Mark
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maetl.bsky.social
Mark
@maetl.bsky.social
Lecturer in Product Design at UCNZ. Tech industry dropout. Narrative systems and geoscience meddler. Old school web sectary. Frankenbike curator. Waste stream wrangler.
Pinned
I don’t want raytracing or photorealism, I want the lo-fi dwarfs in their fortress to be standing in grid cells backed by a fully simulated carbon cycle, atmospheric fluid flow, insolation, atmospheric chemistry, evapotranspiration, geological strata, ecological systems...
The Wellington CCO director breaking into his neighbour’s house in a cat burglar suit and masturbating over her things.

The predatory groomer and rapist Tim Jago operating as party president of ACT for years, crowing on a podcast with Seymour about ‘victimhood’.
November 13, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Mark
azhdarchid.com/against-metr...

I really do hate the term 'metroidbrania'. I think so do many of you. Let's nip it in the bud before it becomes something people are financially invested in.
Against 'Metroidbrania': a Landscape of Knowledge Games
What are knowledge games? How do we relate them to each other? What sub-genres exist – and which ones might be implied?
azhdarchid.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Chad the Brainrot IDE should be the last straw for Silicon Valley having any leadership influence on product design.

Stop it, it’s already dead, etc
November 13, 2025 at 12:34 AM
Reposted by Mark
Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.
November 12, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Mark
Brian Roche:
"This person was able to mislead the majority of the system, this system now has to make sure we're not going to get captured by that again."

You are fucking kidding me. How does he say that with a straight face?

#nzpol
November 12, 2025 at 8:27 PM
“It’s not corruption, it’s a ‘cultural integrity problem’ of not being able to manage conflicts of interest” was an actual real thing that was said in New Zealand media today.
November 12, 2025 at 10:49 PM
New cryptid just dropped
November 12, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Mark
I am fed up to the back teeth with narrow academic book smart pseudo-intellectual approaches to internet threats. If you are not adopting an adversarial street fighting stance to current trends, you don’t understand the rules of the game
November 12, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Good for Iceland to recognise this directly. Ireland asleep at the wheel, and Canada approving giant new fossil gas projects. Come tf on.
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
www.reuters.com
November 12, 2025 at 8:43 AM
Something to consider for New Zealand which spent most of the 20th century trying to create itself as a model version of this forsaken island.
November 12, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by Mark
A big reason proc gen feels so different to AI in spite of superficial similarities is exactly this!!

Proc Gen systems reflect the interests and creative preferences of the tool makers, whereas AI is catch-all sludge that reflects no specific point of view. It’s not remotely the same!
In case anyone ever asks, I *have* written a material generator and a music generator for Eldritch 2, but that's not AI. That's me taking all the things I personally know about those things, and writing my own tools to make the process a little faster and easier for myself. It's still 100% me, baby.
November 12, 2025 at 7:36 AM
Reposted by Mark
"babies are born worshipping unknown gods" is one of the most incredible dwarf fortress bugs i have heard of. its poetry.
November 11, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Reposted by Mark
We also need to consider the possibility that the barrel is an apple-rotting machine. The structure and history of policing are based on enforcing power structures, so it’s little surprise that individuals within the institution learn to protect and abuse power.
“A few bad apples” is always used to deflect criticism of systemic problems in NZ.

Schopenhauer’s entropy is a more realistic way to think about it: “If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.”
November 11, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Once they recognised they could get away with presenting ‘multiple hats’ as a way of justifying selective acknowledgement of facts and blocking scrutiny by parliament and media, it was only a matter of time for selective acknowledgement to become a ‘protocol’ in the official communications loop.
Periodic reminder that the role of Secretary (as in a minister's Private Secretary who handles their correspondence) is traditionally to keep secrets FOR the sovereign power (ie the minister), not to keep secrets FROM the sovereign power so they can enjoy plausible deniability when shit blows up
November 11, 2025 at 11:39 PM
“A few bad apples” is always used to deflect criticism of systemic problems in NZ.

Schopenhauer’s entropy is a more realistic way to think about it: “If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage.”
November 11, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Mark
ok one last post -- oldheads are always going to "why is the web dying.... how can we get the kids invested in the free and open web"

bro the kids can't read. that's why the web is dying. first things first
November 11, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Is it also that these tendencies towards organisational self-protection, deference to hierarchy and intolerance towards external criticism apply directly to the government as well?
The fundamental problem this Government has in responding to the McSkimming coverup report is that it's broader law 'n order programme relies on having an enforcement arm that exhibits these sorts of characteristics ... no "soft" policing that second-guesses its actions + does "what is needed".
November 11, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Mark
we fixed our girl with the power of BUCKET HAT 🪣🎩

a lil' romance option redesign for that game we're making called: 🔍 "ShelfLife: Art School Detective" 🔍

#datingsim #lgbt #indiegamedev #indiegame #gamedev #indiegames
November 11, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Staff at NZ universities will now have to deal with govt mandated free speech complaints process designed to facilitate far right agitprop infiltrating campus spaces and threatening our academic freedom under the guise of protecting it.
www.beehive.govt.nz/release/ensu...
www.beehive.govt.nz
November 11, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Maybe the "mature conversation" NZ needs to have is about the gap between rhetoric and reality with CEO and board appointments.
November 11, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Spilled-milk discount deck furniture piss country.
November 11, 2025 at 5:54 AM
At what point do we publicly accept that NZ is deeply corrupt and the only reason why we don’t have a culture of direct payoffs and bribery (that we cite as the evidence for us not being corrupt) is because it’s not needed? The boys club gets what it wants through people playing their social roles.
November 11, 2025 at 5:06 AM
The RNZ MediaWatch attempt to self diagnose the ongoing destruction of NZ media and emergence of a polarised low trust information environment is welcome, but falters for reasons related to the macro problems.
November 11, 2025 at 3:02 AM
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a pundit possessing moderate fame must be in want of a deferential, sycophantic social media audience.
the hipsters, they’re ordering double frufru mocha soy frappuccino. doesn’t anybody order a black coffee anymore
November 10, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Mark
Ahead of COP 30 I’ve been thinking about the irony that the critics of our 1.5 IPCC report are many of the people now saying it’s too late to act because we’ve going past 1.5 & we must focus on instead on technological fixes to address overshoot - here’s why I think these arguments are distractions
November 10, 2025 at 5:13 AM