Yes, it really could be a brilliant new age of fairer, Tātai Whetū justice and harmony. Or it could supercharge racism and cause a nuclear war... - One thing that the NZ government needs to prepare for is an expensive and extensive process of developing bespoke AI tools for each department. Correcting biases with a bunch of quality control experts is a must, and neither cheap nor fast. Off the shelf tools aren't up to the level of data churn. In the US, they buy up an eng

Gmaj7/D Thoughts that keep swirling Dmaj7/C# Into my head. A The seconds keep twirling. Dmaj7 Virtually dead. Gmaj7/D I see an imprint, Dmaj7/C# From some other past. A Another era Dmaj7 That thought it would last. Em A7 A rustling in the breeze Em C#, D A cure for some disease G Dsus2 Fellow travellers on the trail E-7sus4 A D These collective memories Gm

Writing is the cheapest part of the process. With musicals, it's particularly important. Most Broadway shows take about 5 years from conception to full staging. A film is no different. A musical needs a complete score of at least forty minutes. Unlike writing a film score, it needs to be perfectly synchronised with good lyrics. Even my fastest scores take a full year to write. Working For Each Other is the exception. Paul dosed me with speed. - If everyone could do it, I

VUW has to lose. There's no grey area. It's not negotiable: you covered up a serial predator and destroyed my reputation to exploit me. You spied on my compositions while I wasn't enrolled. That's a serious criminal offence. It would have been illegal even if I had been enrolled. Dr. Fisher is being investigated. - You will settle in five figures at the lowest. You will admit fault to the public and take responsibility. - There is no magic deal. There's only the one that m

Watching the same boring TV shows As my younger self, confounding the spies. Wearing longer and longer clothes, Watching my hair as it epically grows. Watching the same 24-hour news channel Through our younger selves, believing their lies. Writing shorter and shorter prose; Getting real deep on morning talkback shows. Who remembers who was wearing which clothes? Watching loops of repetitive decay. While we get on our knees and pray. Those, boring rituals that fill our mu

In my experience, they laugh you off until the charges are serious and the police are investigating the pattern of harassment and threats. You don't even need a lawyer to attend mediation, yet they'll fob you off so that they can't be caught sitting in a room admitting that they have ignored your refusals to licence the songs which they still can't figure out how to play or sing. All they had to do was: a) take my offer to sell Weeded Out seriously, b) meet in real life to

BLERTA - six-episode series Letter To Blanchy BLERTA is existential. It's all on badly degraded videotape. Letter to Blanchy is probably similar. Why is BLERTA important? It's the only real footage of Bruno's drumming. All those fabulous live takes and John Charles arrangements are significant. Not to mention that they're both extremely funny! - The Heart of the Stag John O'Shea trilogy (Broken Barrier, Runaway, Don't Let It Get You) Absent Without Leave The Scarecrow Jac

Emanuel and I are in agreement: I'm not going to be singing a live version. Why? Because I'm not a full-blooded tenor. Much like any singer in the world, I can sing excerpts (at my discretion). The full piece is reserved for people who have the right sound and abilities. Replicating my version would be bad karaoke. There will be no stage adaptations. Some Kind of Love and Portrait of a Knight have already done what Mr. Mackintosh and others might wish to do. It may irk the

Perhaps I shouldn't have given them the idea of remaking Backbeat... I'd add that a still image isn't proof of principal photography, and the entire thing is based around the idea that they still own the publishing rights to songs from Please Please Me. Much like Backbeat, it'll be lame covers, not master recordings. To compare and contrast, Sir Peter made nifty little documentaries to announce that he'd begun shooting the Hobbit films way back in the early 2010's. - Whi

Leaving aside the fact that life rights aren't a concept in the Commonwealth, the truth is that the Rashomon Beatles films must be conditional upon script approval. There's no other reason that Paul could have persuaded them to let us finish our draft. Beatles Invade New Zealand! was a giant middle finger to Sam Mendes, but it had some origin of the band bits that he badly wanted to use, so he let me write it. He wasn't predicting that we'd refuse to sell it. He didn't pred

I hadn't really thought that my saga could be defined as torture, but then I read this: Crimes of Torture Act 1989. Part I, Article I: For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of havin

We all know the reason that I wasn't forced to change my name is that I have evidence - and people who can corroborate - that I was using that name in 2019 and 2020. I was releasing tracks as Amanda in early 2021. We've all seen the video of my evidence, so let's stop pretending like you haven't. Perhaps you weren't aware that I kept a diary, but your arrogance irritates me - If you're so bloody angry, then why didn't we have a polite, if terse, meeting where you expresse

We'd massively increase funding for public media, regardless of RNZ/TVNZ involvement in the projects. $50 million a year or more. - We want to take NZ back to the 1980's, when every rural city had a TV station. That's really easy now. We'll give them assistance with syndicating stories and setting up a studio with cheap DSLR cameras, like the one that I shot AMPP on. Then we'd actively encourage people to watch the local news. It's easy in rural communities, as long as it

Yes, but my justification is sound. In my mind, academic writing is just word shuffling. Believe me, I spent six months evaluating academic essays across the Commonwealth. It's already written by formula or rewritten by gifted writers. How does AI change that? - It doesn't require any particular talent, and most people are terrible at it. The irony is that people can't work out from my essays if ChatGPT co-wrote it. RNZ eventually threw in the towel. I have a distinctive

That's George being a bit coy. They were faking blues and rock in those keys, so they probably knew something of I-IV-V-I and other important basics. Given the chromatic voice-leading in the early songs, they probably knew more than that. Paul reckons that Little Richard taught them chord substitutions.

For a temp job that's essentially an insult to placate Sir Paul? So I can be shot and killed in the USA? So I can be treated like shit in Britain? I'm not going to be another Kiwi that's informally exiled for my politics, win or lose. The polls are neck and neck in our upcoming election: I've got shit to do.