"... the book's first-person narrative and empathetic tone mask a basic problem in the text: all Israeli soldiers are portrayed as anonymous rapists and killers, while Palestinians are victims of trigger-happy occupiers. Violence against Israeli civilians is not mentioned, perhaps because it is considered a legitimate means in the struggle for liberation against the occupiers."
This is like criticising a novel about the treatment of Uyghurs for not mentioning violence against Han Chinese.
Minor Detail is a novel about the lives of Palestinians under a military occupation that's been escalating for decades. Just like Nathan Thrall's non-fiction book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is about the lives of Palestinians under a military occupation that's been escalating for decades;
This is seriously the last time I'm taking an #InterCity bus. As usual, I'm desperate for a piss, because for an 8 hour bus ride they only schedule 2 stops where passengers can go to the toilet.
We stop at Turangi, right outside the i-Site, and I ask the driver if I can quickly use the toilet. He grumps at me in his "papers please, comrade" accent, "No! Go back to the bus". No basic courtesy. No information about when we'll next be able to use the toilet.
#InterCity is everything we were told competition would protect us from when it was privatized. It's long past time that - as with the trains - the privatisation experiment with long distance buses was declared a failure, and InterCity re-nationalized.
This monologue by BlindBoy Boathouse is such a fantastic explanation of what it's like to be "mildly" autistic. The mastery of masking that makes people surprised to learn I'm autistic, the imposter syndrome that can amplify, the way socialising can lead to burnout and the failure of executive function, and so on.
Here's an example of a principled conservatives who defends the democratic rights of those they disagree with;
"[David] French is a conservative warrior, who has fought numerous legal battles to protect the right of Christians to participate in the public square. He’s not a squish by any definition. 'I’m going to fight for the rights of others that I would like to exercise for myself because I also know that my rights are fragile', he said."
"I understand the frustrations of religious conservatives, who have watched the culture head off in disturbing directions. But putting up with some drag-queen storytelling seems like a small price to pay to live in a relatively free society."
The US movement against re-electing President ManBaby can greatly improve its chances of success if it can make common cause with moderate conservatives who think like this.
"A plan to update the system for regulating our media content has been running under the radar for years. Some of the agencies that do it now backed the move to one single body, but this week the government dumped it over fears it could cramp free expression online."
Thoughts on this? My knee-jerk anarchist response is that democratic governance has no place in decisions about citizens' expression, online or otherwise. But...
... I'm aware that in a highly unequal capitalist society, the expressions of different people and organisations have very different scales of "reach". So maybe there is a place for regulation to create and maintain pro-democracy media environments. As always, the devil is in the details.
The Julie Anne Genter incident highlights the difficulties faced by being an activist in Parliament. Nobody is better positioned to recognise a government's political gaslighting for what it is. "Read the report" fumed Genter...
... as Associate Transport Minister Doocey smiled his shit-eating grin at her, and carries on talking fact-free nonsense about public and active transport. It's amazing outbursts like Genter's don't happen more often.
"More than 180 New Zealand public agencies have transferred masses of data to Microsoft cloud computing servers in Australia for storage and processing since 2019. Sensitive courts data could be headed that way."
"The NDMS [National Disease Management System] was being hosted within a 'private isolated section' of Amazon's 'cloud' of data warehouse servers in Sydney."
This interview with biologist Adam Rutherford includes some excellent examples of why liberal arts disciplines are essential to science. They are the tools by which we define what science is in the first place, and decide what questions are useful to explore in scientific practice.
"... 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.