Max Soar
maxsoar.bsky.social
Max Soar
@maxsoar.bsky.social
interdisciplinary/undisciplined | Pākehā | he/him

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7509-7861
Reposted by Max Soar
this is almost certainly connected directly to NZ integration into US military industry and imperial power projection and it’s fucking insane that we get hysterical red scare “reporting” about chinese aggression while this overtly evil corruption gets almost zero interrogation or critique
📢 The new rules will "provide clearer pathways for the sector to test, trial, and grow", says Space Minister Judith Collins.
Govt cuts red tape for businesses developing new drones
www.rnz.co.nz
November 26, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
Hey you can hire me to tell you not to hire management consultants for half the cost of hiring a management consultant and you’ll save money
November 25, 2025 at 9:37 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
"It is against the TOS to be talked into suicide by our LLM" is possibly the most evil tech bro thing I've ever read
Additionally, OpenAI argues its not liable because Raine, by using ChatGPT for self-harm, broke its terms of service
November 26, 2025 at 12:29 AM
"The Deloitte report made note that the council should make more use of AI for tasks such as triaging general enquiries from the public, creating reporting on project management and automate workflows."

How about fuck off? Deloitte dragging is down to their level.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...
Deloitte report suggests Wellington City Council has 330 more staff than it should
PSA says analysis from Deloitte, which cost $435k, lacks a basic understanding of what the Council's role is.
www.rnz.co.nz
November 25, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
University among nation’s first institutions to partner with serial arsonist on fire safety programs.
University of Kentucky among nation’s 1st institutions to partner with Microsoft on responsible AI innovation
The University of Kentucky and Microsoft have formed a strategic partnership to advance the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) and strengthen learning, innovation and care across the Comm...
uknow.uky.edu
November 25, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
NZ has had two major reforms of subnational government so far: 1876 and 1989

As the guy who literally wrote a book on the demise of that first system, *and* as someone who generally supports more unitary authorities, my considered opinion is that this proposal is completely insane
No more regional councils - major shake-up of local government announced
The government says it is not a power grab, but about "making local government fit for purpose".
www.rnz.co.nz
November 25, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
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
Reposted by Max Soar
Regardless of kayfabe comms and Nat equivocation in media, ACT always says the thing to its red-faced griefer audience
November 25, 2025 at 6:08 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
National week of action to bring the public’s attention to boycotting SodaStream

#NZPol
November 25, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
That every comment in this article is supportive of trans kids right to access puberty blockers tells you everything you need to know. In the medical community, this isn’t even a debate. No one thinks a ban is right.
November 21, 2025 at 5:11 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
y'know, if tech companies weren't so fired up to call every single thing "AI" it would be a lot easier to distinguish "ML spam filter that is well-sandboxed and tuned on your emails" from "giant context and IP-eroding foundation model that makes people paranoid and unhappy"
since the "google is now training gemini on your email contents" thing keeps bumping around here: it's _not happening_. I say this not to defend google but because I know a lot of people that have broken their filtering and made their lives much more annoying from sheer misinformation.
The malwarebytes Google opting-your-emails-into-ai-training thing is not true. The post is based on one bad tweet.

I know anti-tech lamenting is a Bluesky core principle, but please use the same judgement you would for any other clickbait.

www.theverge.com/news/826902/...
November 23, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
from government by consultant to government by consultants using generative AI.

decades of degrading government capacity to actually govern has left it open to further degradation through ai hype and perceptions it enables further cost cutting.
Major N.L. healthcare report contains errors likely generated by A.I. – The Independent
$1.6 million Health Human Resources Plan from Deloitte cites research papers that don’t exist, making it the second major government policy paper called into question in as many months
theindependent.ca
November 22, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
omg they made Jeffrey Epstein Inbox Simulator '25 jmail.world
Jmail, logged in as [email protected]
You are logged into [email protected], Jeffrey Epstein's email. Sourced from the November 2025 House Oversight Committee data release.
jmail.world
November 21, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
This loser is now being de-banked, but the NZ government is still fine with letting him recruit in Aotearoa.

Https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-21/nsw-neo-nazi-leaders-bank-accounts-frozen-jack-eltis/106032784
Yet somehow, this nazi managed to waltz in and out of Aotearoa without alarms being raised by the SIS, the GCSB, the Immigration department, or the Police. Meanwhile, money is being poured into expensive and repressive systems to stop asylum seekers from boarding flights to NZ.
November 21, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
Rainbow orgs have released a statement: “The banning of puberty blockers is an example of government overreach and political attacks on healthcare… it is an unprecedented and inherently discriminatory use of the Medicines Act to deny healthcare to a particular population on the basis of their sex”
Government Overreach in Healthcare with Puberty Blockers Decision — Rainbow Support Collective
www.rainbowsupportcollective.nz
November 20, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
Very proud to have been able to contribute to this response from the NZNO College of Child and Youth Nurses to the puberty blocker ban. I'm glad our union and college have our back and are willing to stand up to this transphobic government.

www.nzno.org.nz/about_us/med...
Puberty blocker ban will hurt young people: Child and Youth nurses
The decision to ban new prescriptions for puberty blockers will hurt young people, the NZNO College of Child and Youth Nurses (CCYN) Tapuhitia Ngā Mokopuna Mō Apōpō says. Minister of Health Simeon Br...
www.nzno.org.nz
November 20, 2025 at 3:21 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
“GenerativeAI isn’t magic. It’s the product of millions of invisible creators—poets, coders, photographers, musicians—whose work has been harvested, scraped, & absorbed into AI models without consent or compensation…

This is not innovation. It is expropriation.”
—Otti Vogt
AI Must Fund the Commons – Not Eat Them
AI feeds on the cultural commons—now it must pay its dues, supporting the creators and public institutions it depends on.
good-leadership.beehiiv.com
November 15, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
This TERF shit is gonna result in dead kids and the Minister should be pilloried, dragged, reviled, hounded
The Government is banning new patients from being prescribed the most common form of puberty blocker and is explicitly aligning NZ's future policy on this matter to the UK's. PR below.
November 19, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
Karen Chhour is quoted in this piece actively promoting conversion practices, after previously comparing gender affirming care to torture at Lake Alice. This coalition is evil. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...
Govt halts new puberty blockers prescriptions for gender-affirming care
Green Party MP Ricardo Menéndez March says the government is "buying into imported culture wars" .
www.rnz.co.nz
November 19, 2025 at 6:59 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
This is absolutely sickening. This post is taking the politicisation and demonisation of our communities to a new extreme - and anti-trans networks were given a fucking heads up. www.nzfirst.nz/puberty-bloc...
Puberty Blockers Banned For Children
After years of dangerous ideological experimentation pushed by radical activists and rubber-stamped by weak politicians, the New Zealand Government has officially banned puberty blockers for children.
www.nzfirst.nz
November 19, 2025 at 3:52 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
A 1/200 podcast episode by Josephine Varghese interviewing Amanda Thomas that features our work as university workers for Palestine just came out! Listen to it here: www.1of200.nz/podcast/1/20...
1/200 S2E172 - University Workers for Palestine — 1/200
As the Gaza genocide and the invasion, apartheid and killings in Westbank continue, University Workers for Palestine (UWP) are renewing demands and strengthening actions to secure a BDS policy from Un...
www.1of200.nz
November 19, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Max Soar
Legitimisation of an economy built on ever-worsening exploitation is one of the reasons that people are losing trust in ‘representative’ democracy.
November 18, 2025 at 9:24 PM
Reposted by Max Soar
European political scientists are blue in the face from constantly pointing out that accommodating the far right does not help centre-left parties win, and contributes to the rise of far-right parties. There's a mountain of data to support that.

But no, the galaxy-brained strategists must be right.
November 18, 2025 at 11:58 AM