For homeowners and buyers, thereās a great guide from Moisture Detection Co. Ltd. called What You Absolutely Must Know About Owning a Plaster-Clad Home, subtitled The Origin of New Zealandās Leaky Building Crisis and Must-Know Information for Owners to Make Their Homes Weathertight, and Regain Lost Value.
My intent isnāt to repeat someoneās copyrighted information in full, but there are some highlights in there that show how the erosion of standards has got us where we are today. Itās frightening because the decline in standards has been continual over decades, and the authorities donāt seem to know what they are doingāwith perhaps the exception of the bidding of major corporations who want to sell cheap crap.
The document begins with the 1950s, when all was well, and houses rarely rotted. Houses had to have treated timber, be ventilated, and have flashings.
They note:
By the time 1998 rolled around, NZ Standards, the Building Industry Association, and BRANZ had systematically downgraded the ‘Belts and Braces’ and were allowing houses to be built with untreated framing, with no ventilation, and poorly designed or non-existent flashings and weatherproofing.
Councils accepted these changes at ‘face value’ without historical review. They issued building consents, inspected the houses, and gave Code of Compliance Certificates. Owners believed they had compliant, well-constructed buildings, but they did not.
Shockingly, by 1992, the treatment level for framing timber could be with āpermethrins (the same ingredient as fly spray)’, while one method used methanol as a solvent and increased decay. By 1998 āUntreated Kiln Dried Timber (UTKD) was allowed for framingā. The standards improved slightly by 2005 but itās still well off what was accepted in 1952 and 1972.
We recently checked out a 2009 build using plaster cladding and researching the methods of construction, including the types with cavities, we are far from convinced the problems are gone.
Talking to some building inspectors, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence on how shaky things still look.
Since we moved to Tawa and made some home improvements, we realize a lot of people in the trade do not know what they are talking about, or try to sell you on a product totally unsuited to your needs. This post is not the place for a discussion on that topic, but one day I might deal with it.
However, I am surprised that so many of the tried-and-trusted rules continue to be ignored.
Sometimes people like me go on about āthe good old daysā not because we don rose-coloured glasses, but we take from them the stuff that worked.
Itās not unlike what Bob Hoffman included in his newsletter today.
As Iāve also no desire to take the most interesting partāa diagram showing that for every dollar spent on programmatic online advertising, a buyer only gets 3Ā¢ of value āof real display ads viewed by real human peopleāāI ask you to click through.
Again, itās about basic principles. If so many people in the online advertising space are fudging their figuresāand thereās plenty of evidence about thatāthen why should we spend money with them? To learn that you get 3Ā¢ of value for every dollar spent, surely thatās a big wake-up call?
It wonāt be, which is why Facebook and Google will still make a ton of money off people this year.
The connected theme: rich buggers conning everyday people and too few having the bollocks to deal with them, including officials who are meant to be working for us.
Weāre probably far enough along from the event for people not to know which one I am referring to, as Iāve no wish to embarrass the organizers.
Earlier in 2021, we saw a weekend event that would take place at the āJohnsonville Community Hubā. No address was given other than that. Both Duck Duck Go and Google seemed to think this meant Waitohi, the new library and swimming pool complex.
We arrived there to find that no one knew of this event, but maybe we could try the community hall next door?
No joy.
There was the Collective Community Hub on Johnsonville Road but their website made it clear that it wasnāt open at the weekend.
We hung round Johnsonville for a bit and decided we would check out the Collective place, just to see it up close.
Sure enough, thatās where the event wasāit was open at the weekendāand we got there after everyone had packed up.
They were very apologetic and we told them the above. They had noted, however, that there had been more information on Facebook.
To me, thatās a big mistake, because I donāt know what their Facebook page is, and even if I did, there was no guarantee I would see it for a variety of reasons. (Try loading any fan page on Facebook on mobile: the posts take unbearably long and few people would have the patience.) A search for the event on both Duck Duck Go and Google never showed a Facebook page, either.
A similar event posted its cancellation on Facebook exclusively, something which we didnāt know till we got there, and after getting puzzled looks from the party that had booked the venue, I randomly found one organizerās page and clicked on his Facebook link. Again, nothing about the event itself came up on Duck Duck Go or on Google.
In the latter case, the organizer had the skills to make a web page, a normal one, so was it so hard to put the cancellation there?
You just canāt find things on Facebook. They donāt appear to be indexed. And if they are, theyāre probably so far down the resultsā pages that they wonāt be seen. If youāre organizing an event, by all means, post there to those who use Facebook keenly (a much smaller number than you think, with engagement decreasing year after year), but it is no substitute for getting it into properly indexed event calendars or on to the web, where regular people will put in search terms and look for it.
Facebook is not the internet. Thank God.
There were a few surprises switching to Xiaomi.
First up, it asked me to do a voice identification by saying these four words, å°ē±ååø. Only thing is, it doesnāt understand Cantonese.
The default weather app was able to give me details based on exactly where I am (location service turned on, and I was given fair warning that it would be). Thatās superior to Meizuās default weather app, and the after-market Android one I downloaded years ago for my old Meizu M2 Note.
This was a bit disturbing for a Chinese-spec phone: thereās still a Google app in there. I wonder if it sent anything before I restricted it, then deleted it. Permissions included being able to read your contactsā list. I didnāt agree to Google getting anything.
It prompted me to turn on the phone finder, even after we had established that Iām in New Zealand and everything was being done in English. Nek minnit:
Iām finding it remarkable that a 2021 phone does not incorporate the time zone into file dates. I expected this to have been remedied years ago, but I was surprised to see that the photos I took, while the phone was on NZDT, had their timestamp without the UTC plus-13 offset. As a result, Iāve had to set the phone to UTC as Iāve had to do with all prior phones for consistency with my computersā work files. The plus side: unlike my previous two phones, I can specify UTC rather than a location that might be subject to daylight saving.
Unlike the M2 Note, but like the M6 Note, it doesnāt remember my preferred mode when itās being charged by a computer via USB. I have to set it every time. The newer the technology, the more forgetful?
Otherwise itās proved to be a very practical successor to the Meizus, MIUI is prettier than Flyme (although Iām missing that skinās translation features and the ability to select text and images regardless of the program via Aicy), and on the whole itās doing what I ask of it, even picking 5G in town. Importantly, it receives calls and SMSs, and the battery isn’t swelling up.
Of course a Reddit post like this appeals to me.
The one quote a few Redditers have picked out: ‘As I’ve often lamented, Google has reduced the Web to a brothel of whores competing to give a robot the best blow job.’
One awful thing the poster notes is (link removed, but you can see it on the original post): ‘I got a spam email from a scumbag black hat criminal fraudulent crooked waste of money SEO company this morning ā¦ What they do is take money to put up spam links to a company’s competitors’ sites to hurt the competitors’ Web presence ā¦
āThe even sadder thing is that the black-hat SEO actually works. Google’s bots are so stupid that tactics like this will in fact harm the targeted companies.’
This is, in fact, the big concern I have with the Google My Business panels. Anyone can coordinate some negative reviews and mess you up, and there are no safeguards against it.
Finally, they write this: ‘Without exception, the stupidest people I’ve ever dealt with in IT have all worked for Google.’
I’ve only met a handful of people who worked for them. One was really on the ball. Another helped me out virtually (Rick Klau). But if they’re right based on a larger sample, this explains a lot.
Shared on my social media on the day, but I had been waiting for an opportunity to note this on my blog.
It was an honour last week to guest on Leonard Kimās Grow Your Influence Tree, his internet talk show on VoiceAmerica. Leonard knows plenty about marketing and branding, so I thought it might be fun to give his listeners a slightly different perspectiveānamely through publishing. And since I know his listenersā usual topics, I didnāt stray too far from marketing.
We discuss the decrease in CPM rates online; the importance of long-form features to magazines (and magazine websites) and how that evolution came about; how search engines have become worse at search (while promoting novelty; on this note Iāve seen Qwant do very well on accuracy); how great articles can establish trust in a brand and falling in love with the content you consume (paraphrasing Leonardās words here); Lucireās approach to global coverage and how that differs to other titlesā; the need to have global coverage and how that potentially unites people, rather than divide them; how long-form articles are good for your bottom line; how stories work in terms of brand-building; how Google News favours corporate and mainstream sources; and the perks of the job.
This was a great hour, and it was just such a pleasure to talk to someone who is at the same level as me to begin with, and who has a ready-made audience that doesnāt need the basics explained to them. It didnāt take long for Leonard and me to get into these topics and keep the discussion at a much higher level than what I would find if it was a general-audience show. Thank you, Leonard!
Listen to my guest spot on Leonardās show here, and check out his website and his Twitter (which is how we originally connected). And tune in every Thursday 1 p.m. Pacific time on the VoiceAmerica Influencers channel for more episodes with his other guests!
Refreshingly, Iāve noticed that my more recent blog posts havenāt been about Big Tech as often. I havenāt changed my views: the ones Iāve stated earlier still stand, and Google and Facebook in particular continue to be a blight on democracy and even individual mental health.
A lot of the posts were inspired by real-world usage of those websites, if you look back over the last decade. As I use them irregularly, and wish others were in the same boat, then thereās little to report, unless I come across new revelations that I might have a say about.
Google is the search of last resort though it has a great translator; now that the news alerts donāt even work, thatās one fewer contact point with the online advertising monopolist. Facebook is good for monitoring who has breached my privacy by uploading my private data to the platform, and to delete off-Facebook activity (Facebook serves these pages at a ridiculously slow speed, you wonder if youāre on dial-up). Beyond that neither site has much utility.
My Instagram usage is down to once every two months, which means itās halved since 2020, though I still keep an eye on Lucireās account, which isnāt automated.
I stay in touch with some friends on email and thereās much to be said about a long-form composition versus a status update. Itās the difference between a home-cooked meal and a fast food snack. And, of course, I have this blog to record things that might pique my interest.
Go back far enoughāas this blogās been around 15 yearsāand I shared my musings on the media and branding. My blogās roots were an offshoot of the old Beyond Branding blog, but I wanted to branch into my own space. A lot of my views on branding haven’t changed, so I haven’t reblogged about them. Each time someone introduced another platform, be it Vox or Tumblr, I found a use for it, but ultimately came back here. Just last week I realized that the blog gallery, which came into being because NewTumblās moderators started believing in the Republic of Gilead, was really my substitute for Pinterest. It might even be my substitute for Instagram, if I can be bothered getting the photos off my phone.
I must say itās a relief to have everything on my own domain, and while itās not āsocialā, I have to ask myself how much of Instagramming and social media updating ever was. Twitter, yes, to an extent. But oftentimes with Instagram I posted because I got joy from doing so, over trying to please an audience. Itās why I never got that many followers, because it wasnāt a themed account. And if doing what suits me at the time is the motive, then thereās no real detriment to doing so in my own spaces. These posts still get hundreds of viewers each, probably more than what I got on Facebook or Instagram.
I donāt know if this is a trend, since setting up your own space takes far more time than using someone elseās. Paying for it is another burden others may wish to avoid. Nor do I have the latest stats on Facebook engagement, but when I did track it, it was heading south year on year. I do know that the average reach for an organic post continues to fall there, which is hardly a surprise with all the bots. Instagram just seems full of ads.
But in my opinion, fewer contact points with Big Tech is a good thing, and may they get fewer still.
Above: Coverage in Business Desk, with me pictured with Lucire fashion and beauty editor Sopheak Seng.
Big thanks to Daniel Dunkley, who wrote this piece about me and my publishing work in Business Desk, well worth subscribing to (coincidentally, I spotted an article about my friend and classmate Hamish Edwards today, too).
I had a lengthy chat with Daniel because he asked great questionsāthe fact he got a lot out of me shows how good a journalist he is. And he reveals some of our more recent developments, as well as my thoughts on the industry in generalāthings I hadnāt really got on to record often to a journalist, certainly not in the last few years.
I had my Business Desk alerts switched off so I didnāt know he had already written his story (on the day of our interview) till another friend and classmate told me earlier this week. It also shows that Googleās News Alerts are totally useless, something that I realized recently when it took them three weeks to send the alert (the time between its original spidering of the article and the email being sent out). Those had been worsening over the years and I had seen them be one or two days behind, but now they rarely arrive. Three weeks is plain unacceptable for one of the last services on Google I still used.
Back to Danielās story. Itās a great read, and Iām glad someone here in Aotearoa looked me up. I realize most of our readers are abroad and we earn most from exports, but a lot of what weāve done is to promote just how good our country is. Iām proud of what weāre able to achieve from our part of the world.
Above: Google News Alerts take an awfully long time to arrive, if at all. I hadn’t seen one for weeks, then this one arrives, three weeks after Google News spidered and indexed the article. Google feels like another site that now fails to get the basics right.
Sources
Volkswagen Gol G4āmore at Autocade.
The fake friends of social media being the junk food equivalent of real friendships, from this post by Umair Haque.
Stay at home, wear a maskāgeek humour shared from Twitter. Thaikila swimwearāseems to have an interesting history.
More on the Fiat 124 Sport Spider here at Autocade.
Jerry Inzerillo, first male on the cover of an issue of Lucire anywhere in the world, in this case the August 2021 issue of Lucire KSA. The story can be found here on our website.
After three messages I decided I would answer one of those Gmail users asking about advertorial. And from now on I’m just going to copy and paste this to anyone else asking, ‘Why won’t you answer me?’
Dear [redacted]:
Sorry, this is why I haven’t answered you (and this is not because of you, but everyone else who has been enquiring about the same thing for years):
Almost every time I answer one of these emails it leads nowhere, and I’ve answered hundreds over the last few years. What many of them have in common is Gmail. So to save time and energy I’m no longer entertaining link and advertorial requests coming from Gmail.
Even if it were one in twelve I’d be borderline OK (the ratio I had doing phone sales during a recession) but one in hundreds is just not worth it. Your industry has worn me and my colleagues down.
Sincerely,
Jack
I really don’t know why, in the 2020s, anyone would use Gmail, given its rather massive problem of allowing more than one person to use an email address. But I guess if you use Google, you’re not too concerned about privacy, with the endless stories on this topic out there. It shouldn’t then matter if someone else with a similar address can read your emails.
Last month, I Tweeted that I would stop replying to advertorial queries sent to us from Gmail, since over 99 per cent of them result in no deal whatsoever. In fact, that 99 is an underestimate.
One of the early (say mid-1990s to the mid-2000s) rules of the ānet was that if you didnāt have a custom domain, and were relying on the likes of Hotmail or AOL, then you instantly lacked credibility when approaching another business. But as Gmail became ubiquitous, that rule was no longer that important for us, especially since some of our own team opted to use their Gmails and have their work addresses forward to them. Iāve always been one to go with the flow when it came to my colleagues, so if they were using Gmail more, then who was I to be so negative against others approaching us doing the same?
Except for sanity. Of course Iāll still read emails from Gmail but since I get numerous advertorial enquiries every day, then you have to draw the line somewhere. You might say that Iāve waited too long to do this as the 99 per cent sample was taken over years. But past behaviour does show I tend to stick at something for longer than many people.
Iām also surprised at how many of these enquirers want us to ignore New Zealand law, and to have advertorials not marked as such. Iām not in the business of publishing salesā catalogues, or a salesā catalogue masquerading as a magazine, so advertorials are marked as promotional material in some way. So even if they get past first base, they usually fall at the second.
