The ABC brings us an important fatberg update from Brisbane.  (Maybe not safe to read if you’re eating.  A key quote: “We always get corn.”)

Official rebuttal from Noted Fatberg Zoe: #NOTALLFATBERGS

The Breakfast Clubbing Season – In which an intrepid ABC editor inserted talking ex-prime ministerial heads into the trailer for The Breakfast Club.  Many thanks to Friend of No Award Sarah B for bringing this to our attention.

Why Grandma’s Sad, tales from the olds who need youths to get off their lawn, pay attention to grandparents, prioritise boring adults, etc etc. Steph laughed her way through this whole thing, it’s so great.

Kids spend an enormous amount of time looking at a type of device that didn’t really exist ten years ago. Among some young people, looking at these devices is the central animating activity. This is weird. Truly! Younger people are cyborgs and older people are meat, more or less.

At The Conversation: Coles: Not So Good For Humanity, Particularly If You’re A Truck Driver. We’re not saying Steph spent her birthday phonecall from her sister lecturing her sister about not going to Coles for strawberries, but Stephanie has long-term frowned at Australia’s supermarket duopoly (whilst occasionally still using it).

WA, no: WA’s Department of Culture and Arts under fire for ‘turning hoses’ on homeless.

This post was great: Why I’m Done Defending Women’s Sports.

While I’m being asked why “no one cares,” the Women’s World Cup is getting ratings that would make the NBA or Major League Baseball weep with joy. While ESPN Radio self-parody Colin Cowherd says that men are stronger and better athletes and we appreciate greatness in America and that’s why men’s sports is more fun to watch, his radio contract appears in peril because fewer and fewer people care what he has to say.

Steph loves Mount Zero Olive Oil, she can buy it in bulk (pouring it directly into her oil bottles) from Friends of the Earth and it tastes lovely and it’s from Victoria. But I probably wasn’t this thief. Thieves steal almost 600 litres of extra virgin olive oil from Grampians grove Mount Zero Olives.

Liz notes: “probably”.

Plastic Free July update: Steph almost had a meltdown in the aisles of Minh Phat in Richmond, when she realised her choices were the following, as a Chinese-Malaysian in Australia:

• Don’t cook Chinese food, keep plastic free status
• Cook Chinese food, don’t keep plastic free status

Reader, she bought her oyster mushrooms grown in Victoria, wrapped in plastic and on a polystyrene board; she bought her noodles fresh made and wrapped in a plastic bag. She is going to make tofu tonight at home, so at least she has that. Anyway, cultural elements of Western society concepts that are about individualism and clash with other things, etc etc.

On a related note, here is Naomi Klein talking about the western emphasis on individual action as a vehicle for change, versus the collectivist perspective of sweatshop workers in developing countries.

You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

Invisible Australians: Life under the White Australia policy.

Finally, Melbourne is about to enter a cold snap, so here’s a pattern for a penguin hot water bottle cover.  Stay warm!