Noble vs Ignoble dave Thu, 30 Jul 2026 - 08:07 I consider myself a committed political progressive - apparently somewhat unusually and unexpected from someone in my demographic. Some will consider me 'woke' (I'm happy to be awake to the world around me), and others will say I'm 'Left', even 'Radical Left'. Here's the conundrum: I not only accept my labels, I wear them proudly. I can't think of…
Politics of change dave Thu, 30 Jul 2026 - 07:56 I can't help feeling that we're missing a key movement in our society today. Just about all of our interaction with society and the political sphere is now mediated by digital technologies. The impact of that - and the manipulation of those technologies by vested interests - is profound, and I think, largely unacknowledged. I want to see a political…
Thoughts on Sam Neill dave Thu, 16 Jul 2026 - 08:01 I was deeply saddened by the departure of Sam Neill. For his fame, he was a remarkably humble, self-effacing man who was kind and really valued the community around him. It was that sad event that reminded me of an early experience I had which I remember fondly... A few months after first arriving in Aotearoa from the US in 1994, I spent the…
Eulogy for a garden matriarch Image Image dave Tue, 30 Sep 2025 - 04:28 This is a celebration of a life and an acknowledgement of shame and dismay. It's early in the morning and I can't sleep, so I've decided to write down the thoughts that are keeping me awake. I need to tell the tale of 3 Leg, the precious matriarch of our garden. I have always, since I was conscious, been a 'herptophile' -…
I live in Aotearoa dave Thu, 18 Sep 2025 - 19:36 I've been looking for the opportunity to write something like this for a long time... Today, happily for me, the perfect opportunity landed in my lap. I was recently having a look (though gritted teeth, of course) at Facebook, a place I go to occasionally dip back into my past and make contact with folks in my homeland (the USA) or from past parts…
Why is mainstream social media so damn 'user friendly'? dave Mon, 4 Aug 2025 - 11:54 Originally written on 20250228 I seem to remember a cartoon, the wry sort of thing the New Yorker magazine used to run (despite searching, I haven't yet found it), in which a pig in a farm pen is talking to a wary, lean boar standing outside the fence. The caged pig says to wild boar "but the farmer cares for us…
Just a thought: Fediverse is different dave Mon, 4 Aug 2025 - 11:53 Originally written on 20250228 Unlike the mainstream social media, the Fediverse - and its array of ActivityPub-supporting web services - doesn't care if you're there. It's a place where the only ones who benefit from your presence are those who want to interact with you. There are no other shareholders.
Windows broken by design dave Mon, 4 Aug 2025 - 11:53 Flashback: I remember standing in the pick-up department of a hardware vendor I used to frequent back when my business did a lot of system integration (helping Windows-dependent businesses take advantage of the capabilities Linux servers offered them). As I waited for someone to get my order together, I could hear a Microsoft rep in a nearby…
Computer Operating System Analogy dave Fri, 1 Aug 2025 - 15:41 Roughly six years ago (2019?) I wrote this response on Quora (before I abandoned it due to the low quality & trolling nature of most questions) to the highly provocative question: " Why do programmers love Linux the most? " I've republished my response (which received lots of views and upvotes and a few responses), which I thought…
Online voting continues to be a very bad idea in 2025 and beyond dave Tue, 14 Jan 2025 - 17:14 I have long been vocal in my opposition to online voting since 2013, when the spectre was first raised by our local government agency, LGNZ, in 2013. See here , here , here , and here . I think it's a very bad idea for democracy and engagement. I've been on record saying that there are only three…