Posts by Moz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: The Fine Line, in reply to Gregor Ronald,
but we'll need to have jobs waiting for them of course.
And awful lot of immigrants start their own small businesses. The reasons are not all positive, but the fact is we don't need to "create jobs for them", they do that themselves. The cliche take-away shop and dairy are not all there is to it, either.
I'd also like to see the refugee intake kept up and out of this discussion (yes, I'm the first to mention it). Especially it could and should be used as a stick to beat Australia with rather than becoming yet another symptom of our sycophancy.
-
OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
It's worse still when one's household income is in that 9th decile but you still can only dream about owning a 3+1 in your current not-inner-suburbs-and-not-Grammer-zoned suburb of residence
Even for the young-but-earning there are a bunch of catch 22's. "affordable" houses tend to be a long way out and poorly served by public transport, making two cars almost mandatory. If you add that cost in, the inner city looks less awful... but in Australia all that's done is pushed up the cost of apartments and "densification" projects, so now instead of paying $1.2M+ for a house 20 minutes by train from the CBD, you can pay $900k for a half block "house" in the same area (bedroom sizes starting from 2.5m x 3m!), or slightly less for a livable apartment (but strata fees!). Of course "investor" apartments are much cheaper, down to about $500k, but you probably don't want to live in one of those long term (like the bottom half of the income scale have to).
We're looking at buying for the first time hopefully before my partner turns 30. But since she's just started her first full time job in her qualified field her ability to contribute is low (admittedly architecture is 4 year bachelor plus 2 years work plus 2 year masters = 8 years minimum before you can start "professional employment" and begin the 3 year registration process. Less any time spent working for money to survive studenthood or being unable to find professional work to get that all-important experience between degrees).
My expectation is that those without "family resources" will be lucky to buy before they're 30, so they'll be tossing up kids vs house about then. Or like a few are doing, graduating, having kids, and just accepting that they'll be in debt, renting and moving flats every few years just like the poor people do (poor, again, meaning "lower half of the income scale... like they are). Hopefully only until they're in their 40's and have got their incomes up above the median, paid off student loans and saved a deposit, but who knows what will have happened by then.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Bringing the…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
The Dead C ... at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday for the label RIP Society at the Vivid Festival.
Is magicness! now I need $40 and some kind of excuse. Joelistics tonight (hiphop) and loud noises on Saturday, now all I need is ... oh, wait, Directions in Groove[1] at the Eastside Ride on Sunday! My weekend is complete!
[1] not even slightly a jazz fan, but I'm willing to suffer for the sake of eclecticism
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Bringing the…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
survivors wouldn't we able to access a lot of early 21st century information
What's often forgotten is just how little material survives in any form. Sure, we have some of many types of records, but the other 99% or more has been lost. There are very few cases where we can go back even 100 years and say "yes, it's all here". Even for stuff carved on stone - just visit an old graveyard.
The advantage of digital in that sense is density and ease of copying. I have a huge amount of information (including, for example, a complete copy of the diaries and photos from my childhood... or at least those that physically survived until I could scan them). Plug in last year's hard disk, say "copy to this years", wait. Beats "find large slab of stone and a very patient monk...".
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Bringing the…, in reply to bob daktari,
Try this PDF listing of all the albums: http://www.promusic.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Digital-Reissue-List-16-May.pdf</q>
Thank you for that, it's the first half of what I was looking for.
-
I'm now curious about why this was done. It doesn't seem to be "so people can buy them", and "so people will hear them" is limited to Spotify listeners who either use random play or whatever "recommend stuff" options spotify uses and it happens to suggest these ones. If spotify doesn't allow external linking that would seem to make it a poor choice, and if it does, why isn't that list of links one of the main promotional tools? But again I'm assuming that the goal is "get people to hear the music", rather than... well, I dunno, what is the goal?
For me, what I want is to be able to listen to these at work or at home, ideally only downloading them once. I'm happy to pay for it, just not to the extent of buying a new SIM card on a high-data plan so I can plug that into my laptop that supports the proper DAC, then carry the laptop to work every day. It's just a lot of faffing about done that way.
FWIW, I've spent a lot of time ripping and scanning my CD collection (300+ CDs), then organising and scraping documentation together for them. Admittedly a lot of my scans are lower res than the pinterest uploads (my ENZSO is 14oo pix square, cf 1700), but I have them and they're readable and re-printable at the original size. I have a few vinyl rips that are even more work because I've had to fiddle with noise and clicks and whatnot. So I do have some idea what's involved. But the crucial thing I did was organise them all into one big catalogue that I can play. So I open my FLAC-player and they're all there, searchable and listenable. That was the whole point of the exercise.
-
Hard News: Friday Music: Bringing the…, in reply to bob daktari,
There is no single "buy now" nor single point of entry to find them all in one place as its a huge number of albums from a equally large number of different companies
That's kind of useless, then. "some music you might like is available"... yeah, I knew that.
Now I'm supposed to trawl around every music selling site I use searching for random albums I recall from my youth hoping that they're available. Or work through the pinterset site hoping that I don't miss anything I like and that all the available albums have cover art up there, before running each one through the aforementioned collection of retailers. Even Flying Nun, who don't exactly set records in the agressive marketing department, manage to provide a list of their "now in FLAC" material.
I appreciate that people have done a lot of work to make this happen, but surely at some point at least one of those people had a list of all the albums they have worked on?
-
ok, I'm sure I'm just being dense here, but is there some way to actually buy a copy of the 'Tied to the Tracks' material, or do I have to sign up to some streaming service and pay per listen? Either way, direct links would be nice. Unless we're just in the "one day you might be able to hear this" stage?
-
Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Chris Waugh,
A systemic breakdown of communication
And in shocking news, the IPCA said "no individual could be criticised" for that breakdown in communication. Most obviously because anyone who does name names is likely to be sued, which is why we have bodies like IPCA who are supposed to criticise on our behalf.
I wonder if they're taking tips from the PM's office, or is this an independent loss off control?
-
OnPoint: Why does the top 10% paying…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
capital gains ... You are only obliged to declare them if you are a property trader (something practically nobody is).
... because it's pathetically easy to convince the IRD that you're not. I got told by them at one point that if I flicked a particular property within 3 years they'd have to think about labelling me that way (trades in period per properties owned sort of rule IIRC). Easy enough, I held on to it and bought other, smaller properties with the new capital rather than "trading up". It was interesting that the IRD told me of the problem rather than waiting and swooping the way they do with peasants.
The language is, as always, revealing. People like John Key "earn" their capital gains, but those earnings are tax-free, unlike every other type of earning you can do.
I think lack of capital gains tax is a rort that needs to be stopped. Just like I've thought every year since I became aware of it.