Carlos Ghosn redresses the balance

10.01.2020/07.35

It’s been fascinating to watch Carlos Ghosn’s press conference in Beirut, and subsequent interviews, confirming my own suspicions back in November 2018 (as Tweeted and blogged). Carlos Ghosn's criticism of the Japanese justice system isn’t ‘one-sided’ as they claim. For 14 months, they controlled the narrative and the smear campaign against him. He and others […]

I want to remove a My Business location, but Google won’t let me

23.08.2019/08.44

I really should not have wasted my time with Google, as My Business (see yesterday’s post) reminded me just why I don’t use the site—it’s not only the privacy issues, but the fact that things don’t work as advertised, which has always been the case with Google. You’ve already seen that it’s impossible for […]

In the wake of terrorism in your own country

20.03.2019/11.47

Above: Flowers at the Islamic Centre in Kilbirnie, Wellington on Monday. On 9-11, I wrote an editorial in Lucire immediately. It was clear to me what I needed to write, and the editorial got quite a few readers at the time. Today is March 20, five days after a terrorist attack on our country, […]

A chain of events that led to my Dad being effectively starved today

15.12.2018/10.32

Above: Dad and I wait for his psychogeriatric ‘re-evaluation’ on November 30, or, treading a path of bullshit. Even in the rest home, Dad remained very protective of the other residents, so much so that there was an incident involving a day care resident in late November that saw the home insist that he be […]

PS/2 keyboard one way to get your Windows 10 computer back after bricking

10.05.2018/10.12

Everybody wants PS2. Still from The Professionals episode ‘Servant of Two Masters’. I read this article in The Guardian, thinking: surely, after Microsoft rolled out some terrible updates, it wouldn’t be so stupid as to do one that bricks customers’ computers again? Especially after the bug was reported a month ago. The April update worked reasonably […]

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

04.05.2018/02.20

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 […]

Ford to stop selling passenger cars in the US and Canada, save for Mustang and Focus Active

26.04.2018/12.20

The Ford Focus Active: by the turn of the decade, this will be the only four-door passenger car Ford will sell in the US and Canada In a surprise move, Ford has announced that it will cease selling passenger cars in the US and Canada by the early 2020s, excepting the Mustang and the […]

Is the death of expertise tied to the Anglosphere?

20.03.2018/20.56

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 […]

Happy birthday: Autocade turns 10

07.03.2018/09.32

Above: Autocade can be hard work—and sometimes you have to put up less exciting vehicles, like the 2001–7 Chrysler Town & Country, for it to be a useful resource. March 8, 2018 marks 10 years of Autocade. I’ve told the story before on this blog and elsewhere, about how the site came to be—annoyed […]

We need to heed the warnings that Harry Leslie Smith gives

26.02.2018/01.34

Not that Asian countries get this right all the time, but generally, when a 95-year-old speaks, we (as in many of us with Asian heritage, and by ‘Asian’ I mean a lot of cultures that make up the 3,700 million people on the continent) tend to listen and we revere their experience. And WWII veteran […]