I rewatched Princess of Chaos, the TV drama centred around my friend, Bevan Chuang. I’m proud to have stood by her at the time, because, well, that’s what you do for your friends. I’m not here to revisit any of the happenings that the TV movie deals with—Bevan says it brings her closure so that […]
Tag: prejudice
Going beyond a blacked-out image: thoughts on Black Lives Matter
View this post on Instagram #blackouttuesday in support of Black Lives Matter. It was the only blacked out media I found on the phone. Recorded in our conservatory one night. A post shared by Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jack.yan) on Jun 2, 2020 at 7:39am PDT Usually I find it easier to express myself in written […]
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Social media produce some terrible clairvoyants
I see Billie Eilish is singing the next James Bond title song, and it sounds pretty good. The last one, ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, wasn’t one of my favourites and while I didn’t mind Sam Smith’s composition, I felt a female voice might have suited it better. On a Bond music forum on Facebook […]
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Developer creates a tool to expose bigoted, fake Twitter accounts; Twitter bans it
In theory, one of the positive things about social media should be the fact that a company has as much chance of succeeding as an individual. Another is that it shouldn’t matter who you are, you have the same opportunity to get your word out. No one should get special treatment. But, on Twitter, […]
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The big difference with the internet of the ’90s: it served the many, not the few
Above: Facebook kept deleting Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph each time it was posted, even when Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten did so, preventing its editor-in-chief from responding. There’s a significant difference between the internet of the 1990s and that of today. As Facebook comes under fire for deleting the “napalm girl” photograph from the Vietnam War […]
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Je suis Charlie
I was watching France 24 about half an hour after the Charlie Hebdo attack and made the above graphic a few hours later, in support of press freedoms and the victims’ families, and showing solidarity with other members of the media. One friend has made it his Facebook profile photo and I followed suit about […]
Wellington Airport flip-flops again, but pennies drop more quickly in Queensland
Today, those of us on the anti-‘Wellywood’ sign page got some welcome news: that Wellington Airport would reconsider. But, I had to point out, this is again déjà vu. Last time, the Airport flip-flopped as well, and said it would consult the public. Given that the resource consent for ‘Wellywood’ was for nine […]
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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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The rise of the city brand
I don’t have the other writers’ permission to show their side of this Facebook dialogue, but we had been chatting about growing the creative clusters here in Wellington as one of my mayoral policies. I wrote: Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is […]