"[Westpac NZ chief executive Catherine] McGrath herself was featured in a fake article, which was linked from Meta platforms, which showed deep fakes of her clashing with NZ First leader Winston Peters. The bank lodged complaints with Meta, which the bank said were ignored."

https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/04/23/meta-missing-in-action-over-social-media-deep-fake-scams-westpac/

If a TV station broadcast stuff like this, and management refused to take meaningful action to prevent a repeat, they'd be shut down. Why not FB?

#SocialMedia #scams #Westpac #NZ #Meta #FaceBook

#Listening to some delightfully angular, upbeat mathrock, from Canadian instrumental duo Angine de Poitrine;

https://www.kexp.org/podcasts/live-on-kexp/2026/2/5/angine-de-poitrine/

Much less wall of noise than HDU (eg Metamathics), and much less eccentric than Battles. But every bit as good as either.

#AngineDePoitrine #MathRock #KEXPLive #KEXP #instrumental #music #podcasts

@sesivany I noticed that for me dropping analytics was amazing, because you no longer worry how a blog post might perform. You just write it because you think it's useful or fun.

Can recommend ;)

Despite leading on of the most incompetent governments NZ has had in my lifetime, CLuxon has some major FIGJAM energy. Maybe he suffers from Dunning-Kruger?

https://feeds.95bfm.com/link/18452/17322511/political-commentary-w-david-slack-r%C4%81tu-april-21-2026

#PoliticalCommentary #95bFM #podcasts

The first set of CreativeCommons licenses were published in 2002. Version 4.0 was published in 2013. That's an average of a new version every 3 years, although there upgrades happened to solve specific legal problems discovered through usage and academic research. The final upgrade to 4.0 being to make the licenses international, amongst other things.

So how are we to interpret the lack of a new CC suite over the last 12 years? Are there simply no new problems to solve?

#CC #CreativeCommons

"['Media out to get me' is] what politicians say when they're in trouble. And the media can be annoying. But that's the price of democracy."

#MatthewHooten, the #BradburyGroup, 2026

https://traffic.megaphone.fm/MEDIAWORKSRADIOLIMITED7682486290.mp3?updated=1776816575

#NewsMedia #WaateaNews #Rova #podcasts #media #democracy

"It makes a charming photo op to have the air force deliver firewood to tramping huts, but with the price tag of an NH90 at nearly $100 million apiece, it’s also a ridiculous use of resources when a far cheaper civilian helicopter can do the same job."

#SamBuchanan, 2025

https://www.freedomshopaotearoa.nz/2025/02/could-we-give-this-new-arms-race-miss_26.html

(2/2)

Can't find a copy of the particular text I was thinking of yet, but I did find this;

"It’s commonly noted we need the military for such things as disaster relief operations, search and rescue and fisheries protection. If that is the purpose, we would be better funding a professional coastguard and improving our civil defence capabilities."

#SamBuchanan, 2025

https://www.freedomshopaotearoa.nz/2025/02/could-we-give-this-new-arms-race-miss_26.html

(1/2)

Why else would SpaceX make the application when they haven't even tested and confirmed a design for the tech yet? Nor made a solid business case for the usefulness of orbital datacentres.

Unless they're trying to LARP The Rapture of the Nerds?!?

(3/3)

SpaceX lodge the application, loudly press release about it, get lots of attention due to people both cheerleading and criticising it, and harvest the increase in share value. As extractors speculate on the future value of a company that can 'do AI in space'.

(2/?)

"Last month, SpaceX applied to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch one million more satellites for untested 'AI data centres'."

Professor #LauraRevell, Associate Professor #MicheleBannister, Associate Professor #SamanthaLawler, 2026

https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

Whether or they have any intention to actually do this, the application for permission is a pump and dump con, plain and simple.

(1/?)

#SpaceX #DataCentres #satellites #space #FCC

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. I posted a similar sentiment here yesterday;

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/116439748543754268

But this isn't a new idea. One of my amigos in the anarchist movement published a pamphlet 20-30 years ago proposing the abolition of the armed forces. Replacing them with civilian defence forces along the lines of what Philip and I are advocating for.

(2/2)

"We don't need a traditional military to be doing that job, right? That's a coast guard job ... You could have an entirely different force doing that stuff ... We could even have ... a disaster management/ coast guard/ [anti-]poaching protection force ... You don't need javelin missiles or any of that nonsense for that."

Philip ?, 2026

https://www.1of200.nz/podcast/1200-s2-e192-green-party-foreign-policy-w-teanau-tuiono

It could be an umbrella for firefighting and Search & Rescue services too.

(1/2)

#CivilDefence #CoastGuard #FireService #SearchRescue

When Teanau Tuiono said "I sit on the Security and Intelligence Committee" I heard it as 'I sit on the Scary Intelligence Committee'. For a second I thought Parliament had set up a committee for "AI" doomers : P

https://www.1of200.nz/podcast/1200-s2-e192-green-party-foreign-policy-w-teanau-tuiono

#TeanauTuiono #NZPolitics #1of200 #podcasts

Liberal parties since the 1970s (if not longer) have moved all round the political graph, based on where they think voters and donors are. Defining 'centre-left' based on that is like defining 'NZ' as 'wherever Winston Peters is on the day'. I really can't understand if they're intentionally gaslighting the public about this, or if they just really haven't thought it through.

The fact Labour (in the UK or here) aren't seriously considering wealth taxes proves they're *not* centre-left.

(2/2)

"I think the Green Party in Britain has adopted your wealth tax policy. But the centre-left Labour Party is not going to do that, are they."

#GuyonEspiner, 2025

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/579275/30-with-guyon-espiner-economist-gary-stevenson-on-why-new-zealand-should-tax-the-rich

I don't want to pick on Guyon, but this is a classic example of news media defining 'centre-left' as 'whatever the largest liberal party says at any given time'. You'd think the NZ Labour of the 1980s would have showed them that's not a meaningful way to define it.

(1/2)

#30 #GaryStevenson #RNZ #podcasts

"Not that commercial. I think it used to drive the record companies crazy, and I think that's why I never really fit in, in the music industry."

#DonMcGlashan, 2025

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/30-with-guyon-espiner/story/2019016171/don-mcglashan

Intriguing! Because as a teenager I perceived McGlashan's band The Muttonbirds as quintessentially commercial pop music. Right up there with Crowded House, some of whom also came from an avantgarde background (Split Enz), and who also had some quirky songs (Chocolate Cake).

#30 #GuyonEspiner #RNZ #podcasts

No mention of atmospheric pollution, of course, because the FCC doesn't give a shit about that. With SpaceX's 5 Starlinks a day a few months ago, we were well above natural infall rates of most metals, so 1 (presumably) gigantic satellite per hour will be a lot worse than that.

My colleagues and I wrote a bit about using the atmosphere as a satellite crematorium here, and it's bad: https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

#Listening to Girls and Their Toys, a 2025 track by RE:VULVA;

https://revulvauk.bandcamp.com/track/girls-and-their-toys

This is a fun, folky and upbeat instrumental track. Released by a group of very talented and iconoclastic women from Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, who I hope to hear more music from in the near future.

#REVULVA #folk #instrumental #music

@strypey
i just made a #leaflet-based map of diet:vegan=only places if you'd like to try.
https://theliberationpledge.com/map

i tried some of the other ones, but they were so heavy they crashed my browser, even viewing just one country, so i tried to make this one more snappy.