Author Archive
I wonder how common this combination is?
From a blogger’s potted bio on a review of the excellent Scrivener software I use: About Brian xxxxxxx Computer programmer by day; horror and post-apocalyptic thriller writer by night. Bless him! – P (Reminds me of you JT.)
Distribute comment spam. Get pinged. Ask that YOUR OWN SPAM be removed. Hahahaha!
From Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com. He calls it ‘chutzpam’. I call it bleurgh! In other words, the estimable businessmen and women at realinsurance.com.au have been paying SEO companies to spam the comment sections of sites around the globe. But now Google’s new search algorithms are making that legacy spam really damaging. So now they’re sending […]
Untangling from emotional habits
Reviving memories of Edie Brickell got me thinking about her, how happy she seemed, and how she seemed to disappear after marrying Paul Simon. Here’s a line from a Jan 2011 AP interview ‘Edie Brickell releases records full of joy‘ talking about how her long-awaited 2011 CDs, the eponymous “Edie Brickell” and “The Gaddabouts”. Both […]
What am is what I am. Are you what you are, or what?
I had this Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians album Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars virtually on permanent rotate in my car’s cassette player (!!) when it came out. Along with Chuck Girard’s Written on the Wind, Paul Clark’s Hand to the Plow and Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire. Good times. Fantastic music. Dedicated to Cally. […]
Comments, classified
I don’t enjoy navel gazing about comments and moderation here at The Paepae. Every now and then I’m forced to think about it again because someone wants to have a crack at me or someone else in low-value terms. Usually anonymously. I tend towards no censorship beyond filtering spam (thank you Akismet) and throwing out […]
Egregious
When I gently pointed to what some might call errors in this notice I was assured the threat of being shot on the premises was what was intended. Really. – P
Declaring where you’re coming from
Like most people (I think), I find it interesting, at times fascinating, to speculate about WHY people do and say what they do … WHY they might express views that they hold in the way they do … and WHY they enter into discussions or debates (and sometimes flame wars) on the internet. But I’ve […]
Depression is real stuff
From an excellent profile of the awesomely good Rachel Maddow ‘Rachel Maddow’s Quiet War’ in the June Rolling Stone magazine: “Yesterday was like a four-star show, I was totally into it,” she says. “Today and Monday – like, blaagh. Like, doesn’t get any worse. I’ve been doing this for four years! Why do I still […]
Spy fiction? Kinda fits.
Barrister Carl Gardner, writing at Head of Legal blog: Julian Assange: Can he get out of this? … All in all, I think the [UK] Supreme Court made quite a hash of the Assange case. I’m not the only critic, either – Tiina Pajuste at the CJICL Blog argues that they were wrong to bring […]
Upstaging an important public moment
I spotted this statement from Susan Benn on behalf of the Julian Assange Defence Fund over the weekend, which makes some good points about the challenge the Swedish and British authorities (surely) must be having trying to maintain the pretense that they’re treating Julian Assange as they would any other ‘person of interest’. The ludicrous […]
The curse of hypervigilance
Recent angst-ridden discussion about comments published on the internet have reminded me of a conclusion I reached when I was myself the subject of scurrilous anonymous comment: It can bloody hurt. But some of the pain is, sadly, self-inflicted. We’ve seen again and again how anonymity seems to loosen people’s grip on civility. Some of […]
Taking the pfiss out of John Key
Wow. The honeymoon is well-and-truly over: Here’s open comment that the NZ Prime Minister is routinely observed “fibbing, hiding something or not totally convinced by [his] own argument”. ‘How are the mighty fallen!’1 This is just as devastating, in a different way, as what a former NZ Herald editor said in John Key’s media whack-a-mole […]
Speaking up for Madeleine Flannagan
The following is an anonymous comment in support of Madeleine Flannagan, who features in my recent post, ‘Implications of recent internet gagging attempt‘. UPDATE: The comment is now in the comment stream of the relevant post.
Cat 1 – Blow-up giraffe 0
I came out to the lounge this morning and … – P see also: I think my cat must read my blog
Some useful cyber citizen guidelines
It’s funny how even from people’s intended blows you can learn something valuable. A couple of years ago when I was blogging about the dubious operations of a gaggle of ‘internet marketing experts’ (cough) somebody, by a remarkable coincidence, set up a number of blogs linking my name to keywords like ‘scam’ and ‘ripoff’ (see […]
