Erik Kennedy
@erikkennedy.com
Poet behind beloved classics like 'Sick Power Trip' (2025) and 'Another Beautiful Day Indoors' (2022), @thwupbooks.bsky.social. Leading voice of millennial vegan socialist cat-fancying indie pop kids.
📍 Ōtautahi Christchurch
http://www.erikkennedy.com
📍 Ōtautahi Christchurch
http://www.erikkennedy.com
Pinned
Erik Kennedy
@erikkennedy.com
· Jun 20
Not long now, and this big-budget trailer is proof of that.
'Sick Power Trip' hits shelves on 10 July.
teherengawakapress.co.nz/sick-power-t...
'Sick Power Trip' hits shelves on 10 July.
teherengawakapress.co.nz/sick-power-t...
Attacking a treaty ally will be illegal (and stupid) even if Congress authorises it.
January 12, 2026 at 6:50 AM
Attacking a treaty ally will be illegal (and stupid) even if Congress authorises it.
The idea that people will learn to think in the wrong order (starting with certainty built on nothing, rather than moving from uncertainty to confidence) is interesting, unsettling.
www.businessinsider.com/ai-human-int...
www.businessinsider.com/ai-human-int...
AI isn't making us smarter — it's training us to think backward, an innovation theorist says
Innovation theorist John Nosta said AI's polished responses can erode human reasoning at work by creating confidence without understanding.
www.businessinsider.com
January 12, 2026 at 6:45 AM
The idea that people will learn to think in the wrong order (starting with certainty built on nothing, rather than moving from uncertainty to confidence) is interesting, unsettling.
www.businessinsider.com/ai-human-int...
www.businessinsider.com/ai-human-int...
Is that what this man did?
January 12, 2026 at 12:36 AM
Is that what this man did?
If only! This just results in a lot of shops not accepting SNAP anymore.
January 11, 2026 at 8:01 PM
If only! This just results in a lot of shops not accepting SNAP anymore.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
A *very* weird statement by Tracey Whiting announcing her resignation as chair of the Adelaide Festival board.
January 11, 2026 at 11:29 AM
A *very* weird statement by Tracey Whiting announcing her resignation as chair of the Adelaide Festival board.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
Badenoch is fascinating. So busy fighting culture wars online that she considers the very real potential for the break-up of the military alliance on which the UK relies for security to be a fringe issue.
Kemi Badenoch describes Greenland as a “second-order issue” in BBC interview.
The US threatening to annex a Nato territory is anything but that.
The US threatening to annex a Nato territory is anything but that.
January 11, 2026 at 9:19 AM
Badenoch is fascinating. So busy fighting culture wars online that she considers the very real potential for the break-up of the military alliance on which the UK relies for security to be a fringe issue.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
This debacle is getting worse, not better. The ABC has just confirmed that the Chair of the board, Tracy Whiting, has also stepped down, meaning half the board is now gone and there isn’t enough remaining to form a quorum. What a total disgrace.
January 11, 2026 at 9:34 AM
This debacle is getting worse, not better. The ABC has just confirmed that the Chair of the board, Tracy Whiting, has also stepped down, meaning half the board is now gone and there isn’t enough remaining to form a quorum. What a total disgrace.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
January 11, 2026 at 8:37 AM
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
It’s gonna be hard to top this one folks
If women quit X because of Grok’s deepfake nudes, the predators win – so I’m staying
If women quit X because of Grok’s deepfake nudes, the predators win – so I’m staying
If women quit X because of Grok’s deepfake nudes, the predators win – so I’m staying
www.independent.co.uk
January 10, 2026 at 4:05 PM
It’s gonna be hard to top this one folks
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
"In some cases, jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet outputs entire books near-verbatim ... Taken together, our work highlights that, even with model- and system-level safeguards, extraction of (in-copyright) training data remains a risk for production LLMs."
arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671
arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671
Extracting books from production language models
Many unresolved legal questions over LLMs and copyright center on memorization: whether specific training data have been encoded in the model's weights during training, and whether those memorized dat...
arxiv.org
January 10, 2026 at 6:53 PM
"In some cases, jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet outputs entire books near-verbatim ... Taken together, our work highlights that, even with model- and system-level safeguards, extraction of (in-copyright) training data remains a risk for production LLMs."
arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671
arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
TECHNLGY/BIGCHIP.GIF
January 9, 2026 at 2:20 AM
TECHNLGY/BIGCHIP.GIF
I wondered if I was imagining seeing signs of smoke in Ōtautahi. Your pic is a lot less ambiguous.
January 10, 2026 at 8:07 AM
I wondered if I was imagining seeing signs of smoke in Ōtautahi. Your pic is a lot less ambiguous.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
“The wrong ICE is melting, the wrong Amazon is burning.”
(Written on the back of a frozen pizza box)
(Written on the back of a frozen pizza box)
January 9, 2026 at 3:03 AM
“The wrong ICE is melting, the wrong Amazon is burning.”
(Written on the back of a frozen pizza box)
(Written on the back of a frozen pizza box)
Oh, it will absolutely screw up. No question.
January 10, 2026 at 6:26 AM
Oh, it will absolutely screw up. No question.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
Six years and five days ago, we watched the skies change over Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland in a matter of hours, due to the incoming smoke from the Australian bushfires… it was so ominous, in every way.
January 10, 2026 at 4:34 AM
Six years and five days ago, we watched the skies change over Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland in a matter of hours, due to the incoming smoke from the Australian bushfires… it was so ominous, in every way.
'It speaks of a crisis in our hollowed-out democracy in which our politicians no longer have either the courage or judgment to recognise what are the appropriate spheres for their own influence.'
www.smh.com.au/national/pol...
www.smh.com.au/national/pol...
Politicians shouldn’t decide who appears at writers’ festivals. It’s a dangerous path
Australia’s best writers festival could collapse within days as international and local writers boycott it in protest at the removal of Randa Abdel-Fattah.
www.smh.com.au
January 10, 2026 at 5:04 AM
'It speaks of a crisis in our hollowed-out democracy in which our politicians no longer have either the courage or judgment to recognise what are the appropriate spheres for their own influence.'
www.smh.com.au/national/pol...
www.smh.com.au/national/pol...
The quoted sentence is simply nonsense.
January 10, 2026 at 4:49 AM
The quoted sentence is simply nonsense.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
“Wednesday, 21st January will see the first scheduled passenger train arriving in Waihopai/ Invercargill since the demise of the Southerner in 2002. This will be a Mainlander train from Ōtepoti/ Dunedin returning to Dunedin the following day.” 🎉🥳
My latest blog post looks at what’s in store for public transport in Te Waipounamu/ South Island in 2026. Read on for more:
open.substack.com/pub/adventur...
open.substack.com/pub/adventur...
What's coming up in the South Island in 2026
While the opening of City Rail Link in Auckland is likely the biggest public transport story of the year, there's lots more coming up across the motu. Read on for part 1 on the South Island.
open.substack.com
January 10, 2026 at 4:45 AM
“Wednesday, 21st January will see the first scheduled passenger train arriving in Waihopai/ Invercargill since the demise of the Southerner in 2002. This will be a Mainlander train from Ōtepoti/ Dunedin returning to Dunedin the following day.” 🎉🥳
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
The Adelaide Writers Festival now wrecked by the Adelaide Festival Board, half of which was appointed late last year: a marketing executive; a former politician; a local councillor/real estate agent; an airport manager; a lawyer; a media consultant; and a banker. Another public arts takeover fiasco.
January 10, 2026 at 12:11 AM
The Adelaide Writers Festival now wrecked by the Adelaide Festival Board, half of which was appointed late last year: a marketing executive; a former politician; a local councillor/real estate agent; an airport manager; a lawyer; a media consultant; and a banker. Another public arts takeover fiasco.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
I don’t think we should have ceded control quite so quickly and without so much as a fight.
January 10, 2026 at 2:52 AM
I don’t think we should have ceded control quite so quickly and without so much as a fight.
Reposted by Erik Kennedy
Seaweed farms boost long-term carbon storage by altering ocean chemistry, study shows
phys.org/news/2026-01...
phys.org/news/2026-01...
Seaweed farms boost long-term carbon storage by altering ocean chemistry, study shows
Seaweeds are versatile algae. They are sources of food, medicine, and many other products, and they have the added benefit of being extremely efficient at removing CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow...
phys.org
January 10, 2026 at 2:16 AM
Seaweed farms boost long-term carbon storage by altering ocean chemistry, study shows
phys.org/news/2026-01...
phys.org/news/2026-01...