ICYMI: 'Weed in the dead of night' – a librarian shares the secrets of book-culling
4 - 10 February 2020
Weed in the dead of night: A librarian shares the secrets of book-culling. Why do books in the bin send shivers down our spine? Librarian Rebecca Hastie considers the sharp emotions that the decision to cull library books provokes, and explains why it’s a brutal but necessary business.
Māui’s Fish: a view of the NZ health system from the end of a corridor in a Levin hospital. Our health system is broken. It has betrayed its community rather than served it. And the solution lies with the voices of patients, writes Glenn Colquhoun, a New Zealand poet and doctor based on the Kāpiti coast.
New Zealand’s new-wave RTDs, reviewed and ranked. They’re ‘clean’, they’re ‘natural’, they’ll get you lit but not make you fat – or at least that’s the aim. Premixed spirit-based drinks have shed their low-brow reputation and are taking over a summer barbecue near you. But are they any good? The Spinoff collected as many of those fashionable New Zealand-made RTDs as we could, and embarked on a marathon tasting. These are the results.
Just briefly, a quick word from Alex Casey, senior writer at The Spinoff:
I love everything that I do at The Spinoff, but the stories that matter the most to me are those which expose the insipid culture around sexual violence in New Zealand. Whether it’s the political volunteer who found herself vomiting at the sight of her attacker in Parliament, or a Roastbusters survivor reflecting on her trauma five years on, I am constantly in awe of the bravery and the trust that is placed in The Spinoff to tell these stories right.
These stories are very resource-intensive, from hours of interviewing and corroborating, to travel costs, to the significant legal fees. Which is where you come in. If you support The Spinoff Members, you are directly funding this most time-intensive work. And believe me, there is much, much more work to be done.
Emily Writes: 10 reasons you should stop complaining about Wellington’s weather. “If it was hot all the time we couldn’t insufferably say ‘You can’t beat Wellington a good day!’ to each other,” says Emily Writes. “That’s part of who we are. We literally can’t not say it. It’s like a vocal tick you just get if you’ve lived here for more than three years.”
Sky TV’s new CEO has a bold rescue plan. Can he pull it off? In five years the Sky TV share price tumbled from more than $6 to less than $2, during a period when the rest of the NZX50 had doubled. Attacked on all sides by its online streaming rivals, the company has been in freefall for a long time – but Martin Stewart believes he has a plan to save it. Could he actually succeed?
Why it is politically hard to care about the arts. The arts community is up in arms over cuts at the Concert Programme, book-culling at the National Library, and more. So why don’t politicians seem to care? It all comes down to self-absorption, argues Ben Thomas, a former press secretary to the Minister for Culture & Heritage. “It’s a stretch to call the arts a ‘community’,” he writes. “In politics, a community tends to be defined, however broadly, in terms of its interests. Those interests could be based on geography, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, or economic imperatives. The arts are a community more in the sense of the Balkans after the fall of communism – an intractable, internecine turf war based on ancient and obscure grudges.”
The real plague is racism: Why I refuse to give into xenophobia over coronavirus. As the mother of an immunocompromised child, Kiki Van Newton has more excuse than most to worry about the coronavirus outbreak. But racist reactions – and panicked border closures – aren’t the answer, she writes.
PublishedLast save Feb 3