Posts by Farmer Green
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But, but . . is it still O.K. , P.C., nay, de rigeur , to call for violence against " climate deniers"? Extermination even? For "bold action"?
Because, you know . . . nutters can get the wrong idea, right?
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Hard News: Friday Music: Aretha and the…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Tom has always been a Joni Mitchell fan . . . .a big fan.
Aretha was not his bag. -
Hard News: Friday Music: Bar None, and…, in reply to Harry b'staad,
kiwi acts from the past
You know it's over when Te Papa wants you to do some kind of valedictory/memorial/last gasp/ remember-this? re-enactment of a concert that is over 40 years in the past.
Billy TK senior called in recently ; he was looking around to see how many of the cast of "Life Beyond the Material Sky" had not gone beyond, in reponse to a Te Papa request to re-enact the album. The main problem is that nobody knew what we had played. Fortunately I still had an unopened copy of the double album on vinyl; I no longer have it :-)
So I'm guessing that we are going to do it. As with all Powerhouse concerts this has the potential to be an absolute disaster or totally cosmic.
I doubt that we will see Pauline Pool/ Hattie St John on cello this time.
From a personal viewpoint , at least this time I will have a rough idea of what it is that we will attempt to play, and will be in a position to contribute in a more audible fashion.
Rather than having to steal a Mk VII Jaguar to get to the venue, this time we few remaining will use our Gold cards.
Far out. -
" musical artists have been obliged to expend some of their precious creative essence on new ways to earn the money that would allow them to continue being musical artists,"
Yeah, "back -in-the-day" , that was called getting a job.
WTF?
Self-expression has rarely been a marketable commodity. A fortunate(?) few became the cannon-fodder for the "music industry", and were disposed of when their usefulness waned.
But seriously, art is for making money? Whoa, something has changed.
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The longest day and it's cool, overcast and raining!
Allahu Akbar!
Wishing to all and sundry a thoroughly pagan solstice. -
Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to mark taslov,
As long as it’s a “successful election strategy” any minority is fair game right?
And this :-
" we have been systematically making the entire country more stupid for decades.
We learned long ago in this [media] business that dumber and more alarmist always beats complex and nuanced. Big headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad, they all sell. We decimated attention spans, rewarded hot-takers over thinkers, and created in audiences powerful addictions to conflict, vitriol, fear, self-righteousness, and race and gender resentment.
There isn't a news executive alive low enough to deny that we use xenophobia and racism to sell ads. Black people on TV for decades were almost always shirtless and chased by cops, and the "rock-throwing Arab" photo was a staple of international news sections even before 9/11. And when all else fails in the media world, just show more cleavage somewhere, and ratings go up, every time.
Donald Trump didn't just take advantage of these conditions. He was created in part by them. What's left of Trump's mind is like a parody of the average American media consumer: credulous, self-centered, manic, sex-obsessed, unfocused, and glued to stories that appeal to his sense of outrage and victimhood.
We've created a generation of people like this: anger addicts who can't read past the first page of a book. This is why the howls of outrage from within the ranks of the news media about Trump's election ring a little bit false. What the hell did we expect would happen? Who did we think would rise to prominence in our rage-filled, hyper-stimulated media environment? Sensitive geniuses?
We spent years selling the lowest common denominator. Now the lowest common denominator is president. How can it be anything but self-deception to pretend this is an innocent coincidence? "
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to mark taslov,
I hear you. :-)
I'm not sure that you hear me. But just as well that I was here, eh?"Thanks for adequately illustrating how entrenched the racism and apoligism is FG."
What would you have done without me? :-)
But you weren't saying that an anti-immigration bias is necessarily racist, I thought.
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to mark taslov,
t you’ve not been paying close enough attention.
It’s true that farming communities can be inward looking, but I live in a Chinese market-gardening community, and I experience none of what you are describing.
And my four part-Maori children , and Maori/Asian grandchildren have a similar experience. Caucasians are the odd ones out in this little part of Australasia.The historical example is just history . Nothing unusual at the time .
And extrapolating from the antics of the political class? As you say , they’ll do anything for a vote, which is what I was saying in reply to Neil"s musing about Labour cutting immigration. Here:-
I suggested some ways that they could “justify” curbing immigration while appearing to care for the environment and be non-racist at the same time. No more than vague plausibility is necessary.
We must move in very different circles. :-)
You can own "our entrenched racism" ; I don't think I want to be a part of that.
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Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to linger,
any future development of our land use
What do you have in mind there?
What we have done in Godzone to date is to produce fertile topsoils using introduced grasses and ruminants and soil amendments, and the management of those things. -
Speaker: Low-quality language on immigration, in reply to mark taslov,
our entrenched racism.
Xenophobia might be closer to the mark ; perhaps .
Race doesn't seem to come into it ; no target racial group . . . no particular racial group is the perpetrator.