Steph was sort of raised in a multilingual household. Kind of. Sort of. Anyway it’s very complicated, and she has feelings about this beautifully written but very misleading post at The Toast: Exposure: On Raising a Bilingual Child.
Month: September 2015
museum shops of the world: heide museum of modern art
Liz and Ste
ph, accompanied by Friends of No Award Ashleigh and Dr Freya, visited the Heide Museum of Art on Saturday! It was VERY EXCELLENT. Also it turns out a Housemate of No Award is RELATED TO THE HEIDE CREW and this has made the world a better place.
Continue reading “museum shops of the world: heide museum of modern art”
i’m jealous of your linkspam
A hometown story of prejudice and ablism from Liz’s hometown: Down syndrome man refused entry to Brisbane JB Hi-Fi.
The way we treat immigration in Australia has directly resulted in this completely preventable death: Illegal worker dumped in toilet block near Mildura died from treatable condition, police say.
On a related note: the incompetence of Border Force is breathtaking to behold.
Stonewall is very USA, and as Australians we can be forgiven for not knowing specifics, but the new movie is very clearly wrong about the specifics on queer things and racial things, as this great review at Vanity Fair specifies. This Gawker review is also excellent.
Stonewall teaches you about as much about being gay as the Aristocats taught you about being an aristocrat.
Teddy gets left behind at a Canberra hotel; goes on a tourist trip of Canberra before returning to Sydney. Steph loves photos of stuffed toys having adventures, always feel free to tweet them to her.
Gay people in National electorates have a pretty rough time of it. (Trigger warnings for suicide and homophobia.)
Rebecca “@brocklesnitch” Shaw writes on a subject very dear to Liz’s heart: girl gangs, female friendship, and the portrayal of such in middle-grade and primary-aged fiction.
Hugo Award nominations broken down by country. Liz will say something about this as soon as she gets her spoons together.
Vonda N. McIntyre recalls her career as an author of Star Trek tie-ins.
Anti-gentrification protesters target cereal cafe and estate agent in Shoreditch. Look, Stephanie acknowledges that, living in Melbourne’s inner north, she is a part of Melbourne’s gentrification problem. (She also volunteers at a kitchen that has a low income meals program, and has strong feelings about community vegie gardens, but still). HOWEVER this article is still excellent and strangely comforting. Not that riots are a great option, OBVIOUSLY, but also: “Cereal cafe. £5 for cereal when people are starving. F*** gentrification.” DAMN RIGHT.
The Future of Language. Language predictions based on MATHS and also I have some unfinalised questions about the bias of requiring apps to be produced in English thus leading to the need to learn stuff in English and the continuing bias of studies on that. Go away and read the article then come discuss in the comments.
Have you read about Kesha? You should read about Kesha. People are demanding #FreedomForKesha: Here’s what accusing a powerful producer of rape has cost her.
No Award reviews Melbourne Bike Share
One of my goals in life is to not die of heart disease at 51 like my maternal grandmother. On the one hand, she had a lot of other health problems. But so do I, and since my rheumatologist put me on Endep for pain management, I can’t even say, “Well, at least I’m not taking any dodgy first-generation anti-depressants!”
So I am trying to get … fit. Fitter. And it’s going well, thank you for asking! Thanks to my Parkiteer cage, I can cycle to the station 3km from my house and leave my bike locked and covered for the day. And thanks to my Fitbit, I have an incentive to walk 10,000 steps a day, even though that is an arbitrary goal invented by the pedometer industry. I’m basically a pawn of Big Pedometers, but I’m okay with that.
Getting fit(ter) is especially great in spring, with all these bright, sunny, freezing cold mornings. I hopped off the train at North Melbourne today, thinking, “It’s a nice day, I’ll walk from here to the office.”
Then my eye fell on the share bikes.
“They’re just like riding an armchair,” Official Potato Moya told me a couple of years ago. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but every single bike in that pod had a helmet.
It was a sign.
Clearing up some common misconceptions about Australian dragons
Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths about Australian dragons, both those native to the continent, and those that were introduced — deliberately or otherwise — by human activity. So we thought we’d throw together a quick listicle, outlining things more people should know about draconis Australis and other dragons one might find in Australia.
Continue reading “Clearing up some common misconceptions about Australian dragons”
Doctor Who 9.01: The Magician’s Apprentice
Let’s get some things out of the way first:
- Yes, it’s really season 35, the proper season 9 had Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning and Roger “no longer the best Master ever” Delgado.
- Stephanie plays no part in these posts, due to her moral objections to time travel, and also her general disinterest in matters Whovian except when Liz begs her to write an essay about Peri.
- This will be a weekly thing, time and energy and the existence of the universe permitting.
- There will be spoilers.
“The Magician’s Apprentice”, in which the Doctor meets a winsome child on a battlefield, Missy advances the asexual agenda, and Clara/Jane Austen is canon.
(Steph has proofread this post: There really is a lot about the Asexual History of Doctor Who, just fyi)
Continue reading “Doctor Who 9.01: The Magician’s Apprentice”
Reasons to adapt Tomorrow again
Steph is probably going to commit some sort of thought crime, right now:
The series producer, Michael Boughen, who also worked on the film adaptation discussed the powerful connection audiences feel to the well-loved story.
“Tomorrow When the War Began has connected to so many Australians since the book was first published in 1993,” he said.
We couldn’t agree more!
Tomorrow, When the War Began, one of Stephanie’s LEAST FAVOURITE EVER Australian YA books, is apparently going to become a tv series!
(It is not Liz’s least favourite anything because she got a few chapters into the first book when she was 13, then stopped reading because it was awful. But ask her about that time she had to read So Much To Tell You in year 9 and it was incredibly triggery!)
There was a movie adaptation as recently as 2010! But this is not your usual ‘nerdy existential you’ll ruin it’ despair. OH NO. This is ‘this book series was written to capitulate on the fear of the Yellow Peril and to turn it into a tv series is to make a tv series based on the premise that Australia is at risk of the invading Asian hordes to the North, why, why must you do this to me’ kind of despair.
you’re the link try and understand it
Who knew that hot jam doughnuts are a specifically Melbourne thing?
Steph is so into this article: An exile from Iran on the beaches of Australia
Do you believe in alternate universes? Here’s one from the reality where Malcolm Turnbull is a dangerous leftist. But what really made us sit up and pay attention is the discovery that Turnbull’s mother, Coral Lansbury, was amazing. Through her, Turnbull is also distantly related to Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote fame. GUYS.
This interview with the director of Hackers on its 20th anniversary is so great.
Our Own Two Wheels, on using sex from ladies to sell, especially in a community filled with ladies.
Can You Match the Pigeons to the Way They’re Ruining My Whole Life? The anti-birb agenda spreads!
Photos of many adorable sharks.
Obviously the title of this article is now post its prime but the article still stands: Nick Cave implores Malcolm Turnbull to remove Arts Minister George Brandis; with a special note to Sam Twyford-Moore (former EWF director and twitter about town) who put it all together.
How embarrassment: Learning to speak Australian at Peril re: noted boofhead Senator Ian MacDonald.
On the ‘stepping down’ process at Metro Trains.
Because of this racist fucked up country: Adam Goodes to farewell Sydney Swans fans next season after quietly announcing AFL retirement. The man is a role model for Australians and there are a whole lot of AFL supporters who Steph would kick in the groin area if she could.
Rebecca Shaw (aka @brocklesnitch) provides a women’s sport round-up. Liz found out just last week that women’s AFL is a thing that exists!
Every non-white person outside the United States is not a “person of color.” An interesting and critical examination of US responses to Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians and China Rich Girlfriend. (Spoilers, Steph, as a mixed-race SEAzn, hates these books for exactly these reasons.)
Shaun Tan has done some stuff with fairy tales and it is excellent. The Singing Bones.
The dangers of spring
Bearing in mind the limitations of the four European seasons as applied to an Australian setting, it seems to be spring. Sort of. We had some warm days, then some cool days, and in a few weeks, warm will outnumber cool, and then we’ll be whinging about summer until March. (Steph would never whinge about summer.)
Spring is a wonderful time of year, but it also comes with some dangers in Australia. Here are things that make spring difficult for your average No Awarder:
new pm who dis
Blah blah no Tony blah blah.
In all practical terms, this isn’t much of a change. Turnbull may believe in climate change and marriage equality, but there’s no sign he’s actually going to pursue any changes to Liberal policies there. In his first press conference this morning, he declared his commitment to mandatory detention for asylum seekers, so the change of prime minister just puts a new face on the same old human rights violations.
LUCKILY, Australians are good at finding the lighter side of a political backstabbing, and many memes and lols were had. No Award brings you some bits they most enjoyed/most noted. Mostly memes and hilarious rants.
Friend of No Award Ashleigh would like it noted:
Please document my very strong feelings about not giving a fuck about how this might make it harder for labor to win because stacking the deck for the future isn’t a valid argument to let someone fuck everything up for another year
No Award in fact had already adopted this exact sentiment as official No Award policy.
no-award.net 