Posts by Stephen Judd
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Speaker: Drug History: What happened…, in reply to Paul Campbell,
"Self-sown" poppies that disappeared in the early morning were also a feature of Berhampore and Newtown in Wellington... I recall neighbours nodding sagely and talking about the "Newtown Gardener".
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"When the London School of Economics investigated the use of quotas they found that they did not result in unqualified women being appointed. They found that the bar was lifted, not lowered, because the people who were missing out were mediocre men."
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Hard News: Local journeys on the cusp of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Has anyone ever seen these "special marked areas"?
They are increasingly common in Christchurch.
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I wonder how much ads from recognisable, reputable companies lends credibility or legitimacy to marginal news sites. I suspect many people rely on exactly these kinds of spurious cues in assessing whether what they are reading can be trusted.
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Hard News: The fake news problem, in reply to EE,
The Google algorithm seems to be working perfectly.
The more the original story is critcised, the more it is linked to, the higher it is ranked
(probably weighted greater when linked by the Washington Post).
Google users shouldn't interpret the first result as being the most truthfulEh, but why did they implement that algorithm? On the assumption that incoming links were a sign og relevance and quality. And that is the belief that most people have about result ranking, and that belief isn't going to change.
Using quantitative measures as a proxy for qualitative ones is problematic and we can't get away from this. As we are discovering in so many areas at the moment where machine learning and stats are producing results we find unpleasant or surprising.
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I know a surprising number of people on Twitter who seem to love RT as a source. I hope they were chastened (but they won't be) when RT tweeted a video of the 2011 quakes, shot in broad daylight, as an image of the Kaikoura quakes on Sunday night.
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One of the things worth pointing to about her legacy is how even from a position of weakness, shame and advocacy can keep the pressure on. Legislation of three decades has crippled the union movement but she was a excellent general marshalling its diminished resources.
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Mervyn Peake was raised by missionary parents in China. I can't remember where I read this, but supposedly his grotesque illustrations of people were grounded in his experience of returning to England and seeing all the knobbly, bony, puffy, wibbly faces of English people en masse for the first time.
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Couple of thoughts.
1. While I find much to object to in Minto's politics, I appreciate how he keeps the leftward edge of the Overton window closer to where I want to see it. Yes, he's promising things that are outside a Mayor's power. But he is promulgating the ideas.
2. The People's Choice have been disciplined in voting en bloc and caucusing and they are half the council. That has to make negotiations simpler and more predictable and council less fractious. They too deserve some kudos here.
Love the allusion to "Christchurch’s alt-activist network of NGOs and start-ups." Yup. An amazing amount of civic activism stirring here, much of it below the radar.