Posts by Alfie
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Jeez... I didn't know I had so much of this stuff.
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I'm pretty sure my can is red & white, but that will remain a mystery for another day. While I know it's in a white shoe box with some BBC pens and other stuff, I just don't know its exact location. Getting old can be a bastard.
The Agfa box is getting a bit tacky, but hey... it's around 50 years old and still hasn't collapsed at the corners. Yet.
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Hard News: Rip It Up: A history of us, a…, in reply to Sacha,
I'm sure there's half a can stashed away somewhere in the back of my garage. I must be getting close because last week I found a box with dozens of Letraset sheets.
Knocking out headlines, one letter at a time.
And to round off the anachronism, they were stored inside a 15"x12" Agfa film box. It's making me feel very mid-century.
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Hard News: Rip It Up: A history of us, a…, in reply to Sacha,
But the smell of gum!
Mmmmmm... cow gum.
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Speaker: The economics of shit speech, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Sorry to bring the Pedant Patrol down, it’s a personal bugbear…
Hey… I helped raise a wonderful grammar fanatic – it’s already filed under ’beneficial learning experience / don’t do that again’. Meanwhile, here’s a snapshot of The Herald’s “Opinion” page right now.
Soper has a go at twisting a Greens’ success into something involving vermin (the rats must be important because they get two mentions in the headline), Hawkesby shits on Victim Support because she can, and who can tell which self-delusional character Hosking is playing today.
Would I help to fund the media company which gives voice to this sort of uninformed tripe, day after day? Nah. It would feel like I was paying to put petrol in Hosking’s Ferrari.
[ That Oxford comma caused some angst Ian, I can tell you. ] -
Excellent piece Joshua.
I've been phasing myself off The Herald for a while now. There was a point when it was one of my go-to morning sites for local news, back before the editorial direction threw a screaming right and veered off towards Dailymailsville.
The Herald's policy of amplifying the uninformed ramblings of a small bombast of right wing pundits may "engage" users, but it deserves our distain. You can't save journalism by passing off garbage as opinion.
I will miss a few of the serious journalists like Nippert and Fisher, and I'll see how that goes over time. But I could never contribute to any media company which continues to publish reguritated brain farts from the likes of the Hoskings and the Sopers. I just couldn't.
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The Herald goes subscription next week, at $5 per week. Existing print subscribers to the Herald, "Northern Advocate" and four other regional titles will receive free access.
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Nah... it's three different guys who seem to be immersed in various social media enterprises, some of which are allegedly dodgy.
Having Facebook decide to make an example of you is probably not an enviable position to find yourself in.
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Today Facebook and Instagram filed a lawsuit in US federal court against one company and three people based in New Zealand. The defendants operated a service that provided fake likes, views and followers to Instagram users. They'd been previously warned & suspended… but persisted.
Wouldn't it be interesting if their names had cropped up previously?
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At a time when our still-functioning democracy is providing a beacon of hope for the world, here's a reminder that the people behind Dirty Politics have not gone away. They've merely moved a little deeper into the shadows.
The Guardian has an exposé on a series of dark-funded, psuedo-grassroot Facebook ads promoting a hard Brexit. While they appeared to come from a variety of independent groups, the Guardian has traced them back to the Tory and Nats' favourite Goebbelmeister, Lynton Crosby.
But shining lights into dark places can have unexpected consequences and a couple of kiwis have been caught slithering in the periphery of this particular slime-show. Crosby has used Auckland-based Topham Guerin to run digital campaigns since 2016.
They have previous. Apparently they were involved with National's digital campaign in the last election. I won't link to their website but it's generic enough to be the sort of free web template which pops up when you search for "bland". Domain registry details are masked; the site has zero contact details and no information on the two people behind it.
Sean Topham is a former Young Nat President, while Ben Guerin was an adviser to Bill English. The latter's career high so far was being exposed as the lowlife behind National's How Kiwi Are You racist campaign which flopped badly back in 2015.
The anachronism built into National's core policies -- expanded inequality, more oil drilling, more buggered waterways and never-ending tax cuts for those who already pay the least -- are becoming a much harder sell in a world that's burning up fast. And as Putin, Bannon et al have shown recently, Facebook manipulation pays dividends. Big time.
In lieu of policy, spreading lies and micro-targeting misinformation generates fear. And that influences elections. You can guarantee these characters will emerge from their hole when Judith-the-Hun contests the next election for National.
(And loses.)
