Seasonal Canadian humour

My thanks to Sydney-based photographer Robert Catto for linking me to this one, especially near the festive season.        It is funnier than the one I took in Sweden many years ago, which in pun-land could be racist:        The sad thing is, at some point, the majority will not get […]

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How to come third in a mayoral election

One mayoral candidate recently asked me for my advice. I won’t name who it is, since I want those who contact me to know I’ll keep their communications in confidence.    Now, the first thing to do is to get a time machine and ask me the same question 18 months earlier.    But I […]

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It takes 10 years (and sometimes 50) for the establishment to wake up

Given the topic of this post, some of you will know exactly why this still, from the 1978 Steve McQueen movie An Enemy of the People, is relevant. If you don’t know, head here.   Admittedly, I was getting far more hits on this blog when I was exposing Facebook and Google for their misdeeds. […]

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Is the death of expertise tied to the Anglosphere?

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Boris Johnson: usually a talented delivery, but with conflicting substance.   I spotted The Death of Expertise at Unity Books, but I wonder if the subject is as simple as the review of the book suggests.    There’s a lot out there about anti-intellectualism, and we know it’s not an exclusively […]

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Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: the signs were there for years, if one only looked

Facebook’s woes over Cambridge Analytica have only prompted one reaction from me: I told you so. While I never seized upon this example, bravely revealed to us by whistleblower Christopher Wylie and reported by Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian, Facebook has shown itself to be callous about private data, mining preferences even […]

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Mozy driver could have been behind 100–200 BSODs since the Windows 10 Creators fall update was installed

A post shared by Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jack.yan) on Jan 14, 2018 at 4:04 p.m. PST Two very helpful people—bwv848 at Bleeping Computer and Sumit Dhiman at Microsoft—have taken me through the steps to figure out what was going on with my Windows 10 desktop computer, on which I’ve had between 100 and 200 BSODs […]

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There can be only one, unless you forget to register your design: the Range Rover Evoque and the copycat Landwind X7

The stunning original: the Range Rover Evoque. There has been a lot of ongoing press about Landwind’s copy of the Range Rover Evoque (a road test of the Evoque comes next week in Lucire, incidentally), one of my favourite Sloane Ranger SUVs. There’s no way Landwind would have come up with the design independently, and, […]

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Why I ran

In two elections, I told people some blarney on why I decided to run.    In 2010: ‘I was working at Lew’s Diner and this guy had been picked on. I told him, “Stand tall, boy, show some respect for yourself. Do you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this […]

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In education, everyone deserves a chance

I am a huge fan of Sir Ken Robinson, the educational expert. This video has been around for a few years, but it’s well worth another watch.    Everyone has the potential within them—so we need ways of encouraging this for every life, rather than suppress them in favour of just the three Rs.   […]

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Let’s improve on the Wellington logo

The city’s new logo—it is not a rebrand if the underlying tenets are the same—has not met with much support.    The next question must be: all right, if we’re all so smart, can we do better?    Ian Apperley and I think we can. Ian approached me yesterday morning to ask whether we should […]

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