Cyber attacks and the Faraday cage

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Just as I was thinking about the unexpected email from the Australian Taxation Office, She Who Mocks ScoMo called me in to watch a live press conference about cyber attacks. Beware of State-based actors with sophisticated means to hack Australian infrastructure, began the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison (ScoMo). “He’s dog-whistling,” interjected SWMS. This of course sent me off to google what ‘dog-whistling’ meant. After discounting a video of a wizened old Kiwi farmer in gumboots…

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The Listener and The Discerning Reader

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One of my research assistants asked this week if I wanted his back issues of The Listener. I’m now regretting my luke-warm response, given that it is barely two months since the owner, Bauer Media, closed down New Zealand’s 81-year-old current affairs magazine. German-owned Bauer Media had been trying to sell its magazines in Australasia for a while. Things came to a head with COVID-19, as magazines were not considered “essential” under NZ’s strict level…

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Arts Take Virtual Performance To Another Level

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One evening in April, a Kiwi songwriter friend living in London posted a YouTube video by the London Humanist Choir, performing a love song in Māori. The video of New Zealand’s unofficial anthem, Pokarekare Ana, was, as we are now accustomed, a multi-screen video with choir members recording their parts remotely. I shared this with a few Kiwi friends who live elsewhere, knowing it would tug at the tendrils of homesickness, which are almost always…

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Not everyone has Internet access

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I visited my local library last week for the first time in months and noticed that public internet access (computers, desks and chairs), had been removed. Desks, tables and chairs had also been removed from the reading room, where one could sit for hours browsing newspapers and magazines or working on jigsaw puzzles. “That’s not very fair on people who don’t have a computer or access to WIFI,” said She Who Believes in Equality. A…

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