From The Lord of the Rings to Border Patrol: how Sweden sees us

My visits to Sweden have been few and far apart, since it is quite a distance to travel from New Zealand: summer 2002, autumn 2003, winter 2010, and summer 2024. There are many interesting observations one can make with so many years in between, seeing how society has changed with brief snapshots from each visit, […]

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Using once-legitimate sites to host SEO spam

The web is full of bollocks these days, thanks to Google rewarding junk. Here’s The European Business Review, which looks like a legit publication.     Not that you can tell from its website:     As their latest print cover is on “AI”, then maybe it is only fitting that their website is stuffed […]

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Google sacks its own team for protesting

I had bookmarked this a while back: the statement by former Google employees who were sacked for not supporting the company’s involvement with the Israeli government and military. Some were not even part of the employees’ sit-in protests. But Google is too weak to be able to handle dissent, and clearly doesn’t support the welfare […]

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Finally, a proper right of reply

  Finally, my own blog appears up top in one of the Google searches that Semrush claims is happening, but it really isn’t—except maybe by their third-party data supplier’s bots, and me since the misinformation started a few months ago. In fact, the first five slots are truthful, including Scoop’s republication of our release, until […]

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To our Sunday colleagues, you should still be on air

Above: Sunday host Miriama Kamo.   [Originally published in Lucire] To our colleagues at Television New Zealand’s Sunday, including Lucire alum Mava Moayyed, we bid you godspeed and good luck. Your programme didn’t deserve cancellation. This country needs proper, long-form current affairs, and with Sunday airing its final episode [on Sunday] night, this has come […]

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Getting to each 1,000th model on Autocade—so far

The Tofaş Doğan, the 1,000th model entered into Autocade in 2009.   A very quick look at how long it took us to get each 1,000 models on Autocade.   0: March 8, 2008 1,000: December 21, 2009 (1 year, 9 months for first 1,000—Tofaş Doğan was the 1,000th) 2,000: December 30, 2012 (3 years […]

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To those who take technology and make life harder: you’re doing it wrong

I like technology. I don’t hate technology. But I hate what a bunch of idiots have done with technology. You’d be forgiven for thinking I was referring to the mass misinformation-authoring that used my name over the last three months, but, frankly, this level of technological misuse is everywhere in various forms. Take today, when […]

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What do the authors of misinformation have to gain?

Medium, which has been great at removing misinformation about me, rightly asked (after removing yet another fake story about me), ‘Why are they using your name? What are they gaining?’ I replied: Thank you, and I’m glad you’ve asked. I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this for a while, ever since these […]

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Keep the parliamentary term as it is

Rumblings about extending our three-year parliamentary term to four surface from time to time. I don’t think we should change a thing, more so in the era of coalition governments under MMP. And it shouldn’t matter which side of the fence you sit. The length of the term should be inversely proportional to the power […]

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The crunch time media face is nothing new

  Talking Points Memo showed the amounts programmatic advertising brought in to them over the last eight years. (The above graphic is from their card preview on Mastodon.) I’ve never been convinced of programmatic since no one in the ad business could ever explain it in plain language. I say just figure out what’s on […]

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