I really would resist "number of submissions" as a proxy for whether a piece of legislation is good or not. Subs processes just aren't opinion polls, & buying into the logic when numbers are on your side means you're bound by it when they're not. Creates a ratchet of escalating crude discourse imo.

"The Government knows there’s nothing similar between household borrowing and government borrowing. But it also knows that you don’t know that. (Because no one ever explains this properly.) So why use this metaphor if it’s so misleading?"
www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

Andrew Little in like week three of his mayoralty taking credit for everything @misswhanau.bsky.social put in place:

in case anyone needed a reminder that Labour are a neoliberal party whose only value is “we’re not National” and whose only electoral appeal is not actively being in power

Stoked to head into Te Puhi-a-noa / Murchison Mountains near Te Anau last weekend. Amazing place thanks to all the work that goes into pest control there. A few photos taken on the way up, down, or across the steep slopes searching for Takahē. #photography #wildlife #landscape

It’s so bizarre how Te Pāti Māori and the Greens are continually positioned by pundits as “radicals”when the impact of their time in coalition govts are things like whānau ora and insulated houses.

Meanwhile Act is treated like they are reasonable for wanting to re-write a founding document.

I've seen Tweets you people wouldn't believe. Attack lines on fire off the tan suit of Obama. I watched dank memes glitter in the dark of the Gamergate. All those moments will be lost in X, like worms in brain...

Time to Bluesky

Bluesky has gotten LOUD! That's not a bad thing, but I've been here a year and a half and I'm getting used to the changes.

Here's a feed I love. It finds the quieter posters from your follows to display only.

These are often your friends or deliberate follows. Give it a try!

...pretty ill-suited to explaining *waves arms*? The idea that politics is about image and presentation and messaging just doesn't explain the world?? And certainly not "politics is marketplace of idea where rational agents shop so just have better ideas".

My first recrimination is: maybe it's time to revisit all your assumptions about how campaigns work specifically, and how politics work in general.

The entire cosmology of political journalism and political knowers - Debate performances! Rallies! Speeches! Policy announcements (lol)! - seems...

Really excited to be heading back to Disappointment Island in the Auckland Island group of the NZ Sub-antarctic again this summer. One of the most mind-blowing places on earth I reckon. Impossible to take a photo without a bird or 12 in it.

There is an underlying belief still hanging around that left-wing socioeconomic theory is "cuddly but stupid" and right-wing is "harsh but effective", when it turns out on mountains of data that left is "cuddly and effective" and right is "harsh and stupid"

The bullshit excuses for Starmer on Brexit have now moved onto the nonsense that Brexit cannot be undone.

Why bother voting the Tories out if mistakes cannot be undone?

The defeatism of Centrist idiocy, and the arrogant wilful ignorance used to excuse it, should be harnessed as an energy source.

Manufacturing consent, again.

'What are our news values?' asks the editor of RNZ. 'Supporting the landlords and destroying the ability of people to have affordable housing,' comes the answer.

'That's right, and don't you forget it.'

Bernie would have won.

Been playing with a camtraptions.com motion sensor and waterproof housing for my old Nikon D750. Lucky to find a kiwi burrow near home on Rakiura to experiment settings with, and am pretty happy with the kit. Going to try for some more rare birds in the near future...