d

Here's how you can help make a book of 19th century fairy tales available for everyone to read for free.
Frances Brownes was a 19th century Irish poet ("the blind poetess of Donegal"), whose best-known work is Granny's Wonderful Chair, an 1857 fairytale collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances...

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

ChrisP @wordsmithgetxo.bsky.social · 3d

In an old ad for board game Scattergories in Spain a player was shown flouncing out while anothet said “OK, we’ll accept ‘octopus’ as a pet”.
“Aceptamos pulpo” has now entered the language in the meaning of “that’s a bit of a stretch but let’s go with it just for the sake of argument”.

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Musical Chairs @musicalchairs.bsky.social · 13d

Looks like a good time in the news cycle to tackle three big myths 🧵
❌ NZ pension costs are an unsustainable burden ❌
Seriously, no, for lots of reasons.
1. Our current Govt spending on pensions is low compared to most other advanced economies. And... [1/n]

Graph of public pension costs as % of GDP for OECD countries in 2021 (latest data). NZ is lower quartile at around 5.1%. OECD average is 7.8%. Plenty of Euro countries are around 10% or above.

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Margaret Stanley @ecostanley.bsky.social · 4d

The remarkable rise of eBird – the world’s biggest citizen science project
theconversation.com/the-remarkab...

The remarkable rise of eBird – the world’s biggest citizen science project

In 2002, an online database was set up allowing birdwatchers to record their species observations. It is now a vast resource, shaping scientific research.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

Te Ara Paerangi Com - Research Advocacy Capability @te-ara-paerangi.community · 4d

We'd love to have a huge turn out for Nic's talk. Please help spread the word. There are downloadable pdf adverts in the link below. They can be emailed or printed. If you work in a public space (e.g. Library) you could help by printing and posting one of the flyers. Ngā mihi nui!

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Reposted by Mike Dickison

A/Prof Narrelle Morris @narrellemorris.bsky.social · 10d

This is one of the lesser known (but tragic) consequences of Gen AI. It’s not just about theft of IP, which is usually mentioned, it’s about damage to the information infrastructure of underfunded archives, libraries and museums etc. with long term consequences for them and for researchers.

Daryl Green @ilikeoldbooks.bsky.social · 10d

by the way, all those benign AI bots crawling the internet for for-profit LLMs, yeah it turns out when 9,000 hit your archive catalogue or image database all at once they break the system. This is an emerging sector issue.

The last weeks have literally seen humans labouring to feed the machines...

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 4d

It seems I cannot spell MilkMan’s intercap branding right, so here’s the correct version.

MilkMan business cards with canonical spelling.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 4d

I’ve already sung the praises of the Milk Man cheese scones, but they’ve just started doing amazing sausage rolls, $6.50 with a bit of spice, and handmade relish on a good day. I have sometimes had sausage rolls that are wider than they were long, and this is very much the opposite.

Huge sausage roll laden with flaky pastry shot using the Peter Jackson trademark forced perspective that made Gandalf look huge. But it is huge. With a little dish of tomato sauce which Ben apologised for.

Bonus, they seem to be hosting a Barista Battle 16 Oct 5:30 (although Mill Man is tiny and they can only fit about six people inside, so let’s hope it’s a sunny evening).

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 4d

Thank you for your service!