Posts by Robyn Gallagher
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Polity: Gay marriage, weed, and death…, in reply to George Darroch,
There’s a really good illustration of how quickly this change has occurred, and the tipping point seems to have come in 2013.
And 2013 is when New Zealand happily legalised same-sex marriage, going with the flow. It now seems quite weird and old fashioned that Australia is the only anglophonic country to not have same-sex marriage.
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Btw, the Domestic Purposes Benefit doesn't exist anymore. Unemployed sole parents either get the Sole Parent Support benefit if their youngest child is under 14, or the Jobseeker Support (aka the dole) if their younger child is 14 or over.
Neither benefits encourage the beneficiaries to sit on their arses all day. Both are designed to help unemployed sole parents to get work, either part-time or full-time. Whether or not this is reasonable or successful is another issue entirely.
The two benefits are available to both women and men.
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It seems that Novartis, the licensed distributor for this part of the world, would rather tout its own multiple sclerosis drug.
FYI, for people with MS, cannabis is used for the treatment of neuropathic pain and/or spasticity. Novartis' drug (Fingolimod) is a disease-modifying drug which reduces the incidences of relapses in people with that type of MS. Basically, the two treatments are for two totally different types of MS issues and one is not a substitute for another.
But yeah, the more Pharmac-funded treatment options that are available to people with MS, the better.
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Speaking of music (lolz!), the final of the Eurovision Song Contest is on Sunday morning, 7am Aotearoa time. I wrote a brief summary at The Spinoff, but the most important thing to know is that Australia is competing this year as a special guest. Their singer is Guy Sebastian, best known around these parts for winning Australian Idol, and for his R&B tunes that keep popping up in the charts.
You can watch it live on BBC UKTV, or free online at Eurovision.tv
One of my faves is Loïc Nottet from Belgium. His song starts out sounding like the intro of "Royals", but soon drops all similarities and delivers cool, beguiling minimalist pop. (Ok, Lorde does that too, but in a different way.) And the boy can dance.
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A couple of years ago I threw out all my CDs, earlier this year I deleted all my mp3s. Now I'm 100% streaming, either Spotify or YouTube. It works.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
Basically live viewing is all anyone cares about because that’s the number that matters to advertisers.
And it doesn't work saying "I don't watch Campbell Live on live TV, but I don't think this should matter at all to the people that it fundamentally matters to."
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Serious question: who here regularly watches Campbell Live? And by that, I mean the full episode, live to air. Not occasionally watching a video someone has shared on Facebook.
I don't. I really like John Campbell, but I haven't watched the show since the 2000s, and if Campbell Live had been cancelled five years ago I wouldn't have noticed.
Campbell Live seems like one of those shows that people like the idea of in theory, but not enough people actually watch it for that theory to work in practice.
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Speaker: Public art is no place for committees, in reply to Steve Curtis,
Between an alleyway! What were they thinking
What's wrong with having art in an alleyway - and a busy pedestrian thoroughfare at that? It seems a lot more pleasant than having nothing.
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The inclusion of twerking on the list shows someone is still partying like it's 2013. And their soundtrack is Miley Cyrus' "Bangerz" album.
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As a reminder, here's the winners list from 2013. Some of the terms have bleed through to 2014, but others, like Wewege and twerking, are solid icons of 2013.
1. Metadata
2. Fuckstrating
3. Selfie
4. Beersies
5. Berm
6. Big Gay Rainbow
7. Lorde
8. #twitteraunties
9. Wewege
10=Rape Culture
10=Twerking