Eddie Clark
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dreddieclark.bsky.social
Eddie Clark
@dreddieclark.bsky.social
Personal account so expect eclecticism. Law, politics, SFF books, anime, gaming, music. Queer stuff.

Day job = Administrative law and public law theory.
Pinned
Really feels today like everything is happening so much, so forgive me a #booksky metathread of book rec threads from me in my year on bluesky.

Maybe you'll find something to dive into if you, too, are finding things just a bit much at the moment.
Reposted by Eddie Clark
After two years following work toward this, I can finally report that more than 40 duty lawyers are taking industrial action over pay rates in January.
It’ll include 80 per cent of those in Auckland District Court.
Duty lawyers act for those charged with criminal offences who don’t have lawyers.
November 27, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
Page 27, a half-sentence reads "In addition, personnel expenses incurred by Health New Zealand were $0.5 billion lower than forecast..." It doesn't even rate its own sentence! 😠
www.treasury.govt.nz/publications...
Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the Year Ended 30 June 2025
Accessible version Only the Financial Statements Summary has been prepared in HTML.
www.treasury.govt.nz
November 27, 2025 at 2:40 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
The previously unknown gold, well mapped by prospectors who knew about it in the late 19th century:
November 26, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
I imagine most of the people trying to claim that stealing indie ebooks is leftism simply have never had to worry about paying rent or for groceries but sorry, your desire for free luxury goods is outweighed by the material needs of their creators
November 26, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
do we have a "most cursed/awful (hilarious) post of the year" award yet?
Imagining an intensely cursed alt-history timeline where the Axis powers won the war and people are by now using the term "Volkx" to try to be more intersectional
November 26, 2025 at 11:22 PM
I was excited by the premise and it pretty much wholly pulls it off. Beautifully written, too.
THE WOLF AND HIS KING, a retelling of Bisclavret focused on yearning, chronic illness feelings, and the mortifying ordeal of being known, comes out tomorrow! Which is to say, in about an hour! Or in two months if you live in North America, sorry.

finnlongman.com/books/the-wo...
PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS! Do not ask me how my writing is going.
November 26, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
Final week of pre-sales.

*𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐘*

3 lucky random people who order one of my calendars before xmas will receive a 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄 signed 11x17 Matt Print (Valued $75) in their parcel.

paullecomtephoto.nz/products/202...
Ok it's finally happening.

My Calendar 2026 is now available for pre-order. Printing by end of the month to allow for international shipping.

(sorry no international orders just yet, still setting that up).

So happy I could cry.

paullecomtephoto.nz/products/202...
November 24, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
This is a very good and important thread
THREAD.

3 years ago, with no warning, a brilliant orange farm cat wandered over from the draughty barn where he had been living, in rural Cornwall, and decided he wanted to live with us instead.

We decided to call him Jim.

This is the first photo I took of him, on that night: December 1st, 2022.
November 26, 2025 at 9:25 PM
One preliminary point worth noting on this - because it's pretty opaque if you're not a nerd - is that a public inquiry (which this is) has functionally exactly the same powers and independence that a Royal Commission does.

This is completely at arm's length to the government.
Inquiry into handling of the Tom Phillips case announced by government
The inquiry will look if the right steps were taken to ensure the welfare of the fugitive dad's children.
www.rnz.co.nz
November 26, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
The clues are in the coalition agreements: one is largely about getting the administrative state to deliver on its goals; the other leans more towards symbolic battles and using the House as its stage.
November 26, 2025 at 6:33 AM
Listening to music on shuffle as I edit some photos and man, I do like The War and Drugs but they're also an out and out Dire Straits tribute band lol.

Adam Granduciel is an American Mark Knopfler for millennials (mostly complimentary).
November 26, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
Just one of the many ways in which being an above-replacement-level lawyer means knowing what arguments not to make
Additionally, OpenAI argues its not liable because Raine, by using ChatGPT for self-harm, broke its terms of service
November 26, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
Useful ruling from the Ombudsman on an extension decision, which reinforces a number of points. Specifically:

* extensions cannot be used to cover staff absences. Organisations can't use their own administrative inefficiency to gain more time...
November 26, 2025 at 2:36 AM
Post your warning label (yes, I do own this t-shirt)
November 26, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
Today's Love Letter is a stunning meditation on birdwatching and the loss of a friendship, from the one and only @amalelmohtar.com

stone-soup.ghost.io/love-letter-...
Why I Need the Birds
A Love Letters Feature by Amal El-Mohtar - November 2025
stone-soup.ghost.io
November 25, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
I also people realise that if they love an author and want to keep reading their work, publishers will drop authors whose books are not selling and it’s probably destroying the midlist.
November 25, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Always a cursed time on book social media when the pro vs anti piracy discourse gets going. & always strikes me that the pro side - who actually have a point re US chauvinism & global availability/affordability & shareability - undermine their argument by fantasising straw man rich American authors.
November 25, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
1. A landmark study was just published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

It found a 68% reduction in suicidality for trans youth getting HRT.

It also found only 7 of more than 400 stopped taking HRT... and of those that did, 4 still identified as gender-diverse.

Transgender care saves lives.
Study In The Journal Of Pediatrics Finds Trans Youth Care Lowers Suicidality, Few Detransition
The groundbreaking study found that suicidality dropped for transgender youth receiving hormone therapy by nearly 70%, with only 7 patients of 432 discontinuing treatment.
www.erininthemorning.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
“The EU’s highest court has ruled that same-sex marriages must be respected throughout the bloc and rebuked Poland for refusing to recognise a marriage between two of its citizens that took place in Germany.”

Some welcome news today. 🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈
EU court rules entire bloc must respect same-sex marriages in rebuke to Poland
Couple who married in Germany had their right to a ‘normal family life’ impeded, court of justice finds
www.theguardian.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
Oh wow less than a month until Christmas, huh, wonder if anyone needs a recommendation for a really cool, fun, bright, informative, slightly geeky but very accessible, yes my partner wrote it that's how I know it's good, book that would make an excellent gift?
101 Board Games to Try Before You Die (Of Boredom)
Move Over, Monopoly! Find your new favorite board game with this incredible curated guide featuring the best releases from the 21st century. Whether you want to dive into board games as a new hobby, ...
www.paperplus.co.nz
November 25, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Says something about the way New Zealand politics has worked during my lifetime that there are *two* ready comparisons to this government's reckless hatchet job on the basic institutions of our society: the first terms of both the Lange and Bolger governments.
November 25, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Reposted by Eddie Clark
They're good pies Doug
* New Zealand takes pies (namely, handheld meat pies) so seriously that there are National Pie Awards that get major media coverage. The New Zealand National Library has a whole dedicated category for “Pies — Competitions.”

Pie.
November 25, 2025 at 6:09 AM
Just noting which consultancy wrote this report and the history of their reports for public agencies internationally. Anyone check the footnotes of this one?

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...
Hundreds of job cuts proposed in new report to Wellington City Council
Wellington City Council could save tens of millions of dollars through cost-cutting, such as reducing staff, according to a new report.
www.rnz.co.nz
November 25, 2025 at 1:21 AM
*Hell* yes. Yet again, if you've yet to read Astreiant, you should. And this is the great format to catch up with it.
#Booksky We’re doing our first
ebook set! THE COMPLETE ASTREIANT created by Melissa Scott @blueterraplane and Lisa A. Barnett, cover from @inkspiraldesign.bsky.social, is up for preorder now! Releases 12/15 (and it’s eligible for the Best Series Hugo!). queenofswordspress.com/product/comp...
November 24, 2025 at 8:14 PM
This seems to me blindingly obvious. And it's why it's *so* disappointing to me that some of my colleagues in tertiary education - and in primary and secondary - have turned to LLMs as a salve for our undoubtedly pressing workloads. Pushing these on students is a betrayal of our most basic mission.
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that one of the main impacts of LLMs is to disrupt thinking: to make it so that far too many people never properly learn how to do it, and then to control the output so there are thoughts that people never learn how to think.
November 24, 2025 at 6:47 PM