The Weekend Spy :verified_gay:

Come Mr. DJ song pon de pundit :laserkiwi: :tinoflag: Decolonisation and political commentary with no filter. Posts auto-purge after 1 week.

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Last Notes

2026-10-06 23:34:28 GMT

Japan declared that teaching children about hell or using fear-based religious lessons is officially classified as a form of psychological abuse against minors... BECAUSE IT FUCKING IS! Saying so doesn't undermine religious freedom, but if you can't supposedly practice your religion freely without terrorising a child in the process, then perhaps you don't deserve to practice it altogether!

2026-09-28 21:00:32 GMT

It irritates me when people proclaim that autism is a superpower, when they only mean it to refer to some weird quirky habit or hyper-focused fixation that benefits OTHER people.

2026-08-06 13:56:18 GMT

Stan Walker is truly one of the most important artists of our time. His work, through his incredibly powerful voice, makes tangible, the deep sorrow and pain felt by all indigenous people around the world.
The topic of decolonisation is such an important conversation to have, but it can be so overwhelming, uncomfortable and challenging. You’re having to deal with so many complex, intersecting concepts, and emotions all at once. So to have people like Ana Duvernay make a film like ‘Origin’, is honestly such a gift.
She and Stan, and so many others, have been able to convey the message in a way that is timelessly beautiful and easily accessible to a wide range of people. It gives me so much hope.
We have an incredible platform here on the Fediverse, and being able to democratically connect with so many people from around the world is a privilege.
If you want to be genuinely helpful, to educate yourself, if you believe in justice, please take the step forward to decolonising your mind and read the authors who do this critical work, be a witness to the media that tell and highlight these stories.
Through this learning journey, you may feel guilt, shame, sadness, anger, but these are emotions we ALL need to hold and stay with, if we are to intentionally channel them into a force for good.
https://youtu.be/IK8OOpeYHC4
I also highly recommend ‘The Eternal Song’, which is just one among the many amazing films at https://scienceandnonduality.com/films/

2026-08-04 09:38:48 GMT

The media choosing to focus on Winston Peters shouting at people to “go back to where you've come from”, instead of grilling him about how someone like Nicholas Newport was able to infiltrate the New Zealand First party through its youth wing, is exactly the kind of psy-op distraction that enables Nazism to be embedded and normalised.
Attempts to placate the Chinese community from taking offense, won't stop Nazis from coming after our parliament.
Why would they vote for NZ First? Because they know, they can't go mainstream on their own. For the most part, kiwis reject xenophobia. But that hasn't stopped the racists from being emboldened more than ever.
They've copied the MAGA playbook to a tee, hijacking the right-wing conservative block by adopting a more established political organisation, in order to implement their anti-immigration, anti-indigenous, whites-only, ethno-nationalist policies, and they don't care how long it takes, as long as they inch closer to pushing Te Tiriti to oblivion, so that we can no longer stand on it for any legal protections. And Winston is either oblivious to all this happening, showing that he is unable to govern his own party, unable to screen members through a vetting process, or he is complicit, and is totally vying for the white-supremacist vote, feeling confident that he has enough of their support to keep his position as king-maker.
In that context, comments like "butter chicken tsunami" by Shane Jones makes total fucking sense. Whatever NZ First stood for in the past, they have now become a party that harbours neo-nazis and white supremacists, defending abbhorent rhetoric, just like ACT, just like Hobson's Pledge, and every other Atlas Network carbon-copy think tank that has received millions to run campaigns that aim to dismantle our democracy.
This is the imminent threat facing all western, European, and OECD countries. We're busy arguing about guillotines, while they quietly bought guns.
https://www.thepress.co.nz/politics/361052500/senior-nz-first-youth-figure-linked-neo-nazi-group?fbclid=IwY2xjawTdADVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFNbUNBMUFHRG1wQzZYUW1Sc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHg4pIkr_44pVHSqf19wi7Yi6vy2NBwdPxovnmD3lV7HX97zV1Yd-zzkDQfzV_aem_ckCy4TOLTZBQvP4dI6tKqQ

2026-07-28 22:08:41 GMT

Who needs rocket fuel when you've got a human nuclear reactor.
https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/999/870/845/344/454/original/41e8a9e569d8fd2d.jpg

2026-07-25 06:53:03 GMT

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I get the concern about exploitation and coercive labour, those are real harms, and they deserve to be condemned. Most migrants are already escaping violence, poverty, or instability, and they often have very little power over their working conditions.
It’s probably more accurate and more useful to target the actual sources of oppression: exploitative employers, discriminatory policies, trafficking networks, and systems that enable debt bondage and abuse, to the detriment of indigenous sovereignty.
I view the current policy of visa accreditation for certain businesses that are not future-proofed or sustainable, as part of the problem of oppressive systems. Immigration in and of itself isn't bad, but it's how it is weaponized and used to enrich the already wealthy, while simultaneously disenfranchising everyone else (including the migrants) that I have a problem with.

2026-07-25 01:22:27 GMT

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I may be convinced otherwise once it's implemented here and the lived experience can prove the concept is sustainable within our system that continually exploits people for profit, but I think a UBI is like a band-aid. It may soften the symptoms of dispossession and precarity produced by capitalism and settler colonial structures, but it doesn't address the underlying power relations that generate those symptoms in the first place.
Even if it provides short-term relief, it leaves intact the colonial logic that land is something to be governed through extractive institutions and market rule, rather than through indigenous sovereignty, and it keeps capitalism's core demand, that people's lives be made only legible as "workers" and their needs routed only through wage and consumption.
So the REAL decolonial objection isn't that UBI is "bad" in itself, it's that it treats redistribution as a substitute for undoing colonial dispossession. If the goal is justice, then relief without structural change, without returning land, sovereignty, and community power, risks becoming another way colonial-capitalism absorbs critique, AKA a band-aid to the wound, while preserving the system that caused it.
Obviously there's much more complexity and nuance to New Zealand's migrant history and I do recognise that other places are also victims of colonial projects which have led those people to move here in search of a better life, but I can appreciate the legitimacy of such an upheaval to their lives while also recognising the cost to existing communities here.
Also important to note in this global technology race, is that the roles being created to service these new economies are very much outnumbered by the quantity of roles disappearing from across all industries. We are constantly promised freedom and abundance as long as we adopt these tools and yet inequality is worse than its ever been, so what's the timeline then? 10 more years? 25? 50?
We should revolt NOW.

2026-07-23 23:52:25 GMT

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my take on sticking with the status quo is carrying on with the same kind of archaic education, employment models, and immigration systems, that don't seriously take into account the disruption that AI will cause across all industries, and pretending that our current employer accreditation is still fit for purpose, while a future scenario looms where even the regional hobby vape shops you seem to be defending can be fully automated.
We are not re-training and upskilling people nowhere fast enough to adapt to the changes that are coming. I'm not opposed to people moving here, freedom of movement is a basic human right that should be accessed by everyone, but if you want them to thrive, to sustainably make a living once they get here, we can't afford to be short-sighted. What do you think a high rate of unemployment would do for our crime statistics? The way things are, it's a ripple about to touch the edge. I don't even think a UBI will be enough to hold social cohesion together at that point.
It would be quite a utopian vision, if instead of being subjected to menial-labour, people can still be housed and fed as intellectuals and artists after most jobs have been made redundant, but that's not grounded in reality.
Instead of investing in future-proofing and genuinely bettering our lives using these incredibly powerful technologies, AI is being used to impose mass-surveillance and generating profit for a corporate backed police-state.
That is the status quo I'm against and I view immigration from that lens, it has nothing to do with racism.

2026-07-22 02:34:36 GMT

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that's a lot of words to justify sticking with the status quo.

2026-07-22 01:12:05 GMT

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let me put it in another way. The current setup perpetuates the creation of lots of low-wage unskilled jobs that aim to funnel as much money into the pockets of the owners of production, while leaving the rest of the population struggling to meet basic costs.
We should instead invest in the creation of meaningful, well-paid jobs, that build long-term career progression in innovative industries that diversify our economy's reliance away from the main ones, namely: agriculture, tourism and real estate.
So I do have a problem with the tactless and directionless creation of lots and lots of dead-end jobs in our regions in the first place, because it keeps everyone stuck in this cycle of slave-wage renters propping up the lifestyles and retirements of landlords and those privileged enough to own a semi-profitable business, even if that business isn't actually truly sustainable, like constantly plagued by not being able to balance the books, often avoiding tax obligations, firing staff and throwing them into financial uncertainty because they have a slow season, and repeat offenders being bailed out constantly or simply rebranding to escape accountability.
So when you transfer foreign migrants to regional towns to do dead-end jobs, you inevitably get the expected outcome — a dead end economy.

2026-07-21 23:04:32 GMT

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I'm on the fence about "hobby businesses". If it doesn't add real value to a community, it probably shouldn't exist.
We should be diversifying away from jobs that are not future-proof. There are so many more enterprises that are needed: childcare centres, medical clinics, multi-use hubs such as libraries, do we really need yet another op-shop?
We've given tax-breaks to tobacco companies and accredited status to vape shops, but we haven't raised wages for nurses or hired more people at our hospitals when we know that we have a fast-aging population.
You want the regions to thrive? Bring in more IT skills that allow for remote work so that we have income sources that aren't just from agriculture.
As it stands, our priorities are messed up.

2026-07-21 22:35:08 GMT

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I suppose it would be very specialist high level management for some industries or genuine rare technical skills, that just couldn't be filled by a recent graduate. The one thing I hate more than the idea of commonly-skilled jobs going to foreigners instead of kiwis, is giving high paid specialist or management roles to absolute incompetent charlatans through nepotism. So that is where potentially visas need to be considered on a case-by-case basis, but going back to my point specifically about businesses selling vape products, I don't believe a role exists in that organisational pyramid that can't be filled by a local. You could perhaps argue perhaps for importing a very talented manager to sort out problems in the logistics side, but it's quite a weak argument when we could instead invest in free courses that allows current residents to upskill and meet those needs before even starting operations for such a business. It just doesn't seem good practice to even start a vape shop without knowing you can staff it adequately using local labour.

2026-07-21 20:55:49 GMT

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it's likely MBIE. There's genuine reason to keep retail in the list but I think exclusions should be clear, so that migrant workers who get employed by vape shops aren't given a path to residency, it's not a skill shortage and those roles should be filled by kiwis as much as possible. I get that in the regions it can be hard to find staff in general, but it just doesn't seem right that visas are granted for those kinds of businesses.

2026-07-21 14:22:49 GMT

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skilled migrant workers. These jobs can easily be done by our own citizens and residents. Absolutely no reason they need to get retail staff from overseas for a vape shop.

2026-07-21 10:46:53 GMT

Vape shops should not be on the accredited employers list, how was this allowed to happen?

2026-07-06 22:16:03 GMT

https://o.mastodon.nz/media_attachments/files/116/875/333/685/250/511/original/fcc660dab5527a8a.jpg

2026-05-28 14:38:16 GMT

I can't unsee it. Just like how America's reaction to Obama is to vote in Trump, New Zealand's reaction to voting in a woman is to go far-right.

2026-01-12 12:54:59 GMT

"What radicalized you?"
Nothing radicalized me.
I was born with basic empathy.
Somehow the world decided that was radical.

2025-12-18 09:01:49 GMT

“I want to say something many will hate but it needs to be said. I have met Nigel Farage. I do not know him well but I know the world he moves in. We move in similar circles sometimes. The kind of private rooms and members clubs that most people in Britain will never see. I know how the rich speak about ordinary people. They laugh. They joke about how easy it is to wind you up. They know exactly which buttons to press. They know you are angry and tired and struggling and they know you want someone to blame. That is why they point at boats while they pick your pockets.
“I did not grow up rich. I did not grow up in privilege. I understand struggle and the real world. But my life changed and now I see both sides. I sit with billionaires and politicians and decision makers and I hear conversations you never will. I know the truth. They do not care about you. They do not care about your future. They care about profit and control. They see ordinary people as tools or distractions. I am telling you this because I am tired of watching good people being manipulated.
“Look at your life before Brexit and look at it now. Look at your shopping bills. Look at what food costs in Europe right now. Look at how much tax you pay on imports. Look at your wages and energy prices and mortgages. Look at the 10,000 NHS staff we lost when freedom of movement ended. Look at the ambulances that do not arrive. Look at nurses and teachers using food banks. Tell me honestly. Are you better off?

2025-10-18 20:43:16 GMT

I'm sure many of you have heard by now that earlier this week, IU k*lled the print edition of its student paper, the IDS. The issue that was supposed to print this week contained criticism of the Whitten regime and IUs further slide into Fscist control, and they couldn't allow that to happen during Homecoming, when all the rich alumni are in town.
Enter Purdue! The Purdue student paper, The Exponent, owns its own presses. Yesterday, in an act of tremendous solidarity with their biggest rival school, they printed the forbidden issue of the IDS. They then drove it to Bloomington overnight and stocked all of the IDS boxes on campus, just in time for Homecoming.
Solidarity is what makes us stronger, and solidarity will be what ultimately allows us to triumph, if we can ever truly get it together. I hope everyone has a fun, safe day if they're going out today, and I hope we can think about what acts of solidarity we can begin taking to really make this movement MOVE - beyond a permitted expression of upset into more active resistance.
-Sara Whitmer

2025-07-02 10:55:30 GMT

ICEBlock - See Something, Tap Something
https://www.iceblock.app/
ICEBlock is an innovative, completely anonymous crowdsourced platform that allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity with just two taps on their phone. In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and failures to adhere to constitutional principles and due process, making it crucial for communities to stay informed about its operations.
Modeled after Waze but for ICE sightings, the app ensures user privacy by storing no personal data, making it impossible to trace reports back to individual users. Available exclusively for iOS devices, ICEBlock empowers communities to stay informed about ICE presence within a 5-mile radius while maintaining their anonymity through real-time updates and automatic deletion of sightings after four hours.

2025-01-31 11:31:13 GMT

Google is so powerful that it "hides" other search systems from us. We just don't know the existence of most of them.
Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information.
Keep a list of these sites for reference:
https://refseek.com
https://worldcat.org
https://link.springer.com
https://bioline.org.br
https://repec.org
https://science.gov
https://base-search.net

2024-08-16 02:12:31 GMT

https://mastodon.nz/system/media_attachments/files/112/969/274/858/386/738/original/ed56785dd00ae9e3.jpg