In this edition:Customer sentiment deterioratesComCom reports on Satellite impact2300 MHz and 2600 MHz band redistributionJason Paris steps down at One NZConsumers unsatisfied despite world-class networksWriting in the 2025 Telecommunications Monitoring Report, the Commerce Commission says New Zealand has world-class fibre and mobile infrastructure. Network quality has continued to improve in recent years. Yet customer satisfaction remains stubbornly low.The finding is striking because customer…
My concentration was at its highest, and I could not understand why that backup was so slow. The heat would not let me focus, and I was sweating, and the sweat was distracting me. All of a sudden, the sound of the intercom. I jumped in my chair. I looked at the clock: 10. Perfectly on time. "Good". I suspended my task, opened the window and told them to come in, while I put on a pair of shorts and went down to the street. Two lads got out of the white van. One came towards me smiling, holding…
Here at The Family Stage, we are perennially on a crusade to bring you news of the finest family theatre to grace this realm. Our latest quest saw Mummy navigate the Northern Line on a perilous journey to the legendary Polka Theatre, where the Y C Chan Theatre has transformed into (a beautifully air conditioned) Camelot for the summer. Written by Marietta Kirkbride and directed by Nel Crouch, Arthur is (as the title suggests) an adaptation of the Arthurian legend, aimed at ages 6 to 12. The…
Jon and Megan Brooklyn, NY ☀ / 103 ℉
This 4th of July, I think we should officially recognize that shouting into the void has replaced baseball as America's national pastime.
Things didn’t go right from the very beginning. Mr. Valerian Tudori, his baby face shaved squeaky clean, his dimples ready, hopped down the aircraft steps, and almost moaned with pleasure as the soles of his shoes bounced against the tarmac. It must have been the whiff of that wilderness and freedom – the slogan of his own creation – that leaked into his brain. For the thing was, Mr. Valerian Tudori, though still quite young and fairly sporty, usually took his job too seriously to hop in front…
June is gone. It’s summer. A bit too much. Yesterday, the temperature was 38°C. I haven’t had this kind of temperature for a long time. This month, I missed three out of four weeks of the #EuroKino 🎥 watch parties. To be honest, I should probably cancel the weekly event. I didn’t see many people showing up anyway, so I’ll carry on at my own speed. Let’s see what else I’ve been up to. Podcasts I added back a couple of podcasts, but most of the old ones are gone. Darknet Diaries 175: Bayrob - How…
I know I’m usually driving the Finder pretty hard, but I think that’s a necessity, given its position as the center of macOS for power users, and its situation where it feels like Apple pretty much gave up on it. But I also want to show things that Finder does well, and this might be something no one does nearly as thoughtfully: text truncation. This is what happens when you have a filename that’s too long: This is really nicely done, for many reasons that work in lockstep: Finder cleverly…
For many years the game of foot-the-ball has been played in the back alleys of Ankh-Morpork, with teams formed from street communities coming together in sporting comradeship (involving violence and pies, not necessarily in that order). But the game is starting to turn ugly, and in the spirit of maintaining civic order, the Patrician has decided to make the game legitimate, with professionally-organised teams and codified rules. The wizards of Unseen University are invited to form a team and…
Yesterday I went to Safeway–a grocery store in town we only go to once or twice a year–because they’re the only store in the area currently carrying the (very good) Waterloo Root Beer Float seltzer. Safeway was our primary our first year-and-a-half out of college, from 1998-2000 when we lived closer to the city, so we had a frequent shopper card tied to our phone number. I never bothered setting up a new card when we moved, so for the last 26 years I’ve been using the same Safeway Club Card.…
https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/tea-or-books-151.mp3 Thanks again for all your questions for our special Q&A episode of Tea or Books? It took longer than planned, but here is part 2… Do get in touch at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com with suggestions and questions for future episodes!
Funnel cake at Pride Day. Holland, MI.I'm so back in Emacs it isn't even funny. Also Linux. Dank Linux, to be precise. Toy Story 5 was pretty fun. I still can't focus long enough to write more than a few sentences at a time. I'd consider it a debilitating problem, if I actually had more and useful things to write about. It's only a nuisance, honestly. ✍️ Reply by email
So I first saw Claire Foy in Little Dorritt in 2008 and she kept cropping up in other things. She was in the adaptation of The Night Watch, the Sarah Waters novel, in 2011. I wasn't keen. I found her a weak link. In 2015 she was going to be in Wolf Hall as Anne Boleyn and I was sceptical. Then. Then! I saw her in Wolf Hall as Anne Boleyn. And she absolutely blew my socks off. She was amazing. Crackling with fierce energy, coming out fighting, damaged and raw. Now I'm like, Claire Foy is in it?…
It’s a bit light, maybe, to be a day’s sole post, so I’m throwing this in as an extra. I was looking through my saved post list on Bluesky and found a few entertaining images that speak to me. Largely they say, “@!#?@!“, just like Q*bert does. Please enjoy, if you are capable of that. I won’t hold it against you if you aren’t. Links are provided so that you can follow these fine arteests/screenshooters/shitpostors. From Nick C: Where does Pac-Man, um, pack the stuff he eats? If soy sauce…
Strawberry Earl Grey for the Full Strawberry Moon Adagio's tea blends that are only available on the day of the full moon feel very specifically targeted to my interests.
Not to bury the lede (and in true meme manner) I have some ‘personal news’. I’ll be leaving my role at the National Data Library / Government Digital Service at the end of the summer (September 4th to be precise) and before you ask, no I do not currently have anything lined up. In the end I decided that my ongoing fragile health combined with a reorganisation process I did not particularly want to participate in outweighed my fondness for many of the individuals I have the privilege of working…
The latest in a sequence of claims of very large scale structures in the distribution that violate the cosmological principle emerged a week or so ago with a paper in Nature. The paper is behind a paywall but here is the abstract: I’ve been nudged a few times by various people to comment on that but I’ve been busy recently and didn’t have time to look at the paper in detail. I had a quick look today and the thing that immediately struck me was that I didn’t understand the mock catalogues they…
Read What Do Moms Know About Fashion? now!Who do you find yourself relating to more in this story, the mother or daughter?As a very independent and strong-willed person, my younger self would have answered that question as definitely the daughter. I was always the one in my family that insisted on finding my own way and continually did things that made my parents shake their heads. Now that I’m older, I’m just grateful they taught me to think for myself and allowed me the space to make my own…
Big news: according to Sony's latest blog post dated July 1st, 2026, quote:In response to shifting trends in consumer preference, new games will be release on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only.That's right! Sony's done producing disc-based games. Now, if you buy a PS5 title at Gamestop, you're buying an empty plastic case with a license key you can redeem through the PlayStation Store."Shifting trends in consumer preference" is how they choose to frame "we took away the…
I was popping off about negation being an act of creativity, when Blake Watson introduce me to the idea of the “This Page Intentionally Left Blank”-Project (Internet Archive): In former times printed manuals had some blank pages, usually with the remark “this page intentionally left blank”. In most cases there had been technical reasons for that. Today almost all blank pages disappeared […] [this project] tries to introduce these blank pages to the Web again […] to offer internet wanderers a…
Ok here's what we've got from last month (published in the UK in hardback). With the World Cup in full swing and England not yet out of it, I'm pleased to see at least one football history book on the list! Here are the three that appeal to me at first glance: Cold War Football: A History in Ten Matches, by Tony Shaw, Alan McDougall. Possibly ashameless cash-in on the World Cup but I am still pulled in by the premise. As the legendary Golden Leg reminds us in the cult film Shaolin Soccer:…
Flags flying on the waterfront at Shearwater BC. There are two standard Canada flags and two of Curtis Wilson’s 2005 Indigenous Canada flag I spent yesterday, Canada Day, with my friend Pauline Le Bel inside the common room at our municipal hall. The room was filled with the “Canada Day Re-Imagined” part of the program. Michael Yahgulaanas‘ recent works were on display, there was a full collection of posters of the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and we were there…
I remember 9/11 about as well as anyone would who wasn’t directly involved. I remember being on 24-hour duty that day at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I remember being skeptical of the trainees calling for us to look at the television in our small waiting area. I remember watching the concrete barricades get placed in front of the glass hospital door. I remember putting up an American flag before the month was over. Not because I had to. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to. I wanted…
On the comedy beat from Broadway to vaudeville to movies, thinking of two terrific writer-director-performers. One is star of stage, screen, Ziegfeld Follies etc. Leon Errol, born in Sydney, Australia on July 3, 1881. The other is Mel Brooks, because we somehow missed his 100th birthday last Sunday!We're thrilled and delighted that comedian-writer-director-producer Mel Brooks made it to his 100th birthday last Sunday! Here's Mel celebrating birthday #100 with comedian, producer of Everyone…
The Checkout Counter #43 to my RSS readers: a few people let me know that my RSS feed was broken, so hopefully it's fixed now! please reach out to ayu@sweetfish.site if there are still any issues. thank you!we're halfway through the year already…! my june was filled with good meals, movies about people desperate for connection, and impassioned manifestos.hope you're able to keep to comfortable temperatures, wherever you are. until next time! Film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (偶然と想像),…
June has just ended, and it was fun to take part in Robert’s Junited campaign, even though I had a few days with gaps and only managed to collect 29 links. For my first time participating, though, that’s pretty near optimal. Today Robert has launched the next stage: JulyReply. Now it’s not just about collecting, but about replying to posts. Just the right thing for me, since I’m feeling a bit lazy about writing actually and prefer to tinker with my photos. #JulyReply JulyReply 2026, a blog…
The World Series of Poker Main Event begins today. The Main Event is unquestionably the focal point of the entire World Series of Poker, which now consists of 100 separate tournaments over 7 weeks. It costs $10,000 to enter—same as it did in 19701—and somewhere around 10,000 people will give it a spin. Meaning the prize pool will be in the $93 million range after the 7% rake. First place was $10 million last year. It’s no longer the most expensive buy-in—there are now 13 “high roller” events…
If you put a creative work out into the world and someone has a very negative reaction to it, I find that often the best thing to say is: Thanks for the feedback, sorry it wasn't for you. Now if they made some factually untrue statement, you should push back on it,1 and if they're using the critique as cover to make personal attacks, feel free to tell them to fuck off. But if they're giving you a good-faith negative assessment of your work? It's usually best not to engage. Using myself as an…
M.G. Siegler: A couple years back, I was banned by Instagram. Because I happen to know a few people there, I got it resolved and my account back online relatively quickly. But I never got an answer for what actually happened. A few months later, I found myself banned again. Again, I pinged some people. Again I was reinstated. Again, I got no explanation other than someone – or something – messed up. Again. While those bans also instantly took out Facebook and Messenger, I was lucky that it left…
“No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much discussed couplet: ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.’ Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1, The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft
