A refreshing piece on diversity in our mainstream media

Two fantastic items in my Tweetstream today, the first from journalist Jehan Casinader, a New Zealander of Sri Lankan heritage, in Stuff. Some highlights:    As an ethnic person, you can only enter (and stay in) a predominantly white space – like the media, politics or corporate leadership – if you play by the rules. […]

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From my desk, 1986

Before this gets recycled, I thought I’d scan it as a memento: a 1986 printout off our Riteman dot matrix printer (which I still have, with spare cartridges), hooked up to a Commodore 64. I forget the printer interface. The image isn’t mine: I only imagine that 14-year-old me was claiming copyright over the layout […]

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BMW, then and now

This isn’t progress. Nice one, as always! Makes me wonder what was wrong with this credo: "Fashionable styling gimmicks are entirely absent, and the dimensions suit the traffic conditions of today." pic.twitter.com/XhpyW6P1Bs — Kolbenkopp (@kolbenkopp) January 7, 2021 You may also like Miscellaneous images from the US You never know where your interests will take […]

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The Grundig parts’ cache time capsule

When Dad was made redundant from Cory-Wright & Salmon, which had purchased his workplace, Turnbull & Jones, he bought all the Grundig equipment and accessories, thinking that he would find it useful. And for a while he did. The odd one he cannibalized, while the parts were used and adapted. Cory-Wright wound up contracting him […]

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Was it six networks or only five? In all this excitement, they’re ‘Still the One’

I’m sure there are many, many more examples of this tune being used to promote TV networks, but it seems to be a standard in at least three countries I know, and probably far more besides.    It is, of course, ‘Still the One’, which ABC used in the US to celebrate being the top-rated […]

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Forget the stereotypes: how immigrants write with English as their second language

How interesting to find a photocopy of a letter my Dad wrote to the Department of Social Welfare in 1986, to apply for National Superannuation on behalf of his parents.    We had been here less than a decade, but, frankly, Dad’s correspondence was always like this. The whole idea of immigrants coming to Aotearoa […]

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Light humour, dark copy

I really love Hong Kong 漫畫 or manhua, and found this in one of the boxes from the move.    This was before the days of our having a computer scanner, and I had photocopied it out of a magazine or newspaper. There were years the copier was on the blink and everything would come […]

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Is there a type that works from home more easily?

Olivia St Redfern has featured yours truly in her lockdown day 2, part 1 podcast, so I decided to record another response.    It brings to mind something Steve McQueen once said. ‘I’m not an actor. I’m a reactor.’ As in, he could react to a line from another actor.    Anyone who has seen […]

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The death of Holden

GM pulled out of Russia and India, so with hindsight, those of us Down Under, with a far smaller total population, shouldn’t have thought we were particularly special.    Even where GM remains, such as South Korea, there’s a broken model range, with a big gap where the Cruze used to be.    It’s becoming […]

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In the 1980s, I thought society would evolve to become more efficient and smarter

Growing up in a relatively wealthy country in the 1980s, after getting through most of the 1970s, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world would just keep getting better and things would make more sense as humans evolved.    From a teenager’s perspective: home computers, with a modulator–demodulator (modem), could bring you information instantaneously […]

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