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 […]

The “fortress America” approach to the internet fuels piracy

21.12.2019/13.05

There are websites such as CBS News in the US that no longer let us here in New Zealand view them. US Auto Trader is another one. It’s a damned shame, because I feel it’s a stab at the heart of what made the internet great—the fact that we could be in touch with each […]

Capitalism falls down when it’s rigged

04.12.2019/09.57

Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times, touches on a few points that resonate with my readings over the years. He believes capitalism, as a system, is not a bad one, but it is bad when it is ‘rigged’; and that Aristotle was indeed right (as history has since proved) that a sizeable middle […]

Modern masculinity doesn’t involve reinventing the wheel

29.11.2019/13.25

When Douglas Bader recorded in his log book on the aeroplane accident that cost him his legs, he wrote, ‘Bad show’. It was men like Bader, Audie Murphy, Claire Lee Chennault and Douglas MacArthur that my father spoke of as heroes from his childhood. There were plenty more from our own culture but […]

Tesla or SpaceX doesn’t like you? They’ll say you’re an active shooter

24.11.2019/08.01

What does Tesla do to whistleblowers? They tell the cops you’re an active shooter. Apparently, this case about a gentleman called Martin Tripp emerged in 2018 but only today were the police documents released, and are worth reading. Above: Two of the pages from the Storey County Sheriff’s Office over the false […]

Seasonal Canadian humour

22.11.2019/08.16

My thanks to Sydney-based photographer Robert Catto for linking me to this one, especially near the festive season. It is funnier than the one I took in Sweden many years ago, which in pun-land could be racist: The sad thing is, at some point, the majority will not get […]

Big Tech and advertising: the con is being revealed

13.11.2019/11.13

People are waking up to the fact that online advertising isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Last month, Bob Hoffman’s excellent The Ad Contrarian newsletter noted, ‘I believe the marketing industry has pissed away hundreds of billions of dollars on digital fairy tales and ad fraud over the past 10 years (in fact, […]

Facebook is getting away with it again—even though it knew about Cambridge Analytica

25.07.2019/11.55

Thanks to my friend Bill Shepherd, I’ve now subscribed to The Ad Contrarian newsletter. Bob Hoffman is one of the few who gets it when it comes to how insignificant the FTC’s Facebook fine is. Five (American) billion (American) dollars sounds like a lot to you and me, but considering Facebook’s stock rose on […]

More Facebook lies in its ad preferences’ manager?

21.04.2019/12.06

As I’ve often said, it’s wise to keep an eye on your Facebook ad preferences’ page. Even if you’ve opted out of Facebook targeting, Facebook will still keep compiling information on you. I see no other purpose for this other than to target you with advertising, contrary to what you expect. Facebook also tells […]

EU copyright: as far as we’re concerned, link away

13.04.2019/13.45

European Union—www.europarl.europa.eu/downloadcentre/en/visual-identity, Public Domain; link I’m reading more about this EU copyright directive that was voted in last month. Without doing a full analysis, I can say that we won’t go after anyone who links to our publications. We presently don’t care if you use a brief snippet of our content and link […]