Something happened yesterday that could have been merely awkward & upsetting but ended up super triggering & upsetting instead. I was not at my usual workplace & was on the phone, and didn’t hear a loudspeaker announcement of a minute of silence. 1/ SO I TALKED RIGHT THROUGH IT OMG. I hadn’t gotten any notification prior that this was going to happen. I’m still on the phone totally oblivious, and a Pakeha woman comes up to me to reprimand me in a very sanctimonious manner. I have like no idea what she is talking about. 2/

Some important words via FB from a child of Papakura, my friend @Manisha_Bee who lives in London where her job is literally “preventing violent extremism” for local govt. 1/ “I was really sad, and subsequently quiet on what’s happened. But now I’m angry. I could talk about peace, love and unity and the need for it at a time like this but that’s the easy stuff. We have to do the stuff that’s HARD.” 2/

My parents grew up poor in third world countries (their term). They got lucky when fate was handing out brains, became doctors, and were cherry-picked as 1970s migrants to fill a skill-shortage in NZ. Some genuine thoughts on ‘the Kiwi way’ from the outside: 1/ It’s a cliché of self-criticism to point out the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude that pervades ‘Kiwi’ society. But it deserves analysis as an attitude that is born out of a small, close-knit and high-trust country. 2/

Was lining my bin with my free @nzherald last night and was like lolwut 290,000 'Chinese migrants call NZ home'. CUZ! @dchengnz you've been classified as a PRC immigrant in the graphic of your own story. NZ Chinese statsthread for you: 1/ I’m curious about where the @nzherald got the 290,000 figure. I’ve seen rough estimates in the 200,000-250,000 range for *all ethnic Chinese* in NZ, so maybe it’s a very high estimate for the *entire ethnic Chinese population*. 2/

1/ Ummm woah, a little more on Morgan Xiao. The guy using Cultural Revolution-era rhetoric such as "anti-Chinese sons of bitches" who should "get out of New Zealand" to describe critics of the Chinese govt such as Anne-Marie Brady & Freeman Yu... 2/… and who also in his WeChat/MPages/Skykiwi editorial equates anonymous political donations with freedom of expression and voting rights… said that Chinese dissidents in NZ are fake refugees, also had this to say about democracy on Quora if it’s the same guy:

I like living in NZ because our extremist nutjobs are so rare. 1/ I also think that some New Zealanders who think they are having an important conversation about freedom of speech right now, have no fucking clue what they are dealing with when it comes to overseas extremist groups. 2/

Inspired by @TouchMyPoly 's 30 days of Mariah, and the knowledge that ~20 million fewer people will care, I'm doing the 30-day Chris Cornell song challenge... Day 1: A song with a colour in the title.

Such choice! Black Hole Sun, Black Rain, Fell on Black Days... But when @tessairini said the "greatest loss of a cultural concept jettisoned between gen x and millennials is 'sellout'" - gotta be Black Saturday

Here is the INZ profiling spreadsheet and the INZ briefing released to the media yesterday, thanks @NZMorningReport: 1/
drive.google.com/file/d/1MIzvdf…
drive.google.com/file/d/1sxBRJ-… What they have released is an arbitrary points system. But guess what, it's still clearly discriminatory on the grounds of age and gender! 2/