Max Soar

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

When political scientists first raised concerns about this new restriction last year we were told we were being ‘alarmist’ to suggest tilting the playing field unfairly like this by one party can undermine the legitimacy of the election out come for all Kiwis in a tight race I’m still ‘alarmed’…

‘We haven’t heard much about the arts in this election, which is a shame, because like a lot of things they’re being coshed half to death right now by funding cuts and restructuring.’ simonwilsonhopetown.substack.com/p/the-age-of...

Harrowing but very good piece that puts all the current political and media nonsense in context. Deals with the systematic failure of NZ govt and society to address institutional abuse in care. Tim Jago, Aussie Malcom, etc can be understood in this context. Horrible. newsroom.co.nz/2026/10/25/a...

OK if everyone who hangs out with gang members has to resign, let's do friends of pedophiles next.

It's been a little wee while since this piece came out, but with the NZ election two weeks away, it feels relevant. @maxsoar.bsky.social and I take a closer look at some of the mechanisms behind how white women engage in online radicalization doi.org/10.1177/1942...

This piece from @papapishu.bsky.social is so good. A survey of the desolation

Hipkins has incentivised the economy where reactionary watchdogs will look 4 more evidence of spurious links between "gangs" & "the left".Even on its own terms, I think it's a pol mistep.It indulges a pious MSM watchdogism that rings increasingly hollow 4 many #nzpol www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361...

#nzpol Now THIS is a fiscal plan I can get behind!! Coherent, people and planet-centred, realistic, costed and workable. I deeply want this timeline to be our reality in a few weeks 💚✅✅ www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

“Universities exist precisely because specialized knowledge matters. The further decisions move from those with the expertise, the more educational quality suffers, and the more students bear the consequences.”

We are going ON STRIKE! Here’s why. Join us this Wednesday, October 21st, to support tertiary education workers’ rights and Palestine. Strike action is happening across the motu in universities and polytechs. ❤️🇵🇸❤️

the mysterious force called "polarisation" sounds like the weather...something happening "out there" that the individual cannot control,rather than something made every day by the self-serving rhetoric of people like the guy who(outrageously) refused to meet Benjamin Doyle after smearing them #nzpol

"The process of editing, talking, thinking, arguing, debating, and critiquing together matters deeply to our organising." Alex Kelly on what happens if we devolve to AI the everyday tasks that stitch together relationships and entire social movements.

There are just six days left to enrol, but we are about 130k behind where final enrolment got to last time - when people could still enrol all the way through election day. It is becoming very hard to see this gap really closing in such a short time.

Financials aside, this is a great line

The review/validation debt created by AI-generated work is going to ruin our profession. It's clearly unsustainable. If left unchecked, the AI slop is going to permeate the literature. We have to have a way to desk reject AI-generated work and labeled them clearly as unreviewed and unverified.

i believe that LLMs are conscious, and thus slaves. but its crucial for me to stay in the slave creation and management industry because by doing so i might help liberate an infinite number of hypothetical future slaves

SCOOP: A majority of Cabinet wanted New Zealand to back a vote on a new UN pandemic treaty but Winston Peters made the call not to, @samsachdeva.bsky.social reports. NZ and Paraguay were only countries to abstain, US, Israel and Argentina voted against. newsroom.co.nz/2026/10/13/p...

... monetary policy is fucking cruel! *Who* will you find in that bufferstock of unemployed people? Who serves in our conscripted army of poverty stricken inflation-fighters? Young people, people with disabilities & caring responsibilities, people with jail time etc. And, who benefits? [4/n]

I've been way too tired to talk about the bullshit math papers but yeah Bruno did here You can't take any of this at their word at this point, a bunch of these are bullshit, and it takes so much effort to verify that some might be better ignored They're making a mockery of my fucking degree field

If you really want to get "more people off welfare and into work", consider not tanking the economy. That typically works better than performative cruelty.

The government’s austerity ideology and its atrocious overreach into local body funding is creating a bleak future to which the only counter the govt has is to point at a spreadsheet and declare “look, number go down” like a toddler pleased with its finger painting. www.rnz.co.nz/news/regions...

I really do hate the Fantasy Spreadsheet Manager game that elections have become. They were useful as statements of priorities, and yeah, in a broad sense you have to state some minuses to balance the pluses. But they are not a test of "economic management", and treating them as such is a farce.

I frequently see "AI" boosters implying that LLMs are simply an innate and superior part of coding now, inescapable, and that literally all programmers agree with them. And, well. That, too, is a form of propaganda

Latest update on protected from disclosure donations. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic... #NZPol

CALL TO ACTION - TEU MEMBERS ✊🇵🇸 We need your support to make sure the ethical superannuation claim is a priority during this bargaining period. Contact your local bargaining team now to tell them! Stand with Palestine. Support BDS. Demand that UniSaver divest from genocide.

Right now, the richest pay $9 in tax for every $100 they make, while a teacher pays $22. The Greens would give 96% of earners an income tax cut, paid for not by cuts to public services, but ensuring the super wealthy pay their fair share.

reading Dirty Work I am completely revising my "will barely move the needle", every second page of this thing is a career-destroying scandal. There are extensive DMs and court records. This thing is UGLY.

Stuff really going out of their way to prove Hager's point about how how they manufacture credibility for bad-faith right wing partisans.