I published 🔗 this post back in July last year … after months of delay and noodling and questioning, I finally released it - and as with so many of my posts that I often wonder why I bother .. crickets.

From that piece - if you’ll forgive me for quoting myself …

Sadly the Internet has been weaponized and far from creating a place to be educated about the differences of people and countries and life - we are being forced into submission. It’s a place where ignorance is not so much celebrated as ignored - and ignored because on the whole it isn’t recognized, and if you do anything counter to the noise - expect to be piled on because 🔗 you are either with us, or against us.

It has only got worse.

Since the 6th, I have been thinking a lot about ‘whither next’ … and then, a couple of days ago I became aware of a debacle in this little corner of the internet we call Micro.Blog. Not going to get into it here - if you are reading this - you almost certainly know what it’s about., but were I to reduce the whole thing to a single word it’s called BULLYING.

… and as far as I am concerned … bullies can fuck off.

Here’s the problem - any semblance of being able to have your opinion is rapidly disappearing - if not gone already. That used to be ‘across the aisle’, now it’s wormed its way into every corner of every room. And this is an ‘all sides’ problem - witness the Micro.Blog ‘contretemps’ referred to earlier. Again - you are either with us, or against us - and that means - all of these concepts are being expunged form our discourse;

Ambiguity

Ambivalence

Balance

Complexity

Context

Depth

Duality

Finesse

Gray area

Harmony

Nuance

Paradox

Perspective

Reflection

Relativity

Sensitivity

Spectrum

Subtlety

Tone

🔗 A simple, non viral case in point. - the link jumps to a short thread on Substack where I dropped a throw away comment to a comment from Ken Klippenstein and within minutes I got a reply clarifying my tongue in cheek question and what was meant by the executive order. I have learnt my lesson - I need to punctate any and all comments with a smiley emoji … ‘all’ because I am well aware that I am overly glib and sarcastic in most of my online comments.

To save the click through, I also quote this - from ChatGPT ….

facetiousness seems to be waning touches on broader shifts in communication patterns. The rise of digital communication has led to a decline in face-to-face interactions, which traditionally allowed for the nuanced delivery and reception of facetious remarks. Without the benefit of vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language, the subtleties of facetiousness can be lost or misinterpreted in text-based mediums. Moreover, the immediacy and brevity of digital exchanges often prioritize efficiency over the layered wit that facetiousness entails. As a result, such forms of humor may not translate well in online environments, leading to their diminished use. This shift underscores the complex relationship between evolving communication technologies and the ways we express and perceive humor.

And then just this morning, this popped up in my feeds from Om - posted 18 months or so ago ….

You can read the whole post ‘What’s The Truth?’ here.

Not holding back this time. Serendipity has spoken.

What Do You Think?

Specifically, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and The United States

🔗 Kevin Drum linking to the cheapest and most expensive places to live.

🔗 Worlddata

In New Zealand there is a lot of handwringing that translates to countless LinkedIN posts talking about ‘jump starting’ the economy and what do they have to do to grow their GDP which inevitably leads to attracting the ‘brightest and the best’. I’ve even weighed into a few of the debates myself …

• 🔗 How We Grow New Zealand

• 🔗 How do you change the state of NZ’s economic performance?

• 🔗 Brits Flocking To Australia

• 🔗 We’re taking Europe for granted.

Of course it doesn’t help when one of the leading Kiwi journalists writes NZ now frozen, listless, mean & hopeless

Here is one slice of that data from the Worlddata link above.

United States 14
Australia 17
New Zealand 18
United Kingdom 19

.. but check out the average monthly income which in turn drives the purchasing power index.

United States 100
Australia 81.4
United Kingdom 63.8
New Zealand 63.5

I’ll let the UK number sit for you to absorb. I am more interested in the two antipodean counties … turns out Australia has a little more than 30% MORE purchasing power than New Zealand.

No more handwringing needed. I don’t know the exact ins and outs of the rules of NZ and OZ - BUT to all intents and purposes, citizens of each country can jump to the other almost on a whim much as someone in the US can move to a different state. It’s not exactly the same - but for a while now there has been a steady exodus of NZ nationals to OZ for a long time - but its getting a lot more problematic - through to September(ish) of 2024 - an average of 200 Kiwi nationals per day left New Zealand to settle in Australia. When you look at that discrepancy - is there any wonder?

(Side Note - 200 per day for 365 days is 7,300 people - that is 0.14% of the country!)

Of course - there’s more to life than the cost of living - there is also the 🔗Quality of Life - and delighted to report that New Zealand - despite its poor showing on the cost of living scale delivers a satisfying 9th in the world for Quality of Life - nestling right between Japan and Spain. So at least they have that. BUT … to borrow a phrase from Aoteraoa …

“Yeah … No”.

Turns out OZ is the number one destination in the world for Quality of Life.

Me? For all of that handwringing that goes on … I think the powers are solving the wrong problem really well.

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