Oof. Authors learning to do pulp...

Might be a bit of both then - powerful RW people wear suits badly so others emulate it.

According to the Menswear Discourse Guy (who'd know) it's because they read "suit" as "serious business" but they don't know enough or want to know enough to make choices about their suits that will lead to them fitting right.

I mean, again, I get that - but Willis looks relaxed in that shot - she's doing it correctly for what she's trying to display.

Oh yeah I keep meaning to check that out

I mean, sure, yes, all of that is correct. Doesn't shed much light on what Luxo and his team (or the guy from the herald who took the photo) were trying to communicate here though.

Have you read the Second Chronicles? I never got round to them...

I KNOW RIGHT?!

Literally every element pulls in the opposite direction from every other!

The thing I found out as an adult though, is that JH Brennan is actually much more prolific and well-known as a writer of new-age books that teach you how to astral travel and shit. He did write a non-fiction book for kids on how to ghost hunt that I used to own (as a kid).

The author also wrote the Grailquest series of choose-you-own-adventure books. I think they're moderately well-known and they're a loosely Arthurian thing that comes down to "what if Fighting Fantasy was also funny?"

Barmy Jeffers and the Quasimodo Walk Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

It's a series of British kids' books from the 80's, and early 90's. I got them because a lady who babysat for me and my brother used to get seconds from Collins (the publisher) very cheap and so she'd just give us heaps of random books.

In the first book he arrives and becomes the fish-out-of-water audience surrogate hero only ton find that the aforementioned little sister already got there and has become 2IC to the Big Bad Villain.

I am not, by any meaningful metric, a writer. That said, it's a crime that no one has done anything further with Barmy Jeffers - a kid who discovers he can go to a D&D-like fantasy world by doing a weird monster walk he invented to annoy his baby sister.

Live blog: Crunch time for Luxon and the Moany Five at National caucus This is made up. Or is it?

Sharing this story from The Spinoff largely to ask "what on earth did Luxon's team think they were conveying with this image"? He doesn't look remotely relaxed, the foot up as a joke might make sense but his face conveys no humour, the paper everywhere, the tiny coffee, what?

Thats great but he really should've known how to do these things before becoming Prime Minister.

Presumably Belgian puppygirls say "Wooah!"

Literally the only book (let along TTRPG) I've previously seen in this format is Mark Z. Danielewski's "Only Revolutions", which instructs you to read it 10 pages at a time in each direction before flipping it.

we drink laudanum in this web zone

Eg ministers tend to be reshuffled with a view to perceived effectiveness, and PMs get dumped when they seem unpopular or bad at PR.

The government has a lot of power, because we don't have a system of checks and balances. In terms of parties picking their leader internally, I dunno, it tends to be done in response to the electorate rather than to push a particular ideological view.

Also means (not that common, but definitely happens) that a party will ditch a leader who's not performing. That's how Ardern became Labour leader, and looks like it might happen to current PM.

Yup! Leads to a lot more parties being part of government. Our current one is mostly National (think UK Conservatives) with support from Act (right libertarian) and NZ First (charismatic populist). The other common alliance is Labour/Greens.

It's traditional!

I think it's pretty simple. Humans are not great at killing one another without getting all psyched up and dehumanising the enemy - all armies do at least a bit of rape and war crimes. The more monstrous your own cause, the more extreme that needs to be, so the more deranged the acting out gets.

I agree, I just don't think their peak and drop in voteshare had that much to do with their political moves. I think Ardern became toxic because of maniacs, but also they were just never going to stay on the high of "we might die if we don't vote Labour".

In further "mistaking other people's politics for your own" news - "ACT Greens" is a phrase that will give NZ voters the feeling of a minor stroke.

Yeah, sadly I think they think that they went too far left and put people off rather than having had a brief and extraordinary window in which they fumbled the bag.

Yup, but sadly people who were Red Peak's target demo had the choice of "try for Red Peak or try to actually embarrass the Teflon Man for once".

IMO that's the thing that'll probably sink any chance of change for a wee bit. NZ politics is *so much* about the personalities of party leaders - the flag thing absolutely turned into "do you like John Key y/n?"

Yeah, and there are anti-Te Tiriti creeps who would absolutely want to use a republican shift as a way of killing it. That aside, you could absolutely posit a continuity between the Crown and the new republican government that would keep it in place I reckon.