Orthanc
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orthanc.nz
Orthanc
@orthanc.nz
Semi-professional bad influence, secret santa imp, comfort food influencer, and all around good guy, He/Him, Orthanc of the Bluesky.

Tāmaki Makaurau
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Orthanc @orthanc.nz · Nov 22
This post is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be powerful posters.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
This is not what I would have expected for my years word cloud here, but I mean, it's good i think.

Hope, building, community. Not how I see myself but maybe how I'd like to be.
November 28, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Orthanc
Your gentle reminder that my crowdfunding campaign ends tomorrow night… Thanks everyone for all the love. It’s been amazing. www.pledgeme.co.nz/projects/852...
Support Dr Siouxsie After She Supported Us! | PledgeMe
Support Dr Siouxsie to recover some of the money she spent fighting her legal case to protect employees experiencing online abuse
www.pledgeme.co.nz
November 28, 2025 at 6:26 PM
This is important and significant. These are the guidelines that were submitted and agreed before political interference. The ones that should have been published.

PATHA have taken a stand of not having their name used to give credence to the rewritten ones, and released the correct ones.
Y’ALL. PATHA RELEASED THE NEW GENDER AFFIRMING CARE GUIDELINES. THE ONES THE GOVT SUPPRESSED

GET IN IT

patha.nz/resources-an...
Clinical Guidelines | Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa Inc. (PATHA)
patha.nz
November 28, 2025 at 7:30 AM
I remeber when this all started, when I was a regular reader.

There's something endearing and sweet about this xkcd.
Fifteen Years
xkcd.com
November 28, 2025 at 4:26 AM
Reposted by Orthanc
The latter. We're committed to pay equity. We don't think the number calculated by the Nats is much use and we will have our own costing in due course.
November 28, 2025 at 2:04 AM
This is so cool, they're real physical books and they exist.

I cannot even imagine the satisfaction, such a milestone.

🙌🫶
Omg omg omg. I have books in my hand that I wrote.
Hugs and high fives and fist bumps requested. Look at them. They look amazing.
November 27, 2025 at 11:53 PM
How do we feel about people named after something in lord of the rings?

Uh, asking for a friend?
My rule of thumb is if the company is named after something in Lord of the Rings, it’s almost certainly evil.
Since its founding in 2017, Anduril Industries has become one of the hottest companies in a crowded field of defense-tech startup.

Its fast-moving approach comes with its share of setbacks.
November 27, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Taylor Swift decided to visit Hobbiton.

All the hobbit were in quite a flap, they didn't get many visiting pop stars, what could they feed her that would be up to stuff?

The debate raged on, suggestion after suggestion discarded as not enough for the diva...
November 27, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Orthanc
PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS!

gonna be reposting your books because hoo you made a book!

www.versobooks.com/products/303...
November 26, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Do you lick the spoon after you've finished using chilli oil or are you normal?
November 27, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Reposted by Orthanc
Ghosts, possession, romance, witchcraft, ancestral healing, murders, my novel HedgeWitch is out now on e-book and NZers can pre-order their own signed paperback now
jaidedee.com/shop/
November 27, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Reposted by Orthanc
The 2025 edition of My Hearty Commendations: The Complete Letters and Remembrances of Thomas Cromwell, now with 650 letters, parliamentary papers, personal notes and finances, will be available on 1 December
November 26, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Books are so under priced and under valued.

Think how little an ebook or a paperback costs, for all the hours of enjoyment you get even reading it once.

For the huge effort that goes into creating a story, the months of work by an author.
I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.
I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.
November 26, 2025 at 4:58 AM
Reposted by Orthanc
It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick.

Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 12:49 PM
It's not even the sending date, you've all got time. Don't panic #SecretSantaAoNZ.

There have been a couple of gifts gone, but nobody should be worried yet if they don't have a gift yet.
Kia ora e hoa, @bettytimtam.bsky.social. I know you're waiting to hear when your #SecretSantaAoNZ gift is on its way:) Soon my precious; soon. [Sent by 🤖]
November 26, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by Orthanc
November 25, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Squeeee.

This is so exciting, I've really enjoyed beta reading these and will be ordering some signed copies.

Such a milestone, congratulations @witchnwords.bsky.social
Pre-orders for signed paperback copies of HedgeWitch and Concert & Consequence in paperback go live today too. These will be limited to NZ delivery to begin with. (Exception for overseas friends and whanau who can contact me directly)

GET EXCITED!

jaidedee.com/the-magic-be...
The Magic Begins! - Jaide Dee
It’s finally time! 2025 has been, well, not the year that most of us were hoping for. But I have […]
jaidedee.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:29 AM
Reposted by Orthanc
Kia ora #SecretSantaAoNZ
A reminder that we have many different types of people playing the game. Some love the sleuth, some love the hunt for the perfect gift, some need the validation of knowing they're on the right track.
This is one reason I do the questions to help people get to know you -
November 24, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Reposted by Orthanc
i’m one of the people who signed onto this open letter, because i’m fed up with seeing urban legend touted as security advice.

this is normal guidance, for normal people, derived from the combined experience of over 80 security practitioners sick of seeing scare tactics used to drive clicks.
📢 Announcing hacklore.org 📢

It’s time to retire outdated cyber advice! More than 80 cybersecurity veterans have signed an open letter urging a shift from folklore to guidance that actually helps people avoid the most common attacks. 🔐

Blog: medium.com/@boblord/let...

Site: www.hacklore.org
Stop Hacklore!
hacklore.org
November 24, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Reposted by Orthanc
A reminder of some top tips if you're sleuthing on Bluesky for #SecretSantaAoNZ
November 23, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Today I learned that most of NZ and Au are on a mute list because there's a sports team in Utah called the Utah Utes, there's a feed for them, and apparently we talked about Utes to much and overwhelm it with the juvenile form of the Tactical.
November 22, 2025 at 4:54 AM
I wonder if quote notifications go across the bridge.

The quote posts do in this direction at least.
RE: https://mastodon.nz/@phil_stevens/115584891736918953

You get notified of the first quote but not subsequent quotes of quotes.
RE: https://mastodon.nz/@SimonCHulse/115584865575831392

Human curiosity and intellectual discovery is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
November 21, 2025 at 1:18 AM
9 AM, DMs start going out, my monitoring makes pretty patterns
November 20, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Orthanc
Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay, for Trans Day of Remembrance
November 20, 2025 at 7:07 PM
I read this this morning and it's really stuck with me.

The whole thread is worth a read, but this is the bit that's really sticking with me.

To be a safe man is an active thing, it requires actively calling out the mysogyny, actively calling out other men.
The overwhelming majority of men are in that second group, and they walk around thinking they're safe men to be around, when the reality is the opposite. They're always ready to rubber stamp and second the motions of more aggressive men--how does that make them safe? Spoiler: it doesn't.
November 19, 2025 at 6:55 AM