John Darnielle rocks out even harder with a sick electric acoustic guitar

Laughed, cried, yelled out "YOU ARE COMING DOWN WITH ME / HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND" in unison with a thousand other people. The kind of gig you never forget.

John Darnielle rocks out with a sick electric acoustic guitar

I was in the unenviable position of becoming a @themountaingoats.bsky.social fan about a month after the last time they played NZ. Didn't expect it to be 16 years before I got to see them play live, but it was unquestionably worth the wait.

InDesign has this function, but the convenience there is not outweighed by *gestures broadly at the rest of InDesign*

NGE rewired my brain when I watched it as an extremely depressed 17 year old, and I kinda wish I'd watched Utena during that same two-weeks-off-school-because-I-had-a-major-depressive-break period. If nothing else I'd have probably realised I was queer a lot earlier.

This is just like the time I watched the Wire and had to be like "yeah I guess everyone who told me this is the greatest thing ever and I'd love it wasn't exaggerating."

Guess who just finished binge-watching Revolutionary Girl Utena

Guy who watches a 30-year-old beloved & influential anime: Wow guys this is amazing have you seen this show I wanna talk about it endlessly its symbolic register has taken up permanent residence in my brain, did you know it was good?

CYCLONE VAIANU WARNINGS UPDATE

🔴 RED STRONG WIND WARNING - Coromandel Peninsula and Great Barrier Island 🔴

💨 Strong Wind Watches and Warnings updated 🟠 🟡
🌧️ Heavy Rain Watches and Warnings updated🟠 🟡

More warning information: metservice.com/warnings
How to prepare: GetReady.govt.nz

A flyer for the Te Awakairangi Greens "Meet The Candidates" event. It has photos of Courtney White, Chris Norton, Lan Pham, and Celia Wade-Brown. Event is Thursday 16 May, 6-8PM, at The Crooked Elm, Lower Hutt.

Our Hutt South and Remutaka Green candidates are hosting a relaxed Meet-the-Candidates evening on Thursday 16 April, from 6 to 8pm @ The Crooked Elm in Lower Hutt. A chance to connect, talk about what matters to you, and hear a bit about what we’re thinking for the year ahead. Hope to see you there!

Select Committee Reports Georg is an outlier adn should not have been counted

Doing a research survey about marine protection in Aotearoa, and I don't know whether I should point out in the extra comment space that I wrote the select committee report on the Hauraki Gulf / Tīkapa Moana Marine Protection Bill, so my awareness might not be representative of the wider population.

In a half-hearted defense of my anxiety-posting, I did at least try to keep my yelling limited to our own country and its failings

(I also know that posting doesn't do much to help anyone, but fuck it my options are this or start gnawing on my arm while refreshing Al Jazeera)

...genocide, there is nothing more morally vacuous than pretending that we can keep politely pretending things are business as usual and that little chats with the US Secretary of State asking kindly that he de-escalate the war his dying empire started.

Peters tells us that taking a stance would be "mindless moral posturing and vacuous virtue signalling", while the Government condemns Iran's retaliation but not the US and Israel's illegal war of aggression. But when the President of America *goes on social media* and threatens to commit...

There are infinite ways this sentence could have been phrased, and he went with the one that keeps pushing his pathetic culture war "it's New Zealand not Aotearoa!1!!one!" flag.

Text reads "Peters had made clear New Zealand’s desire for de-escalation, and was hopeful that message would be heeded. “All you can do is present your case as a country called New Zealand way out in the west Pacific, speaking more so for a lot of Pacific island nations who would want us to repeat that message."

Went to read this article to get some insight on what the Foreign Minister was actually saying in the room with Rubio, got... some of that, but mostly came away thinking "oh fuck OFF", god forbid he ever stop trying to erase Te Reo at every opportunity.
newsroom.co.nz/2026/04/08/w...

(Considering the moral wound to our nation's psyche is substantially less important than stopping the atrocities being inflicted by the American regime and its genocidal ethnostate proxy, but one of these things is something I have a glimmer of hope of doing something about)

It's not a moral stance if you only ever stand against things when it's easy. That's just cowardice.

Every day our Government refuses to condemn these genocidal actions and brazen war crimes the moral wound deepens. We've spent decades playing the "NZ Inc" game, the idea that we don't do partisan politics on the world stage, we present a united front in support of the international rule of law.

Trump is threatening to erase an entire civilisation. We are watching genocide and war crimes become normalised in real time - Just look at Gaza. And where is the Minister for Foreign Affairs? In the United States, playing footsies with Rubio

These unhinged rants are why we should not be following the US into war. Also a reminder that Israel and the US started this war by dropping a bomb on a school full of children. Say no to AUKUS. Say no to US military payloads being launched from Aotearoa soil.

this is my barbenheimer #maulshadowlord #witchhatatelier

As I walked past a Supermarket while out on my constitutional, I thought I would make this.

A Simpsons meme. Elderly Homer and Marge in bed. Caption is poorly edited to read "You know, [DAVE] turned into a hard-core [WEEB] so gradually I didn't even notice"

Me deciding which anime to watch this season

b&w photo of Mifune in his beloved cream '52 MG TD, with his katana/sword visible on the dash. photo is mostly dirt road, with Mifune at the very bottom of the photo in driver's seat.

Toshiro Mifune driving his MG TD on the set of Yojimbo with his sword on the dash

The Queersar Not An Award 2021 For excellence in queer SFF and SFF with queers released in 2021

Presenting:

The Queersar Not An Award for 2021!

10 (+1) examples of top-quality queer SFF.

Brilliant fantasy cities, some great SFF romance, anti-Brexit Epic Fantasy, dark fantasy mystery, space opera, gonzo slipstream, a great spin-off with a particular spotlight on a throwback of the best sort.

A photo of Dave, wearing a waistcoat, green scarf, and yellow cravat, standing in front of a Green Party flag, holding a rapier.

By the power of friendship, I have been given a rapier.

No helped by the realtime info on bus replacement routes being incomplete (all buses are empty and heading due north).

Oh cool, extremely limited concourse access from the train station as well. Love this.