}

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Internet Wading: Very recent stuff edition

Today is April 30, the last day of the month, which is as good a time as any to resume these Internet Wading posts. This is also the end of the titular US President’s first 100 days, which means we can stop hearing about that—after a few things about it that caught my eye this weekend.

Yahoo News had published a couple good things on the subject, starting with fact checking “The White House’s claims about Trump’s first 100 days”. Naturally, reality is somewhat different than the spin coming from Don and his regime. In a more chartiable mood (when writing the headline, at least), Yahoo News also published, “The 45th president’s norm-busting first 100 days”, which has bonus points for pointing out actual history.

Vox, meanwhile, checks the results of Don’s first 100 days against his promises, and ThinkProgress noted that Don “broke 80 promises in 100 days”.

The UK’s Independent looks at “How relations between White House and intelligence agencies crumbled in Donald Trump's first 100 days”, and in an editorial the paper concludes that “The evidence from his first 100 days in office is that he can be pushed around”.

Also this weekend, and related to Don, as Salon put it, “Another weekend, another protest: Thousands turn out for worldwide ‘Climate March’”. CNN said, “Climate protest takes on Trump's policies – and the heat – in DC march”, while Vox provided “10 of the best signs from the People’s Climate March”.

Speaking of marches, my nearly life-long friend Jason attended the March for Science and blogged about it, including LOTS of signs—great signs, some just fun, a lot with brainy jokes, but all of them with correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Of course. Side note: Posts about things like this are this are among my favourites that Jason does.

But enough of Don and his politics, eh? How about something much more serious? Roger Green has a system for “Systematically listening to the music” in his large CD collection. I’ll admit that his system was far too complicated for me, but it’s kind of interesting all the same. Our own CDs are all still boxed up after our recent move, and I’d actually like to leave them there: They’re a pain to dust all the time, and we don’t even have an easy means to play them. We have to keep them because we’ve digitised them all and when the New Zealand Parliament finally legalised format shifting, it required that people must keep the CDs they digitised so they could produce them on demand in the event of some sort of allegation that one’s digital music was illegal. Or, something (the reason never made much sense). Oddly enough, the last time I mentioned that was also in relation to something Roger posted.

And finally, how about one of the dumbest ideas ever? A new sports stadium has been proposed for Auckland’s waterfront, which isn’t unusual (many have been proposed over the years), but this one is a bit different: It would be submerged. Dubbed “The Crater”, most of the stadium would be below the water, with only the top above the water.

Building a stadium mostly under weather in an era that will see rising sea levels due to climate change doesn’t seem like the brightest idea ever. And imagine terrorists blasting a hole in one side—or even just structural failure—drowning everyone inside. Not a pleasant thought.

All that aside, Aucklanders turned out to protest the loss of their harbour when Ports of Auckland wanted to extend a wharf. What on earth makes anyone think that Aucklanders would accept a massive stadium taking up the harbour they fought to protect?!

And on that appropriate note, that’s enough for this Internet Wading, the very recent stuff edition.

The graphic accompanying this post is an Internet Meme making the rounds the past couple days. I have no idea who wrote it or who created this graphic. But it is so VERY true.

2 comments:

Arthur Schenck (AmeriNZ) said...

It happens. I confuse people every time I talk about New Zealand's MMP electoral system, which seems simple and obvious to me.

rogerogreen said...

Oddly enough, my CD playing isn't that complicated...for me. I've written some math stuff that's also confounded others; it's just my brain.