Thoughts in Uncertain Times
Because thinking about the world is fun
I started this blog at the beginning of the 2020 New Zealand COVID pandemic lockdown because I wished I had recorded life through the civil emergency of the Canterbury earthquakes. When I started, I had no idea how long the pandemic might last, or how long I might keep writing. In 2023, the pandemic is loosening its hold on the world but there are so many other pressing issues on the horizon and interesting aspects of life to ponder that I am not stopping yet…
Latest Posts
How tragic is a ‘natural' disaster? Does it depend on what is lost? Or when it happened? Is sadness about natural disasters another tilt at preventing inevitable change?
The USA is mandating all diplomatic documents use Times New Roman 14 pt font, reversing the previous administration’s change to Calibri 15 point. Why the fuss?
Things can’t stay the same forever but humans have a tendency to wish they could. Like our British racing green windows. Or the Catholic church maintaining women can’t be deacons. Hell, no?
Shane Jones says regional councils should be disestablished because they're full of demonic egg beaters. What are demonic egg beaters? Should they be disestablished?
I finally got some work to do - a good thing! Or a bad thing? Because the work I do is fundamentally about growing the economy, which I don’t believe in. How do I deal with being compromised?
Is classical music more ‘real’ than popular music? There are biases in music, as in every aspect of life. How justified are they?
There’s gold fever in the air in Central Otago as Santana Minerals pushes their gold mining consent forward in the Fast Track application process. Why do we love gold so much?
A pure bread dog and a mixed bread cat - torturing our ever-tolerant cat Loki in the COVID lockdown.
Should we be polite to large language models like ChatGPT? There are good arguments on both sides of the debate.