Nice to know that with 25 years under our belt we can still get on to someone’s fashion magazines’ list.
We did have that earlier, wonderful accolade from Luxlife this year, and I was pleased to receive an email from Feedspot last week to say we had made it on to their top 50 list. We are in 14th, behind some much bigger titles. I believe their algorithm picks up our RSS news feed so it says (presently) ‘5 posts/week’. It was an incredibly pleasant surprise. A big thanks to Anuj and the team at Feedspot.
Our latest test car was the MG ZS EV, the 2022 model. It’s a big improvement on the 2021 one we had last year, and there’ll be more in my review. What did stand out—and not always positively—was the computerized stuff. Yes, it’s all very well having fancy graphics and interfaces, but has anyone other than computer programmers tested them?
With a blown fuse on the power board, the car didn’t charge one night. I came out to find that 33 per cent had got to 39 per cent over nine hours. Yet the car’s displays still showed a familiar charging icon—the type you’ll see on a phone—and when investigating into the menu, it showed another graphic of current entering the vehicle. As I watched, the charge fell to 38 per cent.
I did some troubleshooting with the dealer, who thought scheduled charging might be on. But it wasn’t. I kept digging through the menus to find ‘Connected, not charging’. Finally, truth.
The house fuse was fine, so I kept looking. Eventually, of course, I got to the source of the problem, and reset the power board.
It’s the sort of thing that’s common in computing—bugs on websites or computer programs. And the more we make cars roving computers, the more I fear this is going to happen. I’ve tended to have a short fuse when it comes to these bugs—my personal blog is littered with instances of clumsy behaviour from tech companies—and this stuff should not infect something as important as a family car.
And what a pleasure it was to celebrate the election of our new mayor here in Wellington, New Zealand, Tory Whanau, on Saturday night. I’ve personally backed Tory since she officially launched her campaign, and have known her for some years. She’s energetic and resourceful, and at 39, the same age as a former successful mayor, Mark Blumsky, when he was elected. It’s also the same age I was when I first campaigned for the role.
We tend not to get political in Lucire (hence I wrote about the mayoral race elsewhere) though we’ve never censored political comment from our team. But those media that do get political did far better this year than they ever did when I stood.
One media outlet did slip back into the ‘two-horse race’ narrative and focused on two men in the race, but mostly they behaved far more fairly than in my attempts in 2010 and 2013. I faced a media blackout from some quarters the first time—a candidate who winds up getting 12 per cent and places third should not be excluded from polls—and a more overt “othering” the second time from one medium (the then-foreign-owned daily broadsheet putting on its front page that I had an accent). How far we have come now in 2022 when there was a real poll done, not the fictions of 2010 and 2013, that blew the two-horse narrative out of the water and had Tory and fellow challenger Paul Eagle neck-in-neck (Eagle came fourth). How refreshing to see streamed and televised debates (two on network TV!) that had the top three candidates (not first, second and fourth as Radio New Zealand did—twice—when I stood).
We got to see Tory handle herself well in debates and when there are fairer platforms, people can make up their minds more readily.
I thought she’d do it, but it would be close. I didn’t expect a landslide. (Now watch everyone analyse the campaign or say they expected it all along.)
Congratulations to Tory for a great campaign. I know the love she has for our city, and what books she’s read, and I’m expecting great things for our city.
Speaking of mayoral elections, coincidentally my namesake (at least in English script, though not in Chinese) is running in Toronto this year. The “other” Jack Yan’s website is at jack2022.ca, and recently I made sure my old jackyanformayor.org domain name pointed to his site. I’m not going to comment in depth as I don’t know the politics in his city, but a guy called Jack Yan running for mayor sounds pretty good, right?
Jack Yan is founder and publisher of Lucire.
Above: One of Tory Whanau’s mayoral posters, appropriately modified at her victory party on Saturday.
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