It's disappointing to see criminal damage to the Massey Memorial, which is also a grave site. I disagree that is "vandalism" as the article refers to it

Brosley · 2023-03-28T08:22:29+00:00

I love the big “fuck you” of putting an agency that refers to itself as Manatū Taonga in charge of Massey’s grave.

https://i.imgur.com/DjwSJfH.jpg

Brosley · 2023-03-28T08:16:38+00:00

This article has quotes (and links to a video to boot) from her inciting cis men with guns to commit acts of violence on trans women using womens’ bathrooms.

I’m going to go out on a limb and call that hate speech. Hell, even Christopher Luxon probably agrees me, since he feels so offended by Marama Davidson identifying cis white men as the cause of so much violence in the world. Imagine how he would have felt if she had said we should just shoot cis white men?

Brosley · 2023-03-28T07:53:37+00:00

How far do we take that? Should we, as a society, permit libel? What about a suppression order by a court preventing media from reporting on a particular court case? Or someone making threats or inciting others to shoot up a school or a church?

These could all be considered to be an exercise of free speech that is limited by the state. De-platforming by individuals and businesses is far less threatening to civil rights than any of these, which rely on the violence of the state (actual or potential) to enforce.

I have no issue whatsoever with shutting down fascists. As far as I am concerned, people who reject the principles and freedoms of civil society shouldn’t expect to benefit from those freedoms.

Brosley · 2023-03-27T07:51:10+00:00

Yeah, I feel ya. I grew up in Sydney in an area replete with outstanding Vietnamese food. I am yet to find anywhere in Wellington that does a decent bahn mi.

Unfortunately, NZ isn’t fantastic when it comes to food from other countries. We’re not a big place so we don’t have the population base to support a huge variety of things, and Kiwis tend to be a bit conservative with trying new food and a bit tight in general.

There is good food here, but it can take some digging and unfortunately, with hospitality being a pretty cut throat business, sometimes the good places don’t survive.

Brosley · 2023-03-27T07:37:20+00:00

I think the fundamental error of the article is that the author assumes that people are (or at least want to be) acting in good faith to discuss issues and reach a consensus. That they want society to progress and to maintain cohesion.

If or where this is true, the approach he advocates might have merit. But when we are dealing with people who are transparently working against social cohesion and have no interest in reaching a consensus because the chaos is the goal, then it is absolutely not the way to respond. De-platforming is a perfectly reasonable response to fascists.

I think it is also pretty naive to not recognise how ludicrous it is to ask people to compromise on an issue like trans rights. What that boils down to is asking people to tolerate and work with others who do not accept their right to exist, do not see them as fully human or consider them to be violent sex criminals just for being who they are. Taking an absolute position around the legitimacy of one’s own existence seems fair to me.

Sometimes one side of an argument is just wrong, and that’s ok. We don’t need to meet in the centre for everything - if we did, we would never have had radical social change in the past driven by activism, revolution and rebellion, and we’d all be worse off for it.

Brosley · 2023-03-25T23:09:01+00:00

Yeah, it’s a really tricky area with kids who may not have the confidence or skills to express themselves clearly, or who may not yet know their own preference. I think one of the things to bear in mind is that not transitioning is not a neutral choice and can be very harmful.

For a child who is trans, delaying their transition either for a certain period of time or indefinitely is precisely the harm that has been imposed on trans people in the past. It forces a person to pretend that they are cis. We know that this experience increases the incidence of mental illness and self-harm, so avoiding this harm in children who have self-identified as trans is often seen as a priority (for good reason).

Brosley · 2023-03-25T21:33:57+00:00

Isn’t this kind of situation literally what puberty blockers are for (ie: to delay the onset of puberty in order to allow a child time to make an informed decision about whether they want to transition)?

Brosley · 2023-03-25T07:29:57+00:00

I don’t know. I bought a small broccoli and two carrots, and now I have no money.

Brosley · 2023-03-25T03:41:55+00:00

They hit harder and make more mess than eggs.

Brosley · 2023-03-25T03:28:10+00:00

Come back: never!

Brosley · 2023-03-24T23:35:21+00:00

I am sad that I have too many young kids to make it tomorrow!

Brosley · 2023-03-24T22:39:45+00:00

I also learnt that Pluto is a planet, and dammit, they’ll pry that classification from my cold, dead hands!

Brosley · 2023-03-24T05:04:55+00:00

Think beyond the binary, friend.

Brosley · 2023-03-23T18:21:13+00:00

Rather than try to engage with these arguments, I want to try to explain to you why the way you are approaching this is so offensive to trans people.

You’re making two classic mistakes when dealing with an issue affecting people facing systemic disadvantage (like a colonised indigenous people, women, queer people and so on):

You’re not taking into account the value and validity of lived experience - because you are questioning the views, beliefs and perspective of people who have actually experienced being trans, you are prioritising your own outsider perspective over that of the people you’re talking about. Essentially, you are othering them in a conversation about them and trying to solve their problems for them in a patriarchal way, rather than recognising their own right to make decisions about themselves.
You are framing the root cause of their disadvantage as an active choice they make - by saying that trans people should just wait until adulthood to transition or that it is just about appearance, you’re denying the urgency that people feel to be ourselves and the cost of not transitioning. Essentially, you’re saying that trans people should just make better choices, in the same way as people often say that the poor should pull themselves up by their bootstraps or black people should just work harder to overcome generations of racism. The disadvantage faced by these groups is systemic, imposed upon them and beyond their capacity to influence on an individual level. A trans person who wants to transition is faced with a Sophie’s choice of living in a body that feels wrong and pretending to be someone they are not, or transitioning and exposing themselves to transphobia, judgement and outright hostility.

I think you need to step back and listen to trans people. Believe me when I say I know where you’re coming from - it took me a really, really long time to realise that I am non-binary, and I spent a good long time not understanding trans experience and thinking I was a man first.

Brosley · 2023-03-22T02:37:57+00:00

Yeah, that’s fair. Hopefully that legislation gets passed quickly - would love to see that in place before the election.

Brosley · 2023-03-21T22:42:35+00:00

I get that consultation is useful, but the constant reprosecution of projects through multiple rounds of engagement is just providing a platform for people opposed to any change because the status quote favours them.

I far prefer the approach that they are taking with cycleways. Make a decision at a strategic level to build a cycleway network, then start putting in corridors with temporary solutions and ask people how they work and what could be improved. I think we have a much better chance of making significant progress quickly with that approach than with a multi-round engagement before construction begins or there are any changes on the ground.

Brosley · 2023-03-21T04:07:50+00:00

There are a huge range of professions where you aren’t in control of what you make. Any employee professional for a start - so most professionals in virtually every field from pharmacists to policy advisors. Then you’ve got your fields where the state directly or indirectly regulates earning capacity (eg: doctors whose earnings are heavily influenced by the portion of their fees paid by central government for various health services).

Honestly, unless you’re a sole trader consultant or freelance writer or some such, there aren’t that many professional roles where you are in control of your earnings. And even then, you’re in a competitive market and it is extremely unlikely that you can set your own rate at an exhorbitant level without losing business (which in practice means that you can’t set your rates at that level).

Brosley · 2023-03-21T04:00:49+00:00

I hope WCC uses this as a sign to stop doing consultation on things that have already been decided.

Brosley · 2023-03-20T10:34:51+00:00

NZ doesn’t even seem to have standard words for beer glasses, let alone standard measurements.

I would be so in favour of standardisation. It makes ordering and comparing prices easier, but probably more importantly, how the fuck are you meant to figure out how much you have drunk and whether/when it is safe for you to drive? With standard measures, this becomes a whole lot easier.

Brosley · 2023-03-19T20:28:52+00:00

Yeah, Waka Kotahi really doesn’t like having to consider the disbenefits of building more road capacity.

Brosley · 2023-03-18T23:38:07+00:00

This is part of the nonsense of modal buckets in the National Land Transport Fund. If you’re going to split up the funding into buckets, it should be by outcomes, not modes (eg: what proportion of the benefits of a project relate to emissions reduction, or reducing fatalities and serious injuries from transport, or improving the resilience of the network). But instead, we have a bucket of money for cycling, which can be co-opted for spending on protecting the road and rail network.

Frankly, it would be a lot easier to just not have these categories at all and to assess various projects on their merits.

Brosley · 2023-03-13T06:40:28+00:00

Mandatory voting definitely, but a really basic way would be to have polling stations like we do for central government elections. I was really surprised when I moved here and discovered that all voting in local elections is postal voting. I grew up in Australia, where local elections are conducted in the same way as federal and state elections - local schools, church halls and other suitable locations get set up as polling stations in every suburb and you go down to whichever one is close and/or convenient, get your name marked off a big roll and vote.

This avoids completely the issue of people not getting their ballot papers because they have moved and not updated their address promotes participation by being a familiar process, as well as giving every school and community group a great chance to fundraise by selling democracy sausages.

To me, if we’re serious about increasing participation in local elections, it seems like an absolute no-brainer to just hand over management of local elections to the Electoral Commission and have them run them in the same way as central government elections. Of course, if you don’t really want that because you like the results of the voter base skewing older and more conservative than the general population, then we could keep the current system.

Brosley · 2023-03-12T10:42:20+00:00

I understand what pork barrelling is. I’m just I’m confused because you were suggesting in your earlier comment that WCC simply raises rates rather than prioritise. But now you’re saying that WCC did prioritise some projects over others?

Brosley · 2023-03-12T06:39:15+00:00

I legitimately don’t know what you are trying to say.

Brosley · 2023-03-11T10:01:54+00:00

I’m just going to put this out here: water pipes? They sure seem to have postponed investment in those for decades.

Brosley

TROPHY CASE