The sun sets even more on Twitter

Some folks don’t seem to be happy that Twitter is now a walled garden, where you have to be logged in to see Tweets. This is a good thing, isn’t it? Tweets will vanish from the search engines, and Elon Musk’s desire to build a right-wing disinformation network to further his own beliefs (and those […]

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If you take out Tiktok, then why not Meta, too?

The Hon Debbie Ngarewa-Packer MP was right when she questioned our government’s decision to ban Tiktok from parliamentary devices. If it’s about foreigners getting hold of data, then why not ban Facebook and Instagram? Last I looked, Tiktok had not, unlike Facebook, been party to any genocides. Parliamentary Services says at least Meta is American […]

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Helvetica in metal, 1985

This was the back of Mum’s 1985 tax assessment slip from the IRD. Helvetica, in metal. The bold looks a bit narrow: a condensed cut, or just a compromised version because of the machinery used?    Not often seen, since by this time phototypesetting was the norm, though one reason Car magazine was a good […]

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Searching for Murray Smith

Earlier today Strangers, the 1978 TV series created by Murray Smith, came to mind. Smith created and wrote many episodes of one of my favourite TV series, The Paradise Club (which to this day has no DVD release due to the music rights), and penned an entertaining miniseries Frederick Forsyth Presents (the first time that […]

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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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Saddened to see colleagues lose their jobs as we bid, ‘Auf wiedersehen, Heinrich Bauer Verlag’

I am privy to some of the inner workings at Bauer Media through friends and colleagues, but I didn’t expect them to shut up shop in New Zealand, effective April 2.    Depending on your politics, you’re in one of two camps.    TV3, itself part of a foreign company who has made serious cutbacks […]

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Coronavirus: the weakening of globalization, and the lessons to learn

A generation ago, I don’t think many would have thought that globalization could be brought to its knees by a virus. They may have identified crazy politicians using nationalism as a tool, but probably considered that would not happen in developed economies and democracies sophisticated enough to withstand such assaults.    This course correction might […]

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We’ve been here before: foreign-owned media run another piece supporting an asset sale

Clilly4/Creative Commons I see there’s an opinion piece in Stuff from the Chamber of Commerce saying the Wellington City Council should sell its stake in Wellington Airport, because it doesn’t bring in that much (NZ$12 million per annum), and because Auckland’s selling theirs.    It’s not too dissimilar to calls for the Council to sell […]

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UK picks on independent Tweeters, falsely calls them Russian bots and trolls

If you were one of the people caught up with ‘The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!’ and a selection of Cold War paranoia resurrected by politicians and the media, then surely recent news would make you start to think that this was a fake-news narrative?    Ian56 on Twitter was recently named by […]

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It’s as though Statistics New Zealand set up this year’s census to fail

You have to wonder if the online census this year has been intentionally bad so that the powers that be can call it a flop and use it as an excuse to delay online voting, thereby disenfranchising younger voters.    It’s the Sunday before the census and I await my access code: none was delivered, […]

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