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Reposted by Craig Cliff

Jolisa Gracewood @nzdodo.bsky.social · Aug 8

Copy-paste this for New Zealand, eh (and no doubt a few other purportedly green island nations) 😬🐄🚙💩

Wouldn’t it be lovely to live up to our ad campaigns and film exports, and the gorgeous images we slap on our products, and all the stories we tell our kids about how this is a great place to live?

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Aug 8

My impression of Ireland after cycling around for a few days is that it’s a beautiful country with really lovely people. It’s too bad about the smell of cow poop and car exhaust.

Also, @hannahdaly.ie and her Dad are awesome.

Impressions of Ireland

* Beautiful country
* Lovely people (really, the best)
* Too many cars on narrow lanes going too fast, and not enough of them are EVs
* A few drivers slow down to pass; some even give a whole lane (which is 1.5 m and the law)
* Too many cows
* Could have more vegetarian food
* Well signed cycle ways on roads with 100 km/h speed limit and no shoulder 😬
* Windy, yet not many wind turbines.
* Challenging to take bikes on trains

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Aug 8

#61-#64 I've only read two books in the Booker Longlist so far, but really rooting for Szalay...

Screenshot of Slow Down: the degrowth manifesto by Kohei Saito (audiobook) from the Libby App

Screenshot of The Shetland Way by Marianne Brown (audiobook) from the Libby App

Screenshot of Flesh by David Szalay (audiobook) from the Libby App

Screenshot of The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone (audiobook) from the BorrowBox App. Book 1 was okay. Listening to Book 2 now but kinda losing interest...

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Aug 8

Catch-up time again... #57-#60

Photo of the poetry collection A Lack of Good Sons by Jake Arthur

Screenshot of Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III (audiobook) from the Libby App

Screenshot of Well Met by Jen DeLuca (audiobook) from the Libby App

Screenshot of A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan (audiobook) from the Libby App - for some reason the cover still says Coming Soon, lol.

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Aug 8

Friday packages are the best. Can now plug those unsightly gaps in my Geoff Cochrane collection! Thanks @thwupbooks.bsky.social

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Reposted by Craig Cliff

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Jul 30

Motherfucking wind farms…

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Reposted by Craig Cliff

Paul Bierman @paul-bierman.bsky.social · Jul 28

Amazing visualizations..share these with any climate change skeptical friends. 🧪

thebulletin.org/2025/07/how-...

How clear and simple data visualizations bring the climate crisis home

Climate change is a slow-moving disaster. We need graphics that capture both its pace and its impact.

thebulletin.org

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jul 22

You could borrow it via WCL and the Libby app, once the 19 people ahead of you in the queue are done 😅

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Reposted by Craig Cliff

David Buchanan @retr0.id · Jul 20

no, monks can't fly, you're probably thinking of air friars

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Newsroom NZ @newsroom.co.nz · Jul 12

25 attempts at a biography of the legendary Terry Voss

Short story: Collective Tissue, by Craig Cliff

newsroom.co.nz

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 28

#53-56 Highlight from this bunch: The Proof of My Innocence

The Forgotten Forest by Robert Vennell. Screenshot from the Libby app. Probably better as an illustration physical book, or a guided meditation.

Playworld by Adam Ross. Screenshot from the Libby app. Felt like a novel written by someone immersed in the college creative writing industrial machine who takes a long time between books. Oh wait...

The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe. Screenshot from the Libby app. I read lots of Coe around the time of Like a Fiery Elephant and The Rotters Club. Nice to see him still punning with structure and tackling the Liz Truss era.

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. Screenshot from the Libby app. Note to audiobook producers: when you have an hourlong foreword, it helps to let the listener know who wrote the foreword at the beginning rather than the end (Reader, it was Satre).

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 28

#49-52

Star Gazers by Duncan Sarkies. Photo of hard copy, which I've reviewed for Landfall Review Online.

The Demolition of the Century by Duncan Sarkies. Photo of physical book.

How to Hold a Cockroach: a book for those who are free and don't know it. Screenshot of audiobook in Libby app. This is classic self-help grifter BS, and so excruciatingly repetitive it becomes funny, until it becomes excruciating again. Still don't know if Maxwell has even read Kafka (seems unlikely).

Universality by Natasha Brown. Screenshot of audiobook in the Libby app. Loved Assembly. This one felt like a long book that had been compressed to the point it loses all fidelity.

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 28

#44-48 (Been neglecting this thread but not the TBR pile)...

Photo of Landfall 249 (hard copy of literary journal), which features my story-in-bio notes, 'Connective Tissue'.

Careless People: A story of where I used to work by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Screenshot of audiobook in the Libby app.

Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw. Screenshot of audiobook in the Libby app.

Pounamu Pounamu by Witi Ihimaera. Screenshot of audiobook (English edition) in the Libby app.

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 21

Tried spotting hoiho 🐧 on this, the shortest day of the year, at Roaring Bay in the Catlins, but no dice

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Reposted by Craig Cliff

Bill Manhire @pacificraft.bsky.social · Jun 15

Farewell to the great Maurice Gee. His novels go on looking clearly at the world and introducing us to ourselves.
www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3607...

Writer Maurice Gee has died

The prolific and unassuming writer died in Nelson.

www.stuff.co.nz

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 4

The optimist in me says this 'Gen-AI as Polyester' take sounds likely.
Unfortunately, having just read "Careless People" and watched "Mountainhead", I'm 99% pessimist today.
AI art is only a stage-gate to somewhere much darker.
culture.ghost.io/genai-is-our...

GenAI is Our Polyester

The best way to understand generative AI art and aesthetics is to consider how previous "synthetics" lost value in the long-run For the first half of the 20th century, white-collar workers wore busin...

culture.ghost.io

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 1

Was visible to the naked eye, but not as vivid as captured on my wife's iPhone. My android? yeah, nah

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Jun 1

Aurora from Blackhead Beach, Dunedin

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · May 30

#41-#44 Can confirm The Book of Guilt is worth the hype. Actually, a strong quarter here.

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · May 30

#37-#40 Recent audiobook listening...

The making of another major motion picture masterpiece by Tom Hanks. Screenshot of Borrowbox app.

On the calculation of volume, part one, by Solvej Balle. Screenshot of Libby app

Recognising the stranger: on Palestine and narrative by Isabella Hammad. Screenshot of the Libby app.

Kāwai: for such a time as this by Montry Soutar. Screenshot of the Libby app.

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Reposted by Craig Cliff

Carson @neohazard.bsky.social · May 16

Dodgers broadcast was discussing the science behind the perception of time between children and adults. After hearing the explanation, the color commentator pauses and asks, "Am I gonna feel any better?"

Andy Pages then smashes a dinger into space, thus ending the existential crisis on commentary.

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Apr 25

#33-#36 Physical books by NZ authors read in Aparima Riverton this week.

Pretty Ugly (short stories) by Kirsty Gunn. So cool Otago University Press is publishing story collections now (albeit very slowly)

Biter by Claudia Jardin (poetry) - book and some stones from Marshall Bay beach

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Apr 25

#29-#32 in my 2025 in reading. All audiobooks. Still thinking about Rejection (lol). Tony Tulathimutte really went there!

Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia the Awekōtuku. Screenshot of audiobook in Libby app.

Rejection: fiction by Tony Tulathimutte. Screenshot of audiobook in Libby app.

The Axeman's Carnival by Catherine Chudgey. Screenshot of audiobook in Libby app.

The Serviceberry: an economy of gifts and abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Screenshot of audiobook in Libby app.

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Apr 23

It has always been important to count blessings... Like discovering your wife's second cousin has a crib in Aparima Riverton and it's available this week.

Sunrise this morning at Mitchell's Bay, Aparima Riverton

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Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Apr 10

Still bathing in the afterglow of a fantastic morning event on campus, a collab with the DCC. The end of daylight saving doesn't have to be the end of active commuting!

A photo of people and their bikes queuing for free hot drinks from Grid Coffee Roasters van, and free h-vis gear from the DCC, and free bike check ups from Bike House mechanics, in front of the University of Otago tohu on the corner of Cumberland Street and St David Street, Dunedin.

Craig Cliff @craigcliff.bsky.social · Mar 30

And #26-#28 to close out the first quarter of 2025

Stoner by John Williams. Novel, US. Screenshot of audiobook on Spotify App. A little late to the revival, or maybe I'm the start of the 3rd wave, but v v v v v good.

Going Zero by Anthony McCarten. Novel, NZ. Screenshot of audiobook on Libby App. Felt like it should have been a TV series, but also understandable why it wasn't.

Gliff by Ali Smith. Novel, UK. Screenshot of audiobook on Spotify App. Triggering (not just in the title's similarity to my name) in the way Ali Smith can be: the slide to techno-authoritarianism shown from the other side, clear-eyed and pun-filled.

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