Excellent links by way of the fediverse today. First up, Cory Doctorow about saving the news from Big Tech, with sentiments that aren’t far off my own, many of which have been recorded on this blog. His post is from June 2023. Highlights include this on contextual advertising: In studies, these contextual ads perform slightly […]
Tag: human rights
There is no point to posting on Twitter
The demise of Twitter continues. Today I saw, while heading back to Tawa from Papakōwhai, the aftermath of a seven-vehicle accident (three cars, four commercial vehicles) on the opposite side of State Highway 1. I posted this on Mastodon, and, made an exception and did a fresh message on OnlyKlans, I mean, Twitter. You know, […]
Give nothing to racism
What an honour it was to appear as one of the first batch of people in the Human Rights’ Commission’s Give Nothing to Racism campaign. Taika Waititi, New Zealander of the Year (and a Lucire feature interviewee from way back) introduced the campaign with a hilarious video, and it was an honour to be considered […]
Time for a rewatch: Reza Aslan interviewed on CNN about Muslim violence
Found on my wall today. While it’s over three months old, the responses from Prof Reza Aslan of the University of California Riverside address a lot of the comments that have surfaced post-Charlie Hebdo head-on—which shows that we continue to go round and round the same arguments and not making an awful lot of progress. […]
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When it comes to mass surveillance, forget specificity
Be careful what you say on social media in Britain. English law permits mass surveillance of the big social media platforms, according to Charles Farr, the director-general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, in a statement published last week responding to a case brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil […]
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Frack away, IGas Energy: the Metropolitan Police has your back
The spirit of Gene Hunt is alive and well in the Greater Manchester Police, in the form of Sgt David Kehoe. Arresting someone over drink driving when he has neither drunk nor driven reminds me of The Professionals episode, ‘In the Public Interest’, about a corrupt police force in an unnamed English city outside […]
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Why do the major parties insist on holding us back?
In 2002, I did something really stupid. I bought a brand-new, 750 Mbyte Zip drive. After all, I had had three years of use out of my 100 Mbyte one, and since 750s looked like the way of the future, I had one installed. I can still count the number of times […]
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A bad choice of word, but what does the gay community actually think?
While I was out, I had noticed on Twitter a news item about an octogenarian, working for American Airlines, who was sacked for his use of the word faggot. I despise words like that, just as much as chink or nigger, but the question arises: should he have been sacked, losing some of his […]
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Even as Liu Xiaobo gets a Nobel prize, Beijing can be smug
As I watched actress Liv Ullmann read Liu Xiaobo’s address, ‘I Have No Enemies’, on BBC World, I was quite moved. The address is what the Nobel Prize-winning author and intellectual delivered prior to his sentencing by a Red Chinese court for subversion. What is fascinating is the dignity with which the words […]
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Google’s rethink on Red China: you can’t stop the Chinese people
If I were Google, would I have entered Red China with the censored version of Google.cn, hiding things from the Chinese people for the sake of money? In February 2006, I blogged about this very issue and concluded, ‘No.’ Obeying the law is one thing. Providing the people with slanted views to prop up […]
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