It's all pretty McDisney. But I like this as a way to play media. It has an echo of putting on an album (a vinyl, tape, or CD). But the storage media is a much more robust.

It's been child-proofed, which also makes it drunk-proof and stoner-proof. Kick it around the floor at a party, and it'd still play perfectly fine.

I'd be fascinated to learn exactly how the tech works, what technical protocols or standards are involved, and whether any patents are pending ...

(2/2)

My granddaughter has this thing called a "toniebox" (™️, I believe) that she can use to play music or stories. It's a small amplifier in a decorated box, and the storage media are colourful little plastic figures that by by contact.

Mostly you buy pre-recorded stuff, where the design of the plastic figure matches the theme of the audio (eg a tiny figurine of Ms Rachel). But as with tape cassettes, you can buy blank ones and record your own stories, songs, and so on.

(1/2)

#PhysicalMedia #media

Just like in 2023 , a Labour bloc led by Chris Hipkins has a snowballs chance in hell of becoming the government by itself, and doesn't really deserve to. Hipkins is a spineless Starmerist and a traitor to everything Labour stands for.

So given those 3 options above are the most likely outcomes (in order of likelihood IMHO), I still think it makes sense to try to get Opportunity over 5%. The next Parliament - and Executive - would be less hard right/ far right with them in than out.

(3/3)

Show me a poll this year that shows Lab/Green/TPM beating NatACT First without Opportunity, and I'll show you a dozen that say the opposite. Chances are that either;

1) TOP gets in, backs Lab/Green/TPM due to obviously greater policy similarities

2) TOP gets in, backs NatACT First. *But* makes them take climate change seriously, and otherwise hampers their far right/ hard right urges. Like NZ First in the 1990s, and TPM in the 2010s.

3) TOP fall under 5%, NatACT First win unfettered

(2/?)

Am I blind or did you forget to post this one here @norightturnnz?

"TOP betrays its supporters"

https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/10/top-betrays-its-supporters.html

Politics, as the old saying goes, is the art of the possible.

Neither the Nat nor Labour block is going to legislate a UBI+land tax next term. Wong is just acknowledging political reality, and discussing what concessions might be realistically extracted in a single term. You seem to be mistaking that for total abandonment of policy, and therefore of principle.

(1/?)

Just received a new bank card. The colour pamphlet that came with it opens;

"We've refreshed the design to reflect who were are as a bank; modern, thoughtful, and here to help you and all our customers to bank better everyday."

Who writes this shit? It sounds like slop. Maybe it is.

The bank isn't a corporation either, it's a customer-owned co-op. But Business Idiot language seems to be highly infectious. Another example of the NGO-Industrial Complex, I guess.

#NGOIndustrialComplex

Oh, this box has been open in the background the whole time. "LOL". Obviously, there is literally no way I am going to agree to a "terms of use" to use a goddamn fucking web browser on my own computer.

ableists: we should stop drugging ADHD kids & students just for being different

me: ok, you know what's better for me than ADHD drugs actually, zoom meetings & auto captions. also uncomfortable clothing to comply with dress codes are incredibly distracting. you should allow the kids to stim, draw, play with their hands, while they are listen, and do not demand they stare at you or put them on the spot with random shit tests. and a lot of research shows that schools start too early which causes too much sleep deprivation, this is harmful not only to grades but to health outcomes over their lifetime. much of the curriculum is built on this "memory bank" idea which is some Victorian shit that has been thoroughly discredited, spending too much time on route memorization for weak subjects hurts actually. there is also a lot of evidence that Bush era's No Child Left Behind is a complete disaster--

ableists: no not like that we meant train the kids with carrots and sticks like a dog

me: you were already doing that to all the kids. that doesn't work on a lot of NDs, and can cause more problems like PDA. I'm not even convinced it's good for the NTs either

ableists: well your parents did it wrong obviously

Hi @niomi, just stumbled upon your page here;

https://panshiko.neocities.org/fedi

#TIL about #OpenReview;

"OpenReview aims to promote openness in scientific communication, particularly the peer review process, by providing a flexible cloud-based web interface and underlying database API ..."

https://openreview.net/about

This opening sentence is followed by a long list of open science opens (Open Peer Review, Open Publishing, Open Access, etc).

Anyone used this?

Warning: Aggressive ClownFlare human-checking.

#OpenAcess #OpenScience #PeerReview

I'm dying 😭 https://openfatigue.ai/

Most dried pasta sold in this country comes in disposable plastic bags. Presumably, like most plastic, made out of toxic wastes from fossil fuel refining (if you can claim they have a use, you can rebrand them as "byproducts" or "coproducts")

Anyway, l Just opened a new box of pasta - a brand I haven't bought before - expecting to see a plastic bag inside. I was pleasantly surprised. No plastic bag!

#packaging #plastic #FossilFuels

I wonder if the Public Spaces Incubator is experimenting with publishing over social web protocols yet? If not, I reckon they have as much for them to lean from fediverse devs as vice-versa. From what I read on the PMA website, the Public Spaces folks are doing some amazing experiments with using different kinds of comment interfaces to bring out more constructive conversations.

(2/2)

I hadn't heard of the Public Media Alliance before I randomly saw the announcement about BPM joining (linked in previous post) via web search serendipity.

Their Public Spaces Incubator sounds amazing!

"Over a hundred prototypes have been designed by the team at the Public Spaces Incubator. Of these, about a dozen have been coded, which are now being tested in public and private betas on PSM platforms in Europe and Canada."

https://www.publicmediaalliance.org/public-spaces-incubator/

(1/2)

#PublicMedia #PublicSpacesIncubator

Terrifying levels of digital illiteracy out there: "A browser is a search engine." NO IT IS NOT. You can choose your search engine completely separately from your browser. This applies to phones, tablets and laptops/desktops.
Some good alternatives to google search:
- Brave
- Qwant
- Ecosia
- Duck Duck Go
- Kagi (paid)
- *Many others.*

PLEASE TEACH EVERY STUDENT AND MEMBER OF STAFF TO KNOW THIS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines

#digitalliteracy #websearch #serach #academia #academicchatter #education

"BPM had its origins in two public campaigns that revealed widespread concern about media in Aotearoa ... the successful campaign in 2010 opposing the mooted commercialisation of RNZ; and the unsuccessful campaign to save TVNZ 7, which was an ad-free TV channel broadcasting from 2008 to 2012."

https://www.publicmediaalliance.org/better-public-media-becomes-affiliate-of-pma/

Hard to believe now, but Key's NatACT government seriously proposed commercialising RNZ. Presumably with the long term goal of hocking it off to the highest bidder.

#RNZ #BPM

It's a really nice feeling to walk into the local chippy, or the curry takeaway, and have them ask "the usual?". That only happens when you live in the same place long enough, and go to the same local business regularly, to be remembered.

I've lived in my current place for 2 years now. That's the longest I've lived anywhere since I got back from China at the end of 2019 (for what was meant to be a few months holiday).

It would be fascinating to try a project like the Bank of Real Solutions again as a federated network.

Different groups could host pattern libraries for geographical areas (eg Aotearoa like BoRS), or particular topics (eg patterns relating to food). Federated in some way, so they could share and search across all the public data; text about design patterns, articles about real world examples, and so on. Which could be published under a Free Culture license (eg CC BY-SA like Wikipedia).

(5/5)

The last good version I could find is from early 2014;

https://web.archive.org/web/20140210005717/http://www.realsolutions.org.nz/

There are later versions in the Wayback Machine that look superficially similar, but are infested with spam. Also, 2014 is about when I remember it shutting down.

Like the Transition Towns use of Ning, this is a case study in the importance of separating a data commons from its hosting. So it's availability is not subject to the internal politics or commercial imperatives of groups running websites, etc.

(4/?)

Back in 2010, a group of kiwi Transition Towns folks set up a website to be a community development pattern library. Much like what the Alternatives IMC team had in mind, but focused on Aotearoa, it was called the Bank of Real Solutions;

https://shift-magazine.net/2015/11/17/spotlight-the-bank-of-real-solutions/

Sadly it only lasted a couple of years, due to disagreements between some of the activists and techies involved. The earliest version I found was May 2010;

https://web.archive.org/web/20140210005717/https://realsolutions.org.nz/

(3/?)

#RealSolutions #TransitionTowns #DesignPatterns