Posts by TracyMac
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Well, I think those efforts to curate NZ music are frigging awesome, actually. Spotify thinks that because I live in Australia, I want to listen to "what's hot" there. Not so much, actually. I love Soundcloud, so links there are great.
As for the whinging about their being curated links, unless you want NZOA to directly fund artists' streaming revenue, and to create an NZ music ghetto, linking to the places artists use for their revenue stream its much better.
I'll be using all these, because of the above reasons - I can hardly curate my own Spotify list - time, and I don't just want the greatest hits of the 80s and 90s (the last time I spent more than 2 years of the trot in NZ). My music taste hasn't ossified that much yet.
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Good article in the main, but boy, am I amazingly tired of 3D printers being held up as a liberating force. They do not scale, yet. What they can make is limited (although some people have great ideas).
But even when their limits are solved, I fail to see how they are any different to any other means of production. Yes, if there is going to be any kind of economic revolution, the workers will have to be able to manage the latest technology.
The internet was hailed as a liberating force as well, but no, it's simply a great communications medium, and like any technology, can be used for both good and bad or indifferent, by anyone with the means to control it.
Maybe 3D printing is appealing because they are currently small devices that can be controlled by small numbers of people. So how do you scale up the current craft use for entire communities, much less countries?
I can't see any economic revolution working without some aspects of industrial/mass production. Which Mondragon actually manage, as do some factory co-ops in South America. So please, let's not just focus on cute techno-toys when discussing production in alternative economies.
(Caveat - I'm not focussing on a Marxian "all production happens in factories". Technological change has given us huge amounts of automation. Which I think is great in terms of saving labour, but not for undermining the value of the labour that remains. I don't know what Marx's approach to that would be, combined with the fact that industrial production has mostly been exported to cheap-labour countries.)
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The Divide by Matt Tabibi, is an interesting look at the two-gear law enforcement system in the US at present – one law for the rich (and mostly white) and another for the poor.
Number of people criminally prosecuted for GFC- precipitating shenanigans – 0. Number of people being prosecuted every year for welfare fraud – thousands. He tells a story of a woman denied welfare because she owned sexy undies. Yes, if you’re poor and asking for assistance in the US, welfare officials can and do go through your drawers.
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Hard News: Will the grown-ups ever…, in reply to BenWilson,
I worked in a Jones- owned building that had a couple of specimens of semi- pornographic, sexist "art" in the foyer. ( Disclaimer: most porn is fine to me outside my working environment, and I do not have a Dworkinesque view of sexism. )
When I got up the gumption to ask our company's admin what the "art" was there for, the story goes that some woman working in the building had complained to Jones about his less- evolved views. So he personally selected the art and had it placed where it could be seen by her everytime she entered the building.
Let's just say that nothing in his columns has given me the impression that such a reputation of petty dickishness is entirely undeserved. Nor the blatant sexism.
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Great post.
So agreed on the "amusement park" trenches. My great-grand uncle died in one in Northern France.
However, the one in the Auckland museum always moved me. There was a similar larger-scale exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London that really got to me - it came with sound and lighting effects. I totally acknowledged the artificiality of the exhibit, but trying to imagine living in such horrible quarters day after day after day under a semi-constant barrage and risk of sniper fire just brought home to me how little I can know of its horrendousness and how lucky I am.
And also reflecting on s how, today, so many political disputes end with people blowing each other and bystanders up. When will we learn?
It's really appalling to think that a sleb ( Angelina Jolie, re Syria) has made more apposite comments about war these last few days than any reported politician or prominent participator in the ANZAC circus (by which I mean the hyped Gallipoli "event", which has been even more objectionable here in Oz).
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There are larger numbers of those that leave their own countries but can return ?
No.
As for the person who left again to fight against ISIS, does he have a family he's left in NZ? Perhaps he left because of the conflict, but has found a way he can help fight back against the reason he left.
I'm sure most are grateful to find a refuge, but to pretend that many wouldn't prefer to return home to their language and culture, if circumstances changed, is willfully naive.
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Access: Here's to them, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I totally agree that confining a child except in an urgent case of keeping the kids safe (for a very limited time until the guardians can fetch him/her) is appalling. And that outrage is the appropriate response.
And all the people I know of in special needs education here are also outraged - there isn't a culture in that sector of the "naughty chair". Mishandling of mainstream education needs and inadequately trained mainstream teachers is still too common in many cases, alas.
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Access: Here's to them, in reply to Alfie,
I would like to just say that as someone whose partner worked in special needs education until the end of last year - when the programme funding was cut - this report does not tell anywhere near the full story.
Funding has been cut by 40%, even though increasing numbers of children are being identified as having special education needs. There are many children being put into programmes they are not suited to, simply because there is nowhere else to place them. What programmes remain are underfunded and seriously understaffed.
So while it's appalling, you have frontline staff making decisions that seem best for the majority of students in the class, while not having facilities to properly care for the kid who is having a bad and disruptive day, or who simply can't cope with the environnent on good days.
No-one wants kids 'caged' - especially not teachers in this sector - so please demand more information on the surrounding factors before issuing a knee-jerk judgement. Frankly, I think the Canberra Times needs to step up its reporting on this story. Significantly.
In short, this is most likely a systemic failure of ACT special needs services (in great part) due to federal funding cuts rather than a sadistic teacher or a deliberately negligent institution or programme.
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Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Josh Petyt,
Shout-out to the Tooting massive. I lived just off T. Broadway in the late 90s. My memories are mostly of the market and the awesome second hand bookshop. All those English classics for a couple of quid! For some reason, I never made it to the Lido, and I still don't know why not.
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Regarding the 'climate change due to people is tosh' and 'we're wasting money on this' arguments, there is the 'most cost' counterargument.
There's a formal name for the argument, but I don't remember it right now. What you so is line up all the possibilities and add up the cost, and the cost of the consequences, if the scenario is false.
Scenario 1 - there is no climate change. Patently untrue, but it's still argued. Mitigation cost: none. Consequence cost, if false: catastrophic
Scenario 2: there is man-made climate change and we have to mitigate as much as we can: mitigation cost: high. Consequence cost: low to high, depending on the success of the mitigation.
Scenario 3: there is climate change, but not caused by people. Mitigation cost: medium to high, depending on how many flood defences you can establish, and how many people are evacuated in advance. Consequence cost: high to catastrophic.
Naturally this assumes we haven't hit the point of no return yet. If climate change is happening, we are paying any way, no matter the cause. If it is man-made, and we don't tackle the root cause, it will progress to a catastrophic result. Or would you rather spend a bit more, hopefully avoid catastrophe, or have simply stimulated the world economy if the premise is false.
It's ironic that our western economies are still geared around paying for the war, and it's easy to divert funds to new wars. But somehow it's abhorrent to divert funds to the one thing right now with the potential to catastrophically affect ALL our lives.