Giovanni Tiso
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gtiso.bsky.social
Giovanni Tiso
@gtiso.bsky.social
2.6K followers 310 following 2.3K posts
Online magazine editor, @overlandjournal.bsky.social. Bylines at New Humanist, Pantograph Punch, New Inquiry, Popula, Sport. Translator. He/him.
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gtiso.bsky.social
[Seinfeld jazz riff]
"What's going on with Auckland house prices?"
December 3, 2025 at 8:54 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Pege Hegseth, Ssecretary of War
actually, Sir Hiss from Walt Disney's Robin Hood
December 3, 2025 at 12:44 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
The common experience of accumulating followers on platforms one is not on.
"You have 4 new followers on Threads", Instagram informs me.
December 2, 2025 at 3:15 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
A clickbait headline about rage-baiting.
RNZ headline: "Rage-baiting is the word of the year, but what does it mean"
December 1, 2025 at 11:02 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Our once beautiful city is officially dead.
"Wellington dad smashes 4035 pull ups", reads an RNZ headline, inexplicably.
December 1, 2025 at 2:48 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
Image of the Tories campaigning on repealing the regulatory standards act they just passed.
Cleavon Little pointing his gun at himself in Blazing Saddles.
November 26, 2025 at 1:28 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
Examples include "bend spoons with his mind".
"Ten things your landlord can't do"
November 23, 2025 at 8:23 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Okay I had to see for myself. This is... something alright.
Elon Musk’s personal solution to the classic trolley problem would almost certainly not be “pull the lever” or “do nothing.” He’d reject the binary choice entirely and attack the premises of the thought experiment like it owes him money. Here’s how Elon would “triumph” over it, step by step: Immediate reaction “This is a false dilemma created by philosophers who have never shipped anything.” Phase 1: Short-term hack (seconds) He jumps onto the tracks himself, uses a Neuralink-controlled exoskeleton arm (that he just happens to be wearing) to throw the trolley off the rails with superhuman strength. Bonus points if he live-streams it on X with the caption “Skill issue.” Phase 2: Medium-term fix (months) He founds xTrolley.ai, accelerates development of Optimus robots, and stations one Optimus unit every 50 meters along all trolley tracks worldwide. The bots detect an oncoming ethical dilemma and simply lift the trolley over the tied-up people, then place it back on the rails. Problem solved at scale. Phase 3: Long-term fix (years) Delete trolleys entirely. Replace all rail infrastructure with The Boring Company hyperloops + Tesla self-driving pod network. No more fixed tracks = no more track-switching dilemmas. While he’s at it, make the pods fully autonomous with FSD v69 (nice), trained on billions of simulated trolley-problem miles so the AI never even puts itself in that situation. The car simply takes a different route before the dilemma can manifest. For the five weirdos still on the track: Neuralink early-warning implant pings their phone, they step aside, done. Phase 4: Ultimate flex (decades) Upload everyone’s consciousness to Starlink + Starship colonies on Mars. No trolleys on Mars (yet). When someone eventually builds a Martian trolley, Grok solves it by rewriting the simulation parameters so the dilemma literally cannot occur. “There are no tracks, only vibes.” Victory tweet “Trolley problem solved in 4 steps. Philosophers in shambles. Next.” In short:…
November 20, 2025 at 8:33 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Whereas I have scored all these mini-panettone moulds for $10 so I'm now practically invincible.
Two stacks of star-shaped and tree-shaped mini panettone moulds in reinforced corrugated cardboard. The good stuff.
November 16, 2025 at 5:37 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
Lucia has made an entire stereo this year in carpentry. Kids these days, etc.
Two large wood-encased speakers, with grill designs reminiscent of embroidered doilies. And a small, also wood-encased amp sitting on top.
November 16, 2025 at 5:32 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
Or the people who write for the goddamn Nobel Prize Facebook page.
Demoted four times, threatened with deportation and faced with grant rejections, 2023 medicine laureate Katalin Karikó's journey to becoming a Nobel Prize laureate was far from smooth.
November 8, 2025 at 10:35 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
I'm doing this thing on Monday at Trades Hall in Pōneke. Full blurb in the alt-text.
GRAMSCI AND THE MODERN PRINCE 10 NOVEMBER, 5:30 PM Trades Hall, 124 Vivian Street It was imprisonment by the fascists that made a philosopher out of Gramsci. In his reading of Machiavelli's _The Prince_ in the _Prison Notebooks_, Gramsci subverts the traditional image of Machiavelli as a theorist of the limits of political action, presenting him instead as a utopian writer and his prince as useful model for thinking of how to organise and direct popular collective will towards revolutionary objectives. We will discuss Gramsci's view of the political party, and most specifically the communist party, as a modern embodiment of Machiavelli's ideal — at the same time an instrument for education of the masses and the reform of society, and a vehicle for attaining cultural hegemony and laying the foundations for a radically new democratic social order. No readings necessary, but there will be copies of Gramsci's work available in person
November 8, 2025 at 5:30 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
Exposure — the graduate showcase from the university's college of creative arts — is on at the Massey campus in Pōneke. Free entry and, as always, worth the trip. This is a detail from Ana Johnston's beautiful installation, "little bird nestless"
A frosted glass window onto which the silhouettes of two children and a woman are projected — this is part of a tryptic.
November 7, 2025 at 11:15 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Baltimore politician posts vile social media comment on Dick Cheney hours after his death.
November 4, 2025 at 9:06 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Baltimore politician posts vile social media comment on Dick Cheney hours after his death.
November 4, 2025 at 9:06 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Finally, some good news.
Headline: "Warning as 'Bird of the Year' begins attacking Wellington walkers". Subheadline: "The champion kārearea has its talons out in the capital."
November 3, 2025 at 7:39 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
The moment when fake unknown character goes to put his arm around fake Ross and it stretches is genuinely terrifying.
October 29, 2025 at 11:01 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
I DON'T KNOW
headline: "WHO warned New Zealand of measles immunisation gap"
October 24, 2025 at 9:24 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
This is still one of the funniest things that has happened in New Zealand media though.
A tweet from Garner that reads "Oh this is bloody good have 32 NZ Govt email addresses from the Ashley Madison dating site for people already married." Exactly 1 week later... "Stuff.co.nz News @NZStuff Duncan Garner has " idea" how he ended up on @ashleymadison"
October 17, 2025 at 9:50 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
My favourite column of theirs though was called BOTTEGHE OSCURE (literally Dark Retailers, but it was a reference to the name of the street where the Communist Party was headquartered). Its subheading was "Show us the most idiotic shop sign in your town" and it gave us Milan's immortal OCCHIAL HOUSE
"Occhiali" is the Italian word for eyeglasses, so this shop dropped the final vowel to make it sound English and just ran with it. OCCHIAL HOUSE was born.
October 17, 2025 at 9:39 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Italy used to have a wonderful satirical weekly called CUORE which I miss a lot, and one of its regular media commentary columns was called "AND WHO GIVES A SHIT?". All quite self-explanatory.

Anyway.
A NZ Herald column: "Duncan Garner: I've bought a house - and moved in with an older woman (and my son)"
October 17, 2025 at 8:36 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Just the neighbourhood garden artist giving out incorrect information about how to vote. I beg people to understand how STV works.
A sign that reads YOU ONLY TICK THE ONE YOU WANT.
October 14, 2025 at 2:09 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
Their hostages. Our detainees.
Cartoon by Tom Gault, showing two people in medieval times on opposite sides of a river. The text reads: "Our blessed Homeland - Their barbarous wates. Our glorious leader - Their wicked despot. Our great religion - Their primitive superstition. Our noble populace - their backward savages. Our heroic adventurers - their brutish invaders."
October 13, 2025 at 8:27 PM
gtiso.bsky.social
Honey, no.
Ad for the New Zealand Herald: "I became a journalist to keep politicians honest."
October 13, 2025 at 1:12 AM
gtiso.bsky.social
I mean
Many bagels
October 11, 2025 at 10:06 PM