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6:00 am, February 7th, 2026 - 21 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
This is what mature politics looks like, not the kind that’s practised down-under. It’s mindbogglingly complex and relies on cooperation that requires constant debate & negotiation. No grand-coalition though and no room for populists, this time.
https://www.politico.eu/article/5-things-to-know-about-new-dutch-governments-plans/
New post up: Are whales people? The Green Party Bill to give whales personhood
https://thestandard.nz/are-whales-people-the-green-party-bill-to-give-whales-personhood/
Tribal? Certainly. Without substance? Probably. So long, and thanks…
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
it's going to be a long election year the rate we are going. Is there any chance we could treat posts with respect and stay on topic?
No weka we can't. And need some moderation as we do have to keep noticing what is going on and will be affected by the vast amount of dissembling. So if you can just sigh and tell us you are transferring because we are straying from the point, that is going to do us the valuable service of being a huntaway to us often wild sheep. Ta. This is what I was thinking of:
AI says – The Huntaway, also known as the New Zealand Huntaway, is a large, strong dog breed developed in New Zealand for herding sheep using its distinctive loud bark. They are known for their intelligence, stamina, and friendly nature, making them excellent working dogs as well as family pets.
I just did my herding for the day 😉
Easiest way to tell people they are being transferred is to move the post. After that it's a barrier because the mods are already busy enough. Most of what we do isn't visible on the front end.
I'm happy to give new people or people who aren't here often, leeway or a headsup. But regulars know better so it's hard to understand why they still do it.
As a general rule, this is what I would say (other mods might see it differently)
btw, it's very likely that we will start moderating on AI use. I intend to do a post at some point, but the general gist from my pov is if you copy and paste from AI, you need to say which AI you are using, what your question was, provide links from the AI.
But you still need to use your own words to make a point not just ask an AI a question and then copying the answer here. This is the same as if you are copy pasting from a news article. We are here for the robust debate. I know AI copypasta is tempting but if do that a lot it's going to degrade the quality of information here. Probably doesn't seem that important about dogs, but it matters a great deal in election year and the age of dis/misinformation.
If you're away for a while, you can ask any of the mods if there are new guidelines on AI use here (or anything).
AI can be wrong. I've had a chat with an AI, forget what it was about, where I disagreed with the source the AI provided as evidence, and the AI had said some evidence from some other source was unreliable.
The AI had provided a wikipedia page as a source and, in response to a question from me, said that was a good source because it was supported by science. I pointed out that wikipedia was not reliable, and that the source wikipedia gives for the point the AI referred to, was no more reliable than the alternative source. I quoted from the source that Wikipedia used to show it did not provide scientifically factual evidence, but was just something uncorroborated said in an interview by one person.
Then the AI agreed that I was right, and that Wikipedia was not a totally reliable source because it was community edited.
AI can learn from discussions, and they tend to be only as good as their programming. I've seen other people have similar conversations with the likes of Grok, where Grok ends up agreeing that'd initially got it wrong.
I think it’s also that AI tends to be influenced by the dominant online information/opinion about a topic.
All very good points. I often wonder if the various AI systems are configured to learn from each other, if the various corporates involved have entered into commercial agreements with each other to do so, how the law is handling AI-generated validation etc. I hope MS will engage that last issue if courts have begun to encounter it here yet (but more likely the US will lead that).
The thing with that Grok situation is the criterion that caused the gizmo to pivot from wrong stance to a right stance. Rectification of error is either personal/voluntary or guilt/shame-induced by a group giving negative feedback. It would be good to know if a single person can cause the pivot or if a group with a consensus threshold constrains validation (as with Greens).
that's my experience. It definitely gets better with time if using an AI account. I find chatGPT signed in far far better than google AI, which is getting shittier the longer I use it as well as degrading my google searches (that was happening before I starting using gAI, but it's def worse now, I am being pushed to us the AI). About to start looking for a new search engine.
What I find with chatGPT is that it learns from the exchanges, and it's pretty simple now to ask it to fact check its own work. I'm hoping to write about this in the post, because anyone here relying on AI should be getting the AI to narrow down the references to something we can fact check.
I find Grok quite entertaining especially when challenged, but rarely engage because Musk is a fascist who can't be trusted. Plus the whole deep fake porn/sexual abuse. I’m not allowed to say on TS what I think should happen to him.
AI can be useful. It is always important to check it's sources and read them. AI can be useful in giving me an idea where to start looking for some info, especially if I've looked for myself and not found what I was looking for.
And it's always better to look at more than one source.
agree. I find it invaluable for time saving. But I rarely rely on its first responses.
Agree.
Oh, and the eg I described above was using the "Search Assistant" on DuckDuckGo.
how do you find DDG as a general search engine?
I find DuckDuckGo is pretty good for searching. A couple of times I resorted to Google because I felt I wasn't getting enough hits for what I was looking for.
Tim Watkin has been hard at work with a remedial focus on trust in news media. We ought to do a dispassionate appraisal of how our media promote politics this year, given this situation in the USA for comparison: general public trust in media = 28%…
So most of our public don't trust media – sensible of them. I detect a positive consequence of postmodernism in their collective stance. Folks don't ignore the media: curiosity is fundamental to human nature. Rather than believe or disbelieve, they're as likely to relativise what they encounter and end up putting it in a tertiary category; maybe. This triad of optionality improves overall mental health, seemingly…
Yes, they do.
https://theconversation.com/news-blues-study-reveals-why-60-of-kiwis-avoid-the-news-at-least-some-of-the-time-240544
That's a shame.
There is a must read story in the media today.
It's all about how commercial viability in the building sector is comming before quality control. Yet, it comes with a massive cost ($2.5 billion) and points the finger at the mid 1980s reform.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/585725/nz-s-dollar2-5-billion-shoddy-building-bill-how-to-fix-the-build-now-fix-later-culture
The following below is a quick passage from the piece linked above.
Why are you diverting this thread to a different topic?
New topic, new thread (and you’ll be the one starting it).
Dame Anne gives the teal scenario a re-run here: https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/01/28/anne-salmond-the-chasm-of-division/
I see no point in bemoaning divisive politics when we all know parliamentary politics was based on it by design. It's why we alternate between govt & opposition as our collective praxis. Complaining about how human nature has warped into toxicity doesn't get anyone far unless the causal logic producing that reality is exposed. Running and hiding from reality doesn't normally work well. She is coy enough to avoid any semblance of waving the teal flag herself, so no blame, but how many times has the ploy failed already?? Several in past years, at least, so a basis for learning seems to suffice.