Posts by Deborah
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Muse: How (Not) To Be Incredibly Racist…, in reply to a Denhem,
PS there are real race and gender problems out there. This is just reaching – with some very short stubby limbs.
With a side serve of "I'm gunna tell you how you ought to spend your time and energy, and my choice about what you ought to do is definitely better than yours."
Good grief.
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Up Front: Everyone is Wrong. And Right. Whatever., in reply to Russell Brown,
I think implying it should shut down is even less useful than calling for it to be paid-only.
It never occurred to me that the answer was to shut it down. I think the business model as it exists may not be viable, if they can't pay people enough to moderate it.
We get plenty of business people who say that they can't recruit staff, but when you look into it, it turns out that they're not prepared to pay enough to attract staff. So maybe they need to look at their business model. Perhaps if cash is the problem, they need to look at other ways of remunerating their staff. Things like flexi time, or on-the-job training, or more autonomy for staff, or more openness about the financial affairs of the business so that staff can see where savings can be made, or a commitment to increase wages when certain turnover is reached. Whatever.
Likewise, if Twitter can't operate a decent service because it can't moderate tweets effectively, then it needs to look at its business model. There's a whole lot of ways of doing that, including doing exactly what some of the commenters here have suggested, such as empowering junior staff to make moderation decisions, or creating algorithms so that the abuse-report button doesn't get misused. I dunno, something like if a person gets reported for abuse and gets investigated, and it turns out there's absolutely nothing wrong with her or his tweets (however you judge that), then she or he gets an automatic protection for a certain period of time, and the complainant gets dumped instead.
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But it’s worth noting that twitter doesn’t make a profit, employing a bunch of people to clean up the service they provide from the worst is yet another cost on a business that doesn’t turn a profit.
Then perhaps it's not a viable business.
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Up Front: Good Counsel, in reply to wendyf,
Thank you for telling your story, wendyf. The more stories, the better.
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Three to six cents a day seems very attractive when compared to the hundred-plus dollars it costs for each counselling session.
Yes, it does. But not compared to the cost of not finding the right combination of treatments for the particular person who is right there in front of you.
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Cracker: Johnny Foreigner & the Auckland…, in reply to B Jones,
If we follow the Australian model, then the right to purchase property goes with citizenship, not residence.
The restrictions in Australia apply to established houses. Non-citizens can still buy new houses. The policy rationale is:
that foreign investment in Residential Real Estate should increase Australia's housing stock. That is, the policy seeks to channel foreign investment in the housing sector into activity that directly increases the supply of new housing (such as new developments of house and land, home units and townhouses) and brings benefits to the local building industry and its suppliers. (Source)
There are some exemptions from the rules, for people ordinarily resident in Australia, and spouses of Australian citizens buying properties under a joint tenancy, and for New Zealanders. (Source)
None of that looks too outrageous to me.
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Best $10 ever spent - a knife sharpener, from Ikea. It's just the right size for me to hold it in one hand, and pull a knife through the slot which has whetstone at the bottom. Not the same as getting my knives sharpened professionally, but seeing as my kitchen runs to cheap supermarket giveaway knives rather than fabulous German steel ones, it's not really a problem.
It's the second Ikea knife sharpener I've bought. I first got one when we moved to Adelaide in 2008, but by last year, it had lost its magic sharpening powers, and by then, we were back in NZ, with no access to an Ikea markethall. Fortunately, we visited Adelaide last summer, and we were able to get to Ikea to get new covers for our sofas, and a new knife sharpener.
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This is my stockpot.
"What stockpot?" you say.
That would be the stockpot buried in the garden. You can see the rim on the right hand side of the photo. My daughter was cooking up rice for sushi, but alas, she misjudged the amount of water, or time needed, or something, and the bottom of the pot is very black indeed. We tried soaking it, and scrubbing it with steel wool, but it didn't work. So now we've resorted to the old trick of burying it in the garden, in the hopes that bacteria in the soil will deal to it. It's been in there for a week now, and in the meantime, I am stockpotless, which is a dire state to be in when I want to make big winter soups.
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I would put up a picture of the best cast iron frying pan we ever had, but we gave it away.
When we first set up our household, we were broke. Really, really broke. So we bought various kitchen items from the Warehouse, reasoning that we would replace them bit by bit when we had a bit more money. One of the things we bought was a cast iron frying pan, for about $20.
It was superb. I seasoned it properly, and we looked after it, so it quickly built up a lovely patina. But a few years later, my parents gave us a Le Creuset cast iron pan, which I duly seasoned, and we started using it. It didn't build up a patina as quickly, but it was doing okay.
Then there was a bizarre crime in the small village where we were living. Some of you will recall it: a detective was tied up and tortured, and then his house was doused with petrol and set alight. He managed to get out the window just in time. Very fortunately, his wife and children were away at the time.
Being a small village, the local community rallied around to find furniture and appliances and linen and kitchen ware for the family, because they had lost everything. We looked at our two cast iron frying pans, and decided that we didn't really need two. So we gave away the Warehouse frying pan.
I've regretted it ever since. Not only did it turn out that the detective had set up the crime himself, but the expensive Le Creuset pan has just never, ever, developed the same patina as the Warehouse pan. I season it regularly, and never wash it in soapy water, but somehow, it just doesn't ever get that nice, oily sheen.
Some people in the village did go and demand their stuff back, but we didn't: the detective's wife and children had still lost everything. But I hope they've enjoyed using that pan.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Danielle,
But on a societal level, you do have to note that these choices are made within a particular context, and are part of a larger pattern. I’m all about choosing your choice, but I also think it’s wilfully obtuse to ignore how those choices seem to go overwhelmingly one way.
Yes! Exactly so.
