Mark
@maetl.bsky.social
770 followers 260 following 3.1K posts
Lecturer in Product Design at UCNZ. Tech industry dropout. Narrative systems and geoscience meddler. Old school web sectary. Frankenbike curator. Waste stream wrangler.
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maetl.bsky.social
I don’t want raytracing or photorealism, I want the lo-fi dwarfs in their fortress to be standing in grid cells backed by a fully simulated carbon cycle, atmospheric fluid flow, insolation, atmospheric chemistry, evapotranspiration, geological strata, ecological systems...
maetl.bsky.social
Surely there’s some good samples and sfx in that lot. Maybe I’m too obsessed with recycling.
Reposted by Mark
kchironis.bsky.social
developer: put it down. we don't need another one

concept artist: (clutching tighter) no. this is my emotional support sky whale
maetl.bsky.social
I had some theories about it a while back when they were destroying my cauliflower and broccoli plants but can’t remember all the details—something to do with planting in concentric fortifications with outer layers of calendula, borage, salvia, sage, and sacrificial brassica variants.
maetl.bsky.social
Hot and dry weather will beat them back
maetl.bsky.social
No plausible argument this was in good faith: “Ten minutes before we were due to meet, the Government presented us with another offer for settlement of the Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement – with a condition it would lapse if strike action was notified.”
www.ppta.org.nz/news-and-med...
PPTA Te Wehengarua members vote to strike
www.ppta.org.nz
maetl.bsky.social
Performative acceding to transient authoritarian political movements is a token gesture for the larger project of permanent corporate rule. The grotesqueries of a time of monsters.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...
Marc Benioff Says Trump Should Send Guard Troops to San Francisco
www.nytimes.com
maetl.bsky.social
They don’t agree on god, or populism, individualism, globalisation, public health, etc, but they ALL agree on tax dodging.
maetl.bsky.social
Tax dodging is one of the few coherent unifying ideas of the right. Most of everything else is an incoherent mashup of half-understood economic propaganda, might is right/fuck you got mine tropes, and othering justified cruelty.
Reposted by Mark
ketanjoshi.co
We have truly not yet figured out how to cope with a person or institution that is "aware" of climate change, "accepts the science", but then decides to continue actively worsening it anyway

We don't even have a word or a phrase for this!

theconversation.com/mark-carneys...
Mark Carney’s climate inaction is at odds with his awareness of climate change’s existential threat
Climate action no longer seems to be a priority for Prime Minister Mark Carney, despite his previous activism. This is bad news for Canadians and the climate.
theconversation.com
maetl.bsky.social
That can’t be a real quote, surely—
maetl.bsky.social
Can I get over my fear and loathing of setting up front derailleurs and go for an old school triple?
maetl.bsky.social
Another great salvage object, off a crusty old Marin that was abandoned at UC. Alivio was Shimano’s downmarket line but these 1999 cranks hold up very favourably now. They’re crying out to go on a late 90s monster cross conversion.
Shimano Alivio cranks from 1999
maetl.bsky.social
We need to grow up as a country and society.
publicaddress.bsky.social
The NZ Drug Foundation has a major new report pressing the case for a replacement of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, which turns 50 this month. Thing is, its recommendations – for a complete realignment to health, not criminalisation and punishment, are ... drugfoundation.org.nz/topics/polic...
Safer drug laws
We need safer drug laws for Aotearoa New Zealand - our new report sets out a pragmatic, evidence-based way forward.
drugfoundation.org.nz
maetl.bsky.social
*rush of breath* I also have a lot to say about the complexities of that particular hour of television.

But yes what a lovely day. If I didn’t have a huge pile of marking to do I’d be heading for the hills, climb up as high and as far away from it all as possible in a few hours. Mauri Ora.
maetl.bsky.social
I don’t have time or energy for reckons on this today, but will say there is a huge cultural and understanding gap in NZ around how to design and build such databases and visualise the connections to a high standard.
maetl.bsky.social
Shaw was attacked a day before the atrocity in ChCh, so it just wasn’t ever possible to make news cycle sausage with it, even if they’d tried.
maetl.bsky.social
Will never fall off.
Reposted by Mark
thebasement.nz
What sort of person looks at the state of this world and goes “more weapons are needed. We could be good at making new weapons”?
maetl.bsky.social
This is incredible, well done
maetl.bsky.social
The first waves of neoliberalism made it clear to the upcoming generation of artists and musicians that the post war social contract and access to stable employment was over, even before the advanced rentier economy and housing crisis. In this essay I will…
maetl.bsky.social
Maybe listening in the present reinterprets the past, but then again, fucken Ruth Richardson is getting wheeled out in the media in 2024–25, so I feel like that connection has been forced anyway.
maetl.bsky.social
Tangent but vaguely relevant. The last 94 song I listened to (this week!) was ‘Sitting inside My Head’ and it had never occurred to me that the intro was environmental storytelling of Auckland in an economic recession.

“I walk around this town where buildings are closed and windows are boarded…”
maetl.bsky.social
The next one is considered a masterpiece but I think Leftism will always sit with me as the big one.