The missing final chapter from ‘Dirty Work’

Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work is a slender book with an ambitious purpose: to call attention to a damaging influence on NZ democracy. The book amounts to a detailed explanation of the activities of an extremely visible network of lobby groups, all run by Jordan Williams, and all serving the same underlying agenda.

I found it arresting. I particularly appreciated the section covering one of the first persuasion campaigns undertaken by Williams in New Zealand, the 2012 effort by British American Tobacco to push against the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes. Longtime readers of the blog may remember it as something I wrote about at the time, largely concerning myself with how mystifying this campaign was, as it was clearly conducted at huge expense, and clearly destined to fail. (The two big posts were this one, and this one.)

Among the political and media class, however, the book has received a mixed reception. Many journalists have found it underwhelming. Hager’s exposure of how the Williams network operates is not a revelation, it seems; everything described is routine and ordinary politics. This is just what lobbying is. And the book has little else of note, lacking Hager’s customary revelations. (See this summary of media reactions by Bryce Edwards.)

I do think the book is incomplete, but not for these reasons. To be clear, Dirty Work‘s clear description of the Williams network is sufficiently notable in its own right. Tze Ming Mok summarized the value of the book extremely well: It is for the public, to have summarised in one place, the story of an influential lobby group with the context, analysis and moral judgment that our gallery reporters have no incentive to provide. (From a fantastic thread on Bluesky, read it all.)

The missing piece of this book, in my eyes, is a clear-eyed look at the other half of this ecoystem. Hager describes clearly how the Williams spiderweb produces and circulates a set of toxic messages, but does not similarly expose the operation of the media channels through which this propaganda spreads. Why is there no incentive for our media to provide a framework in which we can appreciate the nature of such a powerful influence operation?

These two components, the Williams cinematic universe and political media, cannot properly be considered in isolation. They have evolved to fit together like host and parasite. This is where I wanted more than Dirty Work gave me. I wanted exposure of the media context in which Williams operates.

One piece is social media. Williams’s multiplex of lobby groups exploits the vectors for propaganda and recruitment that are all that is left of the world’s two major social media channels, Facebook and Twitter/X. These platforms are now set up to serve the goals of dark money operatives, who cultivate anger through manipulative and even misleading messaging. There is a developing global conversation on this subject, but the scale of it is out of scope for Hager’s meticulous local investigative reporting, so we can similarly set it aside for now.

The other piece concerns our news media and the commentariat the exists around it. The tactics of the Taxpayers Union and related groups have been developed and refined specifically for our local messaging environment, not just to spread there, but in fact to influence these environments to make their messages more successful. This, then, is what I see as the missing chapter of Dirty Work: how our news media allow themselves to be gamed by Williams.

(Yes I know, it is the same thing I always want to talk about.)

What is actually missing

Before continuing, I should make explicit that I don’t really think there is a missing chapter in any practical sense. Hager’s focus in this book is crystal clear and appropriate, and as I have noted above, the book stands alone perfectly well. Furthermore, this piece isn’t ignored; it appears throughout Dirty Work, in the ragged edges of stories and down in the secondary paragraphs. Hager’s focus throughout is on Williams, and he is not here to expose journalism and media, particularly given he is part of both (albeit a contentious part).

I call it a missing chapter because drawing together these threads and edges into something clear and strong would add immeasurably to our understanding of what is taking place here, and round off the narrative of the book in a way that would give readers a better understanding of its significance. And if not as part of the book, these matters can be addressed by the discourse around it. Unfortunately, so far this has not happened at all. It’s not surprising as to why: the media are in no hurry to indict themselves.

I think there is a call for both a descriptive and an investigative angle to our hypothetical missing chapter:

  • What is observable about the functioning of our news media and commentariat that makes the Williams method so effective? What patterns are observable in the things that are not reported and not widely understood about the Williams spiderweb? What should the public know and understand that they do not?
  • What is happening inside newsrooms and editorial conversations to create these patterns of emphasis and de-emphasis? What are the effects of ownership influence that might serve the goals of the Williams Performing Circus of Wonders? How seriously does the media take its mission of informing the public, how self-reflective is it regarding its limitations, and how does it balance these concerns with the increasing commercial pressures of operating an era where clicks mean survival?

Why the media exist at all

Maybe some first principles, to ensure we proceed from a solid foundation.

Democracy requires deliberation. It is designed to generate a series of acceptable compromises to protect everybody, heading off the possibility of tyrannny, fascism, and any number of other forms of society that load misery unequally.

Deliberation, in turn, requires information and analysis. The complexity of human society is such that this has to be, well, mediated. There is too much for citizens ever to appraise themselves of directly. To be successful, democracy requires a system that surfaces important issues and allows the filtering of the key arguments across them, so the voting populace can make an informed choice on the essentials.

Obviously that’s not going to happen. But we can at least try. And the Jordan Williams technique described in Dirty Work does nothing except hijack the processes we have to massively overrepresent one specific perspective: opposing any limit or burden on the wealthy by undermining the institution of government itself.

An example of the problems

In the days immediately following the release of Dirty Work, we saw an example of the very phenomenon it discusses.

The Parents Alliance is a new lobby group launched in September 2026. It has no direct connection to the Williamsborg (at least, none identified so far) but there are some second-order links, not least the involvement of David Farrar and Jonathan Ayling. This lobby group claims to speak for parents, with a platform of “common sense” positions arrived at by extensive polling.

And maybe they are exactly as they seem! But it also seems entirely plausible that this is, at least in part, a group which has been constructed to pursue a particular political agenda matching the direction of every Williams-linked group. Education is a particular focus of energised activism on the right, mostly oriented towards classic subjects and onerous testing, unbounded parental choice, and avenues for charter schools and private capture of educational funds. There are strong “common sense” arguments for all these things which downplay or occlude the significant costs associated with each of them.

To take just one example: on the post announcing his involvement with this new group, Farrar says his impetus for involvement was “when the “experts” produced a draft science curriculum that did not mention physics, biology or chemistry. This is when I realised that parents needed to speak up.” The scare quotes around “experts” is a tell. The 2023 curriculum was ambitious, embedding new critical approaches that were strongly based on robust evidence. However, these changes could be attacked in soundbites that excerpted small pieces and challenged “common sense”, and that is exactly what happened; the curriculum became an attack vector for a reactionary right ecosystem that was hungry for anything they could label “woke”. Nothing in the criticism at the time, and indeed in the whole replacement curriculum rushed through since, has been given equivalent evidence-based consideration.

So we have right-wing activists intimately involved in this project, and an appeal to “common sense” which has often been used as cover for a project of throwing red meat to their online base while pursuing their fundamental ideology. That, to me, is more than enough to call for some consideration of what is happening here. We rely on the media to help us determine what is happening. Instead, no questions have been asked, and this new group has been welcomed in media coverage entirely at face value.

Again, I’m not making any claim that this group is anything but earnest. Nor am I saying that the criticisms of the 2023 curriculum that launched Farrar’s piece of the project should be dismissed out of hand. But I am saying simply accepting its self-presentation is naive. Given the lacklustre track record of existing media coverage of education issues, a group such as this could significantly push public opinion further away from evidence.

Another layer of consideration: even if this is a genuine representation of a plethora of parental voices, we should consider also how it can be deployed in media disputes going forward. It is expressly positioned as a voice for parents, in opposition to teachers or public servants. What this will mean in practice, it seems likely, is that every time something new is introduced to the education system, the media will balance out the teacher or ministry explanation with a Parents Alliance reply. Detailed research and evidence-based conclusions will be held to the standard of “common sense”. And that, de facto, will serve the greater project of the right, undermining the idea of government itself.

All of these concerns are clearly prompted by the narrative account in Dirty Work. And they are, evidently, absent in how the Parents Alliance has been received and how it will be managed in the media going forward.

How the rules get played

The media is not a dispassionate observer, watching as if from a moon colony and reporting factually about the events of the day. It is an active social and political force. And the news media’s methods of accounting for this are underwhelming at best.

Consider by comparison the art of online discussion moderation. It is well understood that if you run a forum, comment section, chat group, etc, then eventually you will attract troublemakers. You need behaviour rules for your space, to set standards of expectation, or you will de facto exclude a bunch of people who do not want to be bullied or abused. But as soon as you have rules, the trolls will cheerfully find ways to walk the exact line of what is allowable to make life awful for others, and ideally to trick them into violating those very behavioural rules set up to protect them.

Bad actors do not care about the spirit of the place. They do not care about a shared purpose or a greater goal. They just want to have their fun, or spam their particular message, or whatever it is, and they will use every devious means they can to do so without violating any abstract rule. To moderate effectively, you can’t rely on the rule and say that does the job. You need to exercise judgement, constantly, and you need to aggressively make decisions that uphold the principles of your community. Part of this is accepting that sometimes you will over-police someone who is just having a bad day, or who expressed their ideas poorly, or whatever. Tough for them.

Journalism and the wider world of media really seems to believe that its code of balance and neutrality is a shield against exploitation and bias. In reality the bad actors trying to exploit media channels are going to use every trick they can to tilt media coverage their way, all without breaking a single rule.

“It is essential to cover both sides of an issue” is laudable but fraudulent, and led, for decades, to climate change scientists being balanced out in the media by fossil fuel spokespeople, or that species of rare scientist who doubts mainstream consensus and who has been coddled and funded and raised up by fossil fuel dollars. This still goes on across many issues of public interest; and this persistence is by design, as a tactic deployed by paid strategists who are trying to influence the media on behalf of the wealthy.

“If both left and right are mad at us we’re probably doing okay” is convincing until you realize that the forces of wealth will never be satisfied and will never stop loudly complaining about even the tiniest misrepresentation, even in coverage that flatters them by adopting their priors; and this dissatisfaction is by design, as a tactic deployed by paid strategists who are trying to influence the media on behalf of the wealthy.

“We just report the facts and let the audience decide” is convincing until you recognize that the production and distribution of facts is not neutral, and cannot be neutral, and agencies underwritten by bad actors work to flood the public space with facts carefully selected to reinforce their self-serving construction of reality, and to at least cast doubt on if not drown out any factual production that threatens it; and this flood is by design, as a tactic deployed by paid strategists who are trying to influence the media on behalf of the wealthy.

“Opinion from journalists is fine as long as it’s clearly marked” is a sound principle except for how it has enabled extremely partisan voices to rise in media prominence by exploiting simplistic populism, and then have their political worldviews implicitly stamped with authority by the media apparatus around them that treats them as major figures of legitimate journalism (radio hosts Mike Hosking and Heather du Plessis-Allan are the most visibly examples of this, but the same phenomenon was present in how Cam Slater was treated until Hager’s previous Dirty book revealed some connivance in the background of his work; all three are of course recipients of NZ Media Awards, presumably for doing journalism the right way).

“Weight your coverage towards the political issues the population cares about” makes sense except the ways to discover the issues the whole population cares about are flawed and gameable, and the care of the population can itself be manipulated, by agents who work to shape both things without accountability or visibility; and this invisibility is by design, as a tactic deployed by paid strategists who are trying to influence the media on behalf of the wealthy.

Our neutral media apparatus presents built-in affordances for exploitation, and the Dirty Work of Hager’s book exposes a paid strategist working successfully to exploit them. But the book is limited by not examining these affordances directly. They are not inevitable and natural. They are choices made and reinforced by specific people within the media hierarchy. Like weak moderators who let trolls run rampant on their platform because they never quite step over the arbitrary line of the rules, the editorial cohort in media is (wittingly or not) complicit in allowing malign forces to twist our democracy to anti-democratic ends.

And this is only one aspect of the larger puzzle. Commercial pressures on news media have never been more intense than in this era of global tech hegemony and economic austerity. Billionaires purchasing and consolidating news media and then taking an activist stance to this ownership have led to an unprecedented open tilt to media perspective, one that doesn’t even pretend to the flawed neutrality discussed above. Competing sources of information filled with cheaply-made provocative lies are able to financially sustain themselves on the proceeds of ragebait, and crowd out traditional media channels. It’s tough out there.

Things to do

So, you’re a citizen. What to do?

Protect public media ownership. The wealthy would love to destroy public media. The BBC has been both boxed in and deeply wounded and is gasping in an alley right now. The Trump administration is aggressively attacking funding for and the legitimacy of PBS and NPR. Here in Aotearoa, TVNZ and RNZ have been targets for waves of accusation, undermining, and reform for many years. The present straitened media landscape provides perfect cover for thinning out public broadcasting, just as it is more essential than ever. There is no compromise here: once gone, these institutions will be lost for generations, perhaps forever. (As it is, recovering their strength is probably the work of multiple generations.) These are however high-visibility institutions, and the public attention and voice on their fate is strong. This means resistance from ordinary people can make a real difference. Join the fight.

Demand a citizen’s agenda. The citizen’s agenda was devised by Prof Jay Rosen. It is a toolkit approach for a media org to shift its approach to political coverage so, instead of being lost in the horserace-called-from-the-moon of neutral reporting, conducts a process to identify a set of policies that are of public significance and importance, and then uses its coverage to hold these as a measure for everything that happens in the election period. It is a responsible approach that would transform coverage. This is just one model, of course; the important point is that the path of least resistance employed at present is leading to exploitation.

Engage, carefully, with a fifth estate. If the media are not going to challenge themselves, then we must look elsewhere for a force that will hold them to account. Unfortunately, the world of media analysis and critique is rich with wild voices and conspiracism, and every conspiracy theorist from Trump on down is dubious about the mainstream media and its biased production. Devising a solid rubric to sort the good from the bad is beyond scope of this blog post but probably imperative. Perhaps there already exist some good criteria to apply?

Talk with real people. Ultimately these influence operations work by infecting the everyday conversations that happen all around our society. The only way to counter at that level is to add good messages into this conversational exchange. Chat to the hairdresser and the shop assistant and the person waiting in line to see the film. Be normal. And should any of these issues naturally come up, say what you think. It has an impact.

Dirty Work is available at bookshops and libraries all over. It’s a quick read, and a good one. Thanks, Nicky Hager.

A visit from Nicky

‘Twas the night before Hagermas, and all through the motu
Folks posted their reckons, some random, some thought through;
The liveblogs were hung on the news-sites with care,
In hopes that our Nicholas soon would be there.

The Bluesky crowd nestled all snug in their bubble
And dreamed of the TPU getting in trouble;
While Unity Booksellers laid out the seating,
Preparing for crowds at the book-launching meeting.

Then out on the street there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the curtains and opened the sash.

The streetlights were shining and down on the road,
A van had skid-spun around, spilling its load
Then what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a bright eager man with some tiny rein-deer.

He set to reloading with movements so quick,
I knew then and there that he must be our Nick.
His boxes of books had been tossed all about,
So he set his fine coursers to work with a shout:

“Now, Tipster! now, Finder! now Searcher and Sneaker!
On, Ethics! on, Standards! on, Rawshark and Leaker!
Restack this book load, put the carriage to wheel!
We must be on time for our cover reveal!”

In a magical flurry the coursers set to,
Leaving books neatly stacked looking creaseless and new,
And the heavy van righted, quite ready to drive,
Now I knew the new Nicky would safely arrive.

Hager spoke not a word, but went hard to his work,
And surveilled the vehicle; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger to rest on his lips,
He fixed his eyes on me, and silenced my quips.

Then he sprang to his van, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like a deer-guided missile.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he raced out of sight—
“Merry Hagermas all, and to all a good night!”

[International friends: Nicky Hager is an independent journalist down here in Aotearoa who likes to drop a book of explosive revelations on the eve of an election. As is traditional, no-one has any idea what tomorrow’s book will be about.]

How NZ media launders right-wing extremism

I continue to despair at the state of local media, a longstanding concern as the venerable mediawatch category on this blog shows. As the information environment has eroded into its present miserable state, the failure of the media to rise to the occasion grows ever more inexcusable. Today delivered a particularly egregious example of how unthinking journalists can cheerfully serve the needs of some of the worst people in the world. These bad actors know exactly how to take advantage of our media, and yet in 2026, well into the era of Trump 2, with fascism on the rise and right-wing authoritarianism stronger than it has been since the Second World War, somehow our fourth estate remains completely vulnerable to this kind of exploitation.

At issue is this story in Stuff, one of Aotearoa’s primary news sources: MP defends knitting in Parliament: ‘I find it calming and makes it easier to concentrate’

Lloyd Burr has turned in a light-hearted story about MP Deborah Russell, who can sometimes be observed knitting while at her seat in Parliament.

Russell’s act of knitting prompted some feedback into Stuff’s inbox. One of them said “I’m outraged at the footage of a Labour MP knitting in Question Time. These people!!! Knitting!!!!”

Is it really such an outrageous thing to do during Question Time?

Burr then reported the Speaker of the House’s confirmation that knitting is explicitly allowed in the House, and has been for decades, finishing the para with a light touch: he jokingly added that “it may lead to too much uneven tension in the knit”.

Deborah Russell is quoted saying she finds it helps her concentrate, and we get extra context: lots of MPs are texting or doing social media or games on their phones; a number of other MPs from all sides of politics have knitted while in the House, including several current MPs. The piece ends with a classic human-interest light touch finale: “The funny thing is, I’m actually not that much of a good knitter,” she laughs.

What a charming story! A few grumpy phone calls have been comprehensively dismissed with the addition of good-humoured context!

Except.

Stuff also put on the page [EDITED TO CLARIFY: on their home page, devoid of context] an interactive poll, complete with the cutesy use of a knitting needle in place of the usual pointer. And that has generated tens of thousands of votes, which show the takeaway from the story is not as benign as the cute tone suggests. In spite of long-standing rules, cross-party precedent, testimonial of benefit, and the fact the entire story presents this as fine and dandy, 20,000 people (as I type) still think it’s not OK. Hundreds of comments on the story also include plenty of aggrieved voices who find this completely unacceptable.

Despite the cheerful tone of Burr’s article, and the jaunty energy of the knitting needle pointer, the material effect of this story is to introduce thousands and thousands of people to a fresh justification for furious anger towards (left-wing) politicians.

Lloyd Burr and Stuff just circulated hate propaganda.

This is not a surprise. It was, in fact, completely obvious, so obvious a simpleminded blogger like me could call it. And that’s exactly what happened. I encountered the story on Bluesky, where Hayley/writagal (an excellent follow BTW) shared it expressing entirely appropriate frustration.

I’m going to feature my reply in full because I called it exactly right, and I say this not to show how clever I am (hahahanope) but the opposite: that it was completely obvious to anyone who is paying attention to how any of this shit works now.

This story looks to me like it has come out of one of the outrage mines. Some RW trollmonger on X or in a toxic FB group has seized on it and drummed it up into an issue, and now Stuff is obediently repeating it as "people are concerned". Exactly what the troll accounts wanted, well done Stuff

I expected it was some chud on X who had noticed Deborah knitting and decided to make a thing of it. A couple hours later I braved the feotid waters of X, plugging “knitting parliament nz” into the search function. This incredible investigative skill was rewarded with the culprit: some chud on X who had noticed Deborah knitting and decided to make a thing of it.

But wait, there’s more. By using the advanced investigative technique of “scrolling down slightly” I found even more shocking evidence: this wasn’t even the first time! Back in July the same poster had made almost exactly the same post!

These posts had generated lots of engagement on renowned hate site X dot com, but the first one hadn’t made it out of the troll ecosystem. This time, however, someone had actually sent an email to the Stuff website, and that was all it took. Suddenly it was A Story.

Regardless of Burr’s and Stuff Editorial’s intentions, covering this story at all was handing a win to the right-wing haters. Of course it does! The whole story is about something that looks like a distraction! That’s why there was a need for a specific rule allowing it! That’s why the same subject has been covered in the media in the past! The most salient point of the story is that the negative first reaction is wrong!

This point was completely lost.

As soon as you put an image or video (which Stuff also posted under a separate header!!) of something that, at first glance, looks like a politician failing in their duties… then you’re inviting hate. Especially if they’re on the left. ESPECIALLY if they’re a woman.

The tone of the story, the exonerating facts, all of the words Lloyd Burr put in that story are so much dust in the wind compared to the communicative force of raising it as an issue at all, with images and a reader poll to boot. And this was completely obviously the case right from the start.

So far, so bad. Turning this grumpy email into a story was phenomenally ill-judged, and the story itself was wrapped and presented in a way that would only deliver terrible consequences.

But instead of stopping there, I’m going to use my completely self-taught journalistic skills to take my background investigation to a higher level, with the extremely advanced technique of “clicking on their profile picture”.

Gross.

Just to decode for anyone blessed enough not to know: “Socialists & Globalists” here is a reference to Jews, and relates to grotesque conspiratorial thinking about left-wing ideas that is frequently used to justify all kinds of hatred and atrocities. Gab is a social media site utterly dominated by extreme right ideologies. This guy is a fascist troll hiding his identity, with thousands and thousands of followers, enthusiastically connected to global comms channels that promote hatred and conspiracy.

This is the guy who is looking to make Deborah Russell the target of political and media approprobrium.

Lloyd Burr has done exactly what this fascist prick wanted. Stuff Editorial has done exactly what he wanted.

There was no need to cover this at all. Covering this story was losing. A pathetic self-inflicted failure of journalistic standards, once again, and at the expense of a woman in politics, once again.

And how much media coverage of the extensive community of hatemongers who spread their conspiracy and stoke outrage and try to undermine democracy? None.

Not good enough.

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

(Update 19 August at bottom of post)

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.

Update 19 August: After several prompts via multiple channels, I finally heard from a Spark customer rep via their in-app messaging service and eventually by phone call. It sounded like this person, and the whole structure of Spark customer support, wasn’t really able to engage with the kinds of concerns raised here. The rep said they would endeavour to send it up to someone who might be able to help in a more substantive way. I’m not sure if this will be successful; they did not sound confident. Which suggests to me that there isn’t any escalation path to speak of here. Perhaps I’m old fashioned but I find this shocking; when a customer-facing part of your business (fraud prevention in this case) leaves a customer unsatisfied, it seems self-evident to me that there should be a way to raise a ticket with whoever manages that business unit, and if that manager can’t help, to step up so someone who can address the issue. Apparently not in this case? Spark as a business seems structurally impenetrable. Needless to say, this doesn’t do anything to ease my frustrations, which remain as intense as ever.

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: