Notices by Phil Stevens :tinoflag: (phil_stevens@mastodon.nz), page 2

Shackle Winston (and the coalition in general) to Trump. It's the best strategy we have for punching our homegrown nazis and eroding their electorate support. The worldwide revulsion at what ICE is doing can be an election-year wedge issue here, so let's make it one.

#NZPol

Next we look at the intense amounts of water vapour those superheated seas pumped into the air. This is a classic atmospheric river, with the low-level winds carrying warm and wet tropical air from the vicinity of New Caledonia and pointing it straight at Northland. The colour scale in the middle of this current is "off the scale" and renders as grey.

To make matters worse, there's a stiff nor'easterly picking up the output from the waters south of the Kermadecs and colliding with the northerly river. All this water and energy in the air is unstable and begging for release.

The second image shows the sea surface temperature anomaly for the same area at that time. That big angry-looking patch of reds and yellows to the north and east of Te Ika o Maui is telling us that the waters there are 1-4 degrees warmer than the recorded average over the past few decades.

Overheated waters pump more energy into the atmosphere overhead.

The weather keeps driving me indoors, so I had a little time to look at model visualisations on https://earth.nullschool.net and zoom in on a few bits of data that are relevant to the tragedy that unfolded over the past several days in #Aotearoa as we saw yet another storm pummel districts that copped it just a few years ago.

And yes, this was predicted -- and predictable. This is a textbook example of what all the extra heat in our atmosphere and oceans does.

I'll start off with this graphic, which shows the sea surface temperatures in the SW Pacific, Coral and Tasman Seas on Wednesday as the storm was nearing its peak intensity.

Warm waters pump more moisture into the air above them.

The trigger for all that all that atmospheric water and energy to transform into huge amounts of rainfall is provided by the low-level airflow hitting the exposed coastline. This image shows precipitation rates around midday Wednesday, when the heaviest falls were around Whangārei.

The purple and red areas denote rates of over 10 mm an hour. A day of this will cause havoc in just about any setting, and of course there were bursts of far heavier downpours that might have only lasted an hour or so but dumped 100 mm in that timeframe.

"A profoundly embarrassing collision of violent nationalism, illiterate social chatter, and memetic fascism that’s been spreading across the globe since the pandemic."

Like the antivax protests and rabid fear of cogovernance that hastened the demise of a mostly ok govt in Aotearoa and opened the door to an unholy alliance of Christofascists, Ayn Rand fanbois, and diehard racists. Everywhere you turn, the zone is flooded with shit and the only ones who benefit from that are coprophages.

https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-rise-of-the-troll-state

RE: https://mastodon.nz/@pistonblown/115697617297157526

At least they're not being coy about what they're after.

@ATLeagle @ai6yr Holy shit. If I were in a place that had these abominations I'd keep a stash of plastic explosives with me.

@kibcol1049 I could offer a real simple peace plan. It goes like this:

1. Russia retreats from all the lands it has invaded since 2014.
2. Russia pays reparations to Ukraine for all deaths, injuries, harm, and damage to infrastructure. Assets frozen during the war can be tapped to help with this.
3. Russia agrees to demilitarise and sign non-aggression pacts with all bordering states.
4. Putin wears a sign saying KICK ME every day from now on.

The weird thing about the omission of sea level rise is that it's probably the simplest trend to model out of all of them.

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/05/flood-risk-picture-remains-dangerously-incomplete/

It may be a leap too far for some people, but there is space in my moral framework to grieve the innocent Israeli civilians who were murdered two years ago today, and at the same time be horrified that they were turned into martyrs to justify a holocaust.

No. No. A thousand million times NO.

They will start amassing a trove of warrantless surveillance imagery and we all know the next step will be to feed it to an unaccountable nazi billionaire's panopticon database like Palantir.

We have to fight this and hard. #NZPol

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/575481/fears-of-surveillance-state-as-police-regain-right-to-photograph-public-retain-images

Oh great. The most expensive generating modality on our grid just got a boost from the Minister for Corruption. PV+battery could do the same for a quarter of the cost and not emit any greenhouse gases, but it's not like evidence matters when the govt has nailed its colours to performative climate denial.

Can't wait for these dinosaurs to turn back into hydrocarbons.

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/02/big-new-diesel-power-plant-will-help-in-energy-crises-says-marsden-point-chief/

More fractures. I've lost a lot of my esteem for TPM over their mishandling of the Ferris debacle. They need to lead with empathy and inclusion or they risk alienating a large chunk of their base in the same way that Turia and Sharples did by appeasing the colonisers.

For now, I'll be telling people who give a shit to vote Green.

https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2025/10/02/toitu-te-tiriti-cuts-ties-with-te-pati-maori/

Don't know how many of us noticed this, but before Italy announced that it was sending a military vessel to accompany the Sumud flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, a union-led general strike pretty much shut down the whole country. The strike was called as a message of solidarity with Palestine.

We have the power if just decide to use it.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/thousands-italian-workers-strike-solidarity-112530284.html

Charlie Kirk, eh. What goes around comes around. Thoughts and prayers, etc.

@colinburgess Sea kayaking on that bay is so good. Also, @skinnylatte does cool things at the aquarium.

@JonChevreau Not much of an improvement, when you consider all the possible choices.

Handy up-to-date reference. Just in case.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/how-to-leak-to-a-journalist/

Has there been a statement from NZ Labour on the insanity of remaining in a strategic intelligence alliance with a bunch of psychopathic war criminals who can't even secure their own comms?

I know there's a sort of "gentleman's agreement" that opposition parties don't rock the foreign policy boat, but come on. Make this an issue.

(PS, Greens and TPM: This goes for you as well. Oppose and make hay when it's politically expedient. A statement is all that's required.)

#nzpol