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Mike Dickison

@adzebill.bsky.social

4.2K followers 450 following 16K posts

My Jeopardy categories would be Wikipedia, natural history of Aotearoa New Zealand, Sondheim musicals, bird bones, and enough typography to get me into trouble. Ōtautahi, Dr Him. 0000-0003-1183-2550, Q56458901

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · Nov 11

Happy to announce that, thanks to a grant from Wikimedia Aotearoa NZ, in 2025 I'll be Aotearoa Wikipedian at Large, with a focus on beautiful Banks Peninsula. Anyone keen to help with article writing, book transcription, photos, or research let me know. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Banner for the Jan–Dec 2025 project showing an old chart of Banks Peninsula, mountain cabbage tree, Godley Head, the Okains Bay Library, and Little River.

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Margaret Stanley @ecostanley.bsky.social · 15h

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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Te Ara Paerangi Com - Research Advocacy Capability @te-ara-paerangi.community · 16h

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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A/Prof Narrelle Morris @narrellemorris.bsky.social · 6d

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 · 6d

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 · 17h

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

MilkMan business cards with canonical spelling.

Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 18h

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 · 1d

Thank you for your service!

Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 1d

We'll also be going on a photo walk after lunch to take some shots of Lyttelton's remaining heritage buildings, most of which sadly don't have any freely-usable images. If you have a nice camera and are looking for something socially-worthy to do with it, join us.

Former warder's house for Lyttelton gaol, and the gaol doesn't even have its own Wikipedia article, despite its formative role in NZ history—Mackenzie! Parihaka! Honestly what have the history enthusiasts of Christchurch be DOING for the last 25 years? OK I'll calm down now.

Sled dog statue outside the library, reminding everyone this was where so many Antarctic expeditions left from.

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 1d

Ōtautahi folks: on Saturday 10:00–1:00 we have a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in the Lyttelton Library, looking at the architecture and history of the port. If you're heading over for the market, why not pop in and join us, and learn how to edit Wikipedia? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Lyttelton in 1967 taken by amateur photographer Wilford Peloquin (who calls it Littleton in all his photos)

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 1d

Vote! Vote in your local election! Post your vote by 5pm today! It matters. Hayden explains this more hilariously than I can: thespinoff.co.nz/politics/06-...

One hundred and eighty five billion dollars.
That's the estimated bill to repair our terrible water infrastructure and experts think that estimate is too low. Why is it going to cost so much? Mainly because angry people who didn't want to pay rates were the only ones who voted in local elections. They elected other angry people who didn't want to raise rates and those people kept costs down via the foolproof method of "letting the pipes rot in the ground". Just a few years ago, 8,000 people in and around Havelock North got poisoned when sheep poo seeped into some poorly maintained water infrastructure. Four people died! Wellington's streets are now equal parts sewage and concrete. For a while there people in Otago were drinking lead.

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 2d

Delighted that Cory is having a moment with "Enshittification," because it's an accurate word for what's happening in tech and he's the right person to describe it.

(Gift link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/b...

A Powerhouse Writer Found One Word to Change the Debate About Tech

www.nytimes.com

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

These are the giant pandas of the plant world, surviving in the 8% of remaining Philippine rain forest. The largest Philippine species was seen once in 1885, then not again for a century. No doubt other undescribed Rafflesia are still hiding out. parasiticplants.siu.edu/RaffPhil/Raf...

Title slide: Hidden giants: The strange world of Rafflesia
Pieter Pelser
School of Biological Sciences
6 October 2025

Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

The leathery fruits just sit on the forest floor, full of tiny tiny seeds, which might be dispersed by ants—at least they seem to have a food body (elaiosome) to encourage the ants to collect them. But nobody knows for sure. Nor how the seedlings infect the host vine, or how long the plant lives.

Slide showing the fruit packed with tiny seeds, and ants possibly collecting them.
"21 years of unravelling the mysteries of Rafflesia:
• Taxonomy & distribution
• Phylogeny & biogeography
• Conservation genetics
• Host-specificity
• Species distribution modeling
• Reproductive biology"

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

Anyway, these are weird plants. Parasites of particular species of the widespread vine Tetrastigma, they don't have roots, stems, or leaves. Huge flowers (they brought models) just pop out of the vine, usually at ground level. Otherwise they're hidden in the tissue, up to 8 plants per vine.

Cast of decaying Rafflesia speciosa flower and bud

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

All the species are rare, localised, and most on just one island. They seem to have arrived from Borneo about 40 million years ago, and slowly colonised the archipelago. They're picky about their hosts and growing conditions and don't disperse well. doi.org/10.1016/j.ym...

Tree of Phillipine Rafflesia species showing origin over 40 mya.

Sequence of colonisation of the Philippines by Rafflesia species from Panay to Luzon to Mindanao

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

Just heard a great talk from Pieter Pelser and Julie Barcelona about Rafflesia, the world's biggest flower. They've been researching them in the Philippines for 21 years, and species numbers have gone from 2 to about 14. They smell, "like a dead rat", to attract pollinating flies.

Barcelona and Pelser posing beside a Rafflesia flower on the forest floor bigger than their heads.

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

Samuel Butler's "Erewhon", an early NZ SF novel, is proofread of the month on Wikisource. They already had it, but they need to get a scan-backed version. You can help out here: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:E...

en.wikisource.org

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 2d

This thread puts the whole austerity nonsense in perspective. We could throw millions into IRD to reap billions from tax dodgers, but for some reason don't.

Jabberwokiwi🦎 @jabberwokiwi.bsky.social · 2d

Yep, it's the same old "bash a beneficiary" or "lazy youf" rhetoric to gain a couple of votes.

Lazy Luxon chasing 4000 kids to save approx $1.3M year but won't chase Destiny church charitable trust or Gloriavale, with charities estimated to be avoiding $2.0B year in tax avoidance.

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Stephen Harrison @stephenharrison.com · 3d

“I’m a lycanthropic spell checker.” That’s how Wikipedia editor WereSpielChequers explains his username.

In my latest newsletter, we talked about easily confused words, dead links, and the election process for the Wikimedia Foundation’s board of trustees.

Inside Wikipedia’s Board Elections

Interviewing candidate Jonathan Cardy about what it takes to join the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation and its role in shaping one of the world’s most influential websites.

www.stephenharrison.com

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 4d

Getting my head around flying to Portugal later this month and talking about the work I’ve been doing with museums and WIkipedia. meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_Wi...

"I'm presenting at GLAM Wiki" Lisbon 30 Oct to 1 Nov.

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Jonathan C Slaght @jonathanslaght.com · 5d

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts

Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

www.popsci.com

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New Zealand Geographic @nzgeo.bsky.social · 4d

Remember the Magic Eye books of the 90s?? Now, you can have a crack at viewing New Zealand’s native flowers in 3D. Clematis, orchid, ngutukākā, korukoru, oioi… this is a luscious, spectacular feature by @rebekahwhite.bsky.social, based on the new book He Puāwai by @theobrominated.bsky.social

Magic flora

Philip Garnock-Jones has spent more than a decade photographing our native flowers as they’ve never been shown before: in luscious, three-dimensional detail.

www.nzgeo.com

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 4d

When we look at the useful stuff that LLMs give us, we should not think, how cool is this technology. We should think, what an amazing range of useful work people are willing to share online, freely, without any monetary compensation. Which the machine is just summarizing for us.

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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 4d

huge notice that pops up if you try to edit the cat article

adding a photo? read this first. we know you love your cat. so do we, but that doesn't mean a photo of your cat is a good choice for the article

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 5d

Ah, the joy of freelance life. A couple of 2026 funding pools have just dried up, so if anyoneʻs interested in a project with a Wikipedian, now’s the time to get in touch. www.rove.wiki

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Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 6d

47–54. Another seven Patrick O’Brian novels, background hum to the last few months of reading other things, historical snacks like potato chips I can’t quite stop eating. Such a fine series.

A stack of seven Patrick O’Brian novels from 3 (HMS Surprise) to 9 (Treason’s Harbour)

Praise for Patrick O'Brian and for
THE THIRTEEN GUN SALUTE
“On 1 April 1800, during a performance of Locatelli's C major quartet in the music-room of the Governor's House in Port Mahon, Minorca, a penniless Irish physician drives a hostile elbow into the ribs of a naval lieutenant without a ship. It is perhaps the most productive affront in fiction since April 1625 when d'Artagnan, rushing down the stairs of M de Trevaille's house on the rue du Vieux Colombiers in pursuit of the Chevalier de Rochefort, accidentally insulted three musketeers. The next day the lieutenant, Jack Aubrey, is promoted and given command of a neat little brig, the Sophie; he makes up the quarrel, signs on the physician, Stephen Maturin, as ship's surgeon and they sail away together for 15 novels to experience battle at sea, intrigue on land, shipwreck, mutiny, calm and tempest. In length the series is unique; in quality—and there is not a weak link in the chain—it cannot but be ranked with the best of twentieth century historical novels.”
-T. J. Binyon, Independent