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6:00 am, May 30th, 2026 - 40 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 …
Coal customer collapse. Not so good for Bathurst. But good indeed for our Planets environment ! : )
And apart from Bathurst, I note dubious company Talleys involvement….
Keep the coal in the hole….and a Just Transition.
Shane "Coalman" Jones has always been a great mate of Talleys.
Ah, yes. Knew someone would get the connection : )
No conflict of interest there…much
Does Talley's now invest where Shane Jones wants them too? Seems like one of those fishing stores one does not believe. Who is corrupting who now?
A valued cog in the Coalition of Corruption – working tirelessly for the sorted.
“Is there anyone in the government who sees anything wrong with this?” – Helen Clark
C’mon Helen, it’s just how the CoC rolls.
https://vote.nz/
Well….Im not really sure of your meaning here ? IMO there's more than a few examples of Matua Shane and Conflict of Interest.…over our NZ Environment.
And hes been in there a while….
I….would think it was obvious ?
Just realised we should stop calling it AI, intelligence is the wrong word and concept. Large Language Model/LLM instead. Or Machine Simulators or something. The term AI has been around for a long time, but the geeks are getting ahead of themselves.
https://x.com/ValerioCapraro/status/2060362101227504072
Paper: Statistical approximation is not general intelligence
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qjrhs_v1
This from above is a very revealing paragraph about our actual present thinking in many quarters (halves?).
This seems to epitomise our present governments! These people have since childhood engineered their mindset and cultural learnings (or lack of them); or is it vice versa? That is the question! But it is observable and unlikely to change much unless there is a very destructive event forcing change.
Or can a new wave of sentiment and practical practice gather, and spread out in a positive way, very much needed in the known western culture, but also in world responses, knowing that we tend to be driven by atavistic or inherent genes? leading us to become a special species of animal, incoherent in our thoughts and drives, and long-lived so the good is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by our negative outcomes which can be devastating.
AI stands for Algorithm Industry in my view.
It's how I help to keep perspective as the snake oil routines around LLM's would have you believe any old crap as they pimp it along with their wealth in the process.
This could make the dot.com crash look like a picnic as the sharks are all cashed up.
I noticed an interesting input on AI on RNZ and thought it worth noting. I have put the link on OM 30/5/26 in a spirit of being aware of developments which we can only watch.
AI, despite all the hype designed to inflate share prices, is just an extremely sophisticated version of search engines.
Google, but with more computing power and inputs to use.
It's accuracy, like any search engine, depends on where some human decides it should look.
The Treasury Trap is a concept that descibes why Aotearoa is suh a resource rich country and yet feels structurally weak.
What our institutions are focussed on decides the nature and strength of our productive capacity.
"What is an economy actually for?
Asset inflation?
Or civilisation-building?"
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/guest-blog-tadhg-stopford-new-zealand-did-not-accidentally-become-a-fragile-country/
Nicky-No-Boats has identified two broad classes of NZer – Kiwis who have "won the Lotto", and sorted Lotto winners. Willis would have you believe that everyone's a winner, baby. Not since "DVDs and Tip Top" has she been this 'relatable' – it's a real eye-opener.
"Executed by A.I." – gerrit? Move-ON!
DMK…. My first memory for me, of Nicola, will always be the icecream and dvd. I wondered wtaf is this shite from the Minister of Finance ? And soon enough… all was revealed.
Ah well, soon enough to be relegated to those Finance Ministers.
November : a fresh Future a'coming for NZ : )
In our town – our food bank has had to up the number of food parcels a week over the past year by around 100% ie double what they have been issuing in the previous year. I gather that this is typical across the around 500 Food Banks around NZ.
In the Budget we were able to garner only one specific foodbank support of $7 million for a year.
So: 500 food banks around New Zealand (Google info);
divide into $7m = $14,000 per unit
= $270 per week;
Whoopee!
What sort of mean spiritedness can honestly think that this is providing assurance to the most vulnerable.
I wonder if lucky Lotto lady Nicky-No-Boats 'feels' that Kiwis who ‘choose’ Food Banks have also "won the Lotto" – honestly, at times Willis comes across as artless/heartless.
Still, it's 'tough love', and the CoC's Finance Minister is making sacrifices too – Move-On!
https://vote.nz/
I reckon that Nicola Willis’ hair cost more than 20 pāua pies.
Reckon each nail could cost up to one pāua pie (including labour) – but the colour!
Of course others will have noted that Labour's Hipkins eating a pie, or sausage rolls being included as good fare, is being copied. Nicola Will not be outdone by this lower class populist attention-grabbing. She shall not be outdone be Labour – anything they can do she can do better. My favourite example and activator might bring a smile to a jaded mind. (It's from Annie Get Your Gun, but that was from a more free-wheeling time, not right for now).
Nicola Willis didn’t quite hit the mark with S&P Global Ratings and not all prominent NZ economists are convinced either by her Budget, which is not surprising given the rabbits and dead rats that she pulled out of her
headhat.https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/economy/budget-2026-sp-global-ratings-underwhelmed-by-governments-efforts-to-return-the-books-to-surplus-economists-wary-of-treasurys-rosy-forecasts/premium/BR6PCXXF5FBD7C3QNEFSVYVRUI/
"given the rabbits and dead rats that she pulled out of her
headhat."You missed an anatomical trick, I reckon!
I wasn’t in the right head space when I commented. Has been rectumfied now, thank you.
Imagine being the butt of our unkind taunts!
Some folks are used to it and don’t give a rat’s arse.
Were you thinking of anyone in particular
Sam Mahon
Lynda Topp
Many cartoonists and satirists (special mention of Steve Braunias)
And many others
Kia kaha!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/culture/five-times-kiwi-creatives-called-out-the-government
Such impassioned pleas, reported by RNZ, could move the NActF CoC to Act fast
https://vote.nz/
As expected, Nicola Willis’ Buget-2026 speech was a textbook example of political framing and followed the familiar pattern mentioned here: https://thestandard.nz/open-mike-28-05-2026/#comment-2063354.
The narrative is one of manufacturing or exaggerating a crisis – not necessarily the crisis that ordinary New Zealanders are experiencing – and pushing the Coalition and herself forward as the only responsible leaders to secure NZ’s future via more cutting jobs & austerity. Fact: it’s not the government’s books & debt that’s holding back this nation, it’s the narrative.
The speech lacks an innovation strategy and only implies a lift in productivity after economic recovery, i.e., after BAU has been restored – it ignores many high-quality reviews, reports, and commentary that innovation drives the economic engine into growth and, of course, there’s no money allocated into those areas of innovation. In short, it’s a jumbled mess of fear-mongering & boogeymen to feed our minds with neoliberal garbage.
The first thing that Labour may want to do is to reject this narrative and create its own and different one. Only then, different ways & approaches will make sense.
Thom Hartman outlines the way the neoliberal lie was sold to the American people – fully applicable to New Zealand.
8 minutes long.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?hl=en#inbox?projector=1
Electricity and transport.
Even Hungary gets it.
”He said €1.5bn would go towards developing Hungary's electricity grid, with a focus on solar panels and wind farms, while another €2bn would be spent on new intercity trains.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8plenyk6no
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Russia hits Romania
The IDF raping children on the west bank
Isreal being scum war criminals in Lebanon – when are they not these days…
Closer to home, Fiji welcomes warmongers
So the real question is – when will the war worshiping, fundamentalist PM of ours will send our kids off to die for these imperialist pricks?
https://vote.nz/
What I would say to you is that it's awful being CEO of New Zealand Aotearoa – the pay’s a pittance for a start. I'm beginning to wish I'd gone with that Fonterra gig.
Oh look the racism is on full display
https://people.com/trump-bans-disease-experts-from-speaking-who-ebola-11984027
– Marco Rubio
But we're going to bring ebola to Kenya.
/
A Kenyan court has suspended US plans to open an Ebola quarantine facility for American citizens in the country that has sparked public concern about cross-border infection risks.
[…]
The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU) questioned why Kenya was allegedly selected to host a quarantine facility for exposed US citizens, despite not being at the epicentre of the outbreak.
Kenya, East Africa's largest economy, had not recorded any Ebola cases as of Friday
The union said it was "utterly disgusted" by what it described as the government's willingness to compromise Kenya's national biosecurity in exchange for foreign aid.
"If it is too dangerous for America, it is too dangerous for Kenya," the union stated, referencing what it claimed was Washington's refusal to allow Ebola cases on to US soil.
Davji Bhimji Atellah, KMPDU's secretary general, said the union "will not sit back and watch Kenya be treated as a containment colony for a lethal pathogen that we did not generate."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpdp74lgzplo
What a moaner! Growth's green shoots are in your face – you're just not looking right.
Still growing, for the sorted – onya CoC. Hey, lucky Lotto Nicky-No-Boats, have a marmite sarnie to get the taste of that pāua pie out of your mouth.
To Drowsy…..you are on fire today…
Thanks. The NActF CoC really grinds my gears – they just keep getting worse!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/aotearoanzhistory/posts/1525062715982752/
The NActF CoC has been so bad for NZ Aotearoa. CoC 'govt' by and for the sorted is to be expected, but they haven't stopped at self-service – wilful socioeconomic and environmental wrecking is off the charts, disenfranchising voters (or 'dropkicks', according to deputy PM Seymour) being one particularly egregious example.
Imho, it's not enough just to turf 'em out; they must be held to account, particularly barefaced liar Luxon (what a role model) and other Atlas/NAct robopath MPs.
The shredders will be working overtime, so for NZ's sake:
* Urgency has been (mis)used a lot this term, the latest instance being yesterday:
Lots of good cartoons out there. I've posted this one a few times – every Kiwi knows.
"Labour's Helen White on Friday said the regulatory impact statement – which summarises the law's purpose, costs and benefits – redacted the section outlining the problem the bill sought to solve, "so it is very, very difficult to know what is going on here"."
That really sums up this government. They have no idea what they are doing, but they just don't care.
Coalition of Chaos Coalition of Corruption Coalition on Cnuts
Take your choice.
Putting one person in to check AI generated stuff is putting someone up as a sacrifice against a sure tide of manufactured stuff who will become stressed and sick. It is I think, virtue signalling just for show. AI is unstoppable and not controllable, as a whole and probably even small limits will be a drop in the bucket.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/science-and-technology/596607/like-drinking-from-a-firehose-what-it-s-like-to-be-the-human-in-the-ai-loop. May.28/26