'Bunch o balloons' was my introduction to Zuru so I hunted till I found EcoSplat. It's not easy to find alternatives, but they're out there. The constant push to glorify that family is revolting.
We got some EcoSplat ‘water ballons’ for our kids and we love them. They don’t hurt our soul, and because of the way you use them, playing with them with the kids has turned into a really fun event. Then once dried we use them for throwing and catching games. We’ve had our EcoSpats for a couple of years now, and they’ve been very well used.
As soon as we were given ‘bunch of balloons’ years ago, I felt a bit ill…. Little pieces of shit, connected to big pieces of shit to be broken and left all over the garden, birds nests and planet 😢 try telling that to a 4 year old that just wants a water fight…
I haven’t quite figured out my thoughts eloquently here, all the plastic and consumerism and hype to kids to cajole the exhausted parents into buying more shit is horrific. Now appealing to teenagers with Haircare etc too. Somewhere in there are humans who are also living with human hurts, I believe they had some baby loss and now set up a foundation maybe and now have a newborn? Which is awful for anyone, even if your belief system is plastic is king.
Yes- piece of shit views/tweets/business mantra/associates. But how can we find the commonality and the people in there to try and build rapport with to have decent discussions with?!
Yelling at each other from different sides of the void doesn’t seem to work and is just exhausting, noisy and well yelly. It’s all just so desperately depressing.
I can't get Gary Busey's son Jake Busey out of my head.
When they make the film about the insufferable billionaires whose entire drive appears to be destroying the planet by manufacturing plastic products, Jake better get the call from Fincher.
I can't quite clock what it is - this kinda face. The megachurch face. I guess it's just... whiteness + money + certain psychological tendencies slowly warping the face somehow?
It's the hair style that accentuate the forehead, with overly whitened teeth on display in a smile that wants to be read as friendly, but instead comes across as "Hello fellow human, are you as pleased with my new skin suit as I am?”
(And of course they never bother complimenting YOUR skin suit.)
Thanks Dean. That is worth stating really, really clearly.
To be a person openly supporting Tommy Robinson and his ideas - and still be spoken of in glowing terms in the press - well, I guess we'll see if anything changes.
I don't have high hopes going on NZ's track record.
I'm so tired of the obscenely wealthy, and even more tired of their assholery and the praise it gets. Individuals are not good people just because they have a lot of money, and from what I've seen, that level of wealth is often a reliable indicator that they are undeserving of the admiration they so easily get.
It's this strange aspirational thing. Similar genre of news reporting where they talk glowingly about young people who bought their first home via hard work... then in the last paragraph you find out they got a healthy deposit from their parents (which is fine, but I just wish it wasn't reported the way it is).
Idolising someone like Nick is not what I want to see in Aotearoa New Zealand. It's absolutely frightening that people think Zuru is cool and that it's filling up our landfill so successfully. The fact he donated some much money to ACT, the Nats and NZFirst is really telling. We need to stop large donations to political parties or we risk becoming a mini USA. Thanks for the work you do David! So important to see what the wealthiest people are up to! On that note I really enjoyed listening to Kim Hill Wants to Know speaking to Dutch/Belgian Professor of Economics from Utrecht Uni on Limitarianism, Ingrid Robeyns. It's about limiting extreme wealth. I am all for it!
Tommy Robinson is an absolute piece of shit and watching him take off as a right-wing hero in other parts of the world is INFURIATING and also scary. He's such an awful, awful person. Thank you for exposing people for supporting him!
Also his name isn't even Tommy Robinson. It's Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. In fact, he's had several names. As I understand it, he changed it as a way to sound more 'salt of the earth'. The prick.
Does he have somebody follow him around to erect a table with table cloth whenever he feels like a snack? I hope you are ok because that last comment is some pretty rank defamation of you. Thanks for taking on assholes like this.
I remember a time when New Zealanders hated pretentious assholes doing shit like this. Like when we used to mock any dickhead with a cell phone. When did we change.
Worth noting that he felt obliged to put you down, David. That says you stung him, which is why I love your work. There are all too few media holding the venal rich and powerful to account. The world is better for your courage and persistence.
It's a strange thing - I know he idolises Musk, who also has a tendency to get into these social media wars with people. And who gets incredibly obsessed with weird racist shit.
When I say that David is precious and must be protected, it's not just a meme. If something ever happens to him, we will have a hard time figuring out who did it.
It's no accident that the deification of obscenely rich folks like Musk, Mowbray and Zuckerberg goes hand-in-hand with their domination of the fourth estate. We can snort at Musk wasting all those billions on Twitter but for him it was money well spent, given that he can now do stuff like decide who gets to govern Germany.
Political cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned yesterday from the WaPo (Motto: Democracy Dies with Subservience) after her cartoon depicting owner Bezos genuflecting before Trump was rejected. This is after Bezos reportedly canned the election endorsement of Kamala in an act widely derided as 'anticipatory obedience.'
The good news is that she is now a colleague of yours, David, with a Substack of her own.
👍💪 Ann is a shero - her cartoon was epic & up to her usual high standards i.e. Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning among others - her substack is "Open Windows" & to date is free to read 🧐
Upgraded to paid after reading because I want to be on the right side of history as the world becomes increasingly dystopian...thank you for putting your neck out in a world obsessed with the voyeuristic experience of watching the mega rich talk cash and conservative ideals and packaging that as destination "success". It feels increasingly rare to hear this narrative !!!
Thanks Madeline. Honestly, paying subs are EVERYTHING when it comes to a solid backstop for when legal letters do arrive (which they do from time to time).
Thank you. It means a lot. Unsubscribe whenever you want and go back to free - the fact you paid a cent is more than 90% of readers do! (not anyone in the comments here - they are all paid up and supporting and keep this thing alive).
This is what bothers me….if we hold people like this accountable then we are accused of tall poppy syndrome. I had this very discussion the other day, a couple of things were raised. Did they really come from nothing or did they have mom and pop investors? No worries there but make the narrative transparent. Not really on topic but the takeaway for me was the accountability and responsibility of someone who has made “billions” to make some kind of reparation, or offset their polluting somehow, and I don’t mean carbon credits….the invisible R and D, or fair working conditions for everyone involved in the Zuru experience. If they truly had done it hard then they would have empathy for their employees. ie don’t be a cunt
Meanwhile, the helicopter drama continues to unfold in Westmere….but I digress.
They are really far from being self-made; they come from an upper middle class family (one wealthy enough to send all the siblings to an expensive private school), and rheir parents bankrolled their first ventures.
Like lots of “self-made” people, they tend to conveniently forget about all the advantages they were provided that got them to a point where they could work hard without being paid for a while.
You are the ultimate foil for a piece of shit like this, as he literally cannot understand how you manage to irritate and make problems for him with your "lack" of money, power and expensive haircuts. This is a family fuelled by a sense of their own magnificence, completely in denial of the white privilege and gross behaviour that built their empire of plastic crap.
Webworm, your journalism, your films and all the social commentary represent something they desperately want but can't actually buy with privilege or power- meaning! Your work has meaning, integrity and value. They can't manufacture that, he hates that you have it.
If you compare death beds: a legacy of unicorn-cat pink plastic shit, bullying and racism vs a life lived fighting for the underdog and providing interesting and otherwise unreported stories- it's a no brainer. And while he doesn't have the intellect to understand this, he likely feels it and its maddening
Seconded. Who do you think will be more remembered and celebrated in years to come? The guy who made Tickled, Mister Organ, hell, even the ‘David Farrier, THREENEWS!’ reports - or some rich dickhead who made a load of plastic crap…?
👏👏👏💯 Bravo! The only reason for these a##h*les to attack people like David, is knowing he is right about them. People who are secure in their own integrity & manhood (in this case 🤷) would just keep hanging out with their famous friends & raking in their ill-gotten $$$ & ignore it. Another case of elevating something by opposing it - now more of us know about his perfidity than if he has just kept it zipped😁😂
Why is there a shift of rich white men (Elon, Zuru etc) coming out in support of Yaxley Lennon and getting involved in UK politics recently? Do they think it's a safe space to share their bigotry in relation to whereas if they wade in in relation to their own country's politics etc they would be seen for what they are?
As a UK based reader it saddens me to see the support and voice these joyless, hate filled cretins are getting.
With Musk, I wonder if it’s a distraction from what he’s doing in America - sort of “yeah I might be asset stripping the United States but the British government supports CHILD TRAFFICKERS!”. But yes, it is deeply concerning. No one should pay Robinson (not even his real name) any attention. He’s a foul, loathsome thug and gangster. That’s all.
And as far as I could tell Nick never mentioned a Robinson before Elon posted about him a few days ago. He is dutifully following in big daddy Elon's footsteps.
I can't help but think that the reason he is commenting on it is because he wants Elon to notice him. Unfortunately shining a light on it helps him with this.
🤔 But NOT shining a light on it means ordinary folks don't get alerted in Aotearoa, which is important, and I hardly think Quelon would notice lil ole David fighting "goliath" ⁉️ BUT it would be totally awesome if he does 😁😂🤣 🙏 Do much more good for Webworm & the Farrier brand than for Mu$krat 🤷
I just said this to someone else above, but it means a lot. Unsubscribe whenever you want and go back to free - the fact you paid a cent is more than 90% of readers do! (not anyone in the comments here - they are all paid up and supporting and keep this thing alive).
When you work in a newsroom you have access to legal counsel and so on... with Webworm, that luxury all depends on paying readers. So - THANKS.
One point that I despise desperately about these despicable men(everything about them disgusts me) is how they use sexual violence as a platform. It makes me want to throw my phone against the wall. They victim blame, say if you're not like them then you must abuse children and women and yet look at how many women and children Andrew Tate has raped and trafficked. The hypocrisy reeks from every breath they take. The far right portray themselves to be tough on crime, but you need to look deeper into what they really believe.
The thing is that the far right don't actually "believe" any of what they spout. It's all about what will resonate in the moment - regardless of whether any of it is true.
'Bunch o balloons' was my introduction to Zuru so I hunted till I found EcoSplat. It's not easy to find alternatives, but they're out there. The constant push to glorify that family is revolting.
YOU ROCK ANNA.
We can each make small changes to make things better.
Giant, huge respect.
We got some EcoSplat ‘water ballons’ for our kids and we love them. They don’t hurt our soul, and because of the way you use them, playing with them with the kids has turned into a really fun event. Then once dried we use them for throwing and catching games. We’ve had our EcoSpats for a couple of years now, and they’ve been very well used.
As soon as we were given ‘bunch of balloons’ years ago, I felt a bit ill…. Little pieces of shit, connected to big pieces of shit to be broken and left all over the garden, birds nests and planet 😢 try telling that to a 4 year old that just wants a water fight…
I haven’t quite figured out my thoughts eloquently here, all the plastic and consumerism and hype to kids to cajole the exhausted parents into buying more shit is horrific. Now appealing to teenagers with Haircare etc too. Somewhere in there are humans who are also living with human hurts, I believe they had some baby loss and now set up a foundation maybe and now have a newborn? Which is awful for anyone, even if your belief system is plastic is king.
Yes- piece of shit views/tweets/business mantra/associates. But how can we find the commonality and the people in there to try and build rapport with to have decent discussions with?!
Yelling at each other from different sides of the void doesn’t seem to work and is just exhausting, noisy and well yelly. It’s all just so desperately depressing.
Nick Mowbray looks like Matt Gaetz's Kiwi cousin.
Every picture of him looks like the last thing you'd see before you're hunted for sport.
I can't get Gary Busey's son Jake Busey out of my head.
When they make the film about the insufferable billionaires whose entire drive appears to be destroying the planet by manufacturing plastic products, Jake better get the call from Fincher.
Oh shit! Gary's got a son? Haha. I didn't need to know that ;-)
The Arise vibes are strong.
I can't quite clock what it is - this kinda face. The megachurch face. I guess it's just... whiteness + money + certain psychological tendencies slowly warping the face somehow?
Fascinating.
Give the man a pulpit and a bible.
It's the hair style that accentuate the forehead, with overly whitened teeth on display in a smile that wants to be read as friendly, but instead comes across as "Hello fellow human, are you as pleased with my new skin suit as I am?”
(And of course they never bother complimenting YOUR skin suit.)
Flexing strong 💪🏼👎🏼
This is an epic comment!!
Thankyou I've been trying to place where I had seen his face before
What a description 🤣
He’s got that “I have just gotten away with murder” look Smug and condescending
The sort of person you imagine chasing poor people with a crossbow for sport.
Being from the UK I just want to reiterate what a racist cunt Tommy Robinson is.
Thanks Dean. That is worth stating really, really clearly.
To be a person openly supporting Tommy Robinson and his ideas - and still be spoken of in glowing terms in the press - well, I guess we'll see if anything changes.
I don't have high hopes going on NZ's track record.
We are in dark times. Like a renaissance of everything we should have learned from, and put behind us by now.
And to use his proper name too. Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Tommy Robinson is his 'stage' name.
Seconded.
Thirded
Fourthed
I'm so tired of the obscenely wealthy, and even more tired of their assholery and the praise it gets. Individuals are not good people just because they have a lot of money, and from what I've seen, that level of wealth is often a reliable indicator that they are undeserving of the admiration they so easily get.
Fuck that guy.
It's this strange aspirational thing. Similar genre of news reporting where they talk glowingly about young people who bought their first home via hard work... then in the last paragraph you find out they got a healthy deposit from their parents (which is fine, but I just wish it wasn't reported the way it is).
Idolising someone like Nick is not what I want to see in Aotearoa New Zealand. It's absolutely frightening that people think Zuru is cool and that it's filling up our landfill so successfully. The fact he donated some much money to ACT, the Nats and NZFirst is really telling. We need to stop large donations to political parties or we risk becoming a mini USA. Thanks for the work you do David! So important to see what the wealthiest people are up to! On that note I really enjoyed listening to Kim Hill Wants to Know speaking to Dutch/Belgian Professor of Economics from Utrecht Uni on Limitarianism, Ingrid Robeyns. It's about limiting extreme wealth. I am all for it!
Oh, thank you! The link for anyone curious: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/why-ingrid-robeyns-wants-to-get-rid-of-billionaires/id1778999412?i=1000678925233
Love Kim Hill and love she has this format for her formidable skills.
That was an epic interview, was driving at the time so will relisten from the RNZ website
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/kim-hill-wants-to-know/story/2018963319/why-ingrid-robeyns-wants-to-get-rid-of-billionaires
That was great 👍
Tommy Robinson is an absolute piece of shit and watching him take off as a right-wing hero in other parts of the world is INFURIATING and also scary. He's such an awful, awful person. Thank you for exposing people for supporting him!
Also his name isn't even Tommy Robinson. It's Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. In fact, he's had several names. As I understand it, he changed it as a way to sound more 'salt of the earth'. The prick.
I reckon he should be referred to as ‘Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the stage name Tommy Robinson’ in all media reports.
Just flicking through the Wikipedia article and associated links - phew. Quite a long list of racist horrific shit.
Dude hates it if you're not a white Christian.
Does he have somebody follow him around to erect a table with table cloth whenever he feels like a snack? I hope you are ok because that last comment is some pretty rank defamation of you. Thanks for taking on assholes like this.
He does always seem to be dining on these isolated tables.
Isolated table at a beach.
Isolated table at a game reserve.
I guess that's what you do when you're.... whatever he is.
*shudders*
I wonder if he's seen White Lotus.
I remember a time when New Zealanders hated pretentious assholes doing shit like this. Like when we used to mock any dickhead with a cell phone. When did we change.
Hope they didn't lose their job for forgetting to lay the tablecloth in the last pic
I sometimes think what I would do with the billions some have…someone following me around with a table ready for a snack sounds perfect
Worth noting that he felt obliged to put you down, David. That says you stung him, which is why I love your work. There are all too few media holding the venal rich and powerful to account. The world is better for your courage and persistence.
It's a strange thing - I know he idolises Musk, who also has a tendency to get into these social media wars with people. And who gets incredibly obsessed with weird racist shit.
Look after yourself, David. These trolls are so toxic!
Exactly! It’s a badge of honour David.
When I say that David is precious and must be protected, it's not just a meme. If something ever happens to him, we will have a hard time figuring out who did it.
It's no accident that the deification of obscenely rich folks like Musk, Mowbray and Zuckerberg goes hand-in-hand with their domination of the fourth estate. We can snort at Musk wasting all those billions on Twitter but for him it was money well spent, given that he can now do stuff like decide who gets to govern Germany.
Political cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned yesterday from the WaPo (Motto: Democracy Dies with Subservience) after her cartoon depicting owner Bezos genuflecting before Trump was rejected. This is after Bezos reportedly canned the election endorsement of Kamala in an act widely derided as 'anticipatory obedience.'
The good news is that she is now a colleague of yours, David, with a Substack of her own.
Keep up the good, independent, work.
Note to self: Next time spellcheck tries to replace "deification" with "defecation," just let it go.
👍💪 Ann is a shero - her cartoon was epic & up to her usual high standards i.e. Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning among others - her substack is "Open Windows" & to date is free to read 🧐
Upgraded to paid after reading because I want to be on the right side of history as the world becomes increasingly dystopian...thank you for putting your neck out in a world obsessed with the voyeuristic experience of watching the mega rich talk cash and conservative ideals and packaging that as destination "success". It feels increasingly rare to hear this narrative !!!
Thanks Madeline. Honestly, paying subs are EVERYTHING when it comes to a solid backstop for when legal letters do arrive (which they do from time to time).
Thank you. It means a lot. Unsubscribe whenever you want and go back to free - the fact you paid a cent is more than 90% of readers do! (not anyone in the comments here - they are all paid up and supporting and keep this thing alive).
This is what bothers me….if we hold people like this accountable then we are accused of tall poppy syndrome. I had this very discussion the other day, a couple of things were raised. Did they really come from nothing or did they have mom and pop investors? No worries there but make the narrative transparent. Not really on topic but the takeaway for me was the accountability and responsibility of someone who has made “billions” to make some kind of reparation, or offset their polluting somehow, and I don’t mean carbon credits….the invisible R and D, or fair working conditions for everyone involved in the Zuru experience. If they truly had done it hard then they would have empathy for their employees. ie don’t be a cunt
Meanwhile, the helicopter drama continues to unfold in Westmere….but I digress.
They are really far from being self-made; they come from an upper middle class family (one wealthy enough to send all the siblings to an expensive private school), and rheir parents bankrolled their first ventures.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1265042-billionaire-brothers-turn-12-000-loan-into-empire-of-cheap-toys
Like lots of “self-made” people, they tend to conveniently forget about all the advantages they were provided that got them to a point where they could work hard without being paid for a while.
THIS!
Yeah, the self-made thing reported by the media is total BS with Nick Mowbray.
And yeah, the tall poppy thing can be valid and good to keep ourselves in check down under... but as you suggest, this is not it!
You are the ultimate foil for a piece of shit like this, as he literally cannot understand how you manage to irritate and make problems for him with your "lack" of money, power and expensive haircuts. This is a family fuelled by a sense of their own magnificence, completely in denial of the white privilege and gross behaviour that built their empire of plastic crap.
Webworm, your journalism, your films and all the social commentary represent something they desperately want but can't actually buy with privilege or power- meaning! Your work has meaning, integrity and value. They can't manufacture that, he hates that you have it.
If you compare death beds: a legacy of unicorn-cat pink plastic shit, bullying and racism vs a life lived fighting for the underdog and providing interesting and otherwise unreported stories- it's a no brainer. And while he doesn't have the intellect to understand this, he likely feels it and its maddening
Fuck Beck, you have a habit of saying things that really make me want to cry / smile. Literally printing this out for days when it feels too hard.
THANK YOU.
Well it's lovely to return the favour, as you do that weekly for me ❤️
Seconded. Who do you think will be more remembered and celebrated in years to come? The guy who made Tickled, Mister Organ, hell, even the ‘David Farrier, THREENEWS!’ reports - or some rich dickhead who made a load of plastic crap…?
👏👏👏💯 Bravo! The only reason for these a##h*les to attack people like David, is knowing he is right about them. People who are secure in their own integrity & manhood (in this case 🤷) would just keep hanging out with their famous friends & raking in their ill-gotten $$$ & ignore it. Another case of elevating something by opposing it - now more of us know about his perfidity than if he has just kept it zipped😁😂
Why is there a shift of rich white men (Elon, Zuru etc) coming out in support of Yaxley Lennon and getting involved in UK politics recently? Do they think it's a safe space to share their bigotry in relation to whereas if they wade in in relation to their own country's politics etc they would be seen for what they are?
As a UK based reader it saddens me to see the support and voice these joyless, hate filled cretins are getting.
With Musk, I wonder if it’s a distraction from what he’s doing in America - sort of “yeah I might be asset stripping the United States but the British government supports CHILD TRAFFICKERS!”. But yes, it is deeply concerning. No one should pay Robinson (not even his real name) any attention. He’s a foul, loathsome thug and gangster. That’s all.
And as far as I could tell Nick never mentioned a Robinson before Elon posted about him a few days ago. He is dutifully following in big daddy Elon's footsteps.
He really is riding Elon's D, huh? Weird seeing rich dudes all simping for each other. I just... can't imagine simping for wealth.
I can't help but think that the reason he is commenting on it is because he wants Elon to notice him. Unfortunately shining a light on it helps him with this.
🤔 But NOT shining a light on it means ordinary folks don't get alerted in Aotearoa, which is important, and I hardly think Quelon would notice lil ole David fighting "goliath" ⁉️ BUT it would be totally awesome if he does 😁😂🤣 🙏 Do much more good for Webworm & the Farrier brand than for Mu$krat 🤷
Worked on me. Upgraded to paid after I read that, the sheer hero worship of him against the back drop of his views. Happy to support your Mahi
Thank you, Ben.
I just said this to someone else above, but it means a lot. Unsubscribe whenever you want and go back to free - the fact you paid a cent is more than 90% of readers do! (not anyone in the comments here - they are all paid up and supporting and keep this thing alive).
When you work in a newsroom you have access to legal counsel and so on... with Webworm, that luxury all depends on paying readers. So - THANKS.
One point that I despise desperately about these despicable men(everything about them disgusts me) is how they use sexual violence as a platform. It makes me want to throw my phone against the wall. They victim blame, say if you're not like them then you must abuse children and women and yet look at how many women and children Andrew Tate has raped and trafficked. The hypocrisy reeks from every breath they take. The far right portray themselves to be tough on crime, but you need to look deeper into what they really believe.
The thing is that the far right don't actually "believe" any of what they spout. It's all about what will resonate in the moment - regardless of whether any of it is true.