"... ads for a Brian Tamaki church event showing a boy carrying a severed head - an apparent reference to David and Goliath - and bearing the tagline 'Time to kill'."
Wow. That is extremely concerning. But imagine these people are perched on a ledge about to jump, and likely to injure or kill members of a crowd gathered below. The only viable response is trying to talk them down. Attacking them will make them more likely to harm others, not less.
I have two problems with this sentence. The pedantic one is that it's a tautology, like saying 'freely speaking his expression'. Which points to a person using terms without really understanding what they mean.
The more substantive one is that Tamaki's use of freedom of expression is not the problem here. Making it about that is distracting, and quite frankly, lazy.
When overcrowded buses replace train services, they should be free of charge. It's nowhere near the same quality of service, and charging for it is kind of rude. If it's free, it encourages train operators to do everything they can to avoid replacement bus situations.
@strypey
This is what happens in Sydney. But probably because the 1980s-era buses we get don't have the technology. Ripped seats, hint of cigarette in the air, yes. Opal card terminals no.
@negative12dollarbill
> the 1980s-era buses we get don't have the technology. Ripped seats, hint of cigarette in the air, yes. Opal card terminals no
What your government needs to do is redirect huge swathes of public transport funding into Roads of Dubious Significance with no allowance for bikes or pedestrians in the budget. Like our enlightened coalition is doing #FacePalm.
"Scientists have identified a set of nine ecological and biophysical limits within which the Earth can continue to sustain human society. These are known as the ‘safe planetary boundaries.’
...There are three planetary boundaries that have already been breached. They are biodiversity loss, climate change and the nitrogen cycle."
It's heartbreaking to read this now. In 2020 it really seemed like it might be possible to convince the Labour government to do a bunch of the stuff described here, and that they might have 6 years to do it. Now we've got the Coalition of Chaos doing exactly the opposite, on almost every point.
Last night I asked a question of an AI chatbot running on my friend's laptop. He's a fulltime professional developer with a very flash laptop, but still. It was a step change to interact with an AI running locally, with no dependence on any remote system.
"So here is a call from the NZOSS to the New Zealand Government to set up a Government centric Mastodon instance to provide a conduit for Agencies, Departments, Entities, Schools, Councils, DHB's and any other central or local government organisation to disseminate pertinent information in real time."
"The idea that trans existence can be debated, in the same way that trans people’s rights to accurate documentation was debated, or trans people’s right to play community sport was debated, does not lend itself well to a discussion by opposing op-eds. Especially if one side is held to a higher standard of proof than the other..."
"The stakes are much higher now than when I was in college. The genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is already a world-historical crime, and the looming invasion of Rafah promises a new magnitude of horror, all of which has motivated students to make sacrifices they might not have otherwise. And the repression they face is far more extreme, with universities directing state violence on their campuses without qualms."
In the longer term, it may be that Biden's win in 2020 was a loss for the left. Because now it's a Biden White House, one known to be soft on Netanyahu's government, that is seen to be presiding over the shocking repression on US college campuses. Not an Orange House even friendlier to Zionist fascists. This has to suppress the left's willingness to turn out and give Biden another 4 years, even though the alternative is definitely worse, for the US and for Palestinians.
"I think the core, critical sin was choosing the advertising model to begin with. Brand advertising is not like direct advertisement, which is more programmatic. It requires something like a Disney to essentially give you a favor, because the only players that matter to them are Google and Facebook. Snapchat, Twitter, everything else did not matter. And these are ads that are essentially throwaway for them. But we made that choice in order to go public."
@sj_zero
> If you're trying to swing an election and you're either a nation-state or a political organization or even an NGO, it's really easy and surprisingly cheap to hire a bunch of people to say whatever needs to be said
The CCP are well known to do this to influence online discourse on domestic politics, and is presumably using it as a soft power tactic outside China too. What AI potentially does is make the same scale of operation available to a much wider range of actors.
@strypey Sounds like reputation washing to me. "Try and forget I turned a good thing into a black hole of grimness and use my new thing, which I pinky promise won't be the same at all when I get bored."
Seems TechDirt's take on Biden's TikTok ban is similar to mine;
"Enacting this legislation has undermined this long standing, democratic principle. It has also undermined the U.S. government’s moral authority to call out other nations for when they shut down internet access or ban social media apps and other online communications tools."
"If we could expand that, by drawing in local media and cooperating with each other, then that sort of model could be expanded to all the community stations nationally.
This is an essential public service - and a not-for-profit is a good way to go because if it becomes successful, the owners aren't just going to flick it off to a bigger company or shut it down during a downturn which is what's happening to a lot of our old newspapers."
"A power system that is already prone to shortages like those currently forecast on Friday is facing never-before-seen demand from electric vehicles (EVs) and big data centres.
Vector is preparing for it - but the lack of laws and regulations and an Energy Ministry are in its way."
"The New Zealand Electricity Authority (Māori: Te Mana Hiko) is an independent Crown entity responsible for the regulation of the New Zealand electricity market. The Authority was established in November 2010, following a government review of the electricity industry, and replaced the Electricity Commission. The Authority has a narrower focus on industry competition, reliability and efficiency than the Electricity Commission had."
So Helen Clark's Labour government set up the Electricity Commission
"... following extremely dry hydro years in 2001 and 2003, which led to government concerns that the electricity market did not provide adequate security of electricity supply."
It was intended to oversee the reliability of electricity supply in Aotearoa over the long term. Exactly what Vector is pointing out we don't have. Why?