A busy day taking care of stuff

Yesterday was a very busy day filled with errands and taking care of things, one of which was too long delayed. My excursion made this an even more active week than it already was.

My first—and most important—stop was the barber shop at the base, the place I’ve been going to ever since I shifted to Hamilton (I talked about the barbershop in a blog post in April last year). This time, I had my hair cut by the young dude (who I briefly mentioned in a blog post in in May 2022). The guy takes his time and is very good, while the older guy always makes me feel uncomfortable for reasons I can’t explain (I ordinarily get the female barber, partly for that reason; the young guy is seldom there when I am).

I thought he seemed a bit low yesterday, almost sad even, so we didn’t have a conversation. However I got him to smile twice: The first time was right after he asked me how I wanted my hair cut, and I asked him if he could trim my eyebrows, too. He said he could, so I added, “I haven’t learned to do it myself, and I’m now getting ‘old man’ eyebrows.” He smiled broadly and chuckled a bit. I used a similar tactic at the very end when he said he just had to shave the back of my neck and he’d be finished. I said that was another thing I couldn’t do myself, because I have to do it with my back to the bathroom mirror, another mirror in my hand looking back at the bathroom mirror. He agreed that was hard, and then I told him about the time I accidentally shaved off part of my beard, and he laughed, and said, “yeah, that’s the sort of thing people do only once if they’re unlucky, twice if they’re careless.” I said, “and after three times, I’d probably have to go into a home”. He laughed a bit and said, “probably not that—just time to put the clippers down.”

I always try to be nice to people who serve customers all day because times have changed and too many customers choose to be awful to people just doing their jobs, but yesterday I kind of wanted to cheer him up a bit. I think maybe I did.

At any rate, my haircut could’ve easily been a month late because school holidays just ended, and I never go to The Base (where the barbershop is) during school holidays or public holidays. On the Saturday of Easter weekend, the traffic to get to the base was unbelievably awful, reminding me why I made the promise to myself in the first place (I was just trying to get across the road that leads to the base in order to go to the other side of the city).

Next, I went to to The Warehouse to check out their (apparently) new range of storage products. Specifically, I was interested in an acrylic turntable with sides (in the dual photo up top), which are good for storing bottles of things like soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, aioli, etc., in the fridge. I put a turntable with no sides—basically a small lazy suzan—in our fridge at least 8 or 10 years ago, and it’s been great—but it works best for jars, not bottles. The bottles I have on it are constantly falling to one side, making it hard to rotate the turntable to get in the back. I’ll use that old turntable on the other side of the shelf, and just for jars. The new turntable is something I don’t need, but it’ll make my daily life much easier.

While I was there, I picked up two pairs of slippers partly the price for two was lower than buying one pair each on two different days. Also, The Warehouse has a long history of dropping products, so when I find products that I like and will use, I’m better to buy extra. The slippers are replacing a pair I bought around 15 years ago that are now falling apart. I got them at The Warehouse, too—and that particular one was discontinued. Of course. Maybe they lasted too long.

I also picked up a pair of what I call “house shoes”, basically lightweight shoes I wear only in the house to protect my feet and keep them warm. That’s because a stubbed toe can cause a gout attack, and also because when my feet get cold, I feel cold all over. They’re replacing ones that are so worn out that I think they only stay on my feet through stubbornness and bravado. I don’t wear slippers other than first thing in the morning because—well, wearing slippers all day long seems too old-mannish to me. Yes, I’m over-sensitive. I don’t care.

However: I also looked at a couple things I want, but definitely don’t need, and I talked myself out of buying any of those things, including one thing I really wanted, and have wanted for awhile. That’s because due to the current tough economic times I adopted a policy of “buy nothing I don’t need, and make due with what I have rather than buy new” (while still allowing myself some treats, though I’m slowly cutting back on those, too). I’m really lucky that I can weather the bad economy fine at the moment, but it’s prudent to live more frugally when there’s no way to know when the economy will stabilise, let alone improve.

On the surface, that fridge turntable may look like it conflicts with my pollices, maybe even that it’s frivolous, and it probably is. Or, maybe it’s actually somewhere in limbo land—it’s cheap, but not a true need, but also something that’ll make my daily life better. In normal economic times, I’d never feel conflicted about buying a damn fridge turntable. On the other hand, I figured out an alternative for one of the things I really wanted using something I already have. So, I didn’t completely abandon my policies.

My final stop was the supermarket for my weekly shop, which was mostly top ups of pantry staples (like dried pasta), and a few things that I didn’t need quite yet, but that were on special. The are certain things that I buy only when they’re on special (like the brand of margarine I use), and that means I sometimes buy them before I need them in order to save money.

So, it was a productive and busy outing yesterday. That night, I planned to have leftovers for dinner, because I’d made extra on Wednesday specifically for that. When I was younger, my mother used to say, “they’re not ‘left’ overs, they’re planned overs!” It took me awhile, but I think I finally understand what she meant—and I’m now doing the same.

The two photos up top are from The Warehouse's site (linked to in the blog post), and are included here for clarity and explanation. I was not compensated in any way for mentioning the product or The Warehouse. The right side of the photo features items from The Warehouse's expanding own-brand grocery products called "Market Kitchen". I was particularly interested in trying their aioli and BBQ sauce, but I couldn't find it at the closest The Warehouse store to my house. I hope to eventually include them in a future post about own-brand grocery products vs. name brand ones.

An early success

I’ve worked on a lot of projects over the years—for all my adult life, actually. Ever since I shifted to Hamilton, the number of projects has increased, and I had to do them alone for the first time in decades. Four year ago today, I finished one that turned out far better than I’d knew at the time.

On May 1, 2020, right after the first Covid lockdown restrictions were relaxed, I finished a project to lay stones in a sort of trough between by driveway and the footpath leading to my front door. I blogged about it at the time, which is where the photo up top is from, and that post was actually an update to a post from the previous weekend, a post where I talked about the project in detail.

I was reminded of this today by a Facebook “Memory”, and it was kind of hard for me to believe I finished the project four years ago—this is one of those times it doesn’t seem like it was even nearly that long ago. However, Facebook also served up a “Memory” from two years ago today in which I noted that the rocks I’d put in the trough had settled a bit since I put them there, but less than I expected. It turns out that now, even after two more years, the rocks never settled more, so I never did add larger river stones—I didn’t need to.

In the four years since I first put the stones in, delivery vans and trucks have driven onto the rocks (especially trucks for Countdown/Woolworths), and park their trucks on the lower part. This has caused absolutely no problem apart from occasionally dislodging a couple stones I have to kick back into the trough, but that’s it. There’s also no sign of damage to the concrete edges.

Because of where that trough is, I often get out of my car and step onto the stones, or if I’m dropped off by someone else, I walk over the stones to get to the front door. I’ve never tripped, nor has anyone else.

I think it has performed so well because of the time and care I took to get a good base course down: I gave it a solid, but permeable, foundation. The stones themselves help to distribute the weight of any vehicles that partially park on them.

My project also gave me exactly what I wanted: A few extra centimetres of driveway width, which people (especially delivery/courier drivers) have used, while not adding a lot of visual clutter. Houses around me with similar troughs usually have them planted with shrubbery of some sort. I didn’t want that because I’d have to maintain them, and I didn’t think they’d add anything, particularly because the front of their houses is flat and level with the street, whike mine has a gentle grade down to the street level.

There are negatives, though: The two bags of larger river stones I bought for the project are still stacked up behind the pillar at the top of the trough, their labels faded by years of sun and rain. If I tried to moved them now, I bet the bags would fall apart. I still hope to use those stones, but I also still haven’t worked out a plan for out front, partly because The Damn Raingarden is so very ugly (it looks like a concrete cattle trough) and, if that wasn’t enough of a visual crime, it’s also off centre in the lawn.

In may of 2022, I published a post called “My 5 favourite home changes”, which was only about changes I paid others to do. While those are still my five favourite things others did, there are plenty I’ve done that were good, too, and those stones are a good example. Maybe I should do a follow-up post about the stuff that I’ve done myself, because that clearly never occurred to me before.

At any rate, I know that the project in the front yard out far better than I knew at the time. Most of the projects I’ve done myself have turned out at least as I expected, and a few, like this one, turned out much better, and that ain’t nothing. I really should make a list, though.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 414 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 414, “Circus clowns”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

NZ: Buyer’s remorse?

TVNZ’s 1News released a new opinion poll last night, and the news is not good for New Zealand’s 3-ring circus government. I haven’t talked about how poorly they’re doing, and for a lot of reasons, but there have been so many bizarre actions by this government that it’s been hard to keep up. At the moment, it looks like New Zealanders see it that way, too.

There are several significant things about the poll, including the headline that if the election were held yesterday, the current government would be gone, replaced by a Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori left-leaning coalition. Also, this result is unprecedented: Since polling started, no first-term government has polled so badly so early in its term. The story at the link above sums this up well:

The result is not unprecedented for an incumbent Government although it has historically not happened so early in its tenure. It is similar to poll results for the [John] Key and [Helen] Clark governments in their third terms.

The third John Key-led [National Party] Government was elected in October 2014 and by the July 2015 poll their coalition would have been voted out. The third Helen Clark [Labour Party] Government was elected in October 2005 and by May 2006 their coalition would have been voted out, based on poll results from that time.

So, this result is common enough in the third term of a government—and not in a first term. National lost the 2017 election, two years after the 2015 bad poll results. Similarly, Labour lost the 2008 election, some two years (and a bit) after the bad 2006 bad poll. The current coalition of Chaos Government has only around two and a half years until the next election.

All of which gives hopes to opponents of the current government, however, there’s more to this.

Even based on this poll, the centre-right National Party would be the single largest party in Parliament, though without enough friends to form government. However, they have access to more potential donor money than Labour does, and much—but not all—of New Zealand’s media is friendly to them. Being the party in government gives them the opportunity to do and say things to appeal to potential voters, So, if they really do lose the next election, it’ll be because they couldn’t sense that the wind had changed directions.

The poll result show that Winston Peters’ rightwing populist party, NZ First, wouldn’t make it back into Parliament. However, Winston has been in and out of Parliament a lot over the past 30+ years, and there’s no way to know for sure what’s going to happen with him in two and a half years. However, while the current coalition cannot govern without him—or, more specifically, his party’s MPs—Winston has never had a successful coalition government with National. After the first MMP election in 1996, he was in coalition with National, then Jenny Shipley rolled the Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, and sacked Winston. His MPs, however, stayed with the government, and so, continued to govern until National lost the 1999 election to Labour.

Winston’s history shows us that he can never be counted out forever, nor can NZ First MPs’ loyalty to Winston be guaranteed. This means that he could be back in 2026, but it also means that if he becomes a liability and was sacked from this government, his MPs might stay and support the government, keeping it in power.

The hard-right Act Party has never been hugely popular in New Zealand. For years, the only reason they had an MP in Parliament was that the National Party did a deal for them to hold the Epsom Electorate. In 2023, their candidate won the Tāmaki Electorate, too, but that at least partly due to how unpopular the incumbent National Party MP was because of his hardline fundamentalist “christian” ideology, which didn’t mesh well with the more traditional conservatism of the electorate. For all it’s faults, the Act Party isn’t as aggressively socially conservative as NZ First. While there’s no reason to think NZ voters will suddenly turn to Act (they didn’t do that in significant any election in which National performed badly), they’re also not currently losing support bad as either National or NZ First.

Similarly, the picture isn’t rosy for the Centre-Left, either. Since losing the election, Labour and its Leader, former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, haven’t presented any sort of alternative to the current mess, nor have they articulated any sort of agenda. However, it can be argued that this is wise strategy two and half years out from an election, especially when the current government is making so many mistakes and alienating voters. It’s about keeping their powder dry while the current government keeps scoring own-goals and undermines itself, not the least by doing things that are very unpopular. But that also risks creating opportunities for the Greens, in particular, to present an alternative now, when voters are grumpy with the government, but don’t yet know what they want instead.

The Greens have their own problems and challenges, too. They’ve had several scandals among their MPs, and their Co-Leader recently resigned, being replaced by a second woman. The harsh truth is that while plenty of folks on the Right reflexively—and, frankly, irrationally—despise the Greens, they’re definitely likely to not respond favourably to a party with two female co-leaders: Misogyny and aggressive sexism has been at the centre of much of the harassment that female MPs—especially former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern—have endured in recent years.

Plenty of Pākehā New Zealanders can’t stand Te Pāti Māori (“The Māori Party” in English, and often abbreviated as “TPM”), and much of that is just as reflexive and irrational as dislike for the Greens is. The party mainly represents Māori interests (though many of their policies would affect low-income people of all ethnicities), and it currently holds six of the seven Māori Electorate seats in Parliament, most of which had previously been held by Labour. It doesn’t hold any General Electorate seats.

This evening, 1News did a bunch of “vox pop” interviews of ordinary people, one of whom said something interesting: The government should show more kindness. I think he’s on to something. Most of the government’s ministers, along with Winston, Act’s Leader David Seymour, and even Prime Minister Chris Luxon sometimes, come across as condescending, arrogant, and irritated that anyone would dare question them. That’s how Winston operates on the daily because it’s part of his brand. David Seymour too often acts like he’s still an opposition MP, making what he thinks are witty barbs, but which now make him sound like kind of a jerk. In fact, the whole lot of them don’t seem to have grasped that governing is different from campaigning. The John Key (and later, Bill English) National government spend nine years blaming the previous Labour Government for National’s own failures and mistakes, and the current government is doing the same thing—but they sound much more condescending and arrogant while doing it

While it’s unlikely the current government’s MPs and Ministers will change and stop acting like jerks so much of the time, if they did it would probably help them sell their unpopular agenda. I guess maybe it’s lucky for those of us who oppose them that it’s highly improbable they can learn and do better.

One thing is absolutely certain: It’s going to be a very long two and half years.

Picturing a weekend

I had a great weekend, from Friday right through Sunday. As it happens, there I took several relevant photos, ones that add to the story of my weekend. Not that I said much on social media, though.

I shared the photo above on my personal Facebook Sunday evening, noting, “instead of talk, here’s my favourite photo of the weekend.” It was my favourite photo, but it’s one I actually took because of another one I shared in the comments on my Facebook post:

When I shared it to Facebook, I said, “And here’s another one from earlier this morning when I woke Leo up to have his breakfast,” which was also a completely accurate comment. However, I took the photo at the top of this post because I noticed that in the second one it looked like his fur was over one eye, and he doesn’t ordinarily look like that. I think it was because of the way the sun was shining on him (the reason I took the photo), and maybe the position he’d been sleeping in pushed his fur over his eye a bit. Even so, I took the second photo to show what he normally looks like these days.

As it happens, there was yet another photo of Leo, one I took Friday afternoon, right after I was done posting my podcast episode that day. I took the photo because I thought he looked cute, but I didn’t share it online or even show family.

There was one other thing about Friday’s photo: One of Leo’s favourite toys, what’s left of a blue dog soft toy named “B-Dog”, is between his front legs. That same toy is in teh background of the photo up top, just the right of Leo’s head. I took the photo a little while after he was done with his breakfast, when he jumped up on my lap, as he often does when I’m in my chair, in order to have a snooze after he’s played with a toy for a bit. That day, it was B-Dog.

Finally, there was another photo I took on Sunday, after I’d fed Leo. It’s two fried eggs (which I’ve become pretty good at making) on toasted store-bought bread, and baked beans straight out of the can, unheated. This was a meal that made me think of Nigel, for three reasons.

First, Nigel always ate the bean straight out of the tin, and I always did, too, but I can remember one of his sisters expressing disgust (mostly real) at this because she always heated them. Every time I have baked beans out of a tin, I think of Nigel.

The second thing was that I don’t recall becoming good at making fried eggs until after I shifted to Hamilton, though maybe I’ve just forgotten. I do know that I learned the technique from a TV chef, though I’ve forgotten who that was. I crack each egg into a ramekin in case the yolk breaks, because then I’ll make scrambles eggs instead, I do the same thing when I make poached eggs, and for the same reason. Once I’ve poured the eggs into my frypan, I add around a teaspoon or so of water and cover the pan. The heat form below cooks the whites, and the steam from the water cooks the top of the egg white and the top of the yolk. Personally, I prefer a see-though lid so I can keep an eye on teh eggs so I can plate them when the top of the yolk starts to get a bit cloudy and the white is clearly firm.

And finally, there’s the toast. As I’ve said before, Nigel had peanut butter and jam on toast nearly very work days for maybe ten years before he died, eating it on the car on his way to work. Sometimes, if he was running a bit late, he’d have me make it for him (especially when we lived in our last house). However, he always insisted that the toast must be cold before it was buttered, and I thought that was crazy—though, of course, I did as he asked. I’ve always buttered my toast hot so the butter melts into the nooks and crannies.

Last week, though—and for absolutely no particular reason—I made toast the way Nigel did, and my Sunday brunch I did it again, partly so see if my first impression was right, and it was: Nigel was right, and it was better when buttered cold because the toast stayed crispy. I tried it when, like Sunday, I was having egg on toast, which can often make toast a bit soggy—but not so much if its buttered cold. He would’ve thought it was hysterical that I tried his method with toast and liked it—though I’d still butter hot toast if I was having cheese on it so the cheese would soften.

Overall, none of these photos, nor the stories behind them, are particularly important, but they are a kind of visual slice of my life this past weekend. As I’ve said a few times now, I I like having reminders, especially from photos. That’s true whether I share them or not.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 413 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 413, “Eighteenth season”, is finally available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Have nice things. Or not.

People have opinions about everything possible. Of course they do: It seems to be a large part of being a modern human. Even so, it’s amazing how people seem to feel the urgent need to spout their negative opinions about things that don’t matter, like pop music. I had two reminders of that this week.

I don’t take part in any of the numerous social media arguments over something in pop culture—movies, TV/streaming shows, music, etc. In general, my feelings about pop culture are summed up in Arthur’s Law:

Everything you love, someone else hates; everything you hate, someone else loves. So, relax and like what you like and forget about everyone else.

Not everyone feels that way—shocker, I know—and many of the Internet Fights I’ve seen are centred on, or related to, something in pop culture. I honestly cannot understand why people get so bothered about what other people enjoy. To me, it seems like such a colossal wast of time and energy.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I saw a Facebook “Memory” about what I posted after the death of Prince in 2016. I later blogged about that, and the post incorporated much of what I said on Facebook. At the time, I was taken aback by the fact that some people couldn’t even leave people alone to grieve the loss of an artist they liked and admired. I said:

The Internet has provided a great way for people to share their grief with people who feel it, too, and that’s wonderful for them. Really, that should be good enough for the rest of us.

Of course, it wasn’t good enough for some people who chose to be truly awful to other people. It just felt wrong to me—not the first time that’s happened. That made me think about all the other times I’ve seen people that seemingly decided that the world simply HAD to know how much they hated a particular thing in pop culture, especially in pop music, which seems to draw the greatest level of attacks.

At the moment, there seems to be no one in pop culture who is a bigger target of hatred than Taylor Swift, but, to me, it’s utterly mystifying. My cards on the table before I go a step further: I like a lot of Taylor Swift’s songs—actually, that should probably be written be as “a LOT”. However, I wouldn’t call myself a “fan”, mainly because I’ve never bought any of her music (I’ve added her music to my Spotify library), However, her song “The Man” was one of my favourite songs of 2020, and the music video [WATCH — no, seriously, watch it!] is quite probably my favourite video of that year (and on my list of all-time favourites). It’s one of the things that got me through the first Covid lockdown. All of which is to make clear that I think she’s an enormous talent, even though I don’t call myself a “fan”—actually, am I a fan of anyone anymore? A topic for another time, maybe.

There’s a thing called toxic fandom, and they can be fans of literally anyone in the public eye. Personally, I’m not too keen on the aggressive and toxic fans of the frequently napping oddly-hued senior citizen politician from Florida, and the toxicity of such fans can be alarming. However, the number of such fans is astonishingly small considering how much attention they get in the media. Taylor Swift absolutely has aggressive and toxic fans, too, but they’re self-evidently NOT the majority.

I think part of the problem is the imperative of modern journalism to promote the sensational and even outrageous in order to get clicks on links (and, even still, eyes on broadcasts). It’s the old-timey journalist’s slogan, “if it bleeds, it leads”, or even “dog bites man isn’t news, man bites dog is.” The news media, then, has a financial incentive to give airtime and print space (online especially) to the most extreme examples of toxic fans being toxic, and while such fans are absolutely not the majority of a given fandom, and even though it can be argued they cast a shadow out of more normal fans, that doesn’t make those more normal-behaving fans insignificant.

I mention all that because part of the hatred directed at Taylor Swift is “justified” but some people as their supposed reaction to the antics of some of Taylor’s aggressive and toxic fans. The question is, those particular fans’ behaviour aside, why do so many people seem to hate Taylor so very much? Far too much of the answer comes down to politics and culture wars.

Not long ago, the news was filled with fans of NFL (American football) reacting bitterly to Taylor’s relationship with Travis Kelce, a tightend for the Kansas City Chiefs. Fox “News” picked up the chorus, condemning her for having the utter audacity to go to watch Kelce play, and declaring there was a fix in for the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl so that she could endorse Joe Biden for president amid all the media coverage. The Chiefs won, and, of course, Taylor didn’t say a word about President Biden.

Fox and other rightwing media outlets then switched their attention to Swift’s hugely, insanely successful Eras Tour. Fox performers claimed Swift would use the platform to urge her fans to support Democrats, something that apparently came from her previous non-partisan urging of her fans to register to vote (and they did). Fox performers demanded that Taylor “stay out of politics”, which, oddly enough, is a demand they’ve never made of any rightwing performer since, well, ever. Amazing, isn't it!

With the rightwing media ecosystem promoting hatred of Taylor Swift, it was inevitable it would metastasise. Now, it’s become part of the USA’s far-right religious-political activism.

Today I saw a cut-and-paste share of a Facebook post by a far-right “Christian singer, songwriter, former worship leader,” and failed Republican candidate for Congress (because I’ve never heard of him, it seems prudent to not name him, so as to not give him a Google boost). He wrote on his Facebook post, “Almost half the songs on Taylor Swift’s new album contain explicit lyrics (E), make fun of Christians and straight up blaspheme God. Is this the music you want your kids listening to? Do you think I’m overreacting?” Well, since he asked, yes, I absolutely do.

He shared small portions—in one case a single line—of lyrics to songs from Taylor’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, and I found nothing in those quoted lyrics to be even remotely offensive, so I decided to listen to the songs in their entirety to find out for myself what he was clutching his pearls about.

The fact is, I liked all three songs, and the two the guy seemed to be the most apoplectic about (because he shared more than a single line from them)? I liked those two the best of the three. This doesn’t surprise me in the least. The rightwing is constantly bleating on and on and on about how “the Left”—by which they actually mean anyone who’s not a rightwinger—is “woke” and they’re all “snowflakes” who can’t accept offence and should “just to grow up”, and because this is the rightwing mantra, I have a question: What should mainstream people say about rightwingers when they entirely overreact to a song’s lyric and claim to be mortally offended by “attacks” on supposed Christians and their version of the Christian god? Are they “woke”? Well, yes, and insofar as that has any meaning, it’s their version of it—though they’d probably prefer their version of the term, “red-pilled”. What’s clear is that, by their own definition, they’re being “snowflakes”—people who can’t accept offence.

It’s easy for people to be cynical about their ideological opposites, presuming they’re arrogant, aggressive, that they lack intelligence or, at the very least, self-awareness, and that their defining trait is hypocrisy. It’s also easy to point out things that seem to justify the prejudice, like the pearl-clutcher who attacked Taylor who then used the comments on his post to market t-shirts he sells on his website. Obviously, neother hypocrisy nor grifting is defined of limited by ideology, even though it seems like the Right has more than their fair share of it.

Decades from now, Taylor Swift and all the nonsense thrown at her by the rightwing in particular will be items in history books, but is this really the way her loudest critics want to be remembered, as intolerant pearl-clutching snowflakes? I ask for a very simple reason: The rightwing constantly demands that mainstream people should “just get over it” whenever rightwingers say or do something the mainstream finds offensive or over-the-top. Shouldn’t righwingers do the same?

Everything you love, someone else hates; everything you hate, someone else loves. So, relax and like what you like and forget about everyone else. No, really!

The graphic up top is something I've seen on social media for several years. Sometimes the graphic has been altered to make a different statement, but the text in this version is the first I saw. I couldn't find who originally created the graphic or where it's from (or even if this version has the original text), however, the first online use I could find was from 2016.

In these modern times

I’ve been a sceptic of the promises made about machine learning, something the media usually calls “A.I.”, for “artificial intelligence”. It’s not that I think it’ll rapidly become self-aware and decide to kill us all—that’ll come later (mostly kidding…). My scepticism is because the promises made have mostly been hype and marketing puffery with little to show for all the hot air expelled. And yet, A.I. is already everywhere, and together with algorithms of various sorts, they will increasingly dominate how we interact with companies and the world. In fact, they already do—and that’s a problem.

Back in February, one of New Zealand’s two supermarket companies, NZ-owned Foodstuffs, announced they would trial Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) as part of their store security, in an effort to reduce in-store crimes. Customers entering a store will be scanned and the system will compare the images with folk in their database. The company said that if the computer finds a match, it will require a second person to do a visual match. If the individual is still considered a match, they’ll be confronted by store security. The company talks about reducing violent and abusive behaviour—which is a very real problem—but it’s obvious it has a roll in excluding recidivist shoplifters, too.

However: FRT is not even remotely foolproof, and the systems make mistakes constantly—especially for women who are not of European descent, such as, Māori, Pacific Island, and Indian. In fact, this problems has already happened.

On Monday, 1News reported that a woman of Māori descent in Rotorua was misidentified as a thief. The woman says she provided the store security with her ID and told them she was not the person they’d trespassed. "It didn't seem to change their mind which was already made up based on what they saw," she said. The company apologised and blamed “human error”, which is another huge problem in the system: It relies on the human verifier being unbiased, something all humans struggle with to varying degrees, and many studies have indicated racial and ethnic bias is common in these sorts of situations. Put another way, no one's perfect. The woman observed, "[It's] ironic they blame human error for an AI piece of technology knowing it will have false positives and errors across the board." Exactly. Also, the incident happened on her birthday.

New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner already had concerns about this use of FRT, so it seems probable his level of concern will be heightened. He’s definitely not alone in that. My local New World supermarket is part of the FRT trial, and I’ve never been comfortable with that fact.

Meanwhile, NZ’s other supermarket company, Australian-owned Woolworths, announced yesterday that it was rolling out body cameras to all of its stores because, the company says, it’s seen “a 75% increase in physical assaults and 148% increase in ‘serious reportable events’ in the past three years”. The cameras will be worn around the neck and only turned on if there’s an incident. Also, staff are supposed to notify customers before recording.

It’s easy to see how in a tense situation a staff member may forget to tell a customer they’re being recorded—or, the staff member may forget to turn it on at all. In a statement quoted in the linked article, the company claims, “Footage will not be released except when requested by police as part of an investigation." So… they won’t turn it over to the police unless its requested by them? What will they do with it if it isn’t requested? How long will they store the footage, and how securely will it be kept? Who will have access to it, and for what purposes? Will A.I. be used, as with Foodstuffs, to identify repeat offenders? Seems to me the Privacy Commissioner ought to be concerned about this, too.

There’s no sensible person one who isn’t concerned about the rise in abuse and even violence directed at retail workers, and we’re well aware that shoplifters are driving up costs for us all. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t legitimate questions that need to be answered, and it also doesn’t mean companies—or governments, for that matter—can do absolutely anything they want and have no controls or restrictions just because they say it’s for “security”. We’re in a completely new arena now, and that’s all the more reason there must be extra caution.

The main problem is that just like its human creators, A.I. isn’t perfect, and its flaws are compounded when the humans in the mix are placed in situations in which their inherent biases may be reinforced by the A.I. system’s inherent flaws. There’s also no such thing as a computer system that can’t be hacked, which is another reason privacy considerations are so important.

We need to dial down the hype and pay more attention to the legitimate concerns about privacy and the potential for harm caused by mistakes—by A.I. or the humans involved in the process. Meanwhile, we do need to do more to stop crimes and violence against workers in stores, and that will likely require legislation. Indeed, the two supermarket companies’ use of technology is happening at least in part because government hasn’t provided any solutions. But charging ahead into the unknown with little oversight doesn’t seem like a great idea. What I’m really saying is, let’s get this right—while we still can.