Posts by linger
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Up Front: The Up Front Guide to Plebs, in reply to Dinah Dunavan,
everyone should have equal rights to marry whomever they choose, or not
That’s ambiguous in a few ways, though I get that the intent is to balance freely given consent, and (expressed, mutual) choice of partner(s), with no overt conditions on number or types of individuals (beyond those that would limit ability to give consent)… which is complex, and hard to sum up in a single statement of aim. No doubt the following can be further improved, but is it getting any closer to what you mean?
Equal access to marriage should be available to all consenting adults who mutually want it.
(N.B. I don’t know where this would leave someone who wants to marry a second spouse against the wishes of their first spouse – something that should call for at the very least a major renegotiation of the first marriage.) -
Winnie may be grandstanding
Hardly unexpected, then!
If there is an error in translation, that is extremely regrettable; but calling for vote nullification is a wild overreaction, not least because most Hindi speakers registered to vote in New Zealand are able to read English well enough to check the intended meaning for themselves. But more importantly, a government stuffup should never lead to disenfranchisement. -
Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to Sacha,
ah the good old days
Fact-checking in t'news? Luuuuxury.
But you try telling folk today, and they won't believe you.
Especially if you tell them in a news report. -
If he really wants a meaningful legacy, there’s any number of actions that are both politically easy, and the right thing to do, that he could start with, and I’m considerably unimpressed that they’ve not even been considered. Taking in refugees from Nauru, for example.
Marijuana law reform is also the right thing to do, but is politically harder, so what are the chances? -
“Seaward” suggests sewage
with a probability not just high, but stinking. -
Hard News: The flagging referendum, in reply to nzlemming,
Government does not supply flags to everyone who flies one. RSA’s, for example, pay for their own.
That would go down well at the RSA: “We want to replace the flag your mates died under, and you’re going to have to pay for the replacement.” Not that anyone would actually be forced to change over immediately, but still…
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Northshoreguynz,
Nah. That's the "tu quoque" fallacy ("But you do it too!" "You did it first!"). Sinking to the same childish level only rewards that behaviour. We face a hard enough struggle getting productive political discussion as it is.
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
In the sense that, as with BDS, KDS or IBS, “troll” can be an easy reflexive, refluxive, unreflecting smear.
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Hard News: The unstable Supercity, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
The basic lesson of that piece, as I read it, is: for large long-term projects, use local developers, and keep some in-house development & support capacity, because that lets you more directly respond to your current and future requirements. Open source can help, but isn’t a cure-all by itself. (Note that the phrase “ nearly as doomed as if you used closed source” doesn’t argue against open source.)
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Polity: Key Derangement Syndrome…, in reply to simon g,
Let’s call it “people derangement syndrome” – why not?
Here’s why not:
(i) It’s not an entirely general misanthropy: they’re mostly quite happy to support other people belonging to their own coterie.
(ii) They’re not deranged; they’re just not empathetic enough to be fit for any job looking after the interest of the general public.One could call it “underclass disparagement syndrome”
(aka beneficiary bashing).