Posts by B Jones
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Woohoo!
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Metadata. It seems like the obvious one to me.
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Had they permanently stopped, or just taken a break? Because "yer honour, I'd stopped robbing houses an hour before the police caught me" isn't a great defence.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I could write about the harm that discussing the clothing choices of rape victims causes, or advising women not to go to parties where people who boast about rape will be in attendance, but I have no particular knowledge in that area, or any idea how to explain it in a remotely intelligent way in my voice.
Yet you feel qualified to argue that balanced against the principle of free speech, free speech must win out? How can you make that comparison without giving proper credit to one of the things you're comparing?
Also – and quite recently – I’ve been told that there are already enough white men talking about rape
Better than them refusing to talking about it.
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Legal Beagle: Think it possible that you…, in reply to sallyr,
Who also have a razor sharp sense of what is a Good Look for their company.
I don't think it's possible to deal with this issue without a little bit of a shakeup of whose speech gets out there, and someone's going to lose out. I'm just fine with that being radio hosts rather than victims of sexual assault and their supporters. I'm also fine with how that was achieved - I certainly can't think of a better alternative. Yeah, consequences, but the consequences of doing nothing are worse.
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Hard News: How do you sleep?, in reply to BenWilson,
I notice when verbal thoughts happen that there is an accompanying slight feeling of tension, which I isolate by feel and relax it.
I guess what I do, when it works, is an informal kind of meditation. Mantras, hah, for some reason "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is visual yet trippy enough to inspire images but not words or logic.
What I hate is the state of half-sleep where you're dreaming and a bit stressed and you think you're awake/in big trouble/about to sit your exam but can't find the room/can't operate a telephone. One weird night after too much internetting I dreamed in posts. After that I have to get up and be awake for a while so I don't go back to thinking some horrible imaginary problem is bearing down on me.
And teeth falling out. God, I hate dreaming that. It can be surprisingly realistic, and it's apparently not uncommon.
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I get 4am wakeups when I'm a bit stressed (like starting a new job: lovely to turn up with panda eyes, chugging coffee and yawning all through meetings). If I'm lucky I get back to sleep before 5:30ish. If I'm unlucky one of the kids will wake up before I drift back off.
What works for me is turning off the audio/verbal part of my brain, the bit that subvocalises all my thoughts and reminds me of all the things I need to do the next day, what I should have said yesterday, and what I'd really do first if I won lotto; and turning on the visual part, eyes shut. For some reason, if I can imagine something visual vividly enough, it's enough like a dream that it becomes lucid dreaming then the real thing.
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I'd be looking at anyone who knew my handle with a bit of a sideeye after something like that. Possibilities that spring to mind immediately include someone having you on, or a very short chain of someone who knows someone at head office. If you're feeling generous, talking to a critic directly to get the conversation out of the media and into where it's influential is a legitimate strategy for dealing with a negative media issue, but not when it looks like a misuse of overwhelming state power. And surely if the chief of police was calling everyone who's been critical of him for a friendly chat, he'd have had a busy week.
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Hard News: Everybody's Machiavelli, in reply to Megan Wegan,
I can take the 8pm to 10pm shift.
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I've been mulling over the Lorde=racist idea, and while I think Flores has got the wrong end of the stick, it's not hard to see why she'd have that reaction. If you're not plugged into the way that the Royals tropes code as general American music in its country of origin, and not paying close attention to the lyrics, you could be excused for seeing a dogwhistle. And it's hard to argue against her analysis from outside without sounding all "she likes hiphop/my wife's from Singapore" or "we live in a post-racial paradise in NZ, we don't see colour," like some of the comments at Feministing. We can't say that with a straight face while the guys on 7 Days do mocking impersonations of AAVE without attracting comment, or golliwogs are sold in airport gift shops. We're not that attuned to the subtleties of US race relations, and it wouldn't be impossible for a NZ artist to put their foot in it. I don't think that's what's happening here, just on a straightforward reading of song lyrics, but it's certainly worth thinking about.
Imagine if, in ignorance of Winston Peters and celebration of jocks who don't wear shirts, someone in the US made a show called Bro-ocracy. Even knowing it was done in ignorance of the term's use in NZ, it would still make me flinch every time I heard it, and feel bad for the resonance it would create within our culture, giving aid and comfort to the people who use it pejoratively and amplifying its effect on the people it labels. If a NZer publicly complained about it, I couldn't really blame them even if they got a few things wrong.