A WIRED review of permits for data center projects using natural gas and linked to OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI shows they could emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. www.wired.com/story/new-ga...
Oof - RNZ running this overly credulous CNN piece on something that’s been called the single dumbest conspiracy of 2026: www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/5...
Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done? Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.
That's tens of thousands of authors whose submissions can be desk-rejected from here on out, leaving some more room for the rest of us.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
For a certain definition of the word ‘stable’ …
#philsky #philpsy
Happy to share my paper on the "prepresentation-hungry" challenge, and why this challenge does not rise from the cognitivists' own point of view.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
You can read it for free here: rdcu.be/feEtI
Yeah absolutely. It’s close to impossible to predict where good ideas are going to come from.
US elites decided, like a school of fish, that climate concern is old, boring, "woke," square, not hip & popular any more. As usual, it was based almost entirely on internal elite dynamics. It had nothing to do with the actual public, which is more concerned than ever.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the main argument here the example about AI development is slightly off the mark - although happily the actual history reinforces the main argument - the models that gave rise to LLMs were dreamed up by psychologists not computer scientists.
Austen Ganley on how mission-led science depends on exploratory science. Describes the new NZ science proposal as a Christmas Tree model -- no roots, doomed to die.
newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/19/w...
NB Stuart Smith National whip at the centre of NZ PM future debate has denied climate change for years & was lead whip who blocked the NZ climate minister from attending the world adaptation conference NZ was hosting last October - you couldn’t make this stuff up www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/science-o...
Here's Saturday's newsletter about how an online freelancing marketplace reacted when the site introduced an AI tool to help freelancers produce their proposals for offered jobs.
Proposal quality went up, but became decoupled from worker ability and effort - it's value as a signal collapsed […]
Reducing our use of one type of vehicle would make a big difference to air pollution, pedestrian safety, and New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Wellington campus to close due to weather Kia ora koutou, Due to a state of emergency being declared for the Wellington region and the issuing of a Red Heavy Rain Warning, we have made the decision to close the Pukeahu Wellington campus effective immediately. The campus will remain closed tomorrow, Tuesday 21 April.
Massey closed too:
Southern Pacific Ocean showing a lot of strange weather patterns colliding with each other in wet and turbulent ways.
Southern Pacific sure looks like a mess right now, eh.
earth.nullschool.net#current/wind...
Can confirm that my son (born and bred in New Zealand) still does this and he’s 17!
Sir Geoffrey has replied! He says:
What I said was "New Zealand is an irredeemably pluvial country." Of course because of climate change it is even more pluvial now than when I said it.
All the best,
Geoffrey
New Zealand long-tailed bat with identification arm band in an outstretched hand as part of the Finding Franklin Bats research project in Auckland.
On International Bat Appreciation Day we celebrate pekapeka 🦇 From winning Bird of the Year to 180+ people gathering for the National Pekapeka Hui, it’s been amazing. Most of all, it’s about growing bat awareness and helping everyday New Zealanders appreciate sharing our world with bats.
#nzbats
New article by AUT's Matt Halliday: How much is climate misinformation shaping NZ Government policy?
blog.planetaryecology.org/2026/04/17/h...
Bluesky announces that they are pivoting to selling shoes.
Surely Marlburghers
Grim reading, but accurately maps to, and confirms what I'm studying in social media commentary - which is a world apart from what NZ govt is saying/communicating/addressing. | NZ business feedback on recent oil price moves and related disruptions www.westpaciq.com.au/economics/20... #nzpol
Horizontal lollipop chart showing Deliberative Democracy Index scores for 18 peer countries in 2025. Denmark ranks first at 0.87. New Zealand ranks 37th at 0.64, near the bottom of the group and below Australia (12th, 0.77), the UK (31st, 0.67), and most other comparable democracies. The USA ranks 58th at 0.48. NZ, Australia, UK, and USA are highlighted in colour.
NZ ranks 14th globally for liberal democracy. But 37th for deliberative democracy - how decisions get made and explained. And that ranking has been falling.
I dug into the latest data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. Short 🧵 (1/5)
#nzpol
AI is profoundly unpopular. A recent NBC News poll found that among 18-34 year-olds, AI's net favorability rating is -44. *Negative 44*. Those are basically serial killer numbers. It's not much better among women 18-49. (Men over 50 and upper class are the only ones who like AI, and just barely.)
a chart showing 3 msft gas data centres vs countries
a chart showing 3 msft gas data centres vs countries
New @stand.earth: Microsoft's 3 new gas data centres will
- Increase Microsoft's emissions 160%
- Have higher emissions than power sectors of each of Greece, Ireland, Sri Lanka, NZ etc...
- Have higher emissions than pwr sector of 15 lowest-emitting countries combined
stand.earth/press-releas...
A very excellent hat!
WELL NOW, would you look at that?
A massive, 4-YEAR-LONG study of NEARLY 30 MILLION people in France found that individuals who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine had a 74% LOWER risk of death from severe COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals and ZERO increased risk of all-cause mortality.
#NZpol I have to admit as someone who has tracked pseudoscience for a long time now, and who has seen so many sportspeople and newsreaders chose a second career promoting fake "wellness" remedies, and hence the grifters behind them, Taine Randall’s decision feels much the same 😔
Latest update
Long ago, being below minimum stocking requirements was seen as a reason to escalate to a higher Fuel Alert level. As of today's update not just one, but all indicators are below minimum stocking levels.
