Posts by Moz
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accept that our creative stars are not paid ambassadors and that they are as entitled as any of us to share their views and, even more so, their experiences.
But, but, that's what they do.
Bic Runga singing about nothing in particular wouldn't be the same. Geez, can you imagine Scribe rapping about Brexit or the price of sugar in Cuba? Maybe Lorde could do a cover of "Fast Car"?
I'm entertained at the white men telling everyone that racism doesn't affect them so it's not a problem. We should remind them of that next time there's a "reverse racism" outcry.
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Just a sec, this isn't public housing? WTF? I can see benefits in having government build stuff like this because they're the ones normally left carrying the can for all the stuff profitable developers leave out. But I was really hoping this would end up as a mixed-ownership system where 50% or so were public housing. Otherwise how is this going to help with the shortage of state homes?
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Hard News: The Unitec project: Something…, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
28 hectares for 80 apartment blocks is 3,500 square metres for each apartment block if I've done my maths right. That seems to be quite a large area of land, enough for a reasonable amount of green space and infrastructure.
Sydney is hardly an outlier for densification by world standards, but we seem to go for solid walls of apartments around railway stations with amenities surrounding those (Turella or Chatswood for recent examples, Canterbury and Green Square as work-in-progress locations). By major city standards I suspect allowing twice the floorplate for everything would be more usual, not ten times.
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FWIW one problem I'm seeing more and more is that even in "liberal democracies" like ours we increasingly have to have profiles on the various social media sites to navigate modern life. From employers who assume you're lying because you have something to hide if you won't give them your Facebook profile (and they can't find it), through to the sort-of-trivial council communicating things strictly via Facebook (seriously. "want to know when submissions open? Sign up for facebook alerts" and there's no other channel given.
Viz, you don't have to impose a monolithic surveillance system in order to get a decent chunk of the benefits. Just requiring people's social media accounts then paying trivial amounts to target ads at them will tell you a lot. "there are 432 people in the subset A+B+C" type things.
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Hard News: 1984, Cambridge Analytica and…, in reply to Russell Brown,
it may well scoop up people resident in New Zealand.
Do you mean when it's rolled out here, or just people here getting included in the Chinese-in-China version? Because the latter is both obvious and part of the declared intention if the system.
My fear is more that the techniques they use are easily extended to everywhere else that have social media systems, and they're very useful to governments (rather than just being useful to their corporate owners). I can't imagine a National government turning down the offer of such a rich and useful source of information, especially given how much they used even the limited shadow of the idea that they had recently. Their equivalent in Australia has been similarly free when given the opportunity.
Whether Labour will be any better is yet to be seen. Hopefully The Greens will be keeping an eye out. But watch for "commercial in confidence" and "national security" being used to deny them (and us) access to knowledge of what's being done.
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Yes. All I can say is "I'll keep trying to do better next time". I wasn't involved in the event(s) you were at, to be clear, but I appreciate the reminder.
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Hard News: Bikelash, paralysis – and progress, in reply to Mike O'Connell,
Is the sharrow concept widespread in Akld?
I've seen them in Oz, but they're very, very rare. Most councils prefer the "dead cyclists" painted in the door zone to remind us what happens when we ride there. Our council has largely stopping doing that after a certain small group pointed out the problem at every single public meeting they held. But I saw a new one the other day, might have to go to some meetings :)
Those anti-bicycle hoops in the last photo really jumped out at me. We've been asking for the removal of stuff like that for a while and it's been interesting that the formal response has almost always been "thank you for your concern" but every now and then a barrier will quietly vanish with no fanfare. I mean "dug up and the holes patched properly", not the old-skool "cut off at ground level and hammered flat" that anyone can do. One that I had to dismount for twice a day disappeared over xmas, and my thank you email hasn't been answered. But the barrier is still gone so I'm happy.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The fractions…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Chchch
Christchurchchurch? Or Christchristchurch? The inquisitive idiot trapped inside my head needs to know.
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A.Zee: music ... and cooking. Is very odd.
But I have been listening to Illegal Music on and off since this post. It's great, thanks for that Russel.
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Hard News: Waitangi: Just enjoy the day, in reply to Hugh Wilson,
noting the contrast with how things are going in Australia
Not least the recent "consultation" where the government asked aborigines what they wanted, after much deliberation the Uluru Declaration was produced... then the government spat in their faces.
One of the things that gets me through invasion day is the knowledge that Waitangi Day is coming up. Even when it was Key hiding from, well, everyone, that was still better than seeing some white dude strutting round boasting about how Australia was founded on genocide and we should celebrate that. Sorry to rant, but thinking about it just makes me sad and angry.
I think part of getting angry is because I'm a kiwi and that's what Maori do when people shit on them from a great height. The Australian shrug and move on thing is just perplexing, and celebrating criminality is weird (from Ned Kelly to Alan Bond and beyond).
I was really happy to see Ms Arden at Waitangi, and the BBQ thing was brilliant in so many ways, from the pragmatic "hospitality is providing food" to the symbolic "public servants serving the people". Thank you, Aotearoa.