29 June 2021
27 June 2021
22 June 2021
19 June 2021
15 June 2021
13 June 2021
12 June 2021
9 June 2021
5 June 2021
Hungary for a good old protest
Budapest has renamed streets around the planned site of a leading Chinese university campus to protest an “unwanted” project forced on it by the government of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Four street signs at the site now bear the names Free Hong Kong Road, Uyghur Martyrs’ Road, Dalai Lama Road, and Bishop Xie Shiguang Road, the last referring to a persecuted Chinese Catholic priest. “We still hope the project won’t happen but if it does then it will have to put up with these names,” the city’s mayor, Gergely Karacsony, told a joint press conference with the district mayor, Krisztina Baranyi. Currently derelict, the area is to house Fudan university’s first European campus in a 500,000 sq metre (5m sq ft) complex by 2024, according to a deal signed between Hungary and the Shanghai-based university’s president. This is the sort of change we also need around Chinese embassies the world over. But the city government best be warned the university’s location could change in response, hopefully not without a further change in street names at the new location.
4 June 2021
Moist 🍆 on my window? Yes please!
A double glazing company’s play on dislike of the word “moist” has raised eyebrows, with te reo Māori speakers pointing out it doesn’t translate well. An advertisement in Dual Glaze’s latest campaign includes an image of the word “moist” written in condensation on a window. The word has been struck out, illustrating widespread objection to its use, and is followed by “ure on your windows?” in bold text. While “moist” makes many people squirm, speakers of te reo Māori pointed out another issue – “ure” translates to “penis”, which doesn’t get moist upon arousal. It gets hard. It’s the female organs that get moist. But enough about the semantics because there has never been a better case for te reo Māori to be taught in schools. It’s part of who we are as New Zealanders - I literally said that in this news story from 2018 (audio predominately in Maori): https://youtu.be/Zr6deZFzAzA.