Facebook: Rules of Engagement

(original photo by Makeen M.Alaa on Unsplash)

Facebook has become a crucial battleground in politics.

On Facebook, waves of comments expressing toxic views create an illusion of mainstream agreement, establishing dangerous social norms.

On Facebook, deliberately contrived propaganda is carried into regular communities to harm positive and progressive causes.

On Facebook, soundbite opinions about political events are circulated, spread, and refined.

If you’re still on Facebook, you’ve seen how wild it gets over there. It can feel like reality has been swamped by bots and monsters. Take heart! The troll army is smaller and weaker than it seems. We can push back, and make a (small but mighty) difference.

(1) Why Facebook matters

The internet has changed a great deal in the last decade, and now we are dealing with a single overwhelmingly important truth: Facebook is the only social media platform where regular people talk to each other.

Other big social media sites (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.) are broadcast channels for receiving content as an audience. Other talk-based social media sites (Reddit, X/Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads) are small next to Facebook, and do not really attract a membership of regular people. (Users tend to be ‘very online’.) Specialist community social media (Neighbourly in NZ, Nextdoor in the US, the NeighbourhApp in Dignity Falls) gets close but doesn’t have the reach.

Regular people go to Facebook and use it daily for regular person reasons:

  • It has a peer-to-peer marketplace that dominates informal selling.
  • It is the online front door of many small and medium businesses.
  • It has an events system that makes it easy to organize parties, special occasions, public events, and more.
  • It shows you what your friends and family are up to, and lets you share your activities with them. (Although this functionality has been degraded, it still works enough to keep people on the site.)
  • And, crucially, it has interest group spaces, where you can see and join discussions about whatever you’re interested in. (This is the only aspect of Facebook that genuinely works well.)

One of the most popular interest group types is the local community group, where a broad cross-section of people in your city, town, or suburb can report lost pets, complain about driving, and discuss the news. On the entire internet, Facebook is the only place this happens at scale.

This makes Facebook crucially important for societies and communities. Politics happens there in a way that it does not happen anywhere else online.

We’d better not abandon it to the right wing machines.

(2) On Facebook, influence is tilted.

In the New Zealand election 2026, Facebook posts and comments will directly influence the voting decisions and political beliefs of countless Kiwi voters.

That influence will be overwhelmingly tilted in favour of reactionary, conservative, and paranoid right-wing parties.

The right has several advantages that help create this tilt:

  • They have the money to place their messages into the platform’s machinery. The political parties directly, but also lobby groups such as the Taxpayers Union and the Sensible Sentencing Trust.
  • They benefit from the structure of the platform. Hot take posts with a simple message provoking a negative emotional reaction generate the kind of activity that leads to circulation via the algorithm. These kinds of post suit right-wing politics much more than left-wing politics.
  • They have the global moment in their favour. Reactionary forces have not been so dominant around the world for over half a century. International messages are delivered into local context by the algorithm.
  • They might also have international interference operations in their favour. Russian activity is real, and while it remains to be seen whether this will a factor in the coming election, it was a factor in the last one.
  • They have the benefit of mendacity. Knowingly false or extravagantly exaggerated claims can easily be illustrated with AI slop and thrown into the algorithm to powerful effect; these kinds of posts serve right-wing messaging much more than left.

These advantages give right wing forces high visibility on Facebook.

There are many Facebook interest groups founded on social fear. Groups spring up expressing worry about immigration, or new health measures, or governance changes. Some are created deliberately by malign actors working to a strategic plan, but others form genuinely as grass-roots actions by concerned people who hold on to social fears.

These groups can become thick with discussion about what is feared, and spread worry and anxiety. Discussion in these groups is almost never about limiting worry or calming members down. The direction of travel is always towards greater fear, and more extreme views. In this way, these groups become entry points into more extreme message groups, which promote ever more elaborate and toxic views of the world.

The distance from a toxic fear group to a busy local community group is small. For those caught up in these fear beliefs, all of these items appear in the same scroll on their Facebook feed. They see paranoid hatred towards Jacinda Ardern that deems her a mass-murdering globalist, and just below, a National Party member scaremongering about the dangers of the Labour government. It all becomes one thing.

Inevitably, then, fear messages from these toxic communities make their way into regular discussion. They come from genuine members of these communities who earnestly hold these beliefs and express them; they come from cynical provocateurs who enjoy stirring up trouble by poking at the ‘do-gooders’ of the world; they come from bad faith political actors who have no actual beliefs to speak of but recognize these messages serve their ends; they come from fake accounts operated by foreign actors seeking to harvest engagement or stir up trouble.

The way Facebook works right now, these messages propagate on neutral spaces in numbers that vastly overrepresent the actual social presence of these beliefs.

They make it seem like there are lots of them. Like their views are extremely common, even the majority. They are not, not even close.

That discrepancy is territory we have ceded.

We can push back.

(3) Rules of engagement for Facebook

On the largest scale, there is not much to be done that will change this election. These factors on Facebook are locked in place. The playing field is tilted. That can’t be fixed in the next few months. It’s an important battle, but the best thing to do for it right now is strive to get the best people for that fight into government.

But there is a huge amount that can be achieved as part of our everyday engagement with our social media environment.

Whenever you visit Facebook, aim to make it just a little bit more pleasant and a little bit more real.

Here’s how to make your contributions most effective, and avoid making things accidentally worse.

[NOTE: Am I missing something? Is something wrong? Let me know so I can improve this list.]

How to engage depends on the kind of post you are looking at:

Posts from right-wing sources: Scroll past any post from a right-wing source. National/ACT/NZ First politicians, Destiny Church, lobby groups… Don’t engage. This just promotes their messages and gets the algorithm humming. They want battles under their posts, do not give them such. (Hardcore options: Read to identify key messages; screenshot and reply elsewhere without sending views to the original post.)

Neutral media sources: Under media sources, e.g. political news articles from RNZ or The Spinoff or NZ Herald, we can comment without driving engagement to RW messages. Particular things to do:
* take messages from the story that resonate and restate them in your own words. Many people won’t click the link.
* directly quote key lines from the story, with a comment like “this is the most important bit”.
* respond to a political message with a real world example from your life. (Don’t make one up!) “This policy would make a huge difference to my brother who does X, Y, Z.”
* reply to other people saying positive messages with more positive messages, particularly if they are getting shitty replies.
* if there are racist/hate messages in the comments (surprisingly common), make a comment (not a reply to an offender) asking for comment moderation.

Things to avoid:
* replying to RW troll/propaganda/negative messages. The engagement just pushes their comments to the top of the heap so people scrolling by will see them first. In fact, the “Most Relevant” filter will often hide your comment and just show theirs.

Friendly sources: Under posts by left-bloc politicians and parties, science outlets commenting on issues of concern, progressive activist folks, etc, you can get stuck in in support. Any action here will help the algorithm push this further. Particular things to do:
* heart and like reacts for the main post
* respond with any kind of positive personal message, something very ordinary is good to set the tone (but not revealing! Don’t open yourself to targeting by trolls!)
* reproduce and celebrate specific points made that you agree with
* wherever possible, emphasise how these politics are extremely normal in the global context. Giving NZ a chance to catch up with other countries is always a great message. Something having worked well in other countries similar.
* reply to any post with hateful subtext not with rage or disgust, that’s what they want. Dismissive contempt is the way. Don’t let hate sit unremarked, but don’t give it heat either, chill the temperature down until everything is icy cold.
* if you want to reply to less offensive troll posts with dunks, mocking rebuttals, sad GIFs, or whatever, this is the place to do it. Can’t do much damage here.

Things to avoid:
* don’t get over your skis, going too hard and overstating how amazing someone is. Regular people react badly to puffery. If you have a personal story of how someone genuinely did something amazing, then go for it, but if it’s just generalised cheerleading, watch the tone.
* don’t get so caught up in fighting trolls that you start to hate the internet and yourself. There is a cohort of people out there who are literally playing a game where they win by emotionally exhausting you. You can always ignore them, and should do so forever.
* by the same token, if a troll account challenges you to prove something or say something or whatever, don’t do it. Even if you do have the answer, just don’t do it. Treating these asks seriously is giving them respect they do not deserve and prolonging a conversation that helps them more than you. Just leave them hanging, like they don’t matter to you in the least. They hate that.
* (if it’s a normal person asking for more info, then go for it, keep chatting. You have to use your judgment about who is normal and who is troll. Some people have aspects of both, humans are complex!)

Local community groups: In these spaces, you can definitely make a difference. Here are some things to do:

* Share political posts from good sources into the group, with a context note about how it will affect local services or local people. Advanced mode: in the context note, instead of saying the thing, ask everyone a question about how the subject might help your community. You want the question to close off avenues for troll/shitpost responses as much as possible.
* Uphold an expectation of respect and kindness in your community. Every community wants to see itself as respectful and kind. Call out instances where kindness fails or respect has not been shown; “here in X town, we show respect to each other.” Don’t come in too hard, but don’t waver either.
* Be present and supportive in non-politics posts too. Community members will remember your name from post to post.

Things to avoid:
* International politics issues. Trans discrimination in the UK, the death toll in Gaza, freedom of speech in the US… Local people just don’t want to see these invoked. Even if they are relevant to what you’re discussing, don’t bring them up. Find another way to deal with the real topics. Yes these things matter! But you are not being negligent by not bringing them up as part of this process.
* Criticising people who don’t get everything right. Sometimes people are wrong on the internet, let it go. You have bigger targets.

(4) Look after yourself

Remember to log off. If you are not used to getting involved in this kind of talk on Facebook, it can be… unpleasant. People act awful online, much more so than in real life. Comments can feel very personal even if they’re not. And sometimes they will be personal, and that’s not okay! Don’t wreck your wellbeing for the sake of a few Facebook comments, that’s not helping anyone.

Find some friendly support. Any Facebook friends who are on the same page as you? Give them a message. Have each others’ back out there.

Consider locking down your account, especially if you are anything other than a white guy.

Accept that you will never see any proof it helped. There’s no way around that. You’re working to shift an invisible vibe among lurking users. There’s no way to see if it works. You just need to trust that it does, because real people are on Facebook and then those people vote. No matter what you do, the laugh react guys will keep laugh reacting, but you can be confident voters have seen your signal too.

That’s it. Repeat until the election. Good luck.

(Thanks to Kelly Whyte for some very helpful advice.)

Dear Spark

Your “Tell us how we went” email has sat in my inbox for some weeks, waiting for me to get to it. Also, I suppose, waiting for some late reply to my last message that might have rescued the situation. Of course that didn’t end up happening. So, this message in your feedback form, which will be too long to fit. So I’m also posting publicly on my blog.

The lapse in your provision of service was relatively small in the grand scheme of things. However, it’s the nature of the failure that has stuck with me. And the more I tried to dig into it, the worse it all seemed, to the point that we are considering leaving Spark entirely.

Here is what happened.

My wife and I have been Spark customers for a long time. You provide us with broadband and mobile phone accounts (also a landline that we no longer use after recent renovations). We have been happy as your customers.

On June 17, my wife and I both received emails from mysparksupport@spark.co.nz titled We’ve removed an account from your Spark ID:

“Hi [NAME],
You no longer have access to Spark account [NUMBER].
If you think you’ve received this in error, please let us know.
Thanks!
From the Spark team”

This brief message was somewhat lost in the welter of emails we receive, and quite frankly it looks like some kind of spam or error. I tried to log into the Spark dashboard to see if I could understand what was going on.

This was unsuccessful in the most unhelpful ways. My password was simply not accepted, as if it was incorrect. I attempted to reset the password, but these attempts failed with no explanation. Finally, when I tried to use Google as a login method, the site gave a different message, that my email identity was locked out.

This began a lengthy process of investigation. My wife had created our account, and so I couldn’t even get any functional responses from support because I hadn’t been given account authority by her (something we had never previously needed or understood we might ever need). She had to spend a lengthy period, many hours, on the phone to establish who she was and figure out what was happening. Once she was able to set me up with authority, I took over and several more hours were spent on calls to get our account access back.

Throughout all the above, your helpdesk workers were unfailingly helpful and responsive. We are very happy with the direct service we received from these staffers. The problem was the limited information they had, the limited understanding they had, and the questions we have remaining at the end of this process.

We were, eventually, told that our accounts had been removed by the fraud prevention team, to protect us, because there were signs of access by a third party. Our account access was fully restored.

I persisted in email conversation with the fraud prevention team, trying to get more information, but there was very little forthcoming. At the end of this process I remain utterly infuriated.

To be clear: your fraud prevention systems are not fit for purpose and we are extremely dissatisfied.

We know that fraud prevention detected an attempt to log into our MySpark account from an international IP address. It was blocked, and an action of some kind was taken that removed access from our email address logins. This in turn generated the emails. Later, when we eventually proved our identities over the phone, our email addresses were linked back to the accounts.

Here are my problems:

What was the trigger event that led to access to our accounts being removed? Fraud prevention provided unclear information here. Fraud prevention could not tell me: which email address was used in a login attempt; was the login just an attempt with an email address, or did they have the correct password as well; were there multiple login attempts; where did these attempts take place; was there a successful login before access was revoked; or any other details at all. I find it hard to understand how this is possible; that our accounts were at such risk that they were taken out of our hands, but the information behind this action is so vague and undefined.

How was the decision made to remove access to our accounts? Was this decision made according to a standard procedure? (In which case, why is there no standard procedural followup?) Was this decision made by a person, or by an automatic process? Is fraud prevention of this nature managed by an AI system or entirely by a human team?

Why didn’t you check with us first? If there was a problem with our accounts from overseas, why didn’t you ever take the step of asking us about it? You have our phone numbers right there! You can verify our identities immediately! Surely the appropriate way to deal with a problem like this is to call and speak to someone, not delete our access, send an email, and abandon us to your FAQ and helpdesk to figure out what to do?

If access was at such risk that our emails were removed, why were they immediately restored? After establishing our identities, our emails were back on the accounts with the same passwords. Belatedly I received a comment from fraud prevention that we might want to change our passwords to be extra safe. But if our account details had been compromised, surely they were still compromised? How had the threat changed? And if it hadn’t changed, why was everything suddenly restored to normal as if nothing had happened? None of this makes any sense at all. Logically, either the initial action or the remedy was faulty. To be enitrely clear about what is at stake here: Are our personal details exposed, or not?

Why was your communication throughout nearly nonexistent? Such a significant event as removal of access for both account users generated a short email with no explanation, and nothing else. Figuring out what had happened took hours. Your systems created a huge problem for us, and then offloaded on to us every aspect of trying to solve it. I’m fairly sure your organisation would agree that “creating a messy problem for us to solve” is not an acceptable customer experience.

What is the risk being mitigated here? Fraud prevention also could not tell me what an intruder might do if they did gain access to our account. Presumably a malicious actor wants to do more than change our mobile phone plans! While this is a secondary issue, our continued ignorance on this point demonstrates just how poorly you have managed our experience.

It has been over a month since this event and I remain thoroughly dissatisfied by what transpired, and I have no confidence at all that the same poor experience will happen to other customers or, indeed, to us again in the future.

I expect a clear explanation, in writing, as to what exactly has happened here, from beginning to end.

Within this, I expect clear answers to these questions: Have our email addresses and passwords been exposed internationally? What information do you have that demonstrates this? If they have been exposed, why were our accounts restored with no changes? If not, why did this intervention happen in the first place? (Note that this information, our email addresses and passwords, counts as personal information under The Privacy Act 2020.)

Also, I want an indication that you understand and accept that your processes dropped the ball here. Our experience as your customers has been well below the standard we should expect from you. It is simply not good enough.

I await your response.

Why I’m Tired

I posted on Bluesky about the state of society, politics, media, all of it. Reproducing it here with slight edits for readability.

I start by quoting the following post from Russel Norman, former leader of the NZ Greens so not just some internet rando: “We now know that within the Prime Ministers Office there was a political lobbying pathway operating via the PM’s Chief Policy Advisor’s private email. Fonterra says it was told to send the lobbying docs via this pathway. It may still be operating via other staffers private email addresses.”

Part of why I/we are feeling so tired is that there is so much obviously unacceptable shit happening and the channels for even pointing it out have narrowed to what feels like a limit.

The quoted post from Russel Norman is incredibly damning but it’s hard to imagine how it might get the wide attention it deserves.

Mainstream media is incapable of meeting the moment. Well-intended journalistic principles have been thoroughly gamed, resources have been starved, journos crushed with broken incentives, and ownership has been co-opted. Illiberal forces know this is their opportunity and they are going for it.

And outside of that, what is left?

The “bluesky is an echo chamber” complaint isn’t wrong; this is one of the only remaining places where reasonable assessments can even be heard, and so we gather and share those reasonable assessments to reassure ourselves we can see it. Whole place is the 😅 emoji.

Meanwhile, I see local communities doing their best to function on Facebook, doing a good job by and large; but next to them on the feed is an overseas news post about Jacinda Ardern swamped with literally hundreds of comments calling her a horse (or worse). A public square irretrievably poisoned.

Yes, this is the exact same thread i have posted probably a hundred times before, expressing the same lamentations in slightly different words. Only a decade ago all these things worked so much better! The Dirty Politics machine could be countered! But now there’s nothing else.

It makes me so angry to see how far social infrastructure has been allowed to collapse, and how those who’ve retained a voice have largely been content to just sit and watch it happen. Their compliance so easily purchased, not even with flattery or corruption; all that was needed was expectation.

It’s an academic disease to overweight the importance of the thing you know about, but I did a masters degree on the power of social norms and it sure seems to me they are the trivially apparent engine of so much of our dysfunction. We all want to fit in with those around us. We trust the wisdom of our crowd. And that is leveraged against us as the extremely wealthy converge on self-serving messages, and well-resourced malefactors flood social channels to create harmful norms.

We know that actually sitting down with people in our communities reveals much more generous views of each other, and more readiness to think critically and openly. But at scale, that is massively expensive. And in its absence, manipulation rushes in.

So I’m exhausted. This NZ government is the worst we’ve had in many decades. Actively destructive to constitutional principles, heedless of evidence, profoundly undemocratic, willing to entertain and encourage hatred for the sake of its coalition. And I just can’t see how to fight it from here.

The wickednesses of the coalition are precisely aligned with the weaknesses of how we do society in 2026. (The weaknesses of the opposition are likewise aligned with the failings of what we are forced to work with.) We’re left hoping for a thousand viral TikToks to somehow turn the tide.

All we can do is push. Luckily Aotearoa NZ’s elections are proportional, so every vote won makes a difference. So I’ll keep pushing. And I’ll stay in the BlueSky echo chamber, where the norms aren’t toxic. Which you’d think wouldn’t be so special. But 2026 is like that.

Owen Davie (March 1944-March 2026)

My bit from my dear Dad’s funeral, giving the overview of his life.

Owen was not one to jump into the spotlight and tell his own story. He didn’t like to blow his own trumpet, in both metaphorical and literal contrast to his grandfather Hilmer, a charismatic brass band leader and renowned trombone player. Owen took after his father, Hilmer’s son, Rod, a devoted family man who was most comfortable slightly back and to the side from the limelight.

Owen was a proud Mainlander. He was born in Dunedin to Mina and Rod. Apart from a brief stint where they moved to Gore, he grew up in Dunedin, spending many weekends and holidays at the family crib at Doctors Point.

As a late addition much younger than siblings Rod and Margaret, he spent a lot of time with his mother, going on shopping trips and having a sneaky ice cream at the milk bar. He missed most of his first year at school due to catching measles, then chicken pox, then mumps, and then topping that off by breaking his arm.

He and his schoolfriends filled their weekends with Westerns at the cinema, spectating at rugby matches, building forts in the bush and raiding a neighbour’s trees for apples (this last is notable as one of the very few acts of rebellion you’ll find in my dad’s long life). One of his fellow raiders, John Matthews, remained lifetime friends, including standing up as Owen’s best man at his wedding. Saturday nights were often spent at home, listening to opera or brass band records with his parents and grandparents.

He studied history at Otago, earning a Masters, and throughout his life there would be history books mixed in with the cricket books in his reading pile. During his studies he was also working in what he called his dream job, ushering at Dunedin Town Hall, which gave him the chance to see the Rolling Stones, Peter Paul and Mary, Louis Armstrong, Roy Orbison, Dusty Springfield, Ray Charles, Herman’s Hermits, and his beloved Beatles.

On graduating he came to Wellington for the career opportunities, meeting here another friend who has remained a fixture, Tim Lovell Smith. They set up a flat in 1970, and Owen trained as an archivist, a good match for his interest in research and his meticulous approach. He went around the Pacific checking and setting up Government archives in the Cook Islands, Samoa and Niue.

His career in the civil service led eventually to the Department of Internal Affairs, where he worked in many areas, most of which were incomprehensible to me as a child and largely remain so now I’m an adult. But I do know he was both highly respected and warmly regarded across DIA, and there was a large turnout to his retirement party in 2009.

So his move to Wellington worked out brilliantly for his career but also in another crucial way: that same year he moved to Wellington, 1970, he met Anne Geddes in the Royal Tavern on Lambton Quay. By the end of ‘71 they were married and settled in the Hutt, and Owen’s long years of catching the train in and out began.

He became very close to Anne’s family here, her sister Margaret and her parents Percy and Felice. And soon the four of us started to appear on the scene.

Owen decided he did not want to be separated from his growing family in any way and was baptised. He went on to be very committed to the parish here, serving in a variety of roles, as well as being involved in all our school committees. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when he took up pétanque after retirement, the club spotted those same special attributes and he became club secretary, a position he held for many years. He was even awarded administrator of the year, something he never told me; I only found out when mum included it in her notes for this eulogy. Still learning new things!

What I do know about my Dad, apart from his reticence in telling me he won administrator of the year, is his fundamental kindness. His concern for others. His determination to make sure the windows were all closed and the doors were all locked before he went out somewhere, no matter how much my mother was revving the car engine to hurry him up. And his gentleness.

I hope I can be as gentle, and caring, and kind. Though maybe a bit quicker to leave the house.

What I’ve done with the second half of 2025

This post is going to be a bit shorter than the one for the first half.

As promised: house renovations. We moved out for three months, and there was a significant to-do list before and after that period, so it absolutely dominated the back half of the year. But it was a success! We had been planning to fix our kitchen since moving in 15 years ago, amazing to finally have it sorted, and as part of the flow-on effects we pretty much improved the entire house. Very happy. Walking around still feels a bit weird, like being in a dream where the geography doesn’t quite match reality, but with very nice carpet (not usually a feature of my dreams).

As promised: Morgue’s Basic D&D, an homage to the game that introduced me to the activity that would come to dominate my creative life. Three game releases that I’d planned to get out into the world at the start of 2024, for the 50th anniversary of D&D, but because of Events they sat there at 90% done for a long time. Part of getting them finished was making the cover illustrations, which was very enjoyable. As is obvious, I am an artist of wildly limited ability, but in this era of A.I. everything it was pleasing to put my amateur and imperfect efforts on display!

And that was all that got out the door. I finished the next FiveEvil release, which will come clambering out into the light next year, and made progress on a few other small projects too. Personal life wise, things have achieved a rare stability on many fronts, so that’s good. I’ve maintained my Nick Carraway engagement with social media (within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life), which feels like a sustainable way to get the neat discoveries without letting too much poison into my veins.

I have been overstretched for years and it has taken a toll, but I have successfully dealt to that. My aim in clearing the decks has been to choose mindfully what to take on, and to make time for the things I need in my life, and that I have yet to sort out. There is a really exciting unannounced TTRPG project I’m keen to dive into, and a pile of enticing family history stuff patiently waiting for me, and I have at least one more unpublished novel in me. But also I just need to keep doing the things that keep me mentally healthy, especially the things that have fallen by the wayside in the last year or two. So probably setting up some good habits there is my real priority for 2026.

And will I write the essay on Predator: Badlands and what it says about secondary worlds and intellectual property, the one that literally no-one has begged me for? We’ll see how we go!

Now we have sun

I’ve been thinking about, and later worrying about, climate change almost my whole life. As a kid reporter for the newspaper (back when there was a kid reporter page in the newspaper/back when there was a newspaper) I worked on a story on the greenhouse effect in the late 80s. The focus then was on CFCs and the ozone hole, which problem was essentially solved, but the bigger challenge remained: human activity is messing with the atmosphere and the consequences would be enormous.

Climate change led me into paying attention to politics (hello Green Party) and into academia (hello small group action) and for the many years I blogged regularly, I returned to the subject over and over.

And I’ve never seen a moment as exciting as this.

Back in 2006 I declared “now we have won”, that the great argument over whether climate change is real has been decided and now the question was what action would be taken. I’m pretty happy with calling that moment as the tipping point. The question of action though has been vexed. But solutions got stuck: human society is so heavily built on fossil fuels that trying to move away from them seemed to inevitably result in some path of greater hardship. People don’t vote for hardship. As things got observably worse on a scarily swift timeline, it was easy to get despondent. It seemed like we needed a miracle!

Now We Have Won

And, not a moment too late, we got one.

Solar is the answer. The right incentives were put in place after that 2006 tipping point to allow investment into the technology, and improvements came, and more improvements, and suddenly it was getting better faster than anyone predicted or expected, on one of those s-curve paths beloved of tech evangelists.

All the climate nerds I follow have been excited about solar for the last few years, and it keeps getting better. The numbers are staggering. Solar is the answer. The economics are absolutely clear: fossil fuels are old tech. Solar is VASTLY better, cheaper, more reliable, more environmentally friendly.

The basis of the science-fiction future is already here. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to let it slowly outcompete fossil fuels. That industry is enormously powerful and is doggedly fighting any attempt to dislodge it, and the pollution it creates is locking in worse and worse climate change. The challenge now is to break the political hold fossil fuels maintain over the world so solar can take its place in time to keep us all safe.

It’s great to see Bill McKibben in a different mode, a positive mode, celebrating as much as focusing on the fight ahead.

Like William Gibson said, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Changing that will be a good fight.

(By the way: nuclear is not the answer. Almost every climate nerd I follow made peace with nuclear power years ago, but solar still beats it on every metric.)

What i’ve done with the first half of 2025

Clearing the decks has been a focus for a while now, and it has finally worked out. So here’s a marker, as we hit the halfway point of 2025, where I’m at.

FiveEvil is done. A horror roleplaying game using a smart remix of the most well-known set of rules there is. It’s out in PDF, and physical preorder is on the way, and I am so so proud of it.

Stay in the Fight is done. A personal memoir of family and struggle by a good friend. It’s out on Amazon now as ebook and POD. Innis’s story is engaging and valuable and he tells it well, his way.

Kill Your Grandad (the game) is done. A black-comedy tabletop roleplaying game about teenage time-travelling nihilists. It’s out in PDF and Print on Demand. (As some of you know, I’ve also written a novel which is a different riff on the same conceptual ground, they are designed to complement each other. Someday i’ll figure out what to do about the novel. I think it’s pretty good.)

KiwiRPG week happened. I’ve managed to step away from this org after being massively involved in setting it up, and it’s great to see it rolling along. I did a lot of comms for it this year.

Submitted on two government bills that demanded opposition. Good work me.

House renovations are happening. We’ve been talking about this for over a decade, and have officially set things in motion. This will give me plenty to do in the coming months.

Also released one episode of my weekly podcast. And walked the dogs a lot. And (most importantly) really looked after my mental health.

Pretty good, I reckon. What next? There’s a FiveEvil follow-up on the way, of course, but I’m also going to get one more thing out of the 90% done column and into the done column:

Regulatory Standards Bill submission

Finally got around to reading this Bill on the last day subs are open. Made these notes (on Bluesky, thinking out loud).

  • It seems to be “if your legislation doesn’t match ACT-style libertarian principles, you need to admit it and wear a sign saying NOT LIBERTARIAN ENOUGH” which has various emergent consequences if embedded in a system.
  • 8 (l) legislation should be the most effective, efficient, and proportionate response to the issue concerned that is available. Is *this bill* the most effective and efficient response to the (supposed) issue of poor-quality regulation? A new legal obligation and oversight board?
  • Creating regulations is always about complex trade-offs on many dimensions. The Bill’s proposed principles are a narrow set of political priorities, not universal concerns, and as such using them as a universal measuring stick is farcical.
  • Surely a future government would just immediately repeal this rather than repeatedly hold up a “not libertarian enough” sign? And if that’s the case, this whole Bill is a waste of effort, right? You can’t legislate norms
  • The principles by which regulation might be judged are not, probably can’t be, settled. The Regulatory Standards Bill would force subsequent governments to pre-concede a particular political framework. It’s an attempt to win a political argument by legislating that you won.
  • basically, (1) any set of principles is inherently political & contestable, this legislation reaches too far in declaring such a set; (2) where specific principles are widely agreed (e.g. role of courts), this Bill is an extremely heavy-handed way to increase conformity even if such is needed

After thinking about it on a dog walk and then later on another dog walk, I turned that into a submission, which is reproduced below. (Unmentioned in this sub is how disgusted I am by the antics of David Seymour online, encouraging his followers to jeer at people who have voiced opposition to the Bill. He is a grotesque hypocrite and a perpetual irritant.)

My submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill

The Regulatory Standards Bill is bad law. While acknowledging other submissions will raise many areas of concern, I will focus on two that stand out to me as sufficient reason not to progress this poorly-conceived bill into law.

1) The heart of the Bill is the set of Principles given in s8. As designed, the Bill demands all new regulations be tested against these principles, and a clear statement is required when there is an inconsistency.

This set of principles is not a generally accepted set of norms for responsible regulation. To the contrary, the principles contain political stances that are heavily contested within the NZ Parliament. 8(b) in particular is an example of such a political claim. The heavily contested nature of the construction within 8(b) is plainly evident in the response to this Bill, and in years of discussion and argument about how “liberty” should properly be represented in the laws that govern society.

By the same token, other Principles that might be widely held as important to responsible regulation by key constituencies, such as consideration of Te Tiriti or climate crisis, are entirely absent. 

This Bill is an attempt to leapfrog political debate and embed a particular political position within the legislative process. This is improper, in that it treats an active debate as a settled one. It is antidemocratic, in that it attempts to legally privilege some perspectives over others. And finally, and most importantly, it is unwise, in that it will lead inevitably to this legislation either being repealed entirely, or becoming a repository for an endlessly revised set of principles that reflect the political goals of the government of the day. 

This reason alone is enough to strike down this Bill now.

2) Secondly, the Bill proposes a legislative reportiing requirement from Ministers for all proposed new regulations, and then builds an elaborate further system complete with a newly constituted Board, in order to achieve its aims. Even on those principles that might be broadly held (e.g. 8(i) on the importance of consultation with those affected by law), the structure imposed by this Bill would be far in excess of what is demanded by the problem. Principle 8(l) says legislation should be the most effective, efficient, and proportionate response to the issue concerned that is available; this system is none of those things, but instead creates work for a fresh bureaucracy. Other avenues that are more effective, efficient, and proportionate exist: taking the pressure off the public service to do more, faster, with fewer people, for example. Policy makers in public service are highly skilled and highly principled but wildly overstretched, and dealing with that is surely the most obvious first step to address the problem claimed by this Bill.

This reason, too, is sufficient to strike down the Bill.

This Bill should not be progressed, as it is improper, antidemocratic, unwise, and unnecessary. It is badly conceived and would make bad law.

Square birthday

I just turned 49. Yes, it’s a big one! A square birthday, seven lots of seven years. My last square birthday was when I turned 36 in 2012, and my next one will arrive (cross fingers) in 2040.

A square birthday is a great opportunity to take stock. How has my life worked out across those seven even pieces of seven years?

0-6: I was born and learned to be human. I lived a life of immense privilege, which is to say, i was surrounded by happy and kind family, economically secure and untouched by major trauma or instability; many do not have such luck in the lottery of birth.

7-13: I found a path. My creative energies and cultural interests fired up and fixed on the things that occupy me to this day: narratives and interactivity, writing and gameplay, performance and emotion.

14-20: I became, properly, me. My sense of self clicked into place after a few years of determined self-interrogation. I fell in love a bit, and thought hard about what that meant. I developed a metaphysics about my own identity and what it is to live in the world. I started being creatively ambitious and saw that I could be a leader when I wanted.

21-27: I started making some bigger moves, with creative projects, with community efforts, with my own life. Went to the other side of the world, to see just how big it was. Met the love of my life in this chunk of time, too.

28-34: Deconstructed all of it. Went back to first principles. Came home transformed. Followed the possibilities I came across. Returned to academia to pursue an insight that was uniquely mine, wrote a novel that pushed me to the limit, started seeking work in those narrow areas for which I was uniquely suited. None of it came to anything, of course, but it was rewarding nonetheless. Then got civil unioned, and became a parent, which immediately overshadowed all else.

35-41: Everything outside fell away around being a Dad for a young child. Unprecedented sensation that i was in the right place doing the right thing whenever I was with them. Also, dog!

42-now: Dad for an older child, against a world of rapidly increasing upset and chaos. Being a stable force against instability occupied my thoughts and emotions. Also did some of the best creative work of my life. However, I was holding too much, and by the end of this time I began to break. It humbled me.

What is coming next? I really don’t know. “Dad” means a different thing nowadays. The world is getting more unstable, not less. And we have two dogs. But it’s good to cast an eye back over this, and see each block being laid that together give me now a place to stand.

I’m just going to try and look after people, and make some interesting things, and breathe deep and sure and calm.

Submission on the Treaty Principles Bill

Submitted on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, on the official website. Submissions remain open until 7 January.

The Treaty Principles Bill would be disastrous to the future wellbeing of Aotearoa and should be rejected with sufficient force and clarity as to damage any future attempt to revive it.

I endorse the submissions of many other organisations, and also the advice of the Waitangi Tribunal and the Regulatory Impact Statement from the Ministry of Justice, as to the deficiencies of this Bill. In particular, I oppose this Bill’s attempt to remove indigenous rights by referendum.

Indigenous rights do exist, as an historical fact by virtue of the Treaty arrangement made between two peoples on the European settlement of Aotearoa, as a legal fact by virtue of international jurisprudence around Treaty and colonisation law, and as an ethical fact by virtue of the natural justice that must accrue to the descendants of those harmed and deprived by systematic exploitation approved by the colonial government. The Bill’s purpose is ill-founded.

Furthermore, putting indigenous rights to public referendum is a grotesque proposal given the extensive popular misunderstanding of crucial facts about this nation’s history and the well-founded grievances of Māori. These misunderstandings are loudly encouraged by bad actors fomenting social division for varied self-serving reasons, and by an international context of so-called ‘culture war’ that is clouding our ability to perceive and manage ourselves as a distinct nation. In such an environment of loud but misplaced opinion, a public referendum poses a profound risk of creating injustice.

Even accepting the premise of the Bill that the Treaty Principles should be revised, a good faith effort to do so in the manner proposed could only begin by launching an extensive effort to educate and inform citizens about Aotearoa New Zealand history, de-prioritise contrarian disinformation sources, and speak honestly about what our society really is. In the absence of any attempt at such a project, it is necessary to conclude that this Bill is presented in bad faith, as an attempt to take advantage of misinformed public sentiment to remove the proper rights of a people who remain disadvantaged by profound and systematic harms. 

There is no place for this Bill. It can do no good, only harm.