#Tag
"Our MPs have stakes in a combined $379 million of property in New Zealand.
A Herald investigation has found that’s an average of $3.16 million across each of our 120 Members of Parliament."
In the current Parliament, NatACT MPs top the rankings for who has the most valuable property portfolio, by a large margin.
"Reading your research suggested to me that ADHD traits - although I'm not minimizing the problems, and the anguish that ADHD people can feel - ADHD traits constitute a special skill set, not an impairment, often, and the impairment comes from not being able to express the skills."
#JimMora, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018943895/is-adhd-an-evolutionary-adaptation
All the hoopla around the opening of Ikea ...
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=72463043-2b3c-40b4-ba16-d8c7d20965c9
... reminds me of the 2004 Czech documentary Český sen (Czech Dream);
https://english.radio.cz/cesky-sen-hypermarket-czech-dream-didnt-come-true-8074451
But the documentary was much more fun.
#podcasts #RNZ MediaWatch #Ikea #documentary #ČeskýSen #CzechDream
Listening to this podcast about First Amendment Auditors, I wonder if there were Marxist-Leninism Auditors harassing coalface public servants in the pre-collapse or post-collapse USSR. This behaviour seems like the US equivalent.
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/flightless-bird-david-farrier-o1VXYIgjQfc/
Finally caught up with this week's edition of The Bradbury Group and it's a really good one, with NZ Herald columnist Simon Wilson, former Winston First and Nat MP Tau Henare, and Green MP Steve Abel;
They talk about the challenge of funding local government, and public perception differences between tax and rates. Again, I think both need to be collected by IRD and split between central and local;
Douglas @Rushkoff speculates about a process where the wealthy sandbox themselves, employing Trained #MOLE workers, and pay them in crypto datacentre vouchers that can be redeemed for compute, memory, storage, and so on. The end of capitalism as the Rapture of the Nerds;
https://www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/342-the-joy-of-being-worthless-except-to-each-other
Intriguing, but it reminds me of the IR realist friend who asked me "how many armoured divisions does BitCoin have?".
I note that this interview is from Oct, so maybe @pluralistic has modified his view on this since then but ...
One of the few things I really dislike among Cory's regular talking points is the misrepresentation of Shoshana Zuboff and the makers of The Social Dilemma, as if they ascribe to DataFarmers the invention of a "mind control ray";
https://www.teamhuman.fm/episodes/339-cory-doctorow-enshittification-is-not-inevitable
Some credulous, Kara Swisher style faux-critics may have made this claim, Zuboff and TSD didn't.
(1/2)
This week's edition of The Fold discusses the Oz ban on (some) social media companies allowing under-16s to access their platforms;
https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/02-12-2025/the-fold-australias-big-tech-revolution-rolls-on
On one level, I'm playing the world's smallest violin for the DataFarming platforms targeted. I'm also relieved that the ban doesn't seem to apply to fediverse services, and other not-for-profit online services that clearly could be put in the "social media" bucket if the politicians were so inclined.
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Local government has been smushed into a much more centralised system over the last 4 decades. Elected local boards that took care of specific jobs in some places (eg drainage boards) were folded into councils. As were community boards in a lot of places.
Many councils were themselves folded together. A process known among local opponents as "forced amalgamation". Auckland started out with dozens of independent city, district and borough councils. Now there's one ring to rule them all.
(1/?)
Now it seems like we're looking at another round of forced amalgamation of local bodies, with Auckland's "supercity" council as the model. The first step being arbitrarily firing all regional councillors and adding their responsibilities to the jobs of city and district mayors.
Two RNZ shows have reported on this over the last week or so, Focus on Politics;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/focusonpolitics?share=ad5c05a5-7472-48fe-b6c8-f13f997ef2aa
... and The Detail;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/the-detail?share=58b425f8-6bc9-4e38-adf8-d9f921904eb9
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"Part of the reason I built diVine was, I wanted an example of this Social Media Bill of Rights. I wanted this idea that users own their own name and their content. That we get say over the algorithms and that we get transparency over them. That we get the right exit, because it's built on this Nostr protocol."
@rabble, 2025
https://revolution.social/episodes/vine-revisited-and-the-fight-against-ai-slop/
(1/2)
#podcasts #RevolutionSocial #SocialMediaBillOfRights #diVine #Nostr
This is an intriguing panel discussion from FediCon, published on the @decentered podcast;
https://wedistribute.org/podcast/s2e4-we-distribute-live/
Some very challenging comments made, including "open source is dead". I just wish the host had asked the guests to explain exactly what they meant by comments like that, before moving along to the next topic.
"Today on Revolution.Social, George and Rabble talk about how the online multiplayer Game Neverending evolved into Flickr; the groundbreaking ways the site approached content moderation and avoiding context collapse; and why the sort of hypergrowth that makes Silicon Valley tick is “the antithesis of building a healthy, happy community.” Plus: The plan to save all of Flickr’s photos, no matter what happens.'
https://revolution.social/episodes/our-mission-is-to-keep-flickr-pictures-visible-for/
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"What's I'm doing is focused very much on my job. As I keep saying; polls, commentariat, rumours, my job is to get on with the country, and getting it sorted for people."
#CLuxon, speaking to Ryan Bridge in 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=8e7b038f-039b-4c10-86c4-cb2a67ad34af
Oh dear. The political truism regurgitation machine has started stringing random clauses together into vaguely sentence-shaped objects, which don't really hang together (they also don't mean anything but that's not new.
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"...it's certainly true that as a result of their tax cut package, and their failure to substantially cut spending, despite their rhetoric, they have widened the operating deficit, to more than it may have even been under Labour.
So if you want to call that borrowing for tax cuts, they have done that. Its certainly true that the amount of borrowing by the government is as bad as it was under Labour..."
(1/2)
All countries that claim to practice 'compulsory voting', don't. Because they all offer a 'no confidence' option. Which is, in effect, not voting.
It's a nonsense, and a distraction from meaningful attempts at democratic reform
https://nzpod.co.nz/podcast/past-present-future/fixing-democracy-compulsory-voting
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#podcasts #DavidRunciman #PastPresentFuture #democracy #elections #CompulsoryVoting
"So if we just go, 'well it works for everybody, or almost everybody, therefore you need to fit in', there's a higher risk of that person being discriminated against. The flipside being, if we do make changes and adaptations for everybody, so that there's choice ...
... the more choice there is available in any given context, the less risk there is of discrimination."
#DrLukeBeardon, 2025
https://www.hidden20.org/podcast/dr-luke-beardon
Someone Is Trying to ‘Hack’ People Through Apple Podcasts // @404mediaco
“The most concerning behavior is that the app can be launched automatically with a podcast of an attacker’s choosing,”
https://www.404media.co/someone-is-trying-to-hack-people-through-apple-podcasts/
"What I ... enjoy is talking with workers. Because ... [that] is where you learn the most about how a company actually operates, based on the ways ... the managers interpret commands from the top, and subject the people underneath them, to them."
#EdwardOngwesoJr, 2025
https://techwontsave.us/episode/215_kara_swisher_shows_tech_journalisms_flaws_w_edward_ongweso_jr
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Scheduled all chapters of my 2 audiobooks to be released on my podcast in January and February of 2026. This is a unique way to support pay what you want audiobooks of mine. To get to the main page, remove the, tips, prefix in the URL https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/weirdwritings #Audible #Audiobook #Audiobooks #Podcast #Podcasts #RSS
"This has taken a huge toll on my self-esteem. The way that I'm talking about myself, even. I don't think that I'm worthy of partnership anymore ... why would anyone even want to have a public relationship with me. Like I'm clearly too alternative, I'm too kinky, I'm too messy, I'm too sexual, I'm whatever."
#ArdenLeigh, 2018
https://susanafrioni.com/2018/12/133/
Oof. This is a bit close to home. Something to think deeply about there ...
#podcasts #SusanaFrioni #LoveSexDesire #relationships #SelfEsteem
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