The late 1990s were a heady time here in Aotearoa. The web—pre-Google, pre-monopolies—was indeed the great leveller: anyone with the right skills could create something online that competed at a global level. Aotearoa, which had for years felt a little backward in time—TV shows would arrive here two to three years after they aired in […]
Read More… from For the sake of our city, it’s important to take the opportunities to move forward
Asking the tough questions on Mastodon. Very tiny samples, and I was limited to four possible answers—but now you know. Meanwhile, I see Linkedin has not been very good at removing misinformation about me. Not as bad as Quora, but still down there. The latest post says ‘jackyan’ is a metaphor for […]
Read More… from Two Mastodon polls: on 50 shades of Grade, and the best non-Bond Roger Moore film
Not that any search engine will find this, but according to the BBC’s The Secret Genius of Modern Life (episode 2), the inventor of the phone orders for food was the Kin-Chu Café at 137 South Brand Boulevard, Glendale, Calif., in 1922 (another link here). ‘Special Delivery Service 11 A. M. to 1 A. M.—Phone […]
Read More… from Who pioneered phone food ordering and delivery?
Eda Tang’s excellent piece revealing that New Zealand Chinese Language Week receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party came out last week, but unfortunately illness kept me from blogging about it properly. It was to have been my final post for September. Many of us suspected this from the start, […]
My Lucire interview with Bay Area designer Devan Gregori has gone online—it’ll likely appear in print afterwards with different visuals. Devan has a wonderful story about how she came to be a fashion designer, and it’s very different to those who fell into the trade through a childhood interest or watching their grandmother sew. I […]
Warner Bros. Even though Twitter is now in its MySpaceX era, I won’t shut my account. I have scripts that run through it, and I don’t wish for some schmuck to come in later and claim my username. Mastodon has taken off this week, my Twitter notifications are at a low, and as I […]
Read More… from I’ve left the data farms but occasionally revisit the Matrix
Dave Troy’s analysis of the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter makes for interesting reading, since Troy has actually spoken to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and has a bit more of the inside track than most. For starters, Troy reminds us that Dorsey trusts Musk, in order to keep Twitter away from Wall Street investors. Dorsey […]
Read More… from Twitter pushes the near future to look more bipolar than multipolar
If you think some of us were being uppity about New Zealand Chinese Language Week, how’s this for a real-life report? Speak Cantonese, get banned from a social media platform. That’s what’s happening in China right now. And I had already mentioned schoolchildren being told off for using their reo. The Google Translate translation is […]
Read More… from China in 2022: speak Cantonese, get banned from social media
My friend Bevan was going to make a podcast in Cantonese for New Zealand Chinese Language Week, and I decided I would record a few tidbits—except it wound up being something far longer and a podcast episode in its own right. So here it is, all 13-plus minutes of it. If this isn’t your language, […]
Read More… from New Zealand Chinese Language Week reviewed—in Cantonese
As we come to the conclusion of New Zealand Chinese Language Week, a review about how inappropriate it was by being the very opposite of inclusive, for those who’d prefer to sit back and listen rather than read one of my blog posts. You’ll likely catch me on RNZ’s The Detail on Friday, […]
Read More… from New Zealand Chinese Language Week: a podcast entry