I'm a bad fan 😫
Today we’re starting with a BIG shout out to the 26 new ✨SYSCA SUPPORTERS✨ who’ve just joined us - I see you & I love you! If you wanna support what we do, you can become a ✨SYSCA Supporter✨ here!
Mōrena lil shits!!
BEFORE WE GET INTO IT, ABOUT 5 MINUTES AGO I SPILT A WHOLE CUP OF COFFEE OVER MY LAPTOP, PHONE, MONITOR... EVERYTHING! SO IF THIS IS THE LAST YOU HEAR OF ME IT'S BECAUSE I LITERALLY HEARD MY LAPTOP SIZZLE AND IDK HOW LONG IT'S GOT LEFT!
And now for the intro I had previously written:
So as I mentioned yesterday, I’m back in my home town for the Easter break, and when one is home, one must attend the local quiz night. Normy, my brothers, Liv’s parents (and whoever else we can find that week) have a weekly team that Liv and I started one summer while we were working here. It’s cute as hell and almost every time, me & my brothers are the youngest people in the room by a long shot. Anyway, the reason I tell you all this is because I let the team down majorly last night.
Most weeks there’s only like one or two questions I can actually answer, and this week - as if they knew that I was gonna be there- there was a question about one Harry Styles. It was a ‘believe it or not’ question, and it was: ‘this singer (and a photo of Harry) is about to release a new album called ‘Harry’s Home.’ I saw the photo of him and the album cover and I was like ‘omg yeah that’s it, believe it!’ and then it came to calling out the answers, they were like no bestie… it’s ‘Harry’s House.’ I AM ASHAMED. We ended up coming second in the quiz, but thank god we lost by more than one point so it actually wasn’t solely my fault.
🥺 If you want to pay for the media you love and make sure I can continue to do this for you, PLEASE, become a SYSCA supporter here - I need you! 🥺
PS! I'm off for Easter (and probs have a broken laptop too) so I'll C U Next Tuesday!!
Bel Chimes In: You’ve been Lemonied
How facial recognition is identifying the dead in Ukraine
Mum’s bacon and egg pie recipe
Why is food SO expensive right now???
Do you have your computer window maximised or nah?
What to say when things go bad: You've been Lemonied
This section is written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chard-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. You should check out more of her beautiful words here.
Ok, so remember that book (and movie) series Lemony Snicket: A series of unfortunate events, about those orphan kids who just have a consistently gnarly time moving around from house to house and bad things just keep happening?
Enter one of my personal favourite words: ‘lemonied’, which means a string of bad things has happened to you in a small space of time.
You know those days when like, you’re running late, your phone dies, you’ve been ghosted, work is bad or hard, you come home and then there’s a power cut? That's when you can say ‘I’ve been absolutely lemonied today’.
The good thing is that there’s hope because in the books things always turn around, the same way life eventually does too :)
How facial recognition is identifying the dead in Ukraine
This isn’t that new of a phenomenon - nor is it that comfortable to talk about, but it’s incredibly telling of the ‘extremely online’ war that continues to push on, and it’s actually something I’ve wondered before - how do you identify someone who’s been killed in during wartime?
Well, if you’re in Ukraine, you use Clearview. Clearview AI is a contro app that basically scrapes people's images from Google and a bunch of other social media sites to create an enormous database of what its CEO and founder Hoan Ton-That calls "a search engine for faces". It’s kinda like Google, but instead of typing a query, the user uploads a photo of a face and it matches you to that person in their database.
I first heard of Clearview when its extensive use by law enforcement in America was being reported on - 3,200 government agencies have either bought or trialled the technology. Last year, Clearview was actually fined by the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office for failing to inform people that it was collecting photos of them from social media platforms - yeah… that’s another thing. We’re all probably in this database, and we have no idea.
Not me - I don’t have social media!
Sorry bestie, even you. The beauty of scraping every single image that exists online is that even if you’re in the background of an image your friend has uploaded, or you’ve been in the newspaper for winning your football tournament, or your photo is on your work’s website - you’re on the database.
Ok, so how is it being used in wartime?
The CEO of Clearview has offered the tech to Ukraine to use to identify dead soldiers, and Ukraine has taken them up on their offer. And let's be clear(view) - I can totally see its use-case here. As dystopian as it sounds, it makes an incredibly emotional and taxing job - that of identifying a dead soldier - a bit quicker and easier.
The way it works is that you snap a picture of the soldiers face, upload it to Clearviews’s database, and the search will return either one or several results of people who look similar. Then you can identify, via other visual elements (like tattoos) or characteristics (you can see where they work) who your match is.
A few more things
While I can see its use case here, Ukraine isn’t just using this technology to identify the dead - they’re also using it to help identify enemy suspects. And this is where things get slightly scarier. Trusting AI to be 100% accurate isn’t something we can do yet. There is a chance that you will scan someone’s face and it will link it to the wrong person in the database. We’ve seen this with AI time and time again. And this is bad enough in peacetime, when a wrong match could get you incorrectly arrested, but in wartime? A wrong match could be deadly if it matched an ‘enemy soldier’ to any other civilian. It could mean imprisonment, or worse.
Anyway, that's my two cents on the latest in tech+war, and if you want to know a bit more about how AI works (and how it gets stuff wrong) you should check out this video:
LET’S TALK ABOUT THE PAY GAP! AGAIN!
LOL we noticed that the links weren't working yesterday, and want you to have everything you need to fight these damn pay gaps!!! So here you have our section on pay gaps (brought to you by our mates at Mind The Gap) again! Lucky!!!
Do you talk about your salary with your partner? With your flat? With your co-workers? Well - you should! Over the past few weeks, we’ve been chatting a bunch about the gender and ethnic pay gaps, but I figured it was time to do some mythbusting (with help from our mates at Mind The Gap!)
WTF is a pay gap?
Pay gaps data shows the difference in earnings between groups of people. In New Zealand, Māori & Pasifika women are the lowest income earners, earning 25% less than the average white male.
We have pay gaps because of many things: paying some people less than others for the same role, paying some people less for roles that require the same level of skills/energy) or simply - and sadly - being biased and discriminating. Yikes - I know.
But NZ’s is only 9% - that’s not even that bad?
First of all besties, it is bad, and second of all - that’s not the full story. Here in NZ, the average gender pay gap is 9%, but the pay gap between a Pākeha man and a Pasifika woman is 25%
How can we help?
By reporting on the pay gap - the most simple and effective tool for closing it. In the UK (where pay gap reporting is required by the Government) the gaps have been reduced by 19%! Mind The Gap has also just launched New Zealand’s first Pay Gap Registry, where you can see which larger businesses in NZ report theirs.
ASK ABOUT IT! To get more businesses reporting on what their pay gap is, it’s on us to start having these conversations. We know these chats can be uncomfy or nerve-wracking (whether it’s with our employers, where we shop, or even with our banks), so if you’re in a position to, here are some templates to help!!
You know our newsy’s are a two-way street, & I’d love it so much if you could respond with any experiences you’ve had with the pay gap - whether it’s discovering it in your workplace or starting a conversation about it with someone you work for - I wanna hear from you!
Not in the mood for expensive food
This section is written by Squish (my older bro Nick!) You can hear him talk shit with me every week on The Shit Show podcast!
Today we got a wee food price update from stats NZ, who confirmed that painful feeling in our pocket that we in NZ have been experiencing over the past year: Food prices in NZ are out of control. A wee overview of the inflation numbers that were released today:
Overall, Statistics New Zealand says food prices rose 7.6% for the year to March 2022, so for the same basket of pineapple lumps, L&P and lamb chops, you’ll be paying nearly 8% more this March than you were last March. It’s bad news for all the meat-eaters out there: meat, poultry, and fish prices increased 8.7%, which is starting to make me rethink the classic Sunday roast. It's even worse news for the vegetarians out there, however, and this is actually shocking, fruit and vegetable prices have increased a fucking crazy 18%. 18%!!! To put this into perspective, a shopping cart of fruit and veges, from your bananas to your avocados, your baby spinach to your frozen berries for your smoothies, would have been worth $40 in March last year but would be worth close to $50 this March.
And, if your goal is to outsmart the supermarkets and just eat out instead, you're also out of luck. Restaurant meals and takeaway food prices still increased, but only at 5.1%. So no matter what, if you want to eat in NZ at the moment, it's going to hurt, and it doesn't look it’s like slowing down anytime soon.
Mum's bacon and egg pie recipe!
If you can afford the ingredients after seeing that last story, that is...
Context: after realising that only 29% of you know what bacon and egg pie is, I feel like it's my duty to make this absolute hallmark of my childhood entirely your problem (+ a lot of you asked for the recipe, and I listen, remember??)
So here's Rhonda's recipe:
You’ll need (and you can just put in as much of each of these ingredients as ur vibing)
Bacon
Eggs
Milk
Cheese
Puff Pastry
A tablespoon of love
NO PEAS EVER
Mum’s instructions:
“Line a baking tin with puff pastry. Spread grated cheese over, then sprinkle over chopped bacon. Crack whole eggs all over the bacon. Beat 2 or 3 eggs with salt & pepper and a little bit of milk. Pour over the bacon & eggs. Sprinkle with a handful of cheese and place a pastry lid on top.
Cook at 180 fan bake until pastry is puffed and golden 😊”
And if you’re my little brother and you have leftover pastry, make a pastry penis on top :-)
A cool vid with a cool dude
Add this to ur weekend watching, along with all the others I reckon <3
Do you prefer to have your computer windows full screen or not full screen?
I HATE FULL SCREEN BECAUSE I FEEL TRAPPED BY IT, but that experience is in fact, not universal, because:
70% of you prefer full screen
30% prefer LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE
What Your Jealousy Is Really Telling You (Culture Vulture)
Yes, even wars have rules (The Shit Show)
What Is It About Jack Harlow? (Harper Bazaar)
Billie Eilish and Nike Team Up for Sustainable Air Force 1 Collab (Footwear News)
BeReal Made Me Realize All My Friends Are Hanging Out Without Me (Buzzfeed)
Become a ✨SYSCA SUPPORTER✨ — shityoushouldcareabout.memberful.com
Seriously, we need you 🥺🥺🥺