Out on the open sea the National mini speed boat has its engine clunking in the air as it gets pulled down by a huge anchor. The anchor is a rusty Luxon head shouting, "IM NOT GOING ANYWHERE!" Chris Bishop is pleading with him to let go, Nicola Willis clings to Bishop, Simeon is trying to stop the boat from sinking with a trusted bucket and Tama is at the back trying to start the engine. It's a shit show.

My cartoon in today's www.thepost.co.nz/topics/post-...

The anchor is dragging the National Party down...

#NzPol #Cartoon #Caricature

IN ... NZ National Party @NZNational Party Apr 17 National is careful and responsible with taxpayers' money. Labour treats it like an endless ATM. We've stopped wasteful government spending while continuing to invest in the frontline services you rely on. 2023 NZ BA TRA National N ZBACK RACK MAORI 3/ We'll stop wasteful spending. 2026 We made $44b of savings in our first two Budgets. A Parigned by Parlatmary Service

Graeme Edgeler @GraemeEdgeler ... Total appropriations in Labour's last budget (2023/24) were $174.7b with estimated spending in 2025/26 of $167.8b. Total appropriations in your most recent budget (2025/26) were $188.0b. That's not $44b of savings. You're spending much more than they did. 1:48 PM Apr 17, 2026 2,737 Views

I love a good Edgling! #NZPol

Just how I imagined it...

I imagine the political obituaries are getting written already (just in case), and I would argue that the Business Daddy Syndrome - the belief that he can Do It Better because because he is Business Daddy - is what defined Luxon's leadership.

Let's take a moment to remember Luxon's KPI outcomes: 12-15 year business failure high, 10-15 year unemployment high, record job beneficiaries, record gang numbers & surpassing police #, higher sexual assaults & record domestic violence, 3500 cancelled state homes while 20,000 wait ...

Comic. [Person and person with white hat facing two boxes stacked with $80 price tag and sale tag on each box.] PERSON 1: They want $80 for this? I could make one myself for $10 in parts, an hour of work, a trip to the hardware store, another $30 in parts, another few hours of work, two more trips to the store for $20 more in parts, another hour of work to redo the first hour of work because I messed up, and $80 to buy this when the one I made breaks.

Make It Myself

xkcd.com/3233/

Yeah, spring chook. ;-)

Yes, oh to be 65 for a day.

The UX when bidding at the last minute on a TradeMe auction is terrible. You have to reload the page to see if anyone else has bid, which is shocking in 2026, especially when you consider that not requiring user page reloads has been solved for at least 10 years.

$600 for shingles vax I just had. Hurt my arm and my pocket.

Shades of Monty Python‘s comfy chair.

What idiot renamed Allbirds to Newbird AI when Pumps-and-Dump was right there?

Headline I half expected to see this morning:

Local oil companies to pivot to AI to solve fuel crisis.

This is the way.

No, he was dead, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive....

Aaargh! I thought the Met had binary search explained to them but they are STILL using this excuse!!! onodi.co/bisect/

Trump’s Dark Night on Truth Social Attacking the pope was only part of the president’s disturbing meltdown.

A dark night on Truth Social shows a president who is not well. Congress, especially the GOP, needs to speak up; they need to act. If not, what tragedies will come? www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

I note for this discussion, that copying 1980s talk radio was an implicit goal for at least 2 decades. The Panel was the prototype...
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Happy anniversary, and great photo!

If you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh.

Screenshot from the linked article, which reads: “The cumulative record is damning. Over the course of little more than two years, the Luxon coalition has timed legislation to kill tribunal hearings mid-inquiry; introduced bills the day after losing in court; overridden the first-ever judicial enforcement of three decades of freshwater protection law; retroactively voided customary rights that had been lawfully recognised; reinstated a sentencing regime found to breach fundamental human rights guarantees; and legislated away a High Court ruling protecting sick and injured New Zealanders from unlawful government debt recovery.”

A useful piece, reminding us how NZ’s government has consistently failed to respect the judgments of the courts, and opted to legislate away the decisions they don’t like.

thejackalman.blogspot.com/2026/04/luxo...

A sourdough loaf on a cooling rack. The bread has a large ear and is nicely browned

Getting back into sourdough.

The only chart that matters every day for fuel prices for the foreseeable future.

An annoying Facebook post that reads: Today in New Zealand, 30 March, 2004, history Michael King was silenced by a fatal car crash at the age of 58. He was the author of 'The Penguin History of New Zealand' which was the most popular book of the year. Here he is being interviewed about that book as it launched. King made the point that the fashion trend of referring to our country's name as "Aotearoa" was a State imposition. He pushed back against it. Ironically, the title of his own book has now succumbed to the very same pressure!

My response: Rachael King Michael King did not "push back" against the use of Aotearoa, in fact used it liberally himself. Just because he lays out his understanding of the origins of the name, doesn't mean he thought it was not a legitimate name to adopt. Language evolves, and if this one word 'Aotearoa' gives us a Mãori equivalent of New Zealand to use alongside it, why is that a problem? He didn't think it was. Why should you use his words out of context to make a point that he didn't believe himself?

So frickin sick of these people taking our father’s words out of context for their own ends.

It’s World Homeopathy Awareness Week. The less aware of it you are, the more good it will do you.

Analysis Finds That Google's AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization A new analysis commissioned by The New York Times suggests that Google's AI Overviews are wrong an astonishing percentage of the time.

This is catastrophic.

Brightin Star 50mm f0.95 lens on a canon camera.

This just arrived today. Giving it a spin in overcast conditions. Manual aperture and focus.